A traveler once came upon an old man sitting next to the road. In his hand the old man held a tiny pebble which the traveler immediately recognized. He had just passed a stream and when he approached to have a drink of water he noticed that the riverbed was covered with these tiny white pebbles. The old man had a bowl on either side of him. One was empty and the other filled to the brim with these tiny white pebbles. The traveler then asked the old man:
“Why are you sitting there with a bunch of pebbles, old man?”
Without looking up the old man slowly said:
“Do you have time for a lengthy conversation?”
The traveler thought about what else he wanted to do that day, but before he could answer the old man continued in the same unhurried tone:
“Perhaps not. Perhaps you are in a hurry to the next town? Perhaps to see the famous church with its stained glass windows and magnificent frescoes?”
“How did you know? Not that I had any specific plans for today but …” he could think of nothing else to say and was slightly surprised by the old man’s frank manner of speaking.
“The people who live in that town do not leave it. Everybody who passes through here goes to see the church. You are passing through here, so you are probably going to see the church”
“If you knew, why do you ask old man?”
“To observe the same thing over and over again does not guarantee that it will continue as you have observed. So I ask. Tell me, are you religious young man?”
“Not really, but I do enjoy the silent beauty of old churches. I have spent countless hours in many different churches all over the world”
“Do you believe that the sun will rise tomorrow?”
“Well yes, of course!”
“Why?” Asked the old man as if it was the last question he would ever need to ask.
“Because that is how the solar system works” replied the young man without even stopping to think. There was the slightest of pauses. The old man looked exhausted but continued, slightly out of breath:
“And how do you know how the solar system works young man?”
“Well” said the young traveler with a clever looking smile “Like you said: by means of observation”
“So you think that because you observed something in the past it will necessarily happen in the same way again and again?”
“Well not always. But with things like sunrise and sunset we can be pretty certain.”
“Completely certain?”
“Well now that you put it that way, no not completely certain I guess. But in all likelihood it will happen as expected”
“In all likelihood yes, but not definitely. And yet, in the one-out-of-a-million times that it does not happen as expected, you would have been completely wrong in your prediction. Either the sun will rise or it will not rise tomorrow. It cannot rise only halfway”
“I think I get the point but I don’t see why it is of much importance, besides, what does this have to do with those pebbles?” he asked, suddenly irritated.
Without raising his head from its lowered position the old man lifted his eyes toward the horizon and said:
“When it comes to knowing you either know or you don’t know. You cannot know halfway.”
He spoke as if the young man wasn’t still standing in front of him and waiting impatiently for an explanation. He continued at a steady pace:
“Probability and knowledge are not the same thing. Therefore you do not know, and in fact you cannot know, that the sun will rise tomorrow”
“I agree, but I simply expect, for the sake of convenience, that it will rise. If it doesn’t I will admit I was wrong.” There followed an awkward silence. The young traveller was about to continue speaking when the old man said:
“Perhaps. But perhaps you also think that I am a crazy old man. Perhaps, once you have gone form here, you will go back to assuming that you know something that is in fact impossible to know”
“What’s your point old man?” The young traveler had almost forgotten how the conversation had started. “Perhaps nobody knows anything about the world at all? If that’s your point then you are just another obnoxious philosopher who can offer nothing but questions!”
The old man sighed, waited and said, almost whispering:
“These pebbles are meant to illustrate just that”
The young man was taken aback and seriously confused. His first thought was: ‘How did the old man just do that?’ And then he thought: ‘How did the old man bring that wayward conversation back to the pebbles?’ ‘It is almost as if he had planned the conversation beforehand.’
There was a vague feeling that the young man couldn’t quite place, but it felt almost as if he had been insulted.
‘Could this have been a trap?’ The young man then had a profound experience. It came through as a series of thoughts: ‘Surely the old man could not have planned the conversation that carefully?’ ‘It must be pure coincidence that my assertion dovetailed with whatever the old man is hiding’ ‘Why then do I feel like a trapped animal?’ ‘The old man must have had this conversation before’ ‘But surely that is impossible?’ ‘Am I that predictable?’ ‘The future cannot be predetermined and yet here I am put on a predetermined spot…’
Without the young traveler even realizing it, somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind the old man had stirred the slightest sensation of uncertainty. The old man looked up for the first time and peered into the distance as if trying to observe the movement of the air around them. He said nothing. The traveler could barely make out the difference between his facial features and his wrinkles. He looked much older than the traveler had expected.
“Are you OK?” the traveler asked, slightly nervous and suddenly concerned about the old man.
“How far have you traveled today young man?”
“I have been walking since sunrise”
“And when you are not traveling dusty roads what else do you do?”
“I am a scholar. I study ancient cultures”
“Do you still want to know what the pebbles are for?”
“Yeah, sure” It was a very unconvincing answer.
“It’s a challenge. A quest of sorts”
“A challenge? What kind of challenge?” Asked the traveler sceptically. Although worried about the old man he couldn’t wait to get going. He was tired after a day’s walking and really wanted a warm meal.
“It involves a riddle”
“A riddle?”
“Yes. A Question. The answer to which lies hidden within the question itself”
The young traveler did not like riddles at all, he despised them, but simply said: “I am more accustomed to finding answers within manuscripts and from artifacts. Sometimes I read for days on end, without stopping, to find one important sentence”
The old man looked unimpressed. He half attempted a smile and for a few moments he said nothing. The traveler felt more and more as if he was speaking into an empty void where neither words nor actions mattered at all. A thought swept through the young man’s active mind: ‘This old man is playing with me’ followed by ‘I do not like being fooled with’
For a few fleeting moments there floated in his mind’s eye an image of the unfinished manuscript he had left behind. It was still opened at the last page he read before giving up and embarking on this journey. It frustrated him so much that he had promised himself to start all over with it upon his return. He was not accustomed to words getting the better of him.
“Life is a lot like a riddle you know” The old man’s words interrupted his thoughts and he was surprised by the sound of his own voice when he replied with a vague look on his face:
“You think?”
“Sure” said the old man. “Look at the most important questions we ask ourselves. Aeons of time have passed and we still ask ourselves everyday: ‘What I am supposed to do?’”
“Well that’s no riddle!”
“Of course it is. Where do you suppose people look for the answer to that question?”
“I don’t know, I guess they keep searching and trying different things until they find something worth doing”
“Exactly. We ask ourselves ‘What am I supposed to do?’ and, if we are fortunate and patient, we find the answer in the same place. Within ourselves.”
They sat in silence. The young man was distracted and couldn’t think of anything but a warm meal, some wine and a comfortable bed. Slightly agitated and eager to get going but not knowing how to end the conversation, the traveler said:
“I am not sure I agree. Life is only a riddle for those that are lost and don’t know what to do.”
The old man barely lifted an eyebrow.
“The riddle, you want to hear it?”
“I must admit I am very curious” He was actually very curious but also thought that this might be a good way to end the conversation and get going.
The old man had a slight grin on his face as if he knew something that he wasn’t supposed to know.
“It is not an easy challenge. I will give you the riddle and in turn you may ask me questions. I shall answer truthfully. For each question you ask I will take one pebble from the full bowl and place it in the empty bowl. Once all the pebbles have been moved from one bowl to the other I can no longer answer any of your questions and you must answer the riddle.”
“What if I cannot answer the riddle?”
“You may go your way and continue your journey but until you answer the riddle you will not be able to speak again”
“And what is my reward if I do answer the riddle?”
“The answer itself”
“I don’t understand. I risk eternal silence and all I get in return is the answer to some riddle?”
“This is not just some ordinary riddle. The answer to this riddle holds the secret to happiness and peace. It is the answer to life itself. In fact, you could go so far as to say that a person who truly understands the significance of the answer lives without fear of death”
There followed a few minutes of absolute silence before the traveler asked:
“So what is the riddle?”
“Once I tell you the riddle you cannot undo it. Once it is spoken you agree to these terms”
The young traveler looked genuinely impressed but there fluttered a thought through his mind, reminding him not to believe superstitious stuff like that.
The old man suddenly looked him straight in the eye, for the first time, and said:
“There is nothing supernatural about this. The conundrum that your mind will find itself within, once challenged with this question, will silence you until you find the answer. It’s that simple.”
The traveler did not actually believe that the old man had the means, whether natural or supernatural, to keep him silent for eternity so he asked:
“What is the riddle? I want to know”
“When you say my name I am not here. Who am I?”
The traveler thought the question over. His mind automatically started preparing a series of questions. In logical order. He looked at the bowl filled with pebbles and thought: ‘There must be at least one hundred pebbles in there’ ‘I will ask him fifty questions’ ‘That should be enough’ ‘It will only take me one hour if he keeps his answers short’ ‘Maybe even less’
His hand lifted to his brow to remove his cap while his mind continued to formulate thoughts and questions.
‘Who or what is this thing that disappears when named or called out loud’ ‘Is it even something’ ‘It can’t be the person talking or the person listening because they are both still there to hear the uttering of a name’ ‘A name’ ‘A name that names the thing that disappears when it is named’ ‘What is its name?’ ‘It is probably not someone but something’ ‘No person can disappear that quickly, within an instant’ ‘The question is not “What is its name” but simply “What is it?” ‘What is it that disappears when you say its name?’
The traveler could feel his mind working. Buzzing. Even after a long and exhausting day he still felt confident once he assumed control of the situation and started working on the problem. With his brilliant mind at work a triumphant feeling slowly started creeping up his spine. Unnoticed it saturated his mind, waiting for an opportunity to explode. He looked at the old man, determined, and asked:
“When I say your name you are not here. Where are you? Are you somewhere else than I?”
“I am not here. I could be somewhere else. I could be anywhere, but if you say my name I am not there where you say it”
“Can I find you?” asked the traveler.
“Yes, by traveling to where I am, you could find me”
“Will I know when I find you there?”
“Maybe”
“OK, but could your presence be mistaken for the presence of something else?”
“No, absolutely not”
“Are you difficult to find?”
“That depends on your level of awareness. But even if you know me only vaguely I am very easily recognizable”
“Do you exist in the physical world?”
“Yes”
“Are you human?” He had to make sure and could feel he was getting closer. This last question was actually unnecessary but he had to be sure.
“Yes I am human…” said the old man without the slightest look of concern on his wrinkled face.
‘I Knew it!’ The triumphant feeling exploded and engulfed his entire consciousness. ‘No reason to think that an old man can work out something more complicated than what I can crack!’ His mind jumped to conclusions and assumed that it had the answer. ‘It must be…’
Suddenly the old man interrupted his thoughts again:
“And no I am also not human” he said, almost as if having intentionally given the young traveler time to” get excited before making him turn around.
A look of surprise. Astonished. Bewildered.
“Sorry, I don’t follow” said the young man tentatively.
“Simple” came the reply. “Yes, because part of any human is me. No, because not all of me is human”
‘This is not right’ ‘He did it again!’ ‘This time it must have been intentional!’ ‘How could this happen?’ ‘It is not fair to do that…’ His mind grasped for something. Anything. Nothing. He no longer knew what to ask. So he started again, following the same train of thought hoping that he simply missed something.
“Then all humans know you?”
“No. Being human does not guarantee knowing me”
There followed another pause.
“Do you really exist in the physical world or are you an abstract concept?”
“I do exist in the physical world although you could say that, to be completely me, I would have to be an abstract concept. I exist in the physical world to varying degrees. But never fully”
And so it continued… The young man continued asking questions and the old man continued giving answers that provided nothing but more questions.
The young man eventually got very angry and insulted the old man who in turn paid no attention to his insults and continued as if nothing was wrong. This only served to further annoy the young traveler. He came close to losing his temper on numerous occasions as the old man continued answering each question diligently and calmly. Each time the young man asked a question the old man would answer while moving a single pebble from one bowl to the other.
And so it continued until there were only two pebbles left and the empty bowl was filled to the brim.
Two lonely pebbles in an ordinary wooden bowl.
“Now what?” asked the exhausted traveler as if not wanting to know the answer.
“One more question” came the reply. Short and to the point. The old man dropped the second last pebble and reached over to pick up the last one.
The young man was tired of asking and thinking and cared not that he had just wasted one valuable question.
‘Tired of questions’ came a vague last thought.
His mind worked as if simply for the sake of being heard but without any real intent left behind the thoughts. ‘Tired of asking and thinking’ he begged. Now he really just wanted to go on and find a hot meal. He was tired of this riddle, any challenge and all questions. He was tired of arguing.
‘Tired of thinking’
So he simply asked: “Please can we stop?”
“Sure.”
The last pebble dropped and there was silence. No more white pebbles.
The young man left. He arrived just before the last restaurants started closing. He ate, left and didn’t say a word to anyone.
He awoke the next morning and had coffee with toast. As always. He went to the famous church with its stained glass windows and magnificent frescoes. As the day wore on an overwhelming sense of weariness was slowly but surely replaced by a sense of purpose. He had not left the church the whole day and when the sun set he had decided that he would find the answer to the old man’s riddle. He simply could not leave the riddle unanswered.
He half smiled to himself and realized for the first time that the old man may have been right all along: ‘The pebbles and the bowls were not there to count questions but to prove a point’ His mind was clear and relaxed. ‘The answer to the riddle cannot come from questioning’ he thought. ‘The outcome of the challenge would have been the same had the old man used a thousand pebbles instead of only one hundred’
He was calm. His mind active, as ever, but there was a serenity, a feeling of peace, perhaps so slight that the traveler did not yet realize it himself. But like the probability of one-out-of-a-million, it was there. However small but ever present.
He thought: ‘The answer will come from prayer’ His head lifted up toward the magnificent stained glass windows. It reflected bright light in beautiful variations of color.
‘Light’ he thought.
The traveler sat in prayer for seven years. And then for seven times seven years more. He became an old man, but, he always remembered, not quite as old as The Old Man.
He prayed for no particular church and in favor of no particular God. He prayed not for forgiveness and not for peace. He prayed not for wisdom nor for wealth. He prayed for nothing in particular. Nothing that can be named. But he prayed none the less.
‘The answer will come from prayer’ and he did find the answer, but once found it could not be named. He simply could not frame a thought that captured what he now finally knew, many years later.
Then, on one not very particular day, he was sitting on a grassy hill overlooking a nearby town. In the town there was a church at which he prayed every week. There he was well known, for many years already, although he had never spoken so much as a word to anyone.
The air was cool and he could smell everything from rotting leaves to a fresh morning dew. He had been sitting on that spot in that position for seven days with closed eyes when suddenly he opened his eyes and looked at the pastel colours of the forest beyond the town. He was sitting under a tree and was shaded from the brightest early morning sunlight. His eyes were different. They were sharp and focused on everything and on nothing in particular. He could see the air move in the cool morning breeze. He noticed that his eyes did not have to make any adjustment whether looking at the furthest houses or the nearest blade of grass. He felt ready to look his way into the earth itself. He felt ready to observe the furthest galaxies with the naked eye.
Slowly, one simple thought followed upon another. He was not praying. He was thinking. Clearly.
‘When you say my name I am not here’ ‘What am I?’ ‘I am whatever was here before this thought’ ‘I am not this’ ‘I am not that’ ‘I am’
There followed a silence in his mind. And then he thought about what he had just experienced:
‘Silence’
It was a profound experience. Thinking silence. When you say my name I am not here. Who am I? I am silence.
He briefly saw his own body as if looking at it from the tree’s perspective. He had become a leaf. But he never lost the piercing focus with which he now stared at the finest detail on the church tower. It was over five kilometers away and yet he could make out the inscription marking the date of its construction. He could distinguish and count each tile of every roof individually. Everything happened as if instantaneous. He no longer thought. Insights and connections between observations and conclusions were automatic and came as if from a vast reservoir of infinite knowledge.
He was still the same traveler. Older but no less inquisitive. He could now move in ways he never knew possible. He could descend into whatever he looked at or ascend and merge with the greater intelligence that gained from his own individualized experience. He was still aware of himself as separate from his surroundings and he never lost touch with his own unique individual awareness. But it became a voluntary separation that would never last longer than a single inquiry. He became aware of other dimensions of existence and vastly superior levels of intelligence. Spheres of infinite possibility where the distinction between thought and reality started to disappear.
He did meet the old man again but quite obviously their encounter was of a very different nature this time around. They spoke for aeons while traveling back in time to witness the formation of their home planet and its subsequent development. On the way they discussed the totality of existence until they arrived at the planet’s current state of being.
The young traveler thanked the old man, who, in return, thanked him too.
Together they looked at the galactic sunset and the old man spoke of a new arising consciousness. Upon their home planet a new age was dawning. A new consciousness was emerging and blossoming one person at a time. A consciousness that thought of the planet as a single organism and realized that an organism at war with itself is doomed. The old man further enlightened the young traveler and told him of the work that has been done by so many who came before. Many who left trails of lighting in the dark. Tendrils extending into unexplored territory in the evolution of consciousness. Quite often there were isolated explosions of light that burst forth from the numerous thin lines of light. But, the old man said, the planet was preparing itself for a final explosion of light before being changed forever. The effect of which would be like the rising of a thousand suns.
The young man eagerly asked what he could do to help with these developments.
The old man simply replied: “We are intensifying our efforts as more and more people are starting to have the first glimmers of light coming from within”
He paused between two stars and said to the young man: “Go be a light on your planet”
“But what should I do?”
“Awaken people. Work using coincidence. Never allow yourself to be pinpointed and turned into a savior. They must save themselves. Teach them about infinity. Teach them about mystery. You do not have answers and answers are not important. Questions are what they need right now”
The old man looked at their home planet and saw a few more years of intense suffering lying in wait for them. He knew it was a necessary stage in the development of another heightened state of awareness in the galaxy. He looked at his young friend and quietly said:
“It is very important that you understand this: In the end they have to save themselves. They have all your potential, but none of your experience. And your experience you cannot give them unless they voluntarily agree to take it upon themselves. The coming of light will give them this choice, but it is their choice none the less”
The old man paused and looked at their sun, relatively young and very small compared to some of the other older giants. With tender compassion he quietly said:
“We cannot force our people to be free”
The two friends looked at one another and then they looked out over the vastness of the Milky Way Galaxy. The old man turned around and looked into the black emptiness of space. Millions upon billions of miles separating galaxies.
He asked the young traveler:
“Do you want to see the universe my son?”
“Yes I do!”
“One day I will take you with me and show you what lies beyond the restraints of all limited perspectives. But for now return to your home planet and spread the word of a greater reality. A reality that lies beyond that of our people’s current perception”
The old man started fading out of view as he merged once again with the one infinite creator. Before he was completely gone the young traveler heard his last words only as the faintest of whispers:
“Go forth my son and travel all the lonely and dusty roads on your planet. You will want for nothing so long as you are a bearer of light…”
