Then, on the third round he will raise questions. And the more sophisticated a society is, the more far away the questioning goes from an existential one. Really, a sophisticated society, a cultured society, means so many answers are given already for which there was no question.

And one has to begin from the beginning. That’s why I insist that your answers must be thrown away; otherwise you will continue to ask questions that are not basic, not foundational, but only secondary – because of the answers that are already implanted.

So I say that it is both correct and incorrect, because if there is no question, no answer is possible. So when a question comes into the world for the first time, it always comes through existential inquiry. For a Buddha the question is existential, but for a Buddhist it is not. For a Buddha, it is not through his conditioning. He has thrown it. He has raised basic questions, and now he goes in search, and then there is an answer, he comes to know something. His answer is authentic because it has come through authentic questioning.

But this answer will be given to others. They may not be in the least interested in the basic question, but they will take this answer because it becomes an accumulation, it makes them richer – at least it makes them feel richer.

You also know: you accumulate answers, many answers. And then these answers are being transferred from generation to generation. Every generation goes on adding, because every generation asks some existential questions and gets some existential knowing. These answers are being added.

So the more cultured a society is, the greater the accumulated heritage of answers, and the less is the possibility of your being in the situation where you can ask a basic question. And if you cannot ask one, then you cannot receive a basic answer. Your questioning is false; you will continue getting false answers.

So first be aware, so that your question is not coming from some answer implanted in you. Put aside the answer. Ask something that is existential to you. If nothing was taught to you – if no answer was given – no theory, no system, no religion – then would there have been any question or not? If there can be a questioning, only that questioning is existential, basic, religious.

So put aside all the conditioned answers and dig deep, to the original being, and face life from there. There will be questions – alive. You may even find it difficult how to formulate them, how to put them, how to ask them, because you have never asked a fundamental question, so you don’t know how to ask. It is better not to ask. Suffer. It is better to suffer that “I cannot ask” than to ask unnecessary things, because through this suffering, you will be able, you will be able to ask. And the moment you are able to ask, you are ready to be given to, because the same process through which you become capable of asking a foundational question, that same process is needed for a foundational answer to penetrate in you, and that same path will be used.