Hi, Michael -
Thanks for these two posts. :) I'd like to underline this last point in the Krishnamurti one. It's absolutely true, yet at first glance it seems so simple or simplistic it might be missed:
: "There is no difference between question and answer.
: If you understand the question really deeply
: the answer is in the question."
He's speaking as one who had been fielding questions for six decades - yet, it continues to hold true if we turn it around and apply it to ourselves:
"If one can formulate the question,
one also already has the answer."
What stops us from realizing this is that we've, most of us, been conditioned by years of 'schooling', in which we're handed information and trained to spit it back out again on demand. :)
This leaves us with a subconscious impression that either "there's only one right answer", or "we need the additional authority of knowing some Expert has already expressed the idea".
Neither of those two notions bears up to conscious examination for very long. :)
Instead the truth of it is as Krishnamurti stated, and as I've rephrased it above. If we as human beings can look out into the world and draw our observations and thoughts about them into the form of a question, we will have then done the work that draws the answer into focus also, insofar as the Really Important Questions are concerned.
Some questions, generally of lesser importance, are of another sort; they seek information - for example, "Krishnamurti, what did you have for breakfast today?" would be one :), or "What sort of gasoline should be used in this automobile?" would be another. These are requests, for information we reasonably expect someone else already has about the specifics of events or of plans and designs in the world laid out by someone other than ourselves.
And even then, if we are inwardly quiet enough, we may 'hear' the answers within ourselves. :) It's because we all are connected at the subconscious level, even if our conscious minds had never before been made aware of it.
The "internet of the subconscious" is already in place - how else do we think the physical global Internet came up into someone's conscious mind as a "good idea"? - and we're "e-mailing" one another all the time, there.
This is also why, "To get the right answer, you have to ask the right question." :) The answer we receive will put in its appearance according to the specific factors drawn together in the question that we formulate.
--hobie