At the time when my spiritual „reawakening“ was only a few months old, I stayed with a very sympathetic couple on their organic farm. Both were not young, but also not old. The wife came from Berlin decades ago. Where he came from I do not remember. She with red hair and strong. He slim with ponytail and nickel glasses. As it somehow belonged to „ecos“. I did not know them before and had visited them there with mutual friends. It was an older, small homestead on which the two lived and worked. The house also functioned as a small seminar house and consisted of a threshing floor with a large table, a large kitchen, a small bathroom, their bedroom, various guest rooms – and a small hallway measuring perhaps three by three meters. In this hallway was a wood stove and on the other side were two old wing chairs. My room was behind one of the four doors leading off this hallway. When we all took our leave for the night, our two hosts sat down in the hallway in the armchairs across from the stove. Since I had my room just next door and didn’t feel like sleeping, I read a bit more and was able to follow what was happening (or not happening) in the hallway. For a long time I heard nothing. Then began a quiet me acoustically incomprehensible conversation. Followed by further longer silence. And again a smaller exchange of thoughts followed by silence and so on, until I heard the creaking of armchairs, footsteps moving away and a door closing. I was fascinated. The two of them, when they didn’t have visitors, just sat around in the hallway. Probably every evening. No television, no radio. No card game. No book. Just like that. And they were silent most of the time. And then they went to sleep. At that time I was already growing aware that the world is not what it seems to be, but I absolutely could not understand something like that yet. Despite everything, I was still stuck in my traditional ideas of how something usually has to be.
The joke is, in retrospect, we live exactly the same way now! Except that we have a living room where the stove is. But it’s also not much bigger than the aforementioned hallway of the farmhouse. – Maybe we just gave the hallway the name living room. – And when it gets dark, we go to bed. Automatically. There is nothing more to do.
How strange something seemed to me at the time, which is now the most normal thing in the world for me. How something can develop, can change. Unnoticed. In one direction or the other. And how difficult it can be to simply accept something „alternative“, even though you yourself are heading for an extremely „alternative“ life plan. That’s how limited we are in our perception. That’s how much traditional ideas are stuck in us. But everything can be one way today and completely different tomorrow. The same applies to the content of this book. It too has its time in which it is true. It, too, is subject to an inner development.
Now we are eyed and asked in astonishment: „What do you drink in the evening, if you don’t drink alcohol? What do you do all evening without TV?“ Answer: „Water, tea, juice or nothing at all. Talking, silence, reading. And go to bed early.“
Well. Who would have thought that a few years ago…?
In another respect, that visit was very remarkable. On the farm was also „produced“ hay. Bales of it. The two told me that someone had approached them and made them a proposal: you should not sell your hay by the bale, but in smaller 2kg bags. He would provide you with these bags and take them filled by the two for a good price, which would be far above what they would get for their hay by the bale. Everything according to the „Dr. Oetker principle“: Pack the things in small containers and take the multiple price for it.
But, no, somehow the two did not want that. Then nothing more came of it. I was speechless! Easier to increase his money was almost impossible! What kind of idiots were they? Too fine, for another to fill bags or what!? They had the farm for twenty years. For the rent of the twenty years they could have bought the yard long ago twice from the owner. And they would have liked to have a decent tractor. Not the old thing that „can only go straight“. My goodness! If they managed like that, then nothing could come of it! Too lazy to pack the hay into the bags!
I did not understand it at that time. I was myself escaping from the worldly, but I hadn’t even grasped that yet. I was still very afraid at that time. The world became new to me. Old structures were breaking down. The money did not let me go. I was still so used to it as a haven of security and yet I could not continue to work like that. What I would have given at that time for the possibility to buy my artificial financial security by „packing hay in bags“! Therefore, my horror stemmed, whether their apparent frivolity.
After I was stunned to tell my wife about this, she kept reminding me of it for many years. She used to say, „Remember the hay in the bags.“ I hadn’t realized it at the time. It wasn’t about the money. It was about the extra income. A new tractor would have been nice. But it wasn’t necessary. Not at any price. Buying the farm was a wish. But if you own the old homestead, then comes the burden of ownership. None of this was necessary! Everything was good the way it was! There was nothing to increase, to change or to optimize. To do one’s day’s work and in the evening to sit in the greasy armchairs until one’s eyes closed and one went to bed. Why more? Or what more? Or what differently? And above all why? The chickens were clucking and the world was fine the way it was. If it changed, then one changed in its framework with.
The organic farmer told me, „I don’t drive highways. They have bad energies.“ Every one of us knows this. But no one acts accordingly.