Before Form: Cosmic Laughter and Ridiculous Grace

Eleven questions. Nine of eleven passes, and you can take it again as often as you like.

Whose words open this module, urging us not to take ourselves seriously?

Rumi Alan Watts Carl Jung J.B.S. Haldane
How did Eli garden at the start of 'The Serious Gardener'?

With help from the village children who came to play each day With wild abandon and no plan of any kind With songs and dances every single morning With discipline, planting and pruning by calculated rules
What was Eli's garden missing despite being orderly?

A strong fence to keep hungry animals out The wild beauty of the gardens around it Enough sunlight for the plants to grow Any water at all for the thirsty plants
What did Eli first do when illness spread among the village crops?

He waited quietly for the spring season to pass He left the village in search of a new and much healthier garden He studied texts, consulted scholars and tried remedies, in vain He burned the crops to stop the illness from spreading
What restored the soil in the story?

A new fertiliser brought from a distant city A scholar's rare and carefully guarded formula from abroad A long and heavy period of spring rain Children playing, singing and dancing among the plants
How did the girl explain what she had done?

She had prayed for the plants every night before sleeping She hadn't done anything; she was playing, and the earth likes to play She had quietly studied gardening with the elders for years She had used a secret remedy passed down to her by her grandmother
What did Eli's garden become known for once he began to play?

Its perfectly straight and tidy rows only Its high walls and firmly locked gate Its wild, exuberant life as well as its order Its rare, costly and exotic plants
Besides survival, which force does this module say people usually credit for evolution?

Mutation, random changes Prayer, the power of intention Memory, the store of experience Gravity, the pull of mass
How does this module describe the third force at work in evolution?

A slow, grinding struggle for scarce resources and survival over millennia A mechanical chain of cause and effect with no surprises Something like cosmic laughter, ridiculous grace and playful alchemy A master plan written out in full before time began
In the accessible 'Game of Attention', what do you do for five minutes?

Playfully shift focus between objects and notice where it goes or sticks Write out a list of the day's most important tasks Stare at a single point in the room without blinking, and count your breaths Repeat a single word silently over and over again
What do you begin to notice in the deepening stage of the Game of Attention?

The attractor patterns in your mind: thoughts and feelings that pull you The exact time at which each separate thought appears The sounds drifting in from the next room or the street outside the window The colours and shapes of the objects around you