866. It is entirely different with the human beings that have no ability whatsoever to "believe". "Believing" is not an act of will; it is exclusively an ability. Either one has this ability or one does not have it, quite irrespective of whether one wants it or not. But if one does not have it, one cannot receive "forgiveness for one's sins", and according to the "believers" one must then be lost without hope. It is not surprising that such doubters also found their way to Jesus. And it is quite natural that he did not use the formula: "Thy sins are forgiven thee" for any of them. They did not come in order to gain "something" that they did not think existed, just as Nicodemus did not come to receive "forgiveness for his sins". It is clear that there could be "other things" than "forgiveness of sins" that could draw human beings to the world redeemer. The fact that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night shows how very important it was for him to talk to this great initiate. And it goes without saying that it was not to discuss ceremonies or temple rituals, either in the form of baptism or any other outwardly religious phenomenon. Nicodemus was himself a Pharisee and a governor and was as such a learned man of the times and consequently quite at home with contemporary authorised wisdom. That he did not seek out the world redeemer in order to get an explanation of some ceremony but, on the contrary, out of hunger to find out about the living mystery of life itself, is clearly established as fact by the content of his conversation with Jesus. One can see from the fragments of that conversation that have been handed down in the Bible that it was precisely the living mystery of life that was under discussion. Jesus does not say to Nicodemus "unless a man be – baptised – again", he says "unless a man be – born – again" etc. There is absolutely nothing that points to the fact that the world redeemer did not mean precisely what he said at this point, just as it appears with all possible clarity that Nicodemus harboured a spiritual hunger that could not be satisfied by the religious authorities of those times, that is, the scribes and the priests. But if his hunger was an expression of something that could not be satisfied by these authorities, then it could be a part of only this new wisdom that Jesus came to enrich the world with. Did he not say to Jesus specifically: "Rabbi, we know that thou art a great teacher come from God"? But as it was not "forgiveness of his sins" that the governor sought from the world redeemer, his errand could have been inspired only by his hunger to take part in the higher or more intellectual content of Jesus' teaching or message.