Here and now, his grandchildren are Obviously thinking that Grandfather is being too hard on them, and too demanding of them, and of the time they must commit to and that grudgingly they will give it a go, to a limited extent, that they will feel comfortable reaching, even though they have not said so to their grandfather. For they had not thought that their simple enough questions would be so complicated to sort out, nor take the amounts of time, that grandfather is suggesting to them. They as usual just want a quick answer that they can say yes to or no to, straight away with out much effort at all. But their Grandfather knows how their young minds work, and how lazy a mind can be when given much more than they had bargained for to digest. Such is the wisdom of grandparents normally.
After three months of effort his grandchildren call him up and say they are still going, and have come up with too much done already and want to check to see if they are on the right track, or should they just quit and give up, as every thing seems to be contradicting itself time and time again, and can they come over for a chat next week end. Grandfather smiles to himself, and asks them to bring the original tape over as well, and that yes they can come over next Saturday, from 9am onwards, to which they grumble at.
So they come over and he listens to the original tape and what they have found out so far. As he puts on the tape to record once more, they have no idea at this time how happy grandfather is as to their exertions and the fruits of their labours, for he can see, that they are only getting a few snipits of truth from their efforts and that these snipits are all tangled up, by the amount of their distrust of them selves and of their efforts and what they think they are seeing, from what they have read and re-read and written down, so far.
Their grandfather can see directly in to the heart of their puzzle, as to the missing piece which will help them to go much further with their investigations, so he gives them another parable, like this one: Can a blind man show another blind man how to jump out of a burning building? and can a blind man give instructions to another blind man on how not to fall off a cliff when he him self has fallen in to many holes in the ground himself?
Then he smiles at his grandchildren and says the puzzle you are trying to work out is not in what you think but in what you think you see is the truth. Try looking at the passages regarding Man's Fallen Nature again, and turn it in to Man's Totally Fallen inability to see beyond his own nose. And come back to me in another three months, as your partly on the right track.
His grandchildren obviously want to argue with him, at this point, and say to him, Granddad, how come you think you know the right answer, and that we don't? Their grandfather just smiles and say's what is simple to understand for a Man with sight is not simple for the blind. It will take time and effort on your part, so now you have come a fifth of the way to the right answer so, go the rest of the way, and your will have the answer you seek, o.k.?
Grandfather realizes that they had only originally come to him for an answer to which they thought he would agree with what they have already made up their minds on any way, And that they had not intended to open them selves up to being vunerable, and possibly wrong in some thing, or in many things, to which they have held dearly to for so long in the past. He knows that when a person has held on to certain belief's for so long, that it is very hard if not impossible for that person to want to be shown they have been holding on to old belief's and practices that were wrong from the very beginning.
For it would mean an entire shift and change of mind and attitudes on what they had held on to so dearly for their entire lives, and that such an admission of folly, would be too much of an embarrassment for them to admit to, and even have less of a desire to want to any way. Humbleness and humility, their Grandfather knows are not a normal part of a Man's normal working character. It demands a complete change of attitudes and a complete change of thinking about things, and a complete willingness to put in to practice the new and correct ones, which to any normal human being seems to be asking too much of them to be able to achieve by them selves, even if they wanted to, which they would rather not.
