I have spoken about it and I have never loved speaking more. The greatest moments of my speaking were when I was speaking on Sosan. Speaking and silence together…speaking yet not speaking, because Sosan can be explained only through no-speaking. He was not a man of words, he was a man of silence. He spoke just the minimum. Forgive me, Sosan, I forgot you. Just because of you I remember a few more who can knock at my door and disturb my after noon sleep, so it is better that I should mention them.

First is Sosan’s Hsin Hsin Ming.

Second is P.D.Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum. It is a miracle that he wrote it before he had even heard of Gurdjieff. He wrote it before he knew what he was writing. He understood it himself only afterwards, on meeting Gurdjieff. His first words to George Gurdjieff were: “Looking into your eyes I have understood Tertium Organum. Although I have written it, now I can say that it has been written through me by some unknown agency I was not aware of.” Perhaps it was that rascal Gurdjieff who wrote it through him, or maybe somebody else whom the Sufis call the Ultimate Rascal, who has been doing miracles – miracles like Tertium Organum.

The title means “the third canon of thought.” The Sufis give that ultimate agency a name; it is not a person but only a presence. I can feel that presence right now, here…this very moment. They call it a certain name because everything has to be given a name, but I will not say it, not in the presence of this beauty, this splendor…of this exuberance…of this exaltation…of this ecstasy.

I said it is a miracle that Ouspensky could write Tertium Organum, one of the greatest books in any language of the world. In fact it is said, and rightly so – remember, I emphasize and repeat, rightly so – that there are only three great books: the first is Organum written by Aristotle; the second is The Second Organum written by Bacon; and the third, by P.D.Ouspensky, Tertium Organum. Tertium means third. And Ouspensky has, very mischievously – and only a saint can be so mischievous – introduced the book by saying, without any ego, simply and humbly, that “The first exists but not before the third. The third existed even before the first came into existence.”

Ouspensky seems to have been spent, totally and utterly spent, into Tertium Organum, because he never could reach to the same height again. Even reporting Gurdjieff in In Search of the Miraculous he has not attained to the same height. When he betrayed Gurdjieff he tried finally to create something better than Tertium. As his last effort he wrote The Fourth Way but failed utterly. The book is good, good for any university curriculum. You can see I have my own ways of condemning a thing….

The Fourth Way can be part of a regular curriculum in a university course, but more than that it is nothing. Although he was trying to do his best, it is the worst book that Ouspensky has written. It was his last book.