[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]
[One man's meat is another man's poison -- or, one man's truth is another man's lie. Truth does liberate, but only if it is your very own.]
Jesus' truth cannot liberate you, my truth cannot liberate you. If the bondage is yours, liberation cannot come from anyone else. If you are creating the chains for yourself, nobody can make you free even if freedom is imposed upon you.
In the first place, an imposed freedom is no freedom at all. Secondly, what will you do with that freedom? You will create more chains out of it. You will use your freedom to create new prisons -- that's all you can do.
Jesus' truth liberated him but it has imprisoned millions of so-called Christians. And the same is true about every religion. Gautam the Buddha is liberated by his experience. Now twenty-five centuries have passed; millions of people are simply creating chains, prison cells, out of the truth of Buddha.
It is true that truth liberates, but the truth has to be yours. Somebody else's truth is a lie -- a lie for you. So the question is not what is truth and what is untruth, basically the question is what is yours and what is not yours.
Now Christians are imprisoned in the church, Buddhists are imprisoned in their own philosophy, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas -- they are still imprisoned. Of course they have different kinds of prisons -- the architecture differs -- but it is immaterial whether the building is made with a different material, is of a different shape and size; the question is, are the people who live in it free or unfree?
How can a Christian be free? -- the first freedom will be freedom from Christianity. And the same is true about other religious and also about non-religious ideologies -- Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Nazism. It does not matter what kind of ideology you live in, every ideology creates a slavery.
Hence remember: truth is not something anybody can teach you, you have to discover it. And it is already there in the innermost core of your being.
Gunther means courageous spirit. The truth is there, but courage is needed to discover it. The coward is always hankering to be imprisoned because in a prison he feels protected, he feels secure. If you are a Hindu you are secure with millions of Hindus, you are not alone. If you are a communist you are secure, your ideology gives you a certain security. It is basically false because it is not your truth, but people live in lies.
Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Don't take lies away from people, because if you take all their lies away, how will they live? They will not be able to stand on their own. They need beautiful lies, they need great systems of philosophy -- which are all false but they give you the feeling that you have understood, that you know."
To discover truth courage is needed because you will have to renounce the lies: the lies with which you have lived for so long, the lies with which you are very much acquainted, the lies that you have taken up to now as being truth, the lies that have gone deep into your blood, into your bones, into your marrow. To reject and uproot all those certainly needs a courageous spirit.
Sannyas is only for the courageous. Religion is experienced only by very few brave people. Cowards only live in pseudo religious. They cannot live without a religion, and the pseudo religion comes cheap. But with me you have to gather your courage and you have to start destroying all your illusions, howsoever beautiful. Once all the illusions are destroyed, once you are disillusioned, truth reveals itself.
[To try and comprehend anything through the mind is like trying to collect spilt mercury. Osho talked next to Dhyan William, a psychiatric technician from America.]
The mind is always wavering -- that's its intrinsic quality. You cannot make it unwavering. It is just as a river flows; the very flow makes it a river. If you stop the flow it is no more a river, it becomes a pond, a lake; its quality immediately changes. It is a river only when it is moving.
Movement is mind's nature; hence you cannot come to any conclusion with the mind, you cannot resolve anything because by the time you resolve it the mind has moved. You were just thinking that you were coming closer to a conclusion, that now the decision is very close and suddenly you see the ground underneath you has slipped away.
Mind cannot be decisive; hence the system that depends on mind -- religion, theology, philosophy -- any system that depends on mind is bound to be wavering, hesitant. It is always a question of either-or, to be or not to be, an d you cannot decide. Even if you decide -- and one has to decide because situations in life demand decision -- a part of you has to be repressed.
If you decide to marry a certain woman, a part that was saying marry somebody else has to be repressed and that repressed part will take revenge sooner or later.
The moment you are bored with this woman the other part will start laughing at you and will say "Now look, I have been telling you again and again not to be foolish, but you never listen -- now you are trapped." If you had married the other woman the same would have been the case, there would have been no difference: you would have become bored with the other woman and the repressed part would have said the same thing.
So through the mind there is no conclusion. Life sometimes needs decisions, so you have to decide, but those decisions are half-hearted, hence there is always guilt and always repentance. And one always goes on thinking "Why did I not do the other thing? Why did I choose this? For what?" And because you have not experienced the other path it remains just a fantasy, it remains beautiful. It becomes more and more beautiful as time passes by.
The only way to resolve this, the only way to drop this constant either-or, the only way to be whole-heartedly in something is meditation, because meditation takes you beyond the mind. Living in the mind you will always remain wavering; the moment you go beyond the mind all wavering disappears. Then there is simply resolution. Then there are no alternatives; you are absolutely free to choose but there is no question of choosing -- you can simply see what is right. Two plus two are four. Now what is the alternative?
As you go beyond the mind things become very simple: right is right and wrong is wrong. There is no hesitation; you have a clear insight. It is not a question of thinking, because transcending the mind means reaching a state of no-thought.
No-thought is clarity and thinking is always cloudy, muddy. You see only a little bit in fragments, and the scene is constantly changing so quickly, so fast, that it is impossible to decide.
Only meditators are capable of commitment, of resolution, of involvement. And those who can get totally involved in anything, they are the few blessed ones because they come to know the truth, the very secret of life. They come to know the joy, the eternal joy of existence. It is only to them that the miracle happens. Others only go on living in a very smoke-filled, cloudy world, groping in the dark, trying to find a way and never finding it. Their whole life remains a constant frustration. Ultimately they achieve only failure; they live in misery and they die in misery.
But the person who has been able to know something of meditativeness lives in bliss and dies in bliss. The moment your life and death both become a celebration to you, you have arrived home. That is the goal of sannyas.
[On the eighteenth of the month Osho spoke about how when you are in love everything appears beautiful, that love makes everything beautiful. He talked on that theme again tonight, and recounted a story to illustrate the point.]
The Sufis have a very beautiful story about a mad lover, Majnu. He fell in love with a woman called Laila. He was poor and the girl belonged to the richest family -- it was not possible that they would ever be able to be together. And in a Mohammedan country, even to see the face of a woman was difficult. It was impossible to meet her, to talk to her, to sit with her -- there was no question of marriage. But Majnu was so much in love that he became mad. For the whole day and night he was singing songs in praise of Laila and the whole town felt sympathetic because he was a very nice young man -- all loved him.
The strangest thing was that Laila was not a beautiful woman -- very ordinary, homely. Even the king of the country became very concerned because he heard this man crying and weeping. Sometimes he would pass by the side of the palace and he was always shouting "Laila, Laila, where are you?" -- asking the trees and the stars "Where is my Laila?"
The king called him one day and he said "I feel really sorry for you. And I know that girl -- you are far more beautiful than she is. She is just ordinary, very ordinary. He called twelve girls from his palace; he had many wives and so he told Majnu "You can choose any one."
In those days, in Mohammedan countries particularly, the woman was almost a commodity. In fact even today the same is the case.
Majnu looked into each woman's eyes and rejected everyone. He said "This is not Laila, this is not Laila, this is not Laila..." And the king said "You must be absolutely mad -- all these woman are far more beautiful than your Laila. I have seen her and I know her. I know her parents, I know her family. Forget all about that ordinary woman; choose any one from these. Or if you are not satisfied I will call many other women. In my palace there are the most beautiful women of the country. I have the first right to get hold of a beautiful woman wherever she is in my country, so you cannot find more beautiful women anywhere."
Majnu said "You don't understand. You cannot see Laila; unless you have the eyes of Majnu you cannot see Laila. You have not seen her, only I have seen her. And I tell you, even her parents have not seen her. Only I have seen her because only I have loved her."
This statement is beautiful, tremendously significant. He says "I have seen her because I have loved her. And I love her -- not because she is beautiful; I fell in love first and then the beauty was revealed to me."
If you love, the whole existence becomes beautiful. To the lover all is beautiful; to the unlover nothing is beautiful. And if one settles for an unloving life then there are only dark clouds with no silver linings.
There are people who have changed the proverb; they say every silver lining has a dark clouds. Their whole approach becomes negative, and these negative people have been very dominant in the world for the simple reason that "no" is very ego-fulfilling. If somebody says "look at the beautiful moon," you can immediately say "Prove that the moon is beautiful," and he cannot. You can defeat him very easily because beauty cannot be proved. Somebody says "Look at the rose -- how beautiful," and you can immediately argue against its being beautiful and you will win the case!
"No" has one thing in its support, it can always win against "yes". But its victory is empty because the people who can say yes to life, who can love life, experience it, and the people who say no close their doors. They may feel very good that they have won the argument, but they have lost their life. And the person who has said yes may have lost the argument but he has won his life -- and that is real victory.
I teach my people to love because I know of no other magic. Once you know how to love you have the secret key, the master key with you; it can open all the doors of all the mysteries of existence.
Bliss is the easiest way to get to know god, Osho said some nights ago. And he said it again tonight to Anand Devam, pointing out that there are lots of ways to get high
Bliss may come through love, it may come through creativity, it may come through meditation -- there are thousands of ways for bliss to come to you -- but whatsoever the source and whatsoever the way, the quality of bliss is always the same, the fragrance is always the same. It is the fragrance we call god. It is far better to call it godliness -- that is the meaning of Devam, godliness.
In a blissful moment one does not need any proof that god exists, one does not even ask the question whether god exists or not. One simply knows, one feels it And the feeling is so total that it leaves no space for doubt. It is only the miserable who ask whether god exists or not. It is the most depressed person who denies existence to god.
My own observation is that the atheists deny god only because they have never experienced anything of bliss -- and they never will because now that they have denied it they will cling to their denial.
They have not seen the sunrise and they have also closed their doors and closed their eyes. With closed doors and closed eyes they are sitting in darkness and they ask "First prove that light is, then we will open our eyes, then we will open our doors, otherwise why should we open our doors, for what? First prove that light exists." How can it be proved?
The only way to prove it is to open your eyes. Bliss is nothing but the opening of the inner eye, the opening of the heart. It is just like a lotus opens and suddenly there is great beauty, great fragrance and from miles away bees start moving, queuing towards the lotus. Some intuitive force gives them the feel.
As your heart opens not only will you feel the presence of god, even others who are not stubborn, who are not stupid, who have not already decided without knowing anything that there is no god -- they will immediately feel something miraculous around you.
P.D. Ouspensky said, when he first saw Gurdjieff he saw him in a restaurant; Gurdjieff was sitting with few friends -- that was his usual habit, to sit in a restaurant and watch people. He would just sit in a corner for hours and watch people. He learned many things through that watching. It was a tremendous help for him later on when he started working on people, because he had watched all kinds of people.
He was sitting in the corner with a few friends when first Ouspensky saw him. Immediately something hit Ouspensky deep in the heart like an arrow. Very strange -- there was something around the man. And Ouspensky was not a gullible person; he was a great mathematician, a logician, a philosopher -- world -- famous, well-known. His greatest book TERTIUM ORGANUM was already published and translated in almost all the languages of the world. Gurdjieff was absolutely unknown, nobody had yet heard of him; people heard about Gurdjieff through Ouspensky. But something was there.
Ouspensky waited there for somebody who could introduce him to Gurdjieff. Then he saw a person who was going towards Gurdjieff's table and later on he caught hold of the man, because he knew him, and he asked "Can you introduce me?" The man said "It will be a difficult thing, very difficult, but I will try my best, because Gurdjieff meets people only when he feels that they have some great potential for growth in this life. He does not intend to work on people who will grow in some life in the future, then some other master will take care. He is in a hurry, so he is very choosey -- but I will present your case."
For months Ouspensky didn't hear anything but what he felt -- something very mysterious that had never happened to him, something like love, like when for the first time one falls in love, a strange experience -- remained with him. But it was of a totally different dimension of love -- as if one has fallen in love with the soul of the other person... and not an ordinary soul; there was something luminous.
Ouspensky persisted, tried again and again. After six months he was able to meet Gurdjieff. And just a look into Gurdjieff's eyes was enough and the miracle happened! He forget all his fame, all his philosophy; he surrendered to Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff said "Why are you surrendering to me? -- you are a famous man, well-known, I have heard your name, I have even seen your book. Why should you surrender to me?"
Ouspensky said "I am surrendering to the miracle of you, to the miraculous that surrounds you." Hence when Ouspensky wrote his first book on Gurdjieff he called it IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS.
He had travelled all over the world, he had even come to India. And the strangest thing was that he had gone around the world in search of somebody who had the secret and back home in his own hometown in Russia he met the person.
Sometimes it happens that you may miss just because the person is available. He must have seen Gurdjieff many times before but he had not taken any note of him. Going around the world, meeting many people, Ouspensky also became capable of seeing; some quality developed in him, some kind of intuitive understanding.
He met many beautiful people but nobody was absolutely satisfying to him, something was missing. Yes, there was a height, there was some understanding, there was wisdom, there was some power, but the miracle was missing: he could not feel the presence of godliness. He remained an atheist till he met Gurdjieff; the moment he met him all his atheism melted away, simply melted away. There was no argument against it -- the presence of Gurdjieff was enough.
That's what happens in the presence of a master. To be with a master is an art -- to be silent, to be available, to be loving, to be open, to be blissful, to be meditative -- and then suddenly one day it transpires.
Osho's Commentary
[One man's meat is another man's poison -- or, one man's truth is another man's lie. Truth does liberate, but only if it is your very own.]
Jesus' truth cannot liberate you, my truth cannot liberate you. If the bondage is yours, liberation cannot come from anyone else. If you are creating the chains for yourself, nobody can make you free even if freedom is imposed upon you.
In the first place, an imposed freedom is no freedom at all. Secondly, what will you do with that freedom? You will create more chains out of it. You will use your freedom to create new prisons -- that's all you can do.
Jesus' truth liberated him but it has imprisoned millions of so-called Christians. And the same is true about every religion. Gautam the Buddha is liberated by his experience. Now twenty-five centuries have passed; millions of people are simply creating chains, prison cells, out of the truth of Buddha.
It is true that truth liberates, but the truth has to be yours. Somebody else's truth is a lie -- a lie for you. So the question is not what is truth and what is untruth, basically the question is what is yours and what is not yours.
Now Christians are imprisoned in the church, Buddhists are imprisoned in their own philosophy, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas -- they are still imprisoned. Of course they have different kinds of prisons -- the architecture differs -- but it is immaterial whether the building is made with a different material, is of a different shape and size; the question is, are the people who live in it free or unfree?
How can a Christian be free? -- the first freedom will be freedom from Christianity. And the same is true about other religious and also about non-religious ideologies -- Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Nazism. It does not matter what kind of ideology you live in, every ideology creates a slavery.
Hence remember: truth is not something anybody can teach you, you have to discover it. And it is already there in the innermost core of your being.
Gunther means courageous spirit. The truth is there, but courage is needed to discover it. The coward is always hankering to be imprisoned because in a prison he feels protected, he feels secure. If you are a Hindu you are secure with millions of Hindus, you are not alone. If you are a communist you are secure, your ideology gives you a certain security. It is basically false because it is not your truth, but people live in lies.
Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Don't take lies away from people, because if you take all their lies away, how will they live? They will not be able to stand on their own. They need beautiful lies, they need great systems of philosophy -- which are all false but they give you the feeling that you have understood, that you know."
To discover truth courage is needed because you will have to renounce the lies: the lies with which you have lived for so long, the lies with which you are very much acquainted, the lies that you have taken up to now as being truth, the lies that have gone deep into your blood, into your bones, into your marrow. To reject and uproot all those certainly needs a courageous spirit.
Sannyas is only for the courageous. Religion is experienced only by very few brave people. Cowards only live in pseudo religious. They cannot live without a religion, and the pseudo religion comes cheap. But with me you have to gather your courage and you have to start destroying all your illusions, howsoever beautiful. Once all the illusions are destroyed, once you are disillusioned, truth reveals itself.
[To try and comprehend anything through the mind is like trying to collect spilt mercury. Osho talked next to Dhyan William, a psychiatric technician from America.]
The mind is always wavering -- that's its intrinsic quality. You cannot make it unwavering. It is just as a river flows; the very flow makes it a river. If you stop the flow it is no more a river, it becomes a pond, a lake; its quality immediately changes. It is a river only when it is moving.
Movement is mind's nature; hence you cannot come to any conclusion with the mind, you cannot resolve anything because by the time you resolve it the mind has moved. You were just thinking that you were coming closer to a conclusion, that now the decision is very close and suddenly you see the ground underneath you has slipped away.
Mind cannot be decisive; hence the system that depends on mind -- religion, theology, philosophy -- any system that depends on mind is bound to be wavering, hesitant. It is always a question of either-or, to be or not to be, an d you cannot decide. Even if you decide -- and one has to decide because situations in life demand decision -- a part of you has to be repressed.
If you decide to marry a certain woman, a part that was saying marry somebody else has to be repressed and that repressed part will take revenge sooner or later.
The moment you are bored with this woman the other part will start laughing at you and will say "Now look, I have been telling you again and again not to be foolish, but you never listen -- now you are trapped." If you had married the other woman the same would have been the case, there would have been no difference: you would have become bored with the other woman and the repressed part would have said the same thing.
So through the mind there is no conclusion. Life sometimes needs decisions, so you have to decide, but those decisions are half-hearted, hence there is always guilt and always repentance. And one always goes on thinking "Why did I not do the other thing? Why did I choose this? For what?" And because you have not experienced the other path it remains just a fantasy, it remains beautiful. It becomes more and more beautiful as time passes by.
The only way to resolve this, the only way to drop this constant either-or, the only way to be whole-heartedly in something is meditation, because meditation takes you beyond the mind. Living in the mind you will always remain wavering; the moment you go beyond the mind all wavering disappears. Then there is simply resolution. Then there are no alternatives; you are absolutely free to choose but there is no question of choosing -- you can simply see what is right. Two plus two are four. Now what is the alternative?
As you go beyond the mind things become very simple: right is right and wrong is wrong. There is no hesitation; you have a clear insight. It is not a question of thinking, because transcending the mind means reaching a state of no-thought.
No-thought is clarity and thinking is always cloudy, muddy. You see only a little bit in fragments, and the scene is constantly changing so quickly, so fast, that it is impossible to decide.
Only meditators are capable of commitment, of resolution, of involvement. And those who can get totally involved in anything, they are the few blessed ones because they come to know the truth, the very secret of life. They come to know the joy, the eternal joy of existence. It is only to them that the miracle happens. Others only go on living in a very smoke-filled, cloudy world, groping in the dark, trying to find a way and never finding it. Their whole life remains a constant frustration. Ultimately they achieve only failure; they live in misery and they die in misery.
But the person who has been able to know something of meditativeness lives in bliss and dies in bliss. The moment your life and death both become a celebration to you, you have arrived home. That is the goal of sannyas.
[On the eighteenth of the month Osho spoke about how when you are in love everything appears beautiful, that love makes everything beautiful. He talked on that theme again tonight, and recounted a story to illustrate the point.]
The Sufis have a very beautiful story about a mad lover, Majnu. He fell in love with a woman called Laila. He was poor and the girl belonged to the richest family -- it was not possible that they would ever be able to be together. And in a Mohammedan country, even to see the face of a woman was difficult. It was impossible to meet her, to talk to her, to sit with her -- there was no question of marriage. But Majnu was so much in love that he became mad. For the whole day and night he was singing songs in praise of Laila and the whole town felt sympathetic because he was a very nice young man -- all loved him.
The strangest thing was that Laila was not a beautiful woman -- very ordinary, homely. Even the king of the country became very concerned because he heard this man crying and weeping. Sometimes he would pass by the side of the palace and he was always shouting "Laila, Laila, where are you?" -- asking the trees and the stars "Where is my Laila?"
The king called him one day and he said "I feel really sorry for you. And I know that girl -- you are far more beautiful than she is. She is just ordinary, very ordinary. He called twelve girls from his palace; he had many wives and so he told Majnu "You can choose any one."
In those days, in Mohammedan countries particularly, the woman was almost a commodity. In fact even today the same is the case.
Majnu looked into each woman's eyes and rejected everyone. He said "This is not Laila, this is not Laila, this is not Laila..." And the king said "You must be absolutely mad -- all these woman are far more beautiful than your Laila. I have seen her and I know her. I know her parents, I know her family. Forget all about that ordinary woman; choose any one from these. Or if you are not satisfied I will call many other women. In my palace there are the most beautiful women of the country. I have the first right to get hold of a beautiful woman wherever she is in my country, so you cannot find more beautiful women anywhere."
Majnu said "You don't understand. You cannot see Laila; unless you have the eyes of Majnu you cannot see Laila. You have not seen her, only I have seen her. And I tell you, even her parents have not seen her. Only I have seen her because only I have loved her."
This statement is beautiful, tremendously significant. He says "I have seen her because I have loved her. And I love her -- not because she is beautiful; I fell in love first and then the beauty was revealed to me."
If you love, the whole existence becomes beautiful. To the lover all is beautiful; to the unlover nothing is beautiful. And if one settles for an unloving life then there are only dark clouds with no silver linings.
There are people who have changed the proverb; they say every silver lining has a dark clouds. Their whole approach becomes negative, and these negative people have been very dominant in the world for the simple reason that "no" is very ego-fulfilling. If somebody says "look at the beautiful moon," you can immediately say "Prove that the moon is beautiful," and he cannot. You can defeat him very easily because beauty cannot be proved. Somebody says "Look at the rose -- how beautiful," and you can immediately argue against its being beautiful and you will win the case!
"No" has one thing in its support, it can always win against "yes". But its victory is empty because the people who can say yes to life, who can love life, experience it, and the people who say no close their doors. They may feel very good that they have won the argument, but they have lost their life. And the person who has said yes may have lost the argument but he has won his life -- and that is real victory.
I teach my people to love because I know of no other magic. Once you know how to love you have the secret key, the master key with you; it can open all the doors of all the mysteries of existence.
Bliss is the easiest way to get to know god, Osho said some nights ago. And he said it again tonight to Anand Devam, pointing out that there are lots of ways to get high
Bliss may come through love, it may come through creativity, it may come through meditation -- there are thousands of ways for bliss to come to you -- but whatsoever the source and whatsoever the way, the quality of bliss is always the same, the fragrance is always the same. It is the fragrance we call god. It is far better to call it godliness -- that is the meaning of Devam, godliness.
In a blissful moment one does not need any proof that god exists, one does not even ask the question whether god exists or not. One simply knows, one feels it And the feeling is so total that it leaves no space for doubt. It is only the miserable who ask whether god exists or not. It is the most depressed person who denies existence to god.
My own observation is that the atheists deny god only because they have never experienced anything of bliss -- and they never will because now that they have denied it they will cling to their denial.
They have not seen the sunrise and they have also closed their doors and closed their eyes. With closed doors and closed eyes they are sitting in darkness and they ask "First prove that light is, then we will open our eyes, then we will open our doors, otherwise why should we open our doors, for what? First prove that light exists." How can it be proved?
The only way to prove it is to open your eyes. Bliss is nothing but the opening of the inner eye, the opening of the heart. It is just like a lotus opens and suddenly there is great beauty, great fragrance and from miles away bees start moving, queuing towards the lotus. Some intuitive force gives them the feel.
As your heart opens not only will you feel the presence of god, even others who are not stubborn, who are not stupid, who have not already decided without knowing anything that there is no god -- they will immediately feel something miraculous around you.
P.D. Ouspensky said, when he first saw Gurdjieff he saw him in a restaurant; Gurdjieff was sitting with few friends -- that was his usual habit, to sit in a restaurant and watch people. He would just sit in a corner for hours and watch people. He learned many things through that watching. It was a tremendous help for him later on when he started working on people, because he had watched all kinds of people.
He was sitting in the corner with a few friends when first Ouspensky saw him. Immediately something hit Ouspensky deep in the heart like an arrow. Very strange -- there was something around the man. And Ouspensky was not a gullible person; he was a great mathematician, a logician, a philosopher -- world -- famous, well-known. His greatest book TERTIUM ORGANUM was already published and translated in almost all the languages of the world. Gurdjieff was absolutely unknown, nobody had yet heard of him; people heard about Gurdjieff through Ouspensky. But something was there.
Ouspensky waited there for somebody who could introduce him to Gurdjieff. Then he saw a person who was going towards Gurdjieff's table and later on he caught hold of the man, because he knew him, and he asked "Can you introduce me?" The man said "It will be a difficult thing, very difficult, but I will try my best, because Gurdjieff meets people only when he feels that they have some great potential for growth in this life. He does not intend to work on people who will grow in some life in the future, then some other master will take care. He is in a hurry, so he is very choosey -- but I will present your case."
For months Ouspensky didn't hear anything but what he felt -- something very mysterious that had never happened to him, something like love, like when for the first time one falls in love, a strange experience -- remained with him. But it was of a totally different dimension of love -- as if one has fallen in love with the soul of the other person... and not an ordinary soul; there was something luminous.
Ouspensky persisted, tried again and again. After six months he was able to meet Gurdjieff. And just a look into Gurdjieff's eyes was enough and the miracle happened! He forget all his fame, all his philosophy; he surrendered to Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff said "Why are you surrendering to me? -- you are a famous man, well-known, I have heard your name, I have even seen your book. Why should you surrender to me?"
Ouspensky said "I am surrendering to the miracle of you, to the miraculous that surrounds you." Hence when Ouspensky wrote his first book on Gurdjieff he called it IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS.
He had travelled all over the world, he had even come to India. And the strangest thing was that he had gone around the world in search of somebody who had the secret and back home in his own hometown in Russia he met the person.
Sometimes it happens that you may miss just because the person is available. He must have seen Gurdjieff many times before but he had not taken any note of him. Going around the world, meeting many people, Ouspensky also became capable of seeing; some quality developed in him, some kind of intuitive understanding.
He met many beautiful people but nobody was absolutely satisfying to him, something was missing. Yes, there was a height, there was some understanding, there was wisdom, there was some power, but the miracle was missing: he could not feel the presence of godliness. He remained an atheist till he met Gurdjieff; the moment he met him all his atheism melted away, simply melted away. There was no argument against it -- the presence of Gurdjieff was enough.
That's what happens in the presence of a master. To be with a master is an art -- to be silent, to be available, to be loving, to be open, to be blissful, to be meditative -- and then suddenly one day it transpires.