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the fresh, the snow-white freshness.
TERTIUM ORGANUM was a costly book. In India, in those days, I was getting a salary of only seventy rupees each month, and by coincidence the book cost exactly seventy rupees -- but I purchased it. The bookseller was amazed. He said, "Even the richest man in our community cannot afford it. For five years I have been keeping it to sell, and nobody has purchased it. People come and look at it, then drop the idea of buying. How can you, a poor student, working the whole day and studying at night, working almost twenty-four hours each day, how can you afford it?"
I said, "This book I can purchase even if I have to pay for it with my life. Just reading the first line is enough. I have to have it whatsoever the cost."
That first sentence I had read in the introduction was, "This is the third canon of thought, and there are only three. The first is that of Aristotle; the second of Bacon, and the third, my own." I was thrilled by Ouspensky's daring, that he said, "The third existed even before the first." That was the sentence that caught fire in my heart.
I gave the bookseller my whole month's salary. You cannot understand, because for that whole month I had to almost starve. But it was worth it. I can remember that beautiful month: no food, no clothes -- not even shelter; because I could not pay the rent I was thrown out of my small room. But I was happy with TERTIUM ORGANUM under the sky. I read that book under a street lamp -- it is a confession -- and I have lived that book. That book is so beautiful, and more so now that I know that the man did not know at all. How could he have managed it then? It must have been a conspiracy of the gods, something from the beyond. I cannot resist anymore from using the name the Sufis use; they call it khidr. Khidr is the agency that guides those who need guidance.
TERTIUM ORGANUM is the second book.
Third: GEET GOVIND -- the song of God. This book was written by a poet very much condemned by Indians, because in GEET GOVIND, his song of God, he talks too much of love. Indians are so against love that they have never appreciated this great work.
GEET
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