"It is an extraordinary book in the sense that you can read it and miss it completely, because the meaning of the book is not in the words of the book. The meaning of the book is running side by side in silence between the words, between the lines, in the gaps.

"If you are in a state of meditativeness – if you are not only reading a fiction but you are encountering the whole religious experience of a great human being, absorbing it; not intellectually understanding but existentially drinking it – the words are there but they become secondary. Something else becomes primary: the silence that those words create, the music that those words create. The words affect your mind, and the music goes directly to your heart.

"And it is a book to be read by the heart, not by the mind. It is a book not to be understood, but experienced. It is something phenomenal. Millions of people have tried to write books so that they can express the inexpressible, but they have utterly failed. I know only one book, The Book of Mirdad, which has not failed; and if you cannot get to the very essence of it, it will be your failure, not his.

"He has created a perfect device of words, parables, situations. If you allow it, the book becomes alive and something starts happening to your being. And naturally, because you have never come to such a state, you are puzzled about what it is – sadness? Blissfulness? There are tears, but those tears can be either of sadness or they can be of immense joy. You have come to a point where you have never been before, so naturally you cannot categorize it. You cannot put a label on it according to your old experiences. But the name does not mean anything. What matters is that you have taken a step beyond yourself. You have never been in this space; you have entered into the unknown, and it is so unknown that you don't have the vocabulary even to give it a name.

"Just see the point: it may look like sadness…because for the first time in your life you will become aware that up to now you have not been alive."