I first met Ostad on an autumn day in 1963 (I am French and had been living in Tehran for 5 years). It is only during the spring of 1964 that I actually became his student. At first, gatherings didn’t take place at fixed dates or at regular intervals and they were attended to only by a few people; gradually the informal gatherings which took place once and then twice a week were turned into regular formal meetings. These meetings were quite separate from the usual religious celebrations in which a large number of people would gather and partake in traditional ritual. Later on, some of us got into the habit of visiting Ostad practically every evening. Ostad would have dinner with his family and some of his students and inevitably all sorts of discussions would arise. It's about these informal sessions I'd like to talk now because it's through them that we got acquainted with most of Ostad Elahi's teachings.

At first, it sounded very simple. His approach was global: all we had to do was to trace back our origin –celestial, he explained– and to find out about our final destination, i.e., returning to the Source. Then our terrestrial destiny would clearly fall in place between those two enigmas that he helped us elucidate. His method was, as it were, socratic: he taught us that everything could be found within us, all we had to do was to explore our inner being and bring back to consciousness the knowledge that our soul had accumulated during the course of its lives. Indeed, he explained, we weren't newly-born souls, we had been going on for ages, travelling to and fro, up and down, on earth and in the heavens. From the very early stages we were urged to mentally focus our attention on the Source. Under his kind guidance we became gradually acquainted with the intricacies of what is right and what is wrong, within the individual framework of our freewill. Before I met Ostad, I used to think of myself as a responsible being; but under his mentorship I soon realized that I acted mostly on impulse and hardly ever measured the implications of my actions… All these new spiritual discoveries were enthralling: the scheme of things he unveiled to us bit by bit every day was so utterly coherent, the divine system so infallibly cohesive. Yet at times, that very cohesion was a cause of alarm to me. I found I was caught up in a colossal system of causality that Ostad had made me aware of, but what if I couldn't make it? What if I couldn't choose the right line of action in that chain of causality? I would feel terribly distressed, as if I had been trapped in the mesh of spirituality: never again would I be able to live as I used to in blissful unconsciousness… And typically, on that very evening, Ostad laughingly referred to the blissful unawareness of ignorance (how happy and carefree are the ignorant!) adding, for my benefit as well as that of others most probably, that the intensity of a person's trials was exactly in direct proportion to the person's capacity and that sincere faith was the key to success. Needless to say that the combined impact of his presence and his words would stir up such effervescent euphoria in the soul that all obstacles disappeared.

Thus I was gently but firmly steered into spiritual training. From the outset, I intuitively trusted Ostad's guidance and later was shown evidence. He was a remarkable teacher, he knew how to set the heart ablaze and the mind yearning for something higher and better, something transcendental and perfect. I really wanted to become the wise and self-controlled person he expected us to be. I should add that his charisma was so pervasive and powerful that sometimes I could hardly bear the intensity of the radiation emitted by his presence. But this was not perceived by everyone. He revealed his power only to those he wanted to and faith in his words was the key to access. One had to believe in order to see, and eventually to know with certainty.

Every evening, all year round and in all weathers, I would join the small group of kin and seekers that gathered around Ostad. It very often started with the reading aloud of the newspaper. Ostad would comment on current events and on occasion, would take advantage of some of the issues to present us with an instructive piece of wisdom. In time the students would recount the significant things that had happened to them during the day or put forward the problems they had to deal with. All questions Ostad would answer with great patience. Don't be afraid to ask, he used to say, there's no silly question. He would invariably indicate the good points in a person and praise all good deeds, and also joke humorously about the weak points of all students, past and present, and the mistakes they were liable to make, but he always did so with tolerance and kindness. In fact he would clarify things without ever wronging. Ultimately, we couldn't help but see for ourselves what we were really made of.

To make his point clear Ostad used to draw on anecdotes or outstanding episodes from the lives of the eminent saints of the past or from his own life. He would also tell us about dreams he had had, often didactic set-ups within which either the structure and purpose of all things created were systematically expounded, or a debate would take place about a doctrinal point that would set the world of spirits in ebullience and from which we had to draw lessons.

The atmosphere was intimate, intense and secure at the same time. We felt secure because our questions were answered and our problems solved. Ostad's words were clear and cogent (later on I came to realize that my understanding of what he said had been over-simplistic, yet what I understood at that stage had been adequately enlightening). His eyes, both inquisitive and compassionate, his smile illuminating his face with leniency, and his laughter open and good-natured (Ostad had a great sense of humor), would make the soul flutter. Indeed his words were aimed at the soul, the language and logic of which he was a master. In a word, he had become the gateway through which I communicated with the divine.

With his teachings, I have rediscovered the coherence of the world. All those scattered pieces, all these dissimilar elements, he brought them together and put them in their place, all the "why's" and "how's" of the world and of existence, he answered, explained, and thus made light spring out of chaos. The amazing thing is that in order to reconstruct the meaning of the world, he used terms and concepts that I had deliberately, before knowing him, excluded from my thought and language (God, good, evil, recompense, submission). All the notions that had a devout connotation and, above all, sounded so antiquated were actualized, vivified, and concretized so as to make us see that they cannot be dissociated from any inner work. In fact, these notions had become like empty shells for us, devoid of any substance. Ostad Elahi allowed us to rediscover their true meaning and to place each fragment back in its place within the immense puzzle of the universe.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the qualities that distinguish these teachings are coherence and immediacy. The coherence is manifest when we gather all his sayings: not only do we fail to find any contradiction, but we can no longer isolate one element from the rest, for everything holds together. As for immediacy, his teachings are prodigious, for they directly touch the heart and spirit of those who receive them.