Asaf Braverman

“Asaf, I don’t know which books you like,” said my grandmother. “Here’s money for your birthday. Go downstairs and buy a book.”

 I approached the psychology section of the single bookstore in town, recognizing from afar familiar titles from my having frequently browsed this shelf. My gaze fell upon an unfamiliar black-green hardcover spine. I pulled it out, opened it randomly, and landed upon the following passage:

We cannot find answers to all these questions if we study man separately from the world. Man is analogous to the universe; the same laws operate in him and we shall find that it is easier to understand some of these laws by studying man, while other laws we can understand better by studying the universe…

In my search so far, I’d encountered books either about man or the universe, never about both. That Peter Ouspensky would insist the two should be studied together sparked my curiosity and drew me to invest my grandmother’s gift for my eighteenth birthday in The Fourth Way.