THE WATCHING WORDS

Anyone tempted to read this book ought to be warned. It opens the door to reality -- and to the very essence of religion. But it takes everything away from the reader and leaves nothing behind.

The Watching Words is seemingly about many different things: the meaning of education, the dangers of imitation, the purpose of alchemy, the true roots of Sufism, the depths of eternity. It spans huge stretches of time and space, from the ancient Greeks to medieval Islam and down to the present day; from Asia to Europe and Africa, then back again.

It honors the wise: Pythagoras and Socrates, Empedocles, Parmenides and Heraclitus, Aeschylus and Solon, Dhu'l-Nun and Suhrawardi. And it exposes those who think they are wiser than the wise for the fools they are -- whether famous philosophers and spiritual teachers or scholars and seekers.

But beneath these themes, names, places is the one story of human unconsciousness in all its absurdity always trying to find a greater reality and never discovering how.

For everybody wanting something to hold onto, inspiring ideas and reassuring guidance, even more knowledge to gobble up and even more wisdom to imagine is their own, this is a book to run as far away from as they can. But for everyone sick to death of their own superficiality and fakery, their constant compromises and cowardice, The Watching Words may be all they need.