The Enchanted Land

This book was almost entirely written in the 1980s when I was still in my twenties. Each chapter, except the one on karma, was originally published as an article in a specialized magazine or journal. The chapters on the Sage, Saint, Yogi, Mother, Wrestler, and Master were first published in Fate magazine between 1984 and 1986. The chapter on Faqir was published in 1982 in Laughing Man magazine. The chapter on the Journey was published in 1986 in the journal, Understanding Cults and Spiritual Movements. And, finally, the last chapter on Karma was written for the Alt.meditation newsgroup on the Internet. 

As the reader will immediately notice this work is decidedly romantic and represents a significant departure from my other, more critical writings. All writing and all speech, as Mikhail Naimy so rightly points out in his lovely tale, The Book of Mirdad, is at best an honest lie. We never actually get the whole truth and nothing but the truth when we read books. We get instead partial glimpses, which, if we are lucky, reveal something of the majesty of our existence. But even when certain books unlock an insight at that very same moment they conceal something important from us. Why? Because all symbol systems (from mathematics to Sanskrit) are less than the totality from which they arise and to which they ultimately point. 

Although I am mostly known as a skeptic, especially among followers of new religions, I don't think that skepticism is the only approach to life or necessarily the most important vehicle to discover truth. I think we are, as our evolution indicates, a wide spectrum of possibilities and there may well be several ways to approach life's mysteries. One of those approaches which I certainly advocate and champion is interior exploration. That is, the day to day practice of focusing one's consciousness to discover phenomenologically the source from which such awareness arises. This type of practice is usually known in the East as meditation and in the West as ceaseless prayer. In both instances, however, the neophyte is attempting to explore a hitherto unknown world.