From the Bhagavad Gītā, the Vedas and the Purāṇas to the head of a patient's bed — the thread of life, and the search for truth.

Eleven o'clock at night in an intensive care unit. An old man sleeps by a tall window after a long operation, and the doctor on nights keeps coming back to his room, where a question waits that no monitor can answer. Half asleep, the old man asks whether she is here, and does not say whom he means.

The Pillar of Fire is the first volume of The Anatomy of Eternity, a book that walks through a single night with eight sacred texts of India and Tibet. It can be read on its own. In the hours before one o'clock it follows a pillar of fire that neither Brahmā nor Viṣṇu could measure, the Upaniṣads' single ball of clay that explains the world, the unfolding of the principles from a perfect balance, a ladder of time from a mote of dust to the life of the creator, the Bhagavad Gītā's "Time is what I am", the gathering-in of worlds at the end of an age, universes as numberless as motes in a sunbeam, and the oldest question of all: why is there a world at all?

Modern science walks beside the texts as an honest companion: the hard problem of consciousness, relativity and the age of the universe, the brain that builds the present moment, the cell that can be turned back to its beginning, the far future of the stars. Each connection is named for what it is, and no claim is made that science proves or disproves any teaching.

Written with reverence for every tradition it touches, with the original verses beside clear English, original line illustrations, a timeline, a list of names, a glossary with a guide to pronunciation and a list of translations for reading on. It asks for no knowledge of Sanskrit or philosophy.