This was definitely the weirdest book I ever wrote, because as it started, I didn’t even think I was writing one. The “guys up there” set up something on my astral body that didn’t allow me to sleep deeply, and I was instead in some kind of a yoga nidra state where I had visions, and those visions would persist and repeat themselves until I wrote them down the best I could in the morning, “flattening” them to the closest approximation while retaining the spiritual message, mantric power, links to the originating reality and some semblance of literary coherence. The difference between the stuff I saw and the stuff that I made up as connective tissue of the story is more vague than one would expect. I thought I was making some stuff up, until it connected seamlessly with the next vision, at which point I stopped trying to make sense of it and just started writing it down in earnest.

The weirdest part is that some things one will expect to have been made up, were in fact the cornerstone of the visions – it started with Gods praising each other, and a flurry of new souls bursting in the space between them. I actually learned how the new souls were born, from that vision. Also, the things like the fountain of kalapas formed in the heart of the soul during worship of God; that’s from the vision and I actually learned that part then. The reason why I didn’t write about it before is because I didn’t know about it before. Also, some stuff you’ll be sure I made up, like Shakti morphing into a cat and playing in Shiva’s lap, that’s the exact content of a vision. I just made her a particular kind of cat, because I find baby snow leopards to be cute, and the cat in the vision was very cute.

I invented side characters to tell the story and watched them turn into major characters without my conscious intention. There are, of course, limits to my resolution. I had a feeling of a certain person, their character, mantric signature, the way they interact with other characters, and I either made up a name or found a historic person that was the closest match I could get. Augustine’s wife and Hildegarde’s husband aren’t each other, but they are an incredibly close match, as personalities go, so instead of writing two repetitive stories, I merged them into one. I knew Shankaracharya’s wife was someone who felt like a very sophisticated Muslim princess from India, and I found the closest historical match. It’s not that exact person, and yet she feels so close that I don’t care. I can’t resolve the details that much while in the physical body, but I think I got the feel of the persons well enough.

The teaching is real, the techniques actually work, the methods for reaching multiple stages of enlightenment are described exactly. The character of the relationships between the Gods is real. The thing about male and female Gods, all real. They don’t actually have coffee, though, but I felt this to be an unjust omission, and it adds some flesh to the plot. Things are repetitive for a reason – some things are just that important.

Hopefully, I now get to start sleeping normally.