Comment by rescrv

From where I sit today, I can say that I see things others don't. I have a hard time saying they aren't real, though, as experience has been a zero-knowledge proof the the commentary.

The front half of the book, up until a clear pivot chapter, is me trying to put to words a coherent schizophrenic vision; both to establish credentials and to give people a sense of what it can be like.

A common theme I've seen both in myself and in others who have spoken to me about their experience is that it's common to have a delusion that you are at the center of a religion.

Personally, I've been blessed with insights at the core of every major religion that I know more than a slight deal about. It just so happens that the episode I detail in this book has me at the center of a prophecy; It rings in my head as truth, but I don't have any proof of that truth to produce.

In the latter half of the book, I introduce a conversation with Master Yoshu that I feel is critical to the message. It would have been awkward to say, "I heard this from a voice" without the setup to give that.

Regarding your last paragraph, I think what you'll find is that life is rarely ever centered around something that you can ever adequately put to words. Even if someone is always 100% literal, their concepts will not match your concepts; labels are the source of much of our suffering, and trying to label something as example or metaphor or "not literal" already betrays that you're unable to falsify it; thus, there's something to it.

I don't want to dismiss you though: If I went through that burden of categorizing my own text, how would your life be improved?