Truth is Stranger than Fiction.

One of the strangest discoveries I made after my own bhumi had nothing to do with me at all. It had to do with history.

The more I tried to understand what had happened to me, the more I began seeing the same pattern appearing in the lives of people who had walked this Earth centuries, sometimes thousands of years, before I was born. They came from different cultures. They spoke different languages. They described their experiences through different spiritual and philosophical traditions.

Yet beneath all those differences was something remarkably familiar.

In Buddhism, awakened beings are often described in three ways.

A Buddha is one who fully awakens and then reveals a path for others to follow. By this definition, figures like Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and Krishna were all Buddhas. They experienced a profound transformation in their understanding of reality and devoted their lives to sharing what they discovered.

A Bodhisattva is someone who has a bhumi and then returns to the world, using their gifts in service of others.

This is where I began seeing people like Carl Jung, Nikola Tesla, Leonardo da Vinci and other great thinkers. They did not necessarily build religions, but they transformed humanity through the gifts that emerged from their deeper understanding. Their awakening expressed itself through poetry, philosophy, science, music, art, and discovery.

An Arhat is someone who experiences a bhumi but never becomes a figure remembered by history.

Many Arhats were lost to time, not because their awakening was less profound, but because history has always been selective about whose stories were preserved. Women, especially, were often denied recognition even when they experienced awakening as well. 

Many of the wives who stood beside history’s greatest spiritual teachers had bhumis as well.  Their stories were often absorbed into the names of the men around them. Mary Magdalene. Tahirah. Yasodhara. Manibhadra.

When you go into Buddhist temples, the stories of the 84 Mahasiddhas are found on murals or hanging on scrolls as a reminder of the achievements of those people. Only four women are listed in the 84. There were more than four. Awakening is contagious. 

These "forgotten" people reveal something important. Awakening and recognition are not the same thing. A person can experience a profound transformation and still disappear from the historical record. 

Peter, James, Paul and John all experienced the awakening as well. They were not forgotten but their story is incomplete and left lesser than Jesus's experience. 

All people who have a bhumi leave the same fingerprint. A radical shift in perception. A deeper understanding of reality. An ability to see connections others can not see.  A desire to bring something meaningful back into the world.

Once I began looking through this lens, the pattern became impossible to ignore. Then I noticed something else!

Awakened people rarely make life more comfortable.

They challenge the status quo. 

They question assumptions. 

They disrupt old stories and force us to see ourselves differently. 

Sometimes they are inspiring. 

Sometimes they are infuriating. 

Quite often, they are both.

This ties directly into another unusual trait: they often "teach" in odd ways. Not because they are trying to be mysterious (or an asshole) but because some lessons simply refuse to fit neatly into ordinary life. 

That is why Zen masters answered questions with riddles, Socrates taught through questions instead of lectures, and mystics throughout history relied on stories, symbols, poetry, and paradox. 

As enlightened humans, their goal was not simply to provide answers. It was to transform the way people saw... and ultimately, how they lived their lives moving forward.

A Bodhisattva's job is to hold the imaginary door open for everyone around them until those people get it and have their proverbial AHA moment. THEY DO THIS IN ANY WAY NECESSARY (See the story of Tilopa and Naropa). Thus liberating them from whatever that "suffering" is. 

This form of tough love "teaching" helps others have a bhumi.

That realization changed the direction of my own investigation. I stopped asking whether awakening was real. I had already experienced it. The question that remained was a different one...

Is there a quicker path towards a bhumi that I can share with friends? This book was created from that question.

I cannot promise that following these patterns will lead everyone to a bhumi. Life does not work like a formula. There are forces at play that are far beyond our ability to control. Call it grace, karma, fate, divine timing, or something else entirely, but there is always something larger involved.

What I can say, with complete honesty, is this: There are doors hidden everywhere in plain sight. And sometimes, all it takes is learning how to recognize them.

I did not set out to find the doors of perception.  

I was simply trying to understand what had happened to me. 

The deeper I looked, the more clearly they appeared.

I think of myself as a witness more than anything else. 

You don't have to believe me. 

Actually, I would rather you didn’t.

The world does not need more people telling others what to believe. It needs more people willing to stay curious, ask uncomfortable questions, and explore what they find for themselves.

Curiosity has always been one of humanity’s greatest superpowers.

It is how we discover new worlds, uncover hidden truths, and occasionally find ourselves standing somewhere we never expected to be.

If you are willing to wander into some very strange territory with me, I would love for you to read my book.