This book wasn’t even planned at the beginning of this year. After I completed my last one, Genesis Unveiled, I thought I might never do another, because my writing wasn’t paying enough for me to earn even a basic living. And my refusal to ‘sex things up’ wasn’t helping my commercial potential. I wanted to continue with my writing and research, of course, because I believe in what I do. But we all have to eat! And I don’t believe it’s possible to write on the subjects that I and many colleagues do without devoting one hundred per cent attention and focus to the job in hand. Trying to mix it with some other form of job just doesn’t work.

I worked as a courier for a while, just to have some money coming in, waiting to see what would happen. It was worth it for the experience. How many of us do menial jobs, treated with varying levels of disdain, all the while thinking ‘I’m worth more than this’? But after I was able to free up the last remnants of my capital, left over from what now feels almost like a past life in which I was a well-paid member of the commercial world, I had a real choice to make. Should I risk all on one last throw of the dice, and write again? Or give it up and do something ‘sensible’, as so many well-meaning friends advised? The answer would depend entirely on whether anything came up that I felt was worth the risk. It had to be something important enough that it would effectively leave me with no choice.

It won’t come as a great surprise that I believe in karma, and that I knew that if I was meant to carry on something would present itself to me. At the beginning of this year I treated myself to the luxury of a two-week holiday in Cancun, partly justifying it on the basis that at last I would get to see some of the Mayan pyramids in the Yucatan about which I had heard and read so much. Needless to say I was impressed by them. But not as much as I was by the simple beauty of the pure white sand of the beaches, and its incredible effect on the colour of the water. And it was while I was contemplating this one day that I received my first intuitional prompt for this book.

As it turned out, this prompt was an initial ‘blind’. I was following up some of the research I had done for Genesis Unveiled, and reading a book about hypnotic regression. It suddenly made sense that I should train as a regression therapist myself! That way I could help people but still earn a living! On my return I investigated the possibility, and wasn’t necessarily put off by the lengthy training in basic psychology that would be required if I really meant to do the job properly. But, as you will see in the opening chapter, other factors started to come into play. Within a short space of time a wealth of corroborating research for the spiritual worldview I had written about in Genesis Unveiled came to my notice – research that hadn’t received the attention I felt it deserved. And pretty soon I had my confirmation that there was at least one more book I had to write.

But don’t think for one moment that I am just another of those spiritual writers for whom everything seems to fall into place because they are on their ‘chosen path’. Indeed, one of the important lessons in this book is that a spiritual path is not necessarily an easy one. Sometimes we are given really difficult hurdles to overcome – indeed, as you will find out, I argue that we ourselves probably plan many of them. Because it is not always the unbroken tranquillity of our lives that measures our spiritual progress, but how we handle the problems we face – and what we learn from the process of striving to get over them.

For a long time I had asked for help during my meditations. Help to make the job of carrying on with my writing and research a little easier. So, having received that assistance in the form of locating important material for another book that I knew I had to write, I made the mistake of assuming that my existing publishers, Virgin, would be just as excited about it as I was. How wrong we can be! Although they were keen to work with me again if only I would write another history-cum-archaeology book, they felt completely unable to take a book that was so clearly focused on spiritual issues alone. My resolve was challenged even further when my proposal for what was then titled Interlife was rejected by several other publishers. So did I have the determination to continue and again, just as with Genesis Unveiled, complete a book without having a publishing deal already signed and sealed?

The answer was yes. But even then my efforts were not exactly assisted by my personal situation. In trying to keep my living expenses down, I was renting a room in a house shared with my nephew in a less than salubrious area of my home city in the south of England. My combined bedroom and office lay next to the dividing wall of the other half of our semidetached house, which was occupied by probably the most psychotic family on the planet. Have you ever tried to distil some of the finer points of the meaning of life while being bombarded with loud urban music at all hours of the day and night? Or by vicious arguments so punctuated by swear words that there is very little room left to say anything at all constructive?! Since previous attempts to complain about the noise had met with threats and scratched cars, it seemed that the only option was to grin and bear it. Which is what I did, even if at times I thought I might go mad.

So I was, I think justifiably, quite proud when finally the first draft was finished – after only six months of intense writing and research. But I didn’t realise at the time that the hardest part was still yet to come! I began my final read-through with some anticipation that within days all would be complete. It started well. But by the time I got halfway through and arrived at the chapter that concerns the dynamics of karma, I got stuck. It is very unusual for me to have to make significant amendments to my work after the first draft, because a great deal of thought goes into that initial effort. But here I was rewriting the first half of that chapter again, and again, and again. Each time thinking I had solved the problem, only to go back again and realise I hadn’t. This time I really did think I was going mad. I just didn’t seem to be able to find any clarity about certain discrepancies in the modern research. So even when my ‘eureka’ moment finally arrived, I had no great confidence that I’d actually cracked it.

But a few days’ break with a friend in the Isle of Man did the trick, and when I returned refreshed and ready for the fight to go on I realized that my fears were groundless. What I thought might read like the ramblings of a deluded idiot finally made some sense. And when I took my findings to their ultimate conclusion, I realised that I had something on my hands that was perhaps rather more important than even I had at first envisaged. It was at this point that I took the perhaps bold, perhaps foolish decision to change the title to The Book of the Soul. And to press ahead with the courage of my own convictions, and use what capital I had left to publish it myself.