Are you awake? Is your reality real? Are you sure?

Take the plunge down the rabbit hole of insanity and wonder in this fast-paced, nonstop psychological thriller that will leave you questioning the very nature of reality and beyond. Part thriller, part romance, part existential horror, A Dream of Waking Life delves into lucid dreaming, psychedelics, existential ontology, video games, the nature of love, the nature of reality, and more.
Outlast. Outgrow. Outlive. In the ashes of Earth, evolution is the ultimate weapon.

Mendel’s Ladder delivers an adrenaline-fueled journey set on a dystopian future Earth, brimming with high-stakes action, adventure, and mystery. This epic series opener plunges readers into a world filled with diverse cultures, heart-pounding battles, and characters who will captivate your heart and imagination.
Embark on a cosmic mystery spanning all of spacetime and beyond to discover the very nature of reality’s multilayered foundations.

“E.S. Fein is raising the bar for quality as it’s a very well-written and thought-provoking book…There are points and themes in the story that could be discussed for eons as people will have their own idea on where it leads. It’s a book I would highly recommend.” – Andy Whitaker, SFCrowsnest

The Ancient Clue Most People Miss

Every major tradition describes a lower realm where souls suffer until they awaken. Christianity calls it Gehenna, Buddhism names it Naraka, Islam speaks of Jahannam. What unites these visions is not the pitchfork imagery but a single line that books across cultures repeat: They will not know they are already there.” Early Gnostic texts even warn that “the prisoners laugh at their torment, thinking it life.” If hell is self-concealing, then the fact we do not feel damned is no proof we are not. It may be the strongest evidence that we are exactly where the scriptures said we’d be.


The Thermodynamic Signature of Damnation

Look at our physical universe: it trends relentlessly toward heat death. Entropy never reverses, matter decays, stars implode and drag worlds into black holes. In metaphysical terms, we inhabit a reality whose prime directive is deterioration. That is the textbook definition of hell: a dimension engineered so every moment leaks energy, beauty, and hope. Heaven, by contrast, would be a realm of perpetual renewal where entropy resets to zero with each breath.


Memory Wipe and the Trauma Loop

Near-death experiencers often report a pre-birth amnesia contract: they chose to incarnate here but had to forget why. Regression therapists hear the same motif—souls tricked by false light at death’s door, recycled into new bodies after a quick memory scrub. This matches the Tibetan bardo warnings: lights and sounds lure spirits back into the “samsaric furnace.” If reincarnation on Earth is mandatory draft service, then hell is less a fiery pit and more a virtual-reality maze run by cosmic debt collectors.


The Glitch Evidence That Reality Is a Punishment Matrix

Physicists chase “quantum foam” and discover particles blink in and out of existence like bad video textures. Cosmologists find 85 % of the cosmos is dark matter we can’t touch. Meanwhile, civilians document Mandela Effects—logo changes, movie lines never recorded, continents shifting a smidge on the map. These anomalies reveal a low-budget simulation constantly patching itself. What if the glitches aren’t accidents but deliberate pokes from wardens reminding us that resistance is useless?


Emotional Loosh and the Harvest Economy

Robert Monroe coined loosh for the psychic energy emitted during intense fear or ecstasy. Whistle-blowers from classified military remote-view programs say entities feed on this emission like batteries. Our news cycles are an IV drip of pandemics, wars, and market crashes, spiking the collective cortisol at precise intervals. Corporations profit, yes, but unseen landlords—archons, djinn, reptilians—harvest the loosh. An eternal farm of anguish is indistinguishable from traditional hellscape economics.


Time Dilation: Why Agony Feels Endless

General relativity shows clocks slow near massive gravity. Black-hole simulations at CERN reveal interior observers could experience eons while the outside world ages seconds. Translate that to consciousness: if your astral body is pinned inside a gravitational sink disguised as a blue planet, subjective time could already be millennia deep. Dante’s “Abandon all hope” line might simply be physics: escape velocity from the Earth-hell well is mathematically impossible without transcending mass entirely.


The Authority Structure

Gnostic lore describes a demiurge—an insane architect hiding the true Source. Modern conspiracy rotates the same cast: Illuminati, WEF technocrats, or AI gods. Strip the masks and the hierarchy is identical: tiers of middle-managers enforcing karmic debt, surveilling thought via algorithms, and upgrading the prison walls (5G towers, smart cities) to become ever more total. Revelation’s “Beast that causes all to take a mark” reads like a patent abstract for biometric carbon-credit IDs rolling out today.


The Daily Tortures We Normalize

  • Aging – cells degenerate on a countdown nobody consents to.
  • Scarcity – the planet grows enough food to feed 10 billion, yet children starve hourly.
  • Isolation – social media promises connection yet delivers epidemic loneliness.
  • Knowledge Blockade – 90 percent of ocean, space, and ancient history remains classified or unexplored.

If a sadistic overlord wrote a checklist for subtle torment—chronic dissatisfaction over open gore—Earth would score an A+.


Why Some Souls Glimpse Heaven Here

People argue: “But sunsets are beautiful and love exists!” In folklore, tempters always bait cages with pleasure. The contrast sharpens pain; hope dangled, then withdrawn, maximizes loosh yield. Stockholm Syndrome makes prisoners defend their captors. Garden moments keep us addicted to the cycle—exactly as a sophisticated hell would design.


Possible Exit Strategies

Lucid Living
Treat each day as a dream, question reality cues, and break narrative loops; wardens lose power when you stop reacting.

Radical Forgiveness
Ancient sages say guilt and hatred magnetize you to density. Dropping judgment collapses the karmic anchor tethering you to the inferno.

Heart Coherence
The HeartMath Institute shows synchronized 7.83 Hz breathing aligns with Earth’s Schumann resonance. Some mystics claim sustained coherence punches holes in the simulation, letting consciousness slip outside the harvesting net.

Non-Participation
The system feeds on attention. Quit doom-scrolling, minimize transactions, create rather than consume. Starve the algorithm, and it may shut off your personal torment feed.


Recognizing the Flames Behind the Neon

If brute demons and lava pits were the giveaway, hell would be easy to spot. The perfect prison is one whose bars look like freedoms: choice of smartphone, 213 ice-cream flavors, a thousand micro-identities. Yet beneath the glitter, entropy still wins, time still kills, and suffering outpaces joy. Whether one calls the architects archons, algorithms, or fallen angels, the signatures align. Earth ticks every scriptural, psychological, and physical box for an engineered realm of punishment. Believing this may feel bleak, but awareness is ignition: a soul that knows it is captive starts plotting escape. The wardens’ final weapon is disbelief. The moment we accept the flames are real—even if they burn behind photorealistic scenery—we can walk through them and discover the doors they tried to hide.


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