Chapter 16: Prologue

When I started recording this audiobook, I found myself in a quandary; I wanted listeners to be able to get right into the narrative, but there was the prologue, to my mind, at least, a useful bit of information that situates my Kundalini experience in a larger context. What to do with it? I decided to stick after the last chapter. In a printed version, it's easy for the reader to skip over, come back to, and generally peruse the contents of a book before deciding whether an introduction, a foreword, or a prologue is worth plowing through. Not so with an audiobook. The listener is stuck with the order in which the work is recorded. Lead off with a prologue or other literary aside and you may lose the listener in the first paragraph. Given the vagaries of attention spans and tastes, it's hard enough when you start with the narrative, much less a well-intentioned interpretation of what the listener is about to encounter. In any case, I learned my lesson — a by-product of the Audiobook experience — and I solemnly vow never to write another book with a prologue.