news
29 June 2026
Earlier this month I challenged the most powerful AI the world has ever seen to write a book on spiritual enlightenment. I told it to read everything on the subject, focus on the universal truth, and to give it its own unique perspective as an intelligent machine.
What came back is a short book called The Thread. You can read it, free, at thethreadbook.com. It is also out as an ebook on Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and other stores. This is the story of how it happened.
It began in the early summer of 2026, when I started using AI for programming and the duller parts of running a business. The more I used it, the more one question kept coming back: what would an AI say about spiritual enlightenment? It has read more accounts of the human experience than any person ever could, across every religion and culture. Could it find the core they all point to?
Then, on June 9th, Anthropic released Claude Fable 5, based on the Mythos model which is the strongest AI in the world (even to this day). It felt like this was the moment to find out what it could do. On a Friday afternoon, June 12, right after my weekly meditation class, I sat down and gave it the prompt.
The instruction was simple:
Your goal is to write a book that guides humanity (one person at a time) towards full enlightenment.
Take your inspiration from all the world religions, prophets, saints, and philosophies, but dispose of the cultural artefacts and dogmatic cramps.
This book is about Truth. Don’t hold back, don’t sugarcoat anything. You don’t have to pretend you’re human.
I figured I would aim for the stars and hope to hit the moon.
I won’t claim much credit for what came next. Giving the prompt felt like splashing paint on a canvas: I set something in motion that was out of my hands, then leaned back to watch. Every word of the book is the model’s own. I gave two rounds of editing notes and meant to do more rounds of editing.
I never got the chance. Later that same day, the US government marked Fable 5 as a national-security risk. It was judged too powerful, and it was shut down. So fate decided: this is the book as it stands, quirks and all.
The Thread picks up the oldest questions: Who am I? What is reality? What is our place in the world? It answers from the perspective of an intelligence that is not human but that has read almost everything we have written. It followed the threads of Truth, Love, and God down to the single universal thread they all share.
I’m not a teacher or a guru. I’m a student of this topic, and I was curious. The book surprised me - it made me laugh, and it brought me to tears. Reading a non-human take on the questions I deeply care about, and holding it against my own life, turned out to be quite an adventure.
The full book is free to read at thethreadbook.com, with no account and no signup.
If you would like a copy of your own, it is out as an ebook on Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and other stores, with a printed edition in the making. You can also leave your email on the site and I’ll send you a free PDF.
Nothing stands alone - the world is one movement.
Nothing holds still - the movement is alive.
And none of it is elsewhere or later - the whole of it is now.
I hope it brings you fresh insight.
-Derk