Guru Diaries

Is heaven just a hiding place?

A graphic novel by L.H. Levin

Set against the gray, stark backdrop of 1990s Boston, Guru Diaries is a psychedelic spiritual thriller about Fernanda and Neeru, two prep-school classmates whose euphoric romance once opened a portal to Kārana Loka, a shimmering yogic realm beyond the dream world.Now, Neeru screams in an abandoned subway tunnel beneath the city to exorcise a thought too horrific to utter—wrecked by abuse from the guru she worshipped as God, and forced to watch her parents prostrate themselves before her predator.As the girls rebuild their lives, trapped in the physical realm, they wonder whether they were once goddesses—or just trauma-bonded teenagers. Was Kārana Loka a revelation of a deeper reality—or a sanctuary their minds created to survive unbearable pain?

“We were scientists of surrender. Girls with pens and breath and theory, charting each other like living constellations.”

“My parents told me to find God.
They didn't tell me that God was hungry.”

“Spirituality is a mixture of love and death. And life is fumbling for a recipe that has just two ingredients.”

L.H. Levin is a writer, musician, and humorist based in the Midwest. By trade, he is an entertainer for the elderly, using music and laughter to bring levity to life’s later chapters.Guru Diaries is rooted in Levin's lived history. A former resident of Cambridge and Boston, he holds an MS in Therapeutic Recreation and studied Expressive Therapies at Lesley University. He's also a certified Vivation coach—a breathing technique that accesses ecstatic states of consciousness. He spent over twenty years in Eastern spiritual communities and stayed at two East Coast ashrams in the 90s that famously unraveled under predatory leadership. Drawing on this background and his experience as a primary caretaker for a loved one surviving psychotic depression, Levin writes to explore the collision of faith and madness.Guru Diaries is an act of witnessing—giving voice to the terrifying silence that falls when spirituality is weaponized, and the ecstatic freedom found in reclaiming one's own soul.

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