Daniil Andreev was a man with a difficult fate. Creativity was for him the content and meaning of life—fulfillment of the duty entrusted to the poet from above. Just as there are devotees in faith, there are also devotees in creativity. That was Daniil Andreev: he wrote the drafts of “The Rose of the World” in a Vladimir prison cell and finished the book itself during the remaining 23 months of homeless wandering that were left for a mortally ill man before his death.
“The Rose of the World” was created on the basis of the author’s personal spiritual experience. Daniil was neither a theosophist nor an anthroposophist, nor anyone of that kind. The states of any vision that visited him from early youth—and in prison turned into a steady and powerful light of transphysical knowledge—are a rare gift, but one found among people of the Lightly Powers. There can be no doubt about those Powers belonging to the Light when you read the book.