The initial story came to me in a flash after Bhante sent us off to meditate on our own one afternoon in the midst of an 8 day silent meditation retreat in early spring of 1981.

I didn't write it down until the 1990s. In 95 I wrote a second draft. At a peak moment in the book to come I wrote "and lightning struck" and lightning struck in the distance as I wrote it. I was amazed.

Some of the channeled material came instantly and other segments came from meditation.

I met Bhante at Claymont - a Gurdjieff-Bennett school that lasted 1 year. That's when the initial vision came of the boy- the desert- the trials and the ending. I find that the works of fiction have a life of their own and they speak to me. I'm sure some of this speaking comes from unconscious elements in me and some from a higher consciousness source.

There's more with the blue light later in the novel.