The author's aim was not to write about the facts of religion but to pursue the possibilities of fiction as a path to spiritual understanding. Spiritual humour was his chosen venue, having been much influenced in childhood by fairy tales, and in adult life by the Sufi storytellers, by Gurdjieff, by stories about Ramakrishna and Rumi, by the writings of Antoine de Sainte-Exupery, particularly The Little Prince, and by that extravagant raconteuse of magic and mystery in Tibet,
