The Luminous One imagines a story about a runaway Jewish peasant boy whose journey takes him from Palestine to Afghanistan, India and China in search of what he calls "the kingdom of heaven." Over the course of seventeen years he learns from great spiritual masters, encounters suffering and tragedy, falls in love and develops a radical philosophy of universal compassion. This is the "re-imagined" story of Yeshua bar-Miryam (the true name of Jesus the Christ) as he struggles for meaning and transcendence in a turbulent and violent world.