It’s a little presumptuous for an author to position himself as a prophet or messiah, but such is Richard Bach’s ambition in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. The slim volume has essentially three threads, each with the core focus on freedom, spirituality, and imagination. The first part of the book is a hand-written allegory where creatures cling to the bottom of a flowing river and one decides to let go and is swept away; other creatures see this creature flying by and see it as a miracle. The second narrative is a straightforward story of the main character, Richard Bach himself, as he flies from various towns and offers $3 plane rides to the citizens. He then meets Dan Shimoda, a man involved in the same project, but doing so after quitting his job as a messiah. Within the book, there are a number of excerpts from a messiah manual that serve as a complimentary set of aphorisms that lends the other sections an allegorical quality.
The central narrative focuses on Bach and Shimoda’s philosophical discussions and Bach trying to learn how to perform miracles like walking on water, swimming in land, making wrenches float, flying planes without having to refuel, and so on. One particularly strange event is when Shimoda conjures a vampire to scare Bach to force Bach to recognize that he should stand up for what he wants and not do anything he doesn’t feel like doing (i.e. give up his blood). Towards the end of the book, there’s a particularly polarizing conversation where Shimoda goes on the radio and insists that people don’t die unless they consent to dying (I can understand the outrage—try telling anyone being starved or bombed right now that they are only dying because they choose to). Then, Shimoda is murdered by an angry townsperson who shoots him with a shotgun. It’s implied that he can save himself but chooses not to.
I think the book is going to be controversial for its philosophical stances either way. There’s a deeply idealistic approach rather than a materialist one. Essentially, the book posits the idea that the entire world is an illusion and that we can manifest anything we want by thinking it. It’s similar to Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist, but it’s much less obnoxious. Anything we want, we have. Any time we think we have problems, we do. As an example of one of the messiah handbook’s aphorisms reads as follows: “You are / never given a wish / without also being given the / power to make it true” (92). Another: “Your / conscience is / the measure of the / honesty of your selfishness. / Listen to it / carefully” (104). Bach’s book positions itself as a kind of guidebook, of course, but I think where things are controversial is that so much of the ‘manifestation’ philosophy of the book is individualistic and it doesn’t necessarily ring true—but of course, I’m a cynic. I just find it hard to believe that when there’s all the systemic issues that serve to disadvantage people that we can “imagine” our way out of it [Bach replaces the word “faith” with “imagination”]. There’s climate change, but we can just imagine the world is perfect and it is—and of course it is, because the world is an illusion.
One idea that is particularly hard to argue with is when Bach asks Shimoda why they go see a movie. Through a Socratic conversation, Shimoda guides Bach to the realization that for whatever justifications we have for doing things, it all comes down to either 1) having fun 2) learning things or 3) both. It’s reasonably persuasive that all of our actions fit into those categories.
In terms of style, the book is fine. The sentence construction is consistently clear and direct. The tone is somewhat aggrandizing, of course, given that the story focuses on two messiahs. There are actually a few moments of humour that land pretty well. There are some sarcastic comments that the central characters share that are nice touches, and as a huge fan of Arrested Development, there was a moment in the text that had a funny echo—certainly not one that Bach could have anticipated, but amusing nonetheless. When witnessing a miracle, Bach reflects on a moment where he interacted with a magician: “when I was a kid, learning magic – magicians say that! They carefully tell us, ‘Look, this is not a miracle you are about to see; this is not really magic. What it is, is an effect, it is the illusion of magic” (56). It reminds me of Gob constantly correcting people on calling magic tricks illusions: Illusion, Michael! or Illusions, dad! You don’t have time for my illusions.
Books serve different purposes. This book is more of a spiritual exercise than an aesthetic / literary venture, at least in my mind. The emphasis is predominantly on ideas presenting those ideas in little allegories, like when a wheelchair-bound man gets out of his chair and runs to the aeroplane because problems are only in our minds. As a result, I don’t have a ton of additional comments. I apologize if this review comes across as a little thin, but in my defence, the book is similarly thin.
It was okay. Will it revolutionalize my life? I’ll have to overcome my grounded realism and perpetually think about how the world is an illusion. I’ll just have to say: I’m no messiah and not likely to become one anytime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment