Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

by Richard Bach

they were beginning to call the Mechanic Messiah, the American Avatar, who disappeared one day in front of twenty-five thousand eyewitnesses?”

you get a job like that, the Messiah, you’re supposed to save the world, aren’t you? I didn’t know the Messiah could just turn in his keys like that and quit.”

“Of course you can quit! Quit anything you want, if you change your mind about doing it. You can quit breathing, if you want to.” He floated a Phillips screwdriver for his own amusement. “So I quit being the Messiah,

A good messiah hates nothing and is free to walk any path he wants to walk. Well, that’s true for everybody, of course. We’re all the sons of God, or children of the Is, or ideas of the Mind, or however else you want to say it.”

Jesus going back to hammering nails for a living? Maybe it just sounds odd.”

‘OK, I’m the son of God, but so are we all; I’m the saviour, but so are you! The works that I do, you can do!’ Anybody in their right mind understands that.”

“It’s not me they want, it’s the miracles!

‘There is no problem so big that it cannot be run away from.’ ”

You know the past and the future of all things. You know exactly where we’re going!” He sighed. “Yeah. But I try not to think about it.”

Perspective — Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you’re forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You’re going to die a horrible death, remember. It’s all good training, and you’ll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less- advanced life-forms, and they’ll call you crazy.

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.

You teach best what you most need to learn.

Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world — even if what is published is not true.

The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, “I’ve got responsibilities.”

Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them. You’re always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

Believe you know all answers, and you know all answers. Believe you’re a master, and you are.”

“This world? And everything in it? Illusions, Richard! Every bit of it illusions! Do you understand that?”

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

A person gets used to being alone, but break it just for a day and you have to get used to it again, all over from the beginning.

if they’re scared they’re either going to crucify somebody or worship him.

if this life is illusion, why do we live it at all? I

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

I’d say that you believe that it’s good and that therefore it does taste good to you. Try it without deeply believing what you believe and it’s sort of like … a fire … after a flood … in a flourmill, don’t you think?

the world’s best movie is still an illusion, is it not? The pictures aren’t even moving; they only appear to move. Changing light that seems to move across a flat screen set up in the dark?”

Can you believe that lots of people for reasons that are very sound to them enjoy believing that they are helpless in their own films?

why some people are unhappy. They are unhappy because they have chosen to be unhappy, and, Richard, that is all right!”

We cannot die, we cannot hurt ourselves any more than illusions on the screen can be hurt. But we can believe we’re hurt, in whatever agonizing detail we want. We can believe we’re victims, killed and killing, shuddered around by good luck and bad luck.”

Lots of people choose lifetimes because they enjoy doing things together.

Who is free to walk out in the middle, any time, change the plot whenever, who is free to see the same film over and over again?” “Let me guess,” I said. “Anybody who wants to?”

What’s the projector?” “Mind,” I said. “No. Imagination. It’s our imagination, no matter what you say.”

“What’s the film?” he asked. “Got me.” “Whatever we give our consent to put into our imagination?”

any illusion requires space and time to be experienced.

Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect, the handbook said to me once.

Then be sure of one thing: the Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.

“Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.”

A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a

It feels an impulsion … this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

It isn’t solid, and it isn’t liquid. You and I decide what it’s going to be for us.

The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.

The original sin is to limit the Is. Don’t.

“So you’re saying that body is illusion and wall is illusion but identity is real and that can’t be hemmed by illusions.” “I’m not saying that. You’re saying that.” “But it’s true.” “Naturally,” he said. “How do you do it?” “Richard, you don’t do anything. You see it done already, and it is.”

“Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them,” he sang. “Did you not a week ago swim in the earth itself?”

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

We choose, ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides. Nobody else.

“Listen,” he said, “It’s important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.”

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

“You don’t do anything. Cosmic law, remember? Like attracts like. Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright. Automatically, as we shine who we are, asking ourselves every minute is this what I really want to do, doing it only when we answer