Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

by Richard Bach

yes, automatically that turns away those who have nothing to learn from who we are and attracts those who do, and from whom we have to learn, as well.”

The dream awake is the same: your will to be free of all things that tie you back – routine, authority, boredom, gravity. What you haven’t realized is that you’re already free, and you always have been.

“That explains it. If you want to be with what you’re magnetizing, you have to put yourself in the picture, too. Sorry I didn’t say that.”

The truth you speak has no past and no future. It is, and that’s all it needs to be.

“Well, Donald, Part One: I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy.” “OK. Part Two?” “Part Two: Everybody else is free to do whatever they feel like doing, for a living. Part Three: Responsible is Able to Respond, able to answer for the way we choose to

There’s only one person we have to answer to, of course, and that is …?” “… ourselves,”

“How about I allow the world to live as it chooses, and I allow me to live as I choose.”

‘Master,’ ” he said, “ ‘I want to be loved, I’m kind, I do unto others as I would have them do unto me, but still I don’t have any friends and I’m all alone.’ How are you going to answer that one?” “Beats me,” I said. “I don’t have the foggiest idea what to tell you.”

“Seeker, thou comest to me for an answer, and unto thee I do answer: The Golden Rule doesn’t work. How would you like to meet a masochist who did unto others as he would have them do unto him? Or a worshiper of the Crocodile God, who craves the honor of being thrown alive into the pit? Even the Samaritan, who started the whole thing … what made him think that the man he found lying at the roadside wanted to have oil poured in his wounds? What

“Even if the Rule was changed to Do unto others as they want to be done to, we can’t know how anybody but ourselves wants to be done to. What the Rule means, and how we apply it honestly, is this: Do unto others as you truly feel like doing unto others. Meet a masochist with this rule and you do not have to flog him with his whip, simply because that is what he would want you to do unto him. Nor are you required to throw the worshiper to the crocodiles.” I looked at him. “Too wordy?”

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.

“Just give up all your inhibitions and all your beliefs that you can’t play. Touch the thing as though it was a part of your life, which it is, in some alternate lifetime. Know that it’s all right for you to play it well, and let your nonconscious self take over your fingers and play.”

“The people who work for a living are doing what they most want to do,” Shimoda said. “Just as much as the people who play for a living …”

“It’s OK if the world is destroyed,” he said. “There are a thousand million other worlds for us to create and choose from. As long as people want planets, there will be planets to live on.”

We see just one little fleck of the whole that is life, and that one fleck is fake. Everything balances, and nobody suffers and nobody dies without their consent. Nobody does what they don’t want to do. There is no good and there is no evil, outside of what makes us happy and what makes us unhappy.”

“Christ said that we have to live for our fellow man. Antichrist says be selfish, live for yourself and let other people go to hell.” “Or heaven, or wherever else they feel like going.” “You are dangerous, do you know that, mister? What if everybody listened to you and did just whatever they felt like doing? What do you think would happen then?”

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

“You said that depending on people to care about what I say is depending on somebody else for my happiness. That’s what I came here to learn: it doesn’t matter whether I communicate or not.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Everything in this book may be wrong.

It’s a different space-time and any different space-time is a dream for a good sane earthling, which you are going to be for a while yet. But you will remember, and that will change your thinking and your life.”