“Illusions” & “Illusions II” by Richard Bach – The Flight of the Messiah

In his timeless inspirational work, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach opened the eyes of countless readers in the world to the potential hidden in each and every one of us to fully realize our dreams and ambitions, no matter how much they go against the grain.

To Bach, flying isn't just a physical act, but rather, a mental release that can take us to unprecedented heights of personal achievement and understanding. And so, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the spiritual sequels to the afore-mentioned novella, Illusions and Illusions II, are once again centred on the idea of taking to the skies.

In the first part of the sequel, we get to make acquaintance with Richard Bach himself as a disillusioned writer who chooses to put all the remaining faith in his world into his propeller bi-plane.

Quite soon though, he meets a self-declared messiah, Donald Shimoda, who helps take Bach's imagination to grandiose new realms high above anything he's ever dreamt of, learning many important lessons along the way about the true power of the human mind.

In the second book, published thirteen years after the first one, the author further continues his story, placing his accent on an event that defined his life for the rest of his days: a near-death experience as his plane struck high-tension wires and crashed inverted.

 Perhaps miraculously, Bach survived it all and awoke from his coma... only to conquer the skies once again soaring as high as he ever did and returning to his true passion in life: literature.

First of all, if Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a work that is still fresh in your mind, then I dare say that you can guess what kinds of books these are: they are inspirational, motivational and educational in their nature. He certainly drops a whole lot of wisdom in barely three hundred pages, with most of the lines teaching one thing or another about the realities of life as he has come to learn them.

He really doesn't discriminate as to the subjects he touches on, educating on matters of family, friendships, finding one's place and belonging in the world, the strength of the human will, the tremendous boon that is imagination, the power that we have to enact change in our own lives, the idea that the messiahs we are really looking for have been hidden deep within ourselves this whole time.

Quite honestly it is a bit difficult to encompass everything he discusses, but rest assured that you'll find many interesting lessons that will stick with you depending on what is happening in your life.

These are the kinds of books that we can keep coming back to again and again over the years to gain a more profound understanding of our internal worlds, perhaps even seeking advice on a certain level. Even the most cynical and pessimistic of minds will find common ground with Bach's points of view.

All in all, this isn't the kind of book that you read for the story, but rather, for everything else. It doesn't seek to simply entertain, but rather, it wants to awaken a drive within us all to make use of our personal power and shape our destinies the way we want to.

Illusions and Illusions II are books of exceptional depth where the author was free to explore life and death in all the freedom he wanted, making for a body of work I can't help but recommend to all the readers out there looking for a more meaningful literary experience.

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Richard Bach Personal site Richard Bach is an American author who is best-known for his 1970s bestsellers, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. He also had a career as an aviator in the United States Navy Reserve as well as in the New Jersey Air National Guard.