Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah is a novel by writer and pilot Richard Bach. First published in 1977, the story questions the reader's view of reality, proposing that what we call reality is merely an illusion we create for learning and enjoyment. Illusions was the author's follow-up to 1970's Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Excellent book. It's a short and fast read, but you'll have to slow down to unpack the message.
I'll be reading this one several times.
This edition is good, no obvious or annoying errors detected.
I still remember the feeling of bewilderment when I first read this book in my early teens. I thought the world to be much more magical back then, and this story only enhanced my wonder and strengthened my imagination. While I no longer believe in all the philosophy presented in the book, it still has a pretty okay story. Mostly for the nostalgia value, I'm giving it a rating of 4.
I would like to say that this is philosophy meets mysticism, but it's only Aleister Crowley meets Carlos Castaneda. There are two central ideas throughout the book: that everything you do is what you must do, and that when you know something it is true. These two ideas are, well, not really explored, but rather repeated in different contexts and with different levels of disbelief. It is all quite simple really, which is not a bad thing on its own, but is phrased in a rather heavy-handed way, designed to impress and make it sound like profound concepts.
Bach manages to shed some of this heavy-handedness by presenting much of the book as a comedy, and dressing the ideas in witty banter and relaxed dialogue around camp-sites and cooking-fires. This way, a large part of the book works quite well – as an ironic examination of gullibility – …
I would like to say that this is philosophy meets mysticism, but it's only Aleister Crowley meets Carlos Castaneda. There are two central ideas throughout the book: that everything you do is what you must do, and that when you know something it is true. These two ideas are, well, not really explored, but rather repeated in different contexts and with different levels of disbelief. It is all quite simple really, which is not a bad thing on its own, but is phrased in a rather heavy-handed way, designed to impress and make it sound like profound concepts.
Bach manages to shed some of this heavy-handedness by presenting much of the book as a comedy, and dressing the ideas in witty banter and relaxed dialogue around camp-sites and cooking-fires. This way, a large part of the book works quite well – as an ironic examination of gullibility – but ultimately, by showing that in the world of the book, everything does work as advertised, he dismisses the irony and asks the reader to take the events at face value.
This discrepancy is maybe the strongest point of the book: you can read it as a philosophical treatise, a farce, or just a fun little novella. But of those three, two are not very good, and the third one might be a waste of your time.
