“Illusions – The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”

A life-changing book from Richard Bach author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

A Dell/ Eleanor Friede book Copyright 1977

An amazing book that confirmed and completed all I had been accumulating over my years of searching for answers in spirituality. These are quotes from the book within the book:

Messiah's Handbook

Reminders for the Advanced Soul

For my handy reference, and yours if you so choose...

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 this 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 you know it.

Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.

You are all learners, doers, teachers.

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

The simplest questions are the most profound:

Where were you born?

Where is your home?

Where are you going?

What are you doing?

Think about these once in awhile and watch your answers change.

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.

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

The best way to avoid responsibilities is to say “I've got responsibilities.”

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self.

Don't turn away from possible futures before you are 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.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands

You seek problems because you need their gifts.

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.

Argue your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours.

Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect

Then be sure that it has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.

(Prelude: “If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you jut 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 direction and at such speed.

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

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.

You may have to work at it, however.

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 want 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.

If you will practice being fictional for awhile 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.

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.

The truth you speak has no past and no future.

It is, and that's all it has to be.

Here is the test to see if your mission on earth is finished:

If you're alive, it isn't

In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom

It isn't always an easy sacrifice.

Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.

And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

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.

The Razor's Edge

Bill Murray made a deal with Columbia Pictures that he would appear in Ghostbusters only if they financed this movie. Originally, no studio was interested in making the film until Dan Aykroyd suggested the deal to Murray. On the final day of shooting, Murray flew to New York City to start filming Ghostbusters

The critics were less than pleased with the $13 million result, but many were moved by a scene that Murray, as co-screenwriter, wove into the story as a way of saying goodbye to his friend and Saturday Night Live colleague John Belushi, who died of a drug overdose a year before the movie was made. In the film Darrell cradles the dead body of his gruff but beloved ambulance corps chief, played by the star's brother Brian Doyle-Murray, and curses him for dying.

"He was a slob. Did you ever see him eat? Starving children could fill their bellies on the food that ended up in his beard and on his clothes. Dogs would gather to watch him eat. I've never understood gluttony, but I hate it. I hated that about you. He enjoyed disgusting people, being disgusting, the thrill of offending people and making them uncomfortable. It was despicable. You will not be missed."

"That scene is all about John," says Murray. "It comes from this old Persian thing where if somebody dies you tell horrible stories about him. That's what I did when John died." And that is what Darrell does as he berates the dead man. "What it does is remind you not to get sentimental. You say, 'That guy was a rat,' and I'm a rat too, and I'd better do something about it rather than weep my life away."