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Richard Bach

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This article is about the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. For the pseudonym of Stephen King, see Richard Bachman.
Richard Bach on the cover page of Time Magazine, Issue: November 1972
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Richard Bach on the cover page of Time Magazine, Issue: November 1972

Richard David Bach (born June 23, 1936) is an American writer. He has authored numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970), Illusions (1977), One (1989), and Out of My Mind (1999). Most of his books have been semi-autobiographical, using actual or fictionalized events from his life to illustrate his philosophy.

Bach was born in Oak Park, Illinois to Roland Robert and Ruth Helen (Shaw) Bach. He attended Long Beach State College (now California State University, Long Beach) in 1955.

Bach was once an Air Force Reserve pilot, and he later became a barnstormer. Nearly all of his books involve flight in some way, from the early stories which are straightforwardly about flying aircraft to his later works in which flight is a philosophical metaphor. Bach had a huge success with Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a fable about a seagull who flew for the sake of flying rather than merely to catch food. Though his later books have not matched its popularity, his work has retained a dedicated fan base.

Many of his later books contain New Age philosophy.

Bach appeared online in the early 1990s in a section of his own at Compuserve, and answered all e-mails personally until he received too many to deal with. He also had his own website, which has since disappeared.

Bach had six children with his first wife, Bette, but they were divorced in 1970. His son Jonathan is a journalist, and he wrote a book about growing up without knowing Richard, and then meeting him as a college student (Richard gave his approval, although he noted that it included some personal history he'd "rather not see in print"). (see Above the Clouds: A Reunion of Father and Son by Jonathan Bach (1993) ISBN 0688117600)

His second wife was actress Leslie Parrish, whom he met during the shooting of the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1973 and married in 1981; The Bridge Across Forever is based on their courtship. They are now divorced and he has since remarried.

Contents

Philosophy

Bach espouses a consistent philosophy in his books. Our true nature is not bound by space or time, we are expressions of the Is (see: Non-duality), we are not truly born nor truly die, and we enter this world of Seems and Appearances for fun, learning, to share experiences with those we care for, to explore - and most of all to learn how to love and love again.

Quotes

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

:"Illusions"

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.

:"Illusions"

That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

:"The Bridge Across Forever"

We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!

:"The Bridge Across Forever"

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

:"Illusions"

If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?

:"Jonathan Livingston Seagull"

You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.

:"There’s No Such Place As Far Away"

I used to think that the purpose of language was to communicate. That if we were clear enough and careful enough, we could make anyone understand anything we write, make them see anything we see. Not so, I found.

The only people who can understand us are the ones who already know what we want to tell them, and then the best of our writing can merely remind, can simply whisper, "I know that, too."

Have you ever wondered why some readers love a book and others just don't get it? I'll tell you why (but you'll understand only if you already know):

Some readers love a book because they enjoy remembering what it brings back to them. The ones who don't love it either don't know what it says, don't care what it says, or would rather not be reminded. They have different enjoyments than chasing once again the ideas a book brings out to play.

:Personal website (now closed)

Each of us discovers our own definition for "soulmate." These range anywhere from "A Meaningless Concept" to the pronouncing of our Significant Other's name.

For me, a soulmate is one with whom we've made a mutual decision before the beginning of any life experience, with whom we have an agreement to meet in spacetime and demonstrate for each other the best we know about sharing love.

In the highest sense we're all soulmates, one to another, we're all reflections of one light. But the highest sense renders the word impractical on our worlds of make-believe, and I resolved to lower the vibrations of my definition to embrace at least one and at most a very few soulmates in any focus of consciousness I call a lifetime.

Soulmates are not images of religious custom or cultural institution, of age or gender. Marriage does not define a soulmate, nor divorce dissolve one. No earthside connection affects that bond. We recognize each other when we meet by signals arranged at a time and place we half-remember from old dreams. The curve of a smile, fragments of shared memories, a phrase that two minds speak at just the same instant. And then we begin the dance we asked of each other before the music of time was written, and enter upon the lives we've customized for our education and our delight.

:Personal website

In the book The Bridge Across Forever, the writer is in search of a perfect soulmate. But, do perfect things/humans/relationships exist ? -- Jitender B., India

Without question, at least for me, perfect things/humans/relationships exist. However, I have gained a lesson or two about the meaning of "perfect." The perfect voyage, for a person who wants to arrive, is the one that takes no time at all. The perfect voyage for a person who loves travel, is the one that never ends.

A perfect relationship, I think, is one that delivers the lessons we have chosen to learn. Likely it won't always meet our definition of "bliss." Likely it will include the toughest, most difficult lessons two people can teach other, lessons they would never abide from any other soul. But we humans are brilliant at choosing, with unerring precision, exactly the partners we need to learn what we must.”

:Personal website

Reality, for me, is by definition, unchanging. "Oh, that was real yesterday, but it's not real today," is not a line I expect to hear from God. If something Is, then it's forever incapable of not-being. One cannot say "Is" about anything that's made from atoms, each of which has a shelf-life of a mere 30 billion years or so, the finite number of minutes between the Big Bang and the collapse of the physical universe. We use our belief in those teensy building-blocks to construct our dream-worlds called universes and galaxies and planets and bodies, formal gardens and racing-cars. They are wonderful toys, in which we can find great delight and learning.

:Personal website

Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.

:JLS

Divorce

Of his divorce, Richard Bach wrote:

"Leslie and I are no longer married. Soul mates, to me, don't define themselves by legal marriage. There's a learning connection that exists between those two souls. Leslie and I had that for the longest time, and then a couple of years ago, she had this startling realization. She said, 'Richard, we have different goals!' I was yearning for my little adventures and looking forward to writing more books. Leslie has worked all her life long, and she wanted peace, she wanted to slow the pace, not complicate it, not speed it up. Not money, not family, no other men or other women, separated us. We wanted different futures. She was right for her. I was right for me. Finally it came time for us to make a choice. We could save the marriage and smother each other: 'You can't be who you want to be.' Or we could separate and save the love and respect that we had for each other. We decided the marriage was the less important. And now we're living separate lives.
"I believe that Leslie and I were led to find each other, led through the years we lived together, and led to part. There's so much to learn! When a marriage comes to an end, we're free to call it a failure. We're also free to call it a graduation. We didn't say, 'I guess we weren't led to each other, I guess we're not soul mates after all.' Our graduation was part of the experience we chose before we were born, to learn how to let each other go." [link]

Works

External links

 

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