the ultimate aim of human life portrayed in the novels of ..., Lecture notes of Philosophy

Download the ultimate aim of human life portrayed in the novels of ... and more Lecture notes Philosophy in PDF only on Docsity! 1 THE ULTIMATE AIM OF HUMAN LIFE PORTRAYED IN THE NOVELS OF RICHARD BACH A MINOR RESEARCH PROJECT SUBMITTED TO UNIVERSITY GRANTS COMMISSION, WESTERN REGIONAL OFFICE, PUNE BY SHRI. TULSHIKATTI DEVAL CHENBASU ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PROF. DR. N.D. PATIL MAHAVIDYALAYA, MALAKAPUR, TAL. SHAHUWADI, DIST. KOLHAPUR (MS) 2013 2 AKNOWLEDGEMENT A minor research project work is both interesting and demanding. The project would not be completed without the help of some people. I am fortunate enough to have received the support and motivation from many people in achieving my task. I would like to thank Dr. Dilip Kuralapkar, Principal, Dr.N.D.Patil , College, Malkapur, Prin.Dr. Ajit Magdum . I also express my thank to my friends Dr.R.P.Lokhande,Head,Dept. of English,R.C.Shahu College,Kolhapur. I would like to place on record my deep felt appreciation to Mr.Shakil Shaikh,Dr,Rajendra Kumbhar, Mr,Prakash Chougule, Mr.Rajendra Dethe,Dr, Kakasaheb Bhosale,Mr.Babasaheb Nadaf. My special thanks to Librarian of Prof. Dr. N.D.Patil College,Malkapur. and their staff.I also thank to library of Barrister Balasaheb Khardekar Library, Shivaji University Kolhpaur. I must express my heartily feeling to my beloved family my wife Mrs. Pratibha and my daughters Pranoti and Manali. I must express my heartily feeling to my friends and colleagues. Mr. D.C.Tulshikatti 5 of flow experiences have consistently suggested that humans experience ultimate aim of life and fulfillment when mastering challenging tasks, and that the experience comes from the way tasks are approached and performed rather than the particular choice of task. For example, flow experiences can be obtained by prisoners in concentration camps with minimal facilities, and occur only slightly more often in billionaires. A classic example is of two workers on an apparently boring production line in a factory. One treats the work as a tedious chore while the other turns it into a game to see how fast she can make each unit, and achieves flow in the process. Neuroscience describes reward, pleasure, and motivation in terms of neurotransmitter activity, especially in the limbic system and the ventral tegmental area in particular. If one believes that the ultimate aim of life is to maximize pleasure and to ease general life, then this allows normative predictions about how to act to achieve this. Likewise, some ethical naturalists advocate a science of morality – the empirical pursuit of flourishing for all conscious creatures. Experimental philosophy and neuroethics research collects data about human ethical decisions in controlled scenarios such as trolley problems. It has shown that many types of ethical judgment are universal across cultures, suggesting that they may be innate, whilst others are culture specific. The findings show actual human ethical reasoning to be at odds with most logical philosophical theories, for example consistently showing distinctions between action by cause and action by omission which would be absent from utility based theories. Cognitive science has theorized about differences between conservative and liberal ethics and how they may be based on different metaphors from family life such as strong fathersvs nurturing mother models. 6 Neurotheology is a controversial field which tries to find neural correlates and mechanisms of religious experience. Some researchers have suggested that the human brain has innate mechanisms for such experiences and that living without using them for their evolved purposes may be a cause of imbalance. Studies have reported conflicted results on correlating happiness with religious belief and it is difficult to find unbiased meta-analyses. Sociology examines value at a social level using theoretical constructs such as value theory, norms, anomie, etc. One value system suggested by social psychologists, broadly called Terror Management Theory, states that human ultimate aim of life is derived from a fundamental fear of death, and values are selected when they allow us to escape the mental reminder of death. Emerging research shows that ultimate aim in life predicts better physical health outcomes. Greater ultimate aim of life has been associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease, reduced risk of heart attack among individuals with coronary heart disease, reduced risk of stroke, and increased longevity in both American and Japanese samples. In , the British National Health Service began recommending a five step plan for mental well-being based on ultimate aim of lifeful lives, whose steps are: (1) Connect with community and family; (2) Physical exercise; (3) Lifelong learning; (4) Giving to others; (5) Mindfulness of the world around you. Richard Bach, the American novelist introduced the weight of one's mortality and the complexities of life and death in the novels Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. The Life and Works of the writer Richard David Bach was born on June 23, 1936. He is widely known as the author of the hugely popular 1970s best-sellers Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of 7 a Reluctant Messiah, among others. Bach's books espouse his philosophy that our apparent physical limits and mortality are merely appearance. Bach is noted for his love of flying and for his books related to air flight and flying in a metaphorical context. He has pursued flying as a hobby since the age of 17. In late August 2012 Bach was badly injured when on approach to landing at Friday Harbor, Washington his aircraft clipped some power lines and crashed upside down in a field. Bach was born in Oak Park, Illinois. He attended Long Beach State College in 1955. He has authored numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, 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's first airplane flight occurred at age 15, when his mother was campaigning for a seat on the council of Long Beach, California. Her campaign manager, Paul Marcus, mentioned that he flew airplanes, and invited Richard on a flight in his Globe Swift. Bach served in the United States Navy Reserve, then in the New Jersey Air National Guard's 108th Fighter Wing, 141st Fighter Squadron (USAF) as a F-84F pilot. He then worked at a variety of jobs, including as a technical writer for Douglas Aircraft and as a contributing editor for Flying magazine. He served in the USAF reserve, deployed in France in 1960. He later became a barnstormer. Most of his books involve flight in some way, from the early stories which are straightforwardly about flying aircraft, to Stranger to the Ground, his first book, to his later works, in which he used flight as a philosophical metaphor. In 1970, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a story about a seagull who flew for the love of flying rather than merely to catch food, was published by Macmillan Publishers after the 10 "messiah" Don Shimoda, who helps him through his difficult medical recovery. Other fictional characters and references also appear. Jonathan Livingston Seagull Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a fable in novella form about a seagull learning about life and flight, and a homily about self-perfection. It was first published in 1970 as "Jonathan Livingston Seagull — a story." By the end of 1972, over a million copies were in print, Reader's Digest had published a condensed version, and the book had reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller list, where it remained for 38 weeks. In 1972 and 1973, the book topped the Publishers Weekly list of bestselling novels in the United States. In 2014 the book was reissued as Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The Complete Edition, which added a 17-page fourth part to the story. Several early commentators, emphasizing the first part of the book, see it as part of the US self-help and positive thinking culture, epitomised by Norman Vincent Peale and by the New Thought movement. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that the book was "banal" and shallow in comparison to a children's book. The book is listed as one of 50 "timeless spiritual classics" in a book by Tom Butler- Bowdon, who noted that "it is easy now, 35 years on, to overlook the originality of the book's concept, and though some find it rather naïve, in fact it expresses timeless ideas about human potential." John Clute, for The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, wrote: "an animal fantasy about a philosophical gull who is profoundly affected by flying, but who demands too much of his community and is cast out by it. He becomes an extremely well behaved accursed wanderer, then dies, and in posthumous FANTASY sequences — though he is too wise really to question the 11 fact of death, and too calmly confident to have doubts about his continuing upward mobility — he learns greater wisdom. Back on Earth, he continues to preach and heal and finally returns to heaven, where he belongs." Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah is 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 followup to 1970's Jonathan Livingston Seagull. With some similarity to Nevil Shute's 1951 novel, Round the Bend, Illusions revolves around two barnstorming pilots who meet in a field in midwest America. The two main characters enter into a teacher-student relationship that explains the concept that the world that we inhabit is illusory, as well as the underlying reality behind it: 'What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it? ... What if a Siddhartha came to our time, with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them? And what if I could meet him in person, if he was flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me?' Donald P. Shimoda is a messiah who quits his job after deciding that people value the showbiz-like performance of miracles and want to be entertained by those miracles more than to understand the message behind them. He meets Richard, a fellow barn-storming pilot and begins to pass on his knowledge to him, even teaching Richard to perform "miracles" of his own. 12 The novel features quotes from the "Messiah's Handbook", owned by Shimoda, which Richard later takes as his own. A most unusual aspect of this handbook is that it has no page numbers. The reason for this, as Shimoda explains to Richard, is that the book will open to the page on which the reader may find guidance or the answers to doubts and questions in his mind. It is not a magical book; Shimoda explains that one can do this with any sort of text. The messiah's handbook was released as its own title by Hampton Roads Publishing Company. It mimics the one described in Illusions, with new quotes based on the philosophies in the novel. Objectives 1. To focus on the ultimate aim of life through the study of the select novels 2. To analyse the novels of Richard Bach through the thematic concern 3. To expose the entanglement of the society in the light of ultimate aim of human life 4. To make a critical statement on the issue of ultimate aim of life in literature in general and Richard Bach’s select novels in particular Hypothesis Richard Bach’s select novels focus on the value and ultimate aim of human life. They are fine allegories of human power and weaknesses. Scope and Limitations The scope of this study cannot be enlarged to accommodate the whole changed scenario of the world after 20th century. Therefore, the objective of this study itself is limited one. It aims at finding thematic visions of the novelist in the terms of the themes of ultimate aim of life reflected in his representative novels only. There was no chance for selection because Richard Bach wrote only two novels which are concerned to the proposed study. Naturally enough, the poetry, and short stories of the select novelist do not come within the purview of the study. At 15 The third chapter is the study of the ultimate aim of the life presented in Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It includes a discussion of the hidden power of every living being and its utilization to reach at our supposed aim The fourth chapter entitled, ‘The Ultimate aim of life portrayed in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah,’, deals with the influence of outer issues which negatively affect on the proposed aim of human life. The concluding chapter deals with the comparative perspectives of the novels along with their innovative visions applied in these novels. The second half of the chapter converges on the findings and exposes whether the objectives of the present research work have been fulfilled or not. 16 Chapter II The Ultimate Aim of Life: Theoretical Perspective 2.1 Introduction People find ultimate aim of life through religion or acquiring wealth.Bach says that he finds a much more flexible and organic expression of life’s relentless struggles and how we meet them. Bach’s wife, who he first met at a Star Wars convention, tolerates his collection of action figures, but thinks it is a little too intense: “I feel like I’m surrounded by tiny warriors poised for battle; I can think of more soothing decorations to place around the apartment.” There are some questions whose answers expose the idea of the ultimate aim of the life. Let us see these questions. The theory of this minor research work deals with the answers of these questions: • Does life have a purpose? • What kind of life is worth living? • How can I overcome despair? • How can I achieve happiness? • Why do I exist? • Why should I exist? • Do my life activities have any lasting value? Each of these questions focuses on a unique point. The first, for example, asks whether there is an over-arching design or goal to human existence that might clarify my place in the grand scheme of things. The second asks whether some approaches to life are better than others. 17 All of the above questions, though, presume that something’s not right with life as we currently experience it, and we’d like a solution to the problem. Not everyone is plagued by questions of life’s ultimate aim of life, and a good test for determining the grip that this has on you personally was suggested by German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche. Since ancient times, philosophers from many cultures around the globe entertained a concept called the eternal return. On this view, the universe that we live in now is just one in an endless series of universes that occurs one right after another, each being identical with the others, right down to the tiniest detail. With our present universe, there are fixed laws of nature that determine how it unfolds, including everything about my own personal existence— how tall I am, who I married, the job that I have, and every word I ever uttered. Someday this universe will be destroyed by cosmic forces, and from its ashes a new universe will be formed. It too, though, will be shaped by exactly the same laws of nature, and thus all events will unfold exactly the same, including my own life. This cycle of universes will continue again and again, forever. Whether we believe the theory of the eternal return is not important. What Nietzsche asks, though, is how you would feel if it was true, and for eternity you would be reliving the exact same events in your life, over and over, in each successive universe. If you would be OK with that, then in all likelihood you are not especially bothered by problems of life’s ultimate aim of life. You’re happy with this life, and you would have no problem living the identical life over and over. However, if the idea of the eternal return seems like a nightmare to you, then this suggests that you have serious issues with the ultimate aim of life as you are right now. Philosophers are not the only ones interested in questions about life’s ultimate aim of life. Psychological studies tell us that happiness declines in our s and returns around age. That’s a long period of personal struggle for each of us, and today’s self-help industry has jumped in to 20 off in a stream, first placing the plant on the bank. While bathing, though, an old snake slithered up to the plant, ate it, and immediately became young; it then slithered away. Gilgamesh’s one chance at becoming immortal was thus ruined. He arrived home in a state of depression, and, in spite of the efforts of his friends to cheer him up, he remained inconsolable. There are two morals of this story. The first and obvious one is that, as strongly as we desire to live forever, the inevitable truth is that we will all die. Given the choice, virtually all of us would jump at the chance to live forever, and the fact that we can’t creates a dark cloud over life’s ultimate aim of life. The second and more interesting moral is that we cannot easily accept our deaths and we may do some crazy things to cheat the grim reaper. While the epic of Gilgamesh is just a myth, this second moral has played out countless times in the real world. In ancient China, some religious believers devoted themselves to conquering death through the strangest of techniques. One involved drinking chemical concoctions which would supposedly balance out the forces within the human body and thereby obstruct the process of dying. Ironically, many believers poisoned themselves to death through these experiments. Another technique involved holding one’s breath for longer and longer periods of time. Eventually the believer would not need to breathe at all, and thereby become immortal. Today, several organizations are devoted to achieving physical immortality. Some recommend taking as many as nutritional supplements a day. Others place hope in biological advances that will reverse the natural deterioration of human cells. Still others look forward to the day when our minds can become digitized – essentially making computerized versions of our present brain processes. What should we think about these efforts to avoid dying? One of the more notable philosophical discussions of death is by German philosopher Martin Heidegger (-). Death, according to Heidegger, is not really an event that happens to me, since it just involves the 21 termination of all possible experiences that I might have. After all, it is impossible for me to experience my own death. Rather than thinking of death as an episode that takes place at the tail end of my life, I should instead view it as an integral part of who I am right now, and during each moment of my life in the future. I continually aim towards death and, even when I feel healthy, in a fundamental way I am really terminally ill. In Heidegger’s words, I am “living towards death.” It is like playing a game such as soccer where, embedded in every moment, there is the idea that time is running out. So, Heidegger says, if I ignore my persistent movement towards death – or resist it as Gilgamesh did – I am only deceiving myself and living in a substandard world of make-believe. By contrast, a proper understanding of death clearly lays down the basic rules of the game of life and thereby gives life form and purpose. If I could continually think of myself as on the path to death as Heidegger suggests, that might help me accept my mortality. However, while my body is designed to die, my mind seems to be hardwired to think that I am immortal, and there’s little that I can do to resist that feeling. For one thing, the natural instinct to survive compels me to resist death at almost all costs; this is something that I share with many creatures in the animal world. For another, I cannot psychologically conceive of the future without secretly injecting myself into it. Even if I try to picture the world a thousand years down the road, I am still there as a ghostly spectator to the events I am imagining. Whether I like it or not, I am inherently resistant to the idea of my non- existence. My natural human attitude towards death, then, may be to assume that I am immortal, and, at the same time, be horrified when I look in the mirror and see my body disintegrating before my eyes. So, the desire for immortality and its accompanying despair, like Gilgamesh experienced, may just be part of life. 22 In Homer’s Odyssey, the adventurous hero Odysseus stops by Hades – the dwelling place of the dead – to chat with deceased friends. While there, he sees several legendary people who are being punished for evils they committed when alive. There’s one fellow whose body is stretched out over a nine acre area. Lying helplessly, two vultures pick at his liver; he swats them to shoo them away, but they keep returning. Another fellow is parched with thirst, but cannot succeed in reaching water. Wading in a lake up to his chin, whenever he stoops down to drink, it immediately dries up leaving only dusty ground. He sees succulent fruit trees above him, but as soon as he reaches for their produce the wind sweeps the branches into the clouds. And then there is Sisyphus, a deceitful king who tricked the god of death and stayed alive longer than he should have. He finally died and went to Hades, but the punishment for his trickery was not a pleasant one. Day after day he pushes a huge stone up a hill, but, always losing energy as he nears the top, he lets it go and it rolls back down. Homer describes the scene here: I saw Sisyphus at his endless task raising his gigantic stone with both his hands. With hands and feet he tried to roll it up to the top of the hill, but always, just before he could roll it over onto the other side, its weight would be too much for him, and, without pity, the stone would come thundering down again onto the plain below. Then he would begin trying to push it up hill again, and, as the sweat ran off him and steam rose from his head. All three of these scenes from Hades depict people trapped into performing futile tasks – swatting vultures, stooping to drink, pushing a bolder. It is the image of Sisyphus, though, that has had the most lasting impact, and for nearly, years writers have used him as a symbol for the emptiness of life’s endeavors. Sisyphus’s fate is frighteningly similar to the assembly line jobs that workers face throughout the world. Jill works in a lawnmower manufacturing plant, and her job is to bolt 25 In the zany film Monty Python’s The Ultimate aim of Life, a man in a pink suit steps out of a refrigerator and tries to comfort a woman who is despairing about her significance in life. He breaks into a song about how enormous the galaxy is – containing a hundred billion stars over a distance of a hundred thousand light-years from side to side. The Milky Way itself, he explains, is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the ever-expanding universe. He concludes, So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth; And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, Because there’s bugger all down here on earth. The man climbs back into the refrigerator and closes the door. The joke, of course, is that the refrigerator man’s advice would serve more to intensify the woman’s despair rather than alleviate it. If you want to feel significant in life, it is probably best to avoid thinking of yourself as a mere dot within a colossal universe. Nevertheless, for millennia people have been agonizing over a sense of cosmic insignificance in the face of the universe’s vastness. Even without the aid of modern astronomical telescopes that can peer into distant galaxies, people in ancient times looked up at the stars and were overwhelmed by their sense of smallness. One of the earliest records of this is from the Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” One of the most disturbing ancient discussions of the sense of cosmic insignificance is that by the Roman philosopher Boethius. His personal story is a sad one. Born into a wealthy family, Boethius was an important diplomat within the Roman Empire, but a political misunderstanding turned the Emperor against him and, at the young age of , he was sentenced to 26 death for treason. While awaiting execution in his prison cell, he reflected on everything that he would miss in life because of this injustice. In this state of anguish he composed a work titled The Consolation of Philosophy. It consists of a dialogue between himself and an imaginary person he calls “Lady Philosophy,” who comforts him with words of wisdom during his final days. Boethius’s problem, she informs him, is that he is too attached to earthly things, particularly literary fame, and it would help if he reflected on his true place in the cosmos. She explains that the size of the earth is but a speck compared to the heavens, that most of the earth is uninhabitable, that human societies are scattered remotely. And it is not just cosmic space that dwarfs human achievements, Lady Philosophy explains, but cosmic time does as well. Even if Boethius does gain some temporary fame during his life, that would be absolutely nothing when compared with the eternity of time. The lesson that we learn from Lady Philosophy is that, like Boethius, each of us is exceedingly isolated within the limitless space and time of the cosmos, with no hope of making any ultimate aim of lifeful or lasting impact. For someone like Boethius who is approaching death, perhaps this will be a little consoling. So what if you’re about to die: in the larger scheme of things your life does not amount to much anyway. But, for the rest of us who are not immediately facing death and have normal hopes and dreams, the brute reality of cosmic insignificance can be discouraging. Why should I strive for anything if I am just an imperceptible twitch within the infinite body of the cosmos? Contemporary French philosopher Paul Ricoeur offered a solution to this problem of cosmic insignificance. He writes, “On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all ultimate aim of lifeful questions arise.” Yes, the grandeur of the cosmos does make our life’s efforts irrelevant by comparison, but 27 we nevertheless find ultimate aim of life within the microscopic components of our lives through the creation of history. That is, while I cannot grasp my personal significance within the incomprehensible cosmic timeline, I can still find my spot within American History, and, even more specifically, my family history. I know how this country was founded, how my ancestors got here, what my grandparents and parents did with their lives, and how all this has shaped me. Thus, we invent a historical narrative of our human past which is larger than our individual selves, yet much smaller and more manageable than cosmic space and time. In Ricoeur’s words, “historical time is like a bridge thrown over the chasm which separates cosmic time from lived time.” Does Ricoeur successfully solve the problem of cosmic insignificance? Without question, knowledge of history does help clarify who I am and how I fit into the world around me. When I think about my spot within human history, I do not feel like an isolated being adrift in an unfathomable cosmic ocean. But while this may temporarily distract me from my sense of cosmic insignificance, it does nothing to change the reality of the limitless cosmos. While I reflect on human history, I may feel at home; but the instant that I gaze at the stars, all of human history itself seems miniscule by comparison. The entire human legacy is confined to an infinitesimally small region of space for an infinitesimally small period of time. Try as I might to keep my focus on human history, the stars return each night to remind me once again of my true limited place within the cosmos, and the sense of cosmic insignificance returns. The story of Job from the Hebrew Old Testament explores another challenge to the ultimate aim of life. Job was not obsessed with death like Gilgamesh or disheartened from futility like Sisyphus. In fact, at the outset of the story he’s happy. Job is a wealthy and morally decent herdsman with a loving family, and he owns a large stock of sheep, oxen, camels, and 30 Job’s story ends with a resolution of a sort. He directly witnesses God’s vastness and then grasps the enormous gulf between the two of them; the very experience of divine power humbles him to accept his situation. But this is a storybook ending, since most believers will not have a direct experience of God’s greatness to force them in line. Imagine that you lost a relative in a tornado and you put the blame on God. In my efforts to comfort you I said, “I know this is painful for you, but don’t be discouraged. God is infinitely great and you are by comparison insignificant; this is what we learn from the story of Job.” This would offend you more than it would console you. In essence, this attempts to solve Job’s problem of suffering by drawing attention to the problem of cosmic insignificance, and that is not a particularly effective resolution. In the course of our lives, most of us experience tragedies that are unprovoked and unresolved -- property loss, the death of loved ones, serious illness. We can surely appreciate Job’s despair when no satisfactory explanation is available. 2.3 ANCIENT GREEK SOLUTIONS Just as problems with the ultimate aim of life were voiced early on in human civilization, so too did the ancient world propose solutions. The theories that they suggested were varied, and we’d be hard pressed to find a solution today which wasn’t first entertained back then. The first set of solutions we will look at are from ancient Greece. For a brief period of time, Greek philosophers were in the self-help business and they offered step-by-step methods for achieving happiness. Four approaches were so popular that even today their names are household words: Epicureanism, Stoicism, Skepticism, and Cynicism. Here are some of their main themes. Jack, an English professor from a large and prestigious university, thinks he’s cracked the code to happiness. Divorced and in his mid ’s, he makes a good income at a job that does not require much work. He published a lot earlier in his career, but now he rides on his reputation 31 and gets by doing minimal preparation for the few classes that he’s required to teach. In his spare time he indulges his many cravings. An enthusiast of specialty foods, he is intimately familiar with the menus of every fine restaurant in his area and he regularly attends wine and cheese tasting events. During the day he reads novels, plays tennis, visits art museums, and takes sculpting classes. In the evening he watches foreign films at art houses, after which he frequents local jazz clubs. On school breaks he flies to Europe, sampling the cultural offerings there. His passions, though, are not limited to food, art and travel. Jack possesses an animal magnetism that makes him particularly successful in the romance department. Each semester he invites a new female graduate assistant to be his lover for the duration of the term. While the women know that the affair is only temporary, they happily agree, and even recommend possible partners for his next semester. On his birthday, his ex-lovers who are still in the area throw him a party. In a word, Jack is an Epicurean. The Greek philosopher Epicurus believed that the job of philosophy is to help people attain happiness; a philosophy that does not heal the soul, he argues, is no better than medicine that cannot cure the body. His formula for attaining human happiness is simple: increase pleasure and decrease pain. Personal pleasure is the only thing that we should pursue, and the value of everything we do in life is judged by that standard. The pleasures that Epicurus recommends are precisely the ones that Jack enjoys, but he warns that we should not pursue all pleasures with equal zeal. First, some are physical such as Jack’s romances, and others are mental such as Jack’s love of art; the mental ones are more important than the physical ones. Second, some desires are not entirely necessary, such as the desire for luxury food, and we should pursue these with moderation. Third, Epicurus warns us to avoid placing short term desires above long-term 32 ones. For example, if Jack skipped teaching his classes for the short term goal of visiting a museum, then he would likely lose his job and his happy lifestyle would come crashing down. Is Epicureanism a reasonable path to human happiness? While we all naturally want pleasure, there is something suspect about a lifestyle that is devoted entirely to its pursuit. Let us grant that Jack is truly happy with his Epicurean existence. There’s no telling, though, how long those activities will sustain his interest. Part of the joy he experiences comes from the newness of his activities: a new restaurant, a new art exhibit, a new story plot, a new lover. There are only a finite number of spices to mix into one’s food, though, and eventually even the most unique of Jack’s experiences will take on familiar patterns and become routine. He will be like Sisyphus pushing a gem-encrusted boulder up a hill, a task no less futile than pushing an ordinary rock. Further, the happiness that Jack does experience rests on a stroke of good fortune that may easily change. If his university cracks down on his laziness, he will have less leisure time for his hobbies. If his ex-wife sues him for alimony, he will not be able to cover the costs of his activities. As he grows older, young women will be repulsed by his romantic advances. Thus, indulging in pleasure is not a stable road to happiness if it rests on so many factors beyond our control. Epicurus himself was restrained in the pleasures that he pursued. He lived on a small food diet, avoided luxuries, and strived for self-sufficiency. “The greatest benefit of self-sufficiency,” he argued, “is freedom.” It seems, then, that the founder of this pleasure-indulging lifestyle was far less Epicurean than we might think, and, instead, he grounded his happiness upon a feeling of independence. Thus, pursuing pleasure alone is no guarantee of aultimate aim of lifeful life, which Epicurus himself recognized. 35 An organization called “The Skeptics Society” is devoted to debunking a host of questionable beliefs, including UFOs, alien abductions, ESP, religious miracles, time travel, and conspiracy theories. One writer for the society cast his skeptical eye on the famed alien space craft sighting in Roswell, New Mexico. The real event, he explains, was simply a military balloon experiment, which decades later was transformed into a UFO legend. He writes, Roswell is the world’s most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim. It’s far past time for UFOlogists to admit it and move on. Those who hope to discover alien life are going to have to look where the aliens are -- which is (if anywhere), somewhere else. Perhaps outer space would be a good place to start. B.D. Gildenberg “Roswell Explained” By exposing the faults in controversial claims such as the Roswell incident, The Skeptics Society hopes to promote critical thinking and proper scientific inquiry. The Society sees itself as following in a long skeptical tradition that began in ancient Greece, particularly the school of Skepticism founded by the philosopher Pyrrho. Pyrrho and his followers maintained that happiness is achieved through doubt. The sort of happiness that they envisioned was mental tranquility – a peace of mind that we experience when we suspend belief. When we hold extreme views, such as belief that aliens visited Roswell, we experience a mental disturbance, and we risk being pulled from one conviction to another. If the aliens did appear there, what was their mission? If the government knew about the event, why are they covering it up? We quickly become tangled in a web of questions and concerns that do not have good answers. It is not only strange beliefs like this that disrupt us, but any strong conviction upsets our peace of mind when we hold rigidly to it, such as the belief that the grass in my yard is green or that the table in my kitchen is round. The solution, according to the 36 skeptics, is to recognize that every belief is subject to doubt. The grass appears green to me because my eyes are constructed a specific way and light shines on it in a specific way. If these factors differed, then the grass would not appear green. So, I should suspend belief about whether the grass really is green. Skeptics argued that I should in fact suspend all beliefs that I hold – about external objects, God’s existence, moral values – and thereby free my mind of the conflict that these beliefs produce. By achieving this mental tranquility, I will become happy. The skeptic is probably right that the more gullible we are, the more we set ourselves up for disappointment. By believing in UFOs, horoscopes or miracle cures, we place ourselves at odds with respectable methods of inquiry and invite ridicule. If I persist in my strange beliefs, contrary to strong evidence against them, then I must brainwash myself in thinking that I am right and everyone else is wrong, which is a discomforting prospect. But the skeptic’s larger point is that all beliefs – both strange and normal – are vulnerable to attack and should thus be rejected for the advancement of mental tranquility. There are two problems with this position. First, suppose that the skeptic is right that even our most commonsensical beliefs can be called into question, such as the belief that the table in front of me is round. It is one thing for me to recognize the theoretical problems with that belief; it is entirely another thing to actually suspend my belief about the table’s roundness, especially when it always appears to me that way. Commonsense beliefs like this may be beyond my control, regardless of how hard I try to suspend them. I am forced to act on the assumption that the table is round every time I place an object onto it or walk around it. Thus, while skepticism may succeed at the theoretical level, it is virtually impossible at a practical level. The second problem is that, even if we could suspend all of our beliefs, many of life’s events would still make us unhappy. Like Sisyphus, I can still be bored to tears with my assembly line job even 37 if I doubt that the factory actually exists. Like Job, I can still suffer enormously if my family dies in a tornado, even if I doubt whether my family actually exists. We experience many painful emotions independently of our belief convictions, and skepticism has no solution for those. Some years ago a music festival was launched called Lollapalooza, which traveled the country attracting large crowds of young people. Many of the musical groups were in the crude and abrasive Punk genre – championing a garage band sound, often with instruments out of tune and vocals off pitch. One band included a “percussionist” who grinded away on a chunk of sheet metal with an industrial disk sander. The festival was so successful that it became a yearly event and several non-musical performances were added, including a television-smashing pit. Most bizarre was a circus sideshow in which one performer ate broken glass, another impaled his cheeks with long skewers, and another lifted heavy weights from body piercings. With its growing notoriety, Lollapalooza became a symbol for a burgeoning youth counterculture that was frustrated with sterile social expectations and rebelled against prevailing values. Many of our conceptions of human happiness are rooted in traditional social expectations, such as how we should dress, what counts as good music, what we should find entertaining, how we should view authority figures. These expectations are not only restrictive, but often wholly misguided. One solution to the question of life’s ultimate aim of life is to challenge cherished social conventions and through this act of defiance awaken a broader appreciation of life’s possibilities. The social rebelliousness of recent youth cultures is in many ways an embodiment of the ancient Greek philosophical school of Cynicism. The aim of that ancient movement was to show contempt for traditional social structures and values – such as power, wealth and social status. By doing so we would rethink the influence that civilization should have on our lives, open ourselves up to a more direct connection to nature, and thereby 40 come.” Reproduction is a way of achieving a type of immortality in the present world. I die, but my name, my legacy, and my family history live on through my children. Some religious philosophers argue that God implants instincts in human nature to help guide our conduct on earth, one of which is the drive to procreate. A more secular understanding of this crucial urge is that it is the result of blind evolutionary forces which keeps animal species like ours from going extinct. Regardless of whether the desire to procreate originates from God or blind evolution, though, it is a fact of human nature that when we reach a certain age, we have a compelling desire to have children. When we succeed, we magically gain fulfillment and a larger sense of purpose beyond our individual lives. On the other hand, failing to have children sometimes results in a sense of incompleteness and, in old age, loneliness. To combat this, childless couples frequently transform their pet dog or cat into surrogate children, and lavish love and attention on them to a degree that others find comical. Sometimes it works, other times it does not. So it seems that nature rewards us when we answer its call to produce offspring, and punishes us when we do not. While procreation might very well give us a purpose beyond our individual selves, is it a cure-all for the problems of life’s ultimate aim of life? Perhaps not. First, having children invites a new set of miseries for parents. There is the need to cut back on one’s most cherished private leisure activities to make time for the exhausting task of child-rearing. There are the constant worries about physical dangers to our children, from poorly designed highchairs to automobile accidents. There is the endless battle to block the bad influences of sex, drugs and violence in the media and schools. There are the inevitable clashes with children during the terrible twos, the rebellious teens, and all years in between. We also suffer along with our children when they are harmed or upset – as reflected in a recent expression that parents are only as happy as their 41 saddest child. Marriages often suffer as a direct result of children, sometimes because of a decline in marital intimacy as privacy becomes impossible, other times because of fights over who should do which child-rearing chores. When things end in divorce, the presence of children can lead to vicious and all-consuming custody battles. In effect, having children involves exchanging Sisyphus’s problems for Job’s. Second, there are limits to how procreation solves Gilgamesh’s problem of human mortality. It is an exaggeration to say that we gain immortality through our children who will outlive us by perhaps only years. Our grandchildren might extend this by another . Generations beyond that, though, will consist of people that we will never know, and who will have no memories of us apart from what is conveyed in a few faded photos. The illusory nature of this kind of immortality may become more evident when our children leave the nest, take on lives of their own and become almost strangers to us. We are once again on our own to find ultimate aim of life, this time, though, while our health declines and our friends die one after the other. With the limited success of procreation as a cure for life’s anguish, religion offers a backup plan: finding ultimate aim of life in this life through the prospect of immortality in the next. Most faith traditions present some account of life after death. While the details vary, the core notion is that the essential part of my conscious identity survives the death of my body in a more perfect state of existence. I might exist in a three-dimensional form that resembles my current shape, but is constructed from a more flawless substance. Alternatively I might exist as a purely spiritual thing that takes up no three-dimensional space. In any case, the real me lives on after my body dies. With a single blow, the idea of life after death attacks all four classic problems of life’s ultimate aim of life. Most obvious is its solution to Gilgamesh’s problem of mortality. The fact is 42 that we never really do die. Upon the death of my body, my true self is released from its physical shackles and continues in another realm. I may not at first enthusiastically embrace the idea of physical death, which is understandable, like my reluctance to throw away an old comfortable pair of jeans for a new pair. But when I fully grasp that my real self will be preserved through this transformation, my worries about death should fade. Life after death also addresses Sisyphus’s problem of life’s pointlessness. My life’s activities may seem futile to me right now, but that is because the physical world that I currently live in is imperfect. My efforts on earth are only a preparation for the world to come, and as long as I keep that in view, life right now has a very clear and important point. Next, life after death addresses the problem of cosmic insignificance. While I may be a mere speck in comparison to the unfathomable cosmos, ultimately the cosmos itself will die out while I will live on for eternity in heaven. Finally, life after death addresses Job’s problem of suffering. If I suffer right now because of a bodily ailment like cancer, I am comforted by the fact that I will have no physical pain in the afterlife. If I suffer now because thieves have stolen my property, I can take comfort in the fact that the scales of justice will be balanced in the afterlife: the bad guys will be punished, and the good guys rewarded. If I suffer now because of the death of a loved one, I am comforted by the knowledge that I will see them shortly in the afterlife. With such an all-encompassing solution to the problem of life’s ultimate aim of life, it is no surprise that the idea of life after death has been so uniformly embraced by the world’s religions. What could be wrong with a solution that is so widespread? The first obstacle to the life after death solution concerns how strongly we actually believe in it. Let’s set aside the issue of whether an afterlife realm really exists – a matter that is stubbornly resistant to absolute proof or disproof. The more important issue concerns the level of conviction that the idea holds within 45 Regardless of the denomination, there are several common features that these religious missions exhibit, which make them larger-than-life experiences for believers. First, these are typically group-efforts among a community of believers, rather than simply isolated campaigns of individual people. It is often this connection with a larger group that gives believers a sense of belonging that they would not otherwise have and, thus, enhances their sense of life’s ultimate aim of life. Second, there is devotion to a firm and sacred set of beliefs about God’s role in human affairs. While theories about the nature and existence of God are a dime a dozen, not just any view of God will do. Leaders within these religious traditions formulate precise doctrines, and believers pledge exclusive devotion to them, thereby rejecting the views of rival religious groups. By embracing these sacred doctrines, believers see themselves as embarking on a higher mission from God and not just participating in routine human-created social activity. Third, participating in this higher mission involves self-sacrifice. Furthering God’s kingdom is no easy task: it is financially costly, time consuming, and mission efforts are commonly met with brutal opposition. Yet, by enduring these hardships, believers feel a special accomplishment when they make progress. While the notion of “furthering God’s kingdom” is distinctly religious in nature, there are many non-religious groups that similarly try to transform society through some moral or political ideology. Like religious missions, these involve group efforts among like-minded people who are devoted to a precise higher calling and willingly endure hardship. Some of these social causes are preserving the environment, eliminating poverty, defending political freedoms, ending minority oppression, or creating global harmony. Devotees to these ideologies often gain a sense of life’s ultimate aim of life similar to that of their religious counterparts. 46 Whether religious or secular, there is a serious price to pay when devoting oneself to a higher mission, namely, conformity. For a group to speak with a single voice, individual members must give up much of their private identities and follow the direction of the larger collection. There is little room for dissenting opinions about the precise nature of the higher mission: this is firmly fixed in the group’s sacred doctrines and enforced by their leaders. Many believers are content to uncritically follow the directives of their traditions, but others are not. Ex-members of conservative religious groups regularly describe how restricting life was for them and how their leaders used various intimidation tactics to keep them in line. Their leaders, in turn, dismiss the disaffected members as mere trouble makers. The clash between the individual and group becomes more serious when the group’s evangelizing tactics are morally questionable, such as launching smear campaigns against rival religious groups. Loyal members comply, outspoken critics are shown the door. While furthering God’s kingdom may help give ultimate aim of life to the lives of some people, it will be less effective for nonconforming “troublemakers”. 2.5 EASTERN RELIGIOUS SOLUTIONS Religions of Eastern Civilization include Daoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and perhaps a dozen other traditions of varying sizes. Eastern religions have advocated all three of the above Western solutions to life’s ultimate aim of life with their own regional twists. In addition to these, though, we find solutions grounded in the more unique philosophical elements of the Eastern traditions themselves. Again, it is important to understand that each religion—Eastern or Western—has its own long and elaborate tradition of beliefs and worship practices that give ultimate aim of life to believers’ lives. We will look at only three highlights here. 47 The Daoist religion emerged in China about , years ago, and its principal message is that of the Dao – the Chinese word for “way” or “path”. More precisely, it is the path of nature itself, which creates and guides everything we see. The Daoist solution to life’s ultimate aim of life is picturesquely presented in a classic tale. One day a prince stopped by to see his cook who was in the process of cutting beef. All of the cook’s motions were like a harmonious ballet as he placed his feet, moved his knees, heaved his shoulders and brought his knife down on the meat. “You have very admirably perfected your art” the prince said. The cook laid down his knife and explained, “I follow the Dao, which is more important than any other skill. Many years ago when I began cutting meat, all I saw was a large chunk of flesh, which I chopped away at. In time I noticed the natural crevices in the meat and, in a spirit-like manner, allowed my knife to glide through them with ease. By doing this I avoided tough ligaments and large bones. An ordinary cook changes his knife every month because he hacks. A good cook changes his every year because he cuts cleanly. I’ve been using this knife now for nineteen years.” The prince responded, “Amazing! By hearing you speak of your craft, I’ve learned how to tend to my life!” The cook’s message is that we should live in accord with the flow of nature, and not aggressively go against it. Picture a stick floating down a river. When it bumps into a rock, it does not bash its way through the obstruction; instead, it gently moves around it and continues down its course. Daoism has a range of specific recommendations for how we should tend to our lives. For example, we should abandon needless rules of law, morality, and etiquette and instead spontaneously follow the simple inclinations that nature has implanted in us. When we are hungry, nature will direct us to acquire food. If other people are hungry, nature will direct us to assist them. We should even avoid expanding our knowledge through study since this will obstruct the wisdom that nature has already placed within us. By following the Dao, our entire 50 theology is an extended commentary on the Four Noble Truths. But it is the third truth -- eliminating desire – that concerns us here. This is the celebrated Buddhist concept of nirvana, which literally means “to extinguish.” In essence, we extinguish our desires just as we might blow out the flame of a candle. Extinguishing our desires, though, involves much more than losing our various cravings: I must lose my individual identity and even my self- consciousness as a distinct being. As long as I experience life in the usual way, I will be tainting everything through my private, self-indulgent identity. By crushing my identity, I crush all the suffering that I’ve created through my desires. From one perspective, Nirvana appears to be the ultimate solution to the problem of life’s ultimate aim of life. Once the “I” is removed from the equation, there is nothing left to experience life’s misery. There are questions about this solution, though, which Buddhists themselves are quick to raise. First, to truly extinguish my identity, don’t I have to be dead? As long as I remain alive, I will always be experiencing my self-identity. It seems strange to say that the goal of life is to be completely annihilated through death. Second, while most Buddhists feel that nirvana can be achieved while we are still alive, the concept of nirvana-in-this-life is almost impossible to describe, and very difficult to achieve. The Dalai Lama, one of Buddhism’s great leaders, describes the frustration that many Buddhists experience regarding nirvana: I myself feel and also tell other Buddhists that the question of nirvana will come later. There is not much hurry. But if in day to day life you lead a good life, honestly, with love, with compassion, with less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to nirvana. Opposite to this, if we talk about nirvana, talk about philosophy, but do not bother much about day to day practice, then you may reach a strange nirvana but will not reach the 51 correct nirvana because your daily practice is nothing. Kindness, Clarity, and Insight, Chapter In short, nirvana is shrouded in mystery, and the best I can do is follow the recommended paths for achieving it, while closing my eyes to what nirvana actually is. While nirvana might be an effective solution to the problem of life’s ultimate aim of life, it is difficult for us to examine this possibility when we cannot easily put it into words. Originating around , years ago, the Hindu religion is a diverse collection of beliefs and practices that emerged throughout India’s rich history. The religion has many different gods, devotional practices and philosophies, which believers can freely select from -- kind of like a religious a la carte menu. Similarly, when it comes to the question of life’s ultimate aim of life, Hindu tradition does not restrict itself to one simple answer. Rather, it offers four distinct goals of life, which people should embrace in varying degrees during different periods of their lives. The first goal of life is pleasure in its assorted emotional and physical forms: food, art, music, dance, and even sex. One of the more infamous Hindu writings, the Kama Sutra, is actually a handbook on sexual activity, vividly describing dozens of techniques. We are naturally inclined to pursue pleasures, and in their proper setting it is fully appropriate for us to fulfill our desires. The second goal is material success. Like pleasure, we are naturally inclined to acquire wealth and power, which not only keeps us from being impoverished but gives us a sense of accomplishment. The goals of pleasure and material success are most fitting for younger couples who are raising families. As we mature, we embrace the third goal, namely moral harmony, which helps regulate our desires for pleasure and success, but also sparks our social responsibility towards other people. The fourth goal is religious enlightenment where believers become spiritually released from the constraints of human life and attain ultimate happiness. This 52 final goal is best pursued when our family responsibilities are behind us and we can go off in seclusion and practice meditation without distraction. There is nothing particularly original with any of these four goals individually. We find each advocated by different philosophers from around the world, such as Epicurus’ recommendation to pursue pleasure. The unique insight of Hinduism, though, is that we are complex creatures who change over the years, and there is no single goal that will give us ultimate aim of life at every stage of our lives. It does not make sense to offer a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of life’s ultimate aim of life when people are so diverse. But this is precisely what many philosophers have done. For example, the Stoics recommend that we should resign ourselves to fate, and this single formula, they believe, is the sole solution to the problem of life’s ultimate aim of life. This may be why the question of life’s ultimate aim of life still seems to demand an answer after thousands of years of attempted answers: we’ve gotten overly simplistic solutions to a very complex problem. In keeping with Hindu tradition, perhaps we should approach the ultimate aim of life as we would an a la carte menu: we can pick a few solutions now and, when life’s circumstances change, go back to the menu and pick a few others. While Hinduism suggests four specific ones – each of which is an excellent menu item – we could add all of the other solutions that we’ve discussed so far, Greek, Western religious and Eastern religious. If I ever become a prisoner of war, then I might want to pick the Stoic option of resigning myself to fate. If life becomes too frenzied for me, I might want to pick the Daoist option of following the way of nature. Religiously inclined people can pick the Christian “furthering God’s kingdom” or the Buddhist quest for nirvana, depending on their religious preference. The point is to seek a solution that best addresses a specific life circumstance or problem. The more creative we are in adding items 55 Chapter III The Ultimate Aim of Life Portrayed in Jonathan Livingston Seagull Introduction: Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a fable in novella form about a seagull learning about life and flight, and a homily about self-perfection. It was first published in 1970 as "Jonathan Livingston Seagull — a story." By the end of 1972, over a million copies were in print, Reader's Digest had published a condensed version, and the book had reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller list, where it remained for 38 weeks. In 1972 and 1973, the book topped the Publishers Weekly list of bestselling novels in the United States. In 2014 the book was reissued as Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The Complete Edition, which added a 17-page fourth part to the story. The book tells the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a seagull who is bored with daily squabbles over food. Seized by a passion for flight, he pushes himself, learning everything he can about flying, until finally his unwillingness to conform results in his expulsion. An outcast, he continues to learn, becoming increasingly pleased with his abilities as he leads a peaceful and happy life. One day, Jonathan is met by two gulls who take him to a "higher plane of existence" in which there is no heaven but a better world found through perfection of knowledge. There he meets other gulls who love to fly. He discovers that his sheer tenacity and desire to learn make him "pretty well a one-in-a-million bird." In this new place, Jonathan befriends the wisest gull, Chiang, who takes him beyond his previous learning, teaching him how to move instantaneously to anywhere else in the Universe. The secret, Chiang says, is to "begin by knowing that you have 56 already arrived." Not satisfied with his new life, Jonathan returns to Earth to find others like him, to bring them his learning and to spread his love for flight. His mission is successful, gathering around him others who have been outlawed for not conforming. Ultimately, the very first of his students, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, becomes a teacher in his own right, and Jonathan leaves to teach other flocks. Part One of the book finds young Jonathan Livingston frustrated with the meaningless materialism, conformity, and limitation of the seagull life. He is seized with a passion for flight of all kinds, and his soul soars as he experiments with exhilarating challenges of daring aerial feats. Eventually, his lack of conformity to the limited seagull life leads him into conflict with his flock, and they turn their backs on him, casting him out of their society and exiling him. Not deterred by this, Jonathan continues his efforts to reach higher and higher flight goals, finding he is often successful but eventually he can fly no higher. He is then met by two radiant, loving seagulls who explain to him that he has learned much, and that they are there now to teach him more. Jonathan transcends into a society where all the gulls enjoy flying. He is only capable of this after practicing hard alone for a long time and the first learning process of linking the highly experienced teacher and the diligent student is raised into almost sacred levels. They, regardless of the all immense difference, are sharing something of great importance that can bind them together: "You've got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull." He realizes that you have to be true to yourself: "You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way." In the third part of the book are the last words of Jonathan's teacher: "Keep working on love." Through his teachings, Jonathan understands that the spirit cannot be really free without 57 the ability to forgive, and that the way to progress leads—for him, at least—through becoming a teacher, not just through working hard as a student. Jonathan returns to the Breakfast Flock to share his newly discovered ideals and the recent tremendous experience, ready for the difficult fight against the current rules of that society. The ability to forgive seems to be a mandatory "passing condition." "Do you want to fly so much that you will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help them know?" Jonathan asks his first student, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, before getting into any further talks. The idea that the stronger can reach more by leaving the weaker friends behind seems totally rejected. Hence, love, deserved respect, and forgiveness all seem to be equally important to the freedom from the pressure to obey the rules just because they are commonly accepted. In 2013 Richard Bach took up a non-published fourth part of the book which he had written contemporaneously with the original. He edited and polished it and then sent the result to a publisher. Bach reported that it was a near-death experience which had occurred in relation to a nearly fatal plane crash in August, 2012, that had inspired him to finish the fourth part of his novella. Jonathan Seagull is a story for one who knows that somewhere there’s a higher way of living than scuffing the tracks of others, someone who yearns to fly the way their own heart yearns to fly. It’s a reminder, this little fable, that the path for us to follow is already written within, that it's for each of us to find our own loves, and live them brightly for ourselves. Others may watch, they may admire our resolution or despise it, but our one freedom is for us to love and to choose every day of our lives, as we wish 60 state of perfection. He learned that the reason for living is finding your own perfection. He practiced and practiced. After three months, he gained six students then he wanted to go back to the flock to show what they have discovered then they went to the Flock’s Council Beach. Although they were ignored by some gulls because they will be an outcast if they will talk to them, some of the gulls can’t resist not learning how to fly after seeing them flying. Eventually, those who talked to Jonathan became outcasts but they gained freedom.Jonathan left his students to find some gulls who want to learn about freedom flying. He left his first student, Fletcher Gull, to be the new teacher of the flock then they began with the first flying session. In terms of the literary text that I’ve chosen, he reminds me of Antonia Susan Byatt’s The Eldest Princess. This is one of the lines from The Eldest Princess, “Because I am not the princess who succeeds, but one who fails and I don’t see any way out.”. It shows that her success is based on what the other people dictates her to do. But in contrary to what she said, her success should not be dictated by others rather success is doing the thing her heart desires. Byatt wants us to realize that if we just do whatever other people orders us to do we will not succeed because success is doing what makes you happy and satisfied. It’s about making your own decision in what path to take to be truly happy. Just like with the book I’ve chosen, he didn’t get satisfied with the purpose of gulls in flying. Flying for them was a tool to get food to satisfy their hunger and for survival and if you do this, you know the value of life but with Jonathan he thought differently. He followed his heart and took a different path. In his journey, he learned that there’s more to life than what the gulls know. Both the eldest princess and Jonathan left the path that others told them to take and created their own journey to discover themselves. They both choose to be happy and that’s what makes them successful in life. 61 In contrast with the novel I picked, I think an example of this is My Best Friend’s Wedding. The story is about a woman who fell in love with her best friend. Unfortunately her long-time friend says he’s engaged. When the fiancée of her bestfriend asked her to be the maid of honor, she tried to sabotage the wedding. She’s been warned by her other friends that it’s the wrong thing to do but she didn’t listen and continued scheming. The girl and her best friend take a walk and she confesses her love to the guy and kisses him. The boy’s fiancée sees everything and runs off but the guy chases her. The girl, who is the best friend of the groom, pursues him but finally realizes that her best friend is really in love with her fiancée. She apologizes and explains everything to the fiancée. After the wedding, the girl wishes them well. Here it shows sometimes following your heart is the wrong thing to do because you might hurt someone by doing it. She thought that if she pursues the guy, he will eventually falls in love with her but unfortunately she ended up hurting herself. She tried to be more than friends and didn’t listen to the people around her because she thinks she can be more than a friend to the guy. Sometimes asking for more than what you have is a selfish act. Sometimes we should be contented with what we have in the present and not ask for more. Jonathan, on the other hand, asks for more in flying and ends up finding true joy without hurting anyone. He was not contented with flying just to get food so he followed his heart and became a freeman if I must say. There’s a happy ending for Jonathan but with Julia Roberts well let’s just say she learned her lesson. Jonathan Livington Seagull is a protagonist; he is a seagull who is passionate about flying and striving for perfection. He is a dynamic character because in the duration of the story, he became aware of his purpose for living. On the other hand, there’s a time he failed and vowed that he would be a normal seagull. An excerpt from the book, “I am done with the way I was, I am done with everything I learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I will fly like 62 one.” (Bach, p. 11) But then he broke his vows and went back to flying again. There’s a sudden change of the character’s perception but in the end he pursued doing what he loves the most. Sullivan – Jonathan’s instructor; he is the one who helped Jonathan to develop his potentials. Sullivan, one of the gulls, realizes that there’s more to living than flying for survival. He is a dynamic character because he argued that Jonathan should stay because he believes that the flock wouldn’t listen to Jonathan because all they want is to fight among themselves about food. An excerpt from the book: “Jon, you were Outcast once. Why do you think that any of the gulls in your old time would listen to you now? You know the proverb and it’s true: The gull sees farthest who flies highest. Those gulls where you came from are standing on the ground, squawking, and fighting among themselves. They’re a thousand miles from heaven – and you say you want to show them heaven from where they stand! . . . Stay here. Help the new gulls here. . . “ (Bach, p.60) But Jonathan still wanted to go because he could not help but think that there might be one or two gulls back on Earth who would want to learn about flying then Sullivan realizes that Jonathan was right. Chiangisathe wisest Elder, he taught Jonathan about knowledge of perfecting his flying and to trust himself that he can do the things he wants to do. “The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body. . . “ (Bach, p. 56) Chiang is a static character because Chiang is a stereotypical wise elder. When we say wise elder, we know that he/she will give wisdom to the protagonist to make him/her undergo a change or development. 65 It’s the same with Hills Like White Elephants the author is the one narrating. The author made sure that the readers feel the tension between the two characters in the story and know their feelings while they were talking.The central theme is self-discovery. People should learn to discover their own potentials by going beyond barriers and have self-determination. They should also follow their hearts and make their own rules and if they all acquire these, then they should now strive hard for perfection. The story doesn’t have a particular social context because this can happen anytime. “I think that most of us can relate to him since all of us want to go beyond limits. I mean we are all or maybe some of us are curious of the abilities we haven’t discovered yet but because of norms, societal expectations and the likes we are become ignorant and limited. I guess living life starts when you become the person you were born to be.” (Guiang, 2013) There are many symbols in the novel such as flying, being an outcast, eating, the flock, heaven, Jonathan and the desire of flying. – Jonathan symbolizes the people who want to be different. Just like what the author said, “To the real Jonathan Seagull, who lives within us all.”Flying symbolizes the dream or the thing we want to do. Just like Jonathan, his dream is to fly. Being an outcast is the thing you have to pay for being different. We have to leave our “comfort zone” to make your own journey. Jonathan was “. . . cast out of gull society” (Bach, p. 25). Being an outcast is not always bad because in the case of Jonathan, he is open to pursue wide range of interest so he has more opportunities in life compare to them.Eating symbolizes the fixation. It is said that their main goal is to eat for them to survive. “Don’t you forget that the reason you fly is to eat.” – father (Bach, p.5)Heaven symbolizes perfection in whatever one chooses to do. “ . . . Heaven is being perfect.” (Bach, p.45)All of these take part to the self- discovery of Jonathan. In reality, in order to discover ourselves, we must remove ourselves from 66 eating (fixation) of the flock (society) thus we become an outcast because we need to let go the comfort zone to search for the heaven of our desire (perfection). Jonathan Livington Seagull is the people who wish to discover themselves. It is said in the book, “to the real Jonathan Seagull, who lives within us all.” The author directly stated that all of us are a Jonathan Seagull. It is interconnected with the central theme since Jonathan hungers for the exploration of his potentials and knowledge.Jonathan Livingston Seagull is the same as Hills like White Elephants, there’s a hidden meaning within the title. In Hills Like White Elephants, there are multiple meaning that the readers can associate with the elephants. In Jonathan, it is up to the audience of how they will interpret the Seagull if it’s a good character or a bad character. For my conclusion I would like to share my personal thoughts about the book. When I was in high school, we were required to read this book but since I’m not a bookworm. I don’t really get to enjoy reading books, I just fall asleep when I read books before. But now of course I should be responsible since I am not in high school anymore. College for me is the next legit thing before having a job. So I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the book gave me so much insights about life. Actually I chose this book because it teaches people how to live their life. I used to be a living robot. Do what I’m expected to do without asking questions and I don’t try new things because it’s not the usual thing a typical person would do. But when I reached the point where I need to choose my course, it was a struggle for me because I’m not used to making decisions for myself. My mother wanted me to take a business course or law which I know I will flunk because I’m not good with Math. So for the first time, I made a decision for myself, it is to take European studies. I know my mom got disappointed with me but I took the risk. Before I keep asking myself if I did the right thing, not to follow what I should take. After reading 67 Jonathan Livingston Seagull, it made me realize that a person would not decide on something if he/she doesn’t want it. I realize that the course I took is really the one I like because I enjoy talking about Europe and speaking French also. I got enlightened and now I’m confident enough to say that I took the course that is really fit for me. I recommend the book for those who are uncertain in living their lives the way they want it or those people who have a hard time getting out of their comfort zones. The book is really good and many insights a reader can gain out of it. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting t oo… What happens when you start to live as your true self? There is certainly some fear in starting to become the person you were born to be. If you’ve spent your life trying to do what is expected of you, your stepping out of that role may cause some consternation on the part of the people around you. Your new way of living may expose the drab existence that they are still clinging to. For those readers developing the practice of listening to a voice other than those that clamor around them, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a welcome companion. This story has been described as a fable, a homily, and an allegory. The essence of the tale is a seagull’s desire to fly and his developing understanding of what flying means.The story begins with a seagull named Jonathan who dreams of flying better than a seagull has ever flown, instead of spending his days looking for scraps of food. The author writes: Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to foodand back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, itwas not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagullloved to fly…. This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self popular with otherbirds.” 70 The Breakfast Flock of 1,000 seagulls surrounds a fishing boat, but Jonathan Livingston Seagull practices flying slowly, apart from the others. Despite fierce concentration, he stalls and falls, which for a seagull brings disgrace and dishonor. Jonathan, no ordinary bird, tries again. Most gulls want to know no more about flight than how to get their food. Even Jonathan's parents are dismayed at his daily experimentation. He wonders why he can stay in the air longer with less effort when he flies low over the water. Mother asks why he cannot be like other gulls and leave low flying to pelicans and albatross. Why does he not eat? Jonathan is bone and feathers, but he does not mind. "So this is heaven," Jonathan smiles, noticing his body growing as bright as his companions' bodies. It feels like a gull body, but it flies far better than his old one ever has. Delighting in pressing power into his new wings of polished silver, Jonathan sets a goal of attaining twice the speed and performance, but he is not disappointed when the best he can reach is 273 mph. He believes that heaven ought not to have natural limits, but he is not disappointed. The escorts depart, wishing him happy landings. Jonathan flies toward a jagged shoreline inhabited by so few gulls that he wonders again at heaven and why he suddenly feels tired. He remembers the saying that gulls never tire in heaven. Memories of earth are fading, and details are blurring, beyond fighting for food and being an Outcast. Watching young Fletcher, Jonathan sees a blazing desire to learn to fly. Fletcher passes his instructor at 150 mph, pulls into a sixteen-point vertical slow roll, breaks up at thirteen and barely recovers. Jonathan explains that Fletcher needs to be smooth and runs through the maneuver with him. At the end of six months, Jonathan attracts six other students, all curious Outcasts, who find performing easier than theory. Jonathan lectures them on how precision flying is a step towards expressing their true nature as ideas of the Great Gull, but they fall 71 asleep, exhausted from practice. Not even Fletcher believes the flight of ideas is as real as the flight of wind and feather. In many ways, he tells them that their whole body is nothing more than thought in a form they can see, but it comes out as pleasant fiction. More specific than Bach's advice is the book's implication that if one does what he likes and ignores everything else, he will be fulfilled and transcend even death with few problems. Stated directly, this message seems naive and impossible. But as the book heightens and oversimplifies, the reader can complicate the meaning as he wishes, accepting the allegory conditionally and concluding that its emotion-laden implications might well be true. One reason the reader might do this is that the book's themes are presented mystically. As the story progresses, the reader may, largely subconsciously, call up his own connotations of the many value words sprinkled through the book — speed, love, excellence, discovery ("breakthrough"), time, and knowledge. These names accumulate energy and merge into a diffuse unity at the end. As he reaches perfection, Jonathan finds it applying to virtually everything: perfect speed, love, honor, freedom, wisdom, truth, self-esteem... Bach's descriptions of flight exhibit an acute metaphorical awareness of aerodynamics and the sensation of flying, reflecting his years of writing for pilots.This precision gives a sense of authority to the general thematic words that Bach uses.The stereotyped values, actions, and dialogue work like symbols because they are incomplete. Bach's loose style affords meanings vague enough to coax the reader into many automatic conjectures. The characters, without limiting detail, can suggest many parallels. Undefined value words can suggest whatever fits the reader's personal definitions. The setting, being mostly air, distracts very little from a wide range of interpretation. The plot—leaving society, learning, returning—has classic roots and is open enough to allow a wide range of reader associations.Bach's allegory of stereotypes resembles an 72 exaggerated impressionistic painting; it casts light in many directions and lets the viewer decide what is illuminated. Like Starsky and Hutch, Jaws and flared jeans, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was one of the hits of the 1970s. It was even made into a movie. But what exactly is this book, and is it still worth reading?Bach's bestseller is an uplifting fable of a seagull, Jonathan, who decides he is much more than just a seagull, who wants something else out of life. It consists of fewer than 100 pages, including many dreamy photographs of gulls in action. The book is now a symbol of the alternative or New Age spirituality that emerged at this time - yet as many have noted, Jonathan's experience in the story is an allegory for the life of Jesus Christ.Jonathan is different to other birds in his flock: "For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight." His father tells him that "The reason you fly is to eat", and that flying for the sake of it is not done. Still, Jonathan spends his days experimenting with high-speed dives and flying very low over the water. He wants to push his limits, to find out what is possible. Often, it ends in desperate failure. He resigns himself to just being part of the flock, doing things the way they had always been done. But one day he tries a dive, and is able to accelerate to a hundred and forty miles per hour, "a gray cannonball under the moon". The next day, he goes even beyond this, over two hundred miles per hour, the fastest a gull had ever flown. In his celebration Jonathan flies down from the heights and flies right through his own flock, luckily not killing anyone. He realizes he has taken his species to a new level. Once he teaches them what he knows, he thinks, they will no longer have a tired life of going from one 75 Chapter IV The Ultimate Aim of Life Portrayed in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah Introduction: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah is a novel 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 followup to 1970's Jonathan Livingston Seagull. With some similarity to Nevil Shute's 1951 novel, Round the Bend, Illusions revolves around two barnstorming pilots who meet in a field in midwest America. The two main characters enter into a teacher-student relationship that explains the concept that the world that we inhabit is illusory, as well as the underlying reality behind it: 'What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it? ... What if a Siddhartha came to our time, with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them? And what if I could meet him in person, if he was flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me?' Donald P. Shimoda is a messiah who quits his job after deciding that people value the showbiz-like performance of miracles and want to be entertained by those miracles more than to understand the message behind them. He meets Richard, a fellow barn-storming pilot and begins to pass on his knowledge to him, even teaching Richard to perform "miracles" of his own. 76 The novel features quotes from the "Messiah's Handbook", owned by Shimoda, which Richard later takes as his own. A most unusual aspect of this handbook is that it has no page numbers. The reason for this, as Shimoda explains to Richard, is that the book will open to the page on which the reader may find guidance or the answers to doubts and questions in his mind. It is not a magical book; Shimoda explains that one can do this with any sort of text. The messiah's handbook was released as its own title by Hampton Roads Publishing Company. It mimics the one described in Illusions, with new quotes based on the philosophies in the novel. Two itinerant fliers meet on a Midwestern field and the one, a retired Messiah, Donald W. Shimoda, teaches the other, the narrator, Richard, how to see the world and everything in it as illusion. The teacher is assassinated, and the pupil records his story before facing his own destiny as another reluctant messiah. Richard, who for years has been flying his antique biplane around the Midwest offering folks ten-minute rides for three dollars a turn, is surprised to spot another gypsy flier on the ground in Ferris, Indiana, and swoops down to meet him. They quickly bond through a love of flying and mechanics, and Richard rakes in more money than ever before, teamed up with Donald W. Shimoda. He finds the man mysterious and has a sense of foreboding in his company, but is ready to give up the lonely life awhile, that is, until Shimoda attracts too much attention through the "miracle" healing a crippled man. Fearing what the crowd will do and knowing the fate of messiahs, Richard flees. Agains all odds, Shimodafinds Richard and sets his plane down beside him. Like attracts like, he says and explains they are fellow messiahs. Shimoda knows it, but Richard does not - yet. By "miracles" small and large, Shimoda whets Richard's interest, but Shimoda claims there is nothing miraculous in what he does. One simply must realize the world and all it contains are 77 illusion. The space-time continuum is false. One chooses how to live each of one's many lifetimes, for the person created in the perfect likeness of "The Infinite Radiant Is," i.e., God, is indestructible. Over many lifetimes, Shimoda has learned to be a Messiah, finds it wearying, and has retired with God's blessing but cannot unlearn all he has learned. He takes Richard under his intellectual and spiritual wing, as wing-to-wing they fly from one farming community to the next offering rides and making good money. Richard is an avid pupil but finds mastering such techniques as cloud-vaporizing; the magnetizing of objects as tiny as a blue feather; walking on water; breathing in water; swimming through dry ground; and sinking into solid earth as though it were liquid, more difficult than he knows they should be. Richard is thoroughly frustrating. Much of the problem lies in Shimoda's maddening teaching techniques, which insists Richard discover truths and master techniques on his own. He shows Richard the standard Messiah's Manual & Reminders for the Advanced Souls, a small book of maxims, which sometimes helps clarify things and sometimes only frustrates more. When Richard cannot apply all he has mastered to the task of walking through walls, Shimoda shows him it is possible and takes Richard to a movie theater, where a clearly- illusionary experience helps clarify his mind. It is well-known and easily understood that one must suspend belief in order to enter the storyline of a movie, which is, after all, a series of non- moving images that depend on being projected on a screen to produce the appearance of reality in space and time. Only a small further step is required to see one's many lifetimes as films, whose genre and outcome one chooses rather than having been thrust upon them. Richard finally sees the point; accepts he knows what he knows; says what he says, and it matters not whether anyone listens or agrees with him. Richard thus "graduates," but has little time left with his Master. His long-held premonition of evil and doom is fulfilled as 80 Richard dogs Shimoda about how he knows so much and what formal training a Master needs. Shimoda produces a copy of the Savior's Manual - officially, the Messiah's Manual & Reminders for the Advanced Souls, a small suede-bound book of maxims. Richard leafs through it, reading about Perspective. Shimoda cannot recall this passage about being a messiah involving a horrible death. That is not obligatory, and Shimoda is unaware if this awaits him. It seems pointless now that he has quit being a Messiah, so he may just ascend in a few weeks once his task is complete. Richard does not realize Shimoda is being serious and reads on about being true to oneself and teaching best what one most needs to learn. Gypsy fliers need a long, smooth, close-cut field near a town with an access road and the field owner's permission. Richard thinks about this as he flies next to Shimoda. Spotting a field too small for a Travel Air, Richard performs a show-off landing and is about to rejoin his friend in the air when he sees Shimoda approaching so slowly his plane should stall. The three-point landing leaves Richard dumbfounded. The first customers arrive as Richard asks about the landing. Suddenly furious that Richard has not known this, Shimoda says the answer to floating tools, healing sickness, turning water into wine, walking on water, and landing Travel Airs on 100 feet of grass all come from realizing the world and everything in it are illusion. An inexplicable feeling of doom has made Richard flee, and it takes a while to readjust to loneliness. He starts a fire, and, for fun, tries floating the 9/16th in the air. For an instant, it works before falling hard. If Shimoda did this by illusion, what is real? If life is illusion, why live? Without knowing the answers, Richard is happy to be where he is, knowing what he knows. Until 10 PM, he sings endless songs to keep from thinking and then mentally wishes 81 Shimodawill get whatever he wants. The handbook falls open to a maxim declaring true family to be linked not by blood but by respect and joy in one another's lives. Richard cannot see how this applies to him, tells himself not to let a book replace his own thinking, and falls asleep. After dinner in Hammond, Wisconsin, Richard concedes life can be interesting or dull, depending on what one makes of it and states he has never figured out why we are here. Shimoda insists they see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. At the climax, as the heroes are surrounded, Shimoda asks why Richard is here and then orders him to snap out of this illusion. Irked, Richard says he is at the movies because Shimoda has asked him - and he wants to see the ending. Walking back to the planes, Shimoda explains laughingly Sundance is the answer to Richard's question of why we are here. Even the best movie is illusion, he says, and the pictures only appear to move. Richard lists many reasons why people go to films, but Shimoda categorizes them to entertainment or education. One afternoon, between passengers, Richard cannot vaporize clouds and knows he is making things harder than they are. He points to the biggest, meanest storm cloud as a challenge for Shimoda and it disappears. Shimoda claims it is easy and has Richard concentrate on a wispy puff of white. After seven minutes, it vanishes, and Shimoda advises him just to relax and remove it from his thinking, rather than being negatively attached. The handbook says clouds do not know why they move as they do, but get an impression from the sky, which does knows. In the same way, if one lifts oneself high enough, one can also know. One never receives a wish without the power to make it true - with work. 82 One afternoon walking out of town, Shimoda is in no mood to discuss the metaphysics of whether he can walk through walls, and Richard is annoyed about never receiving straight answers. When Shimoda says it helps if he is precise in his thinking, Richard restates the question: How can he move the illusion of a limited sense of identity in space-time (i.e., his body) through the illusion of material restriction (i.e., a wall)? Shimoda is pleased and believes this should answer itself. Shimoda reminds him how easy things once appeared hard (like walking as an infant), and reverses the proposition: Can Richard walk through walls? Frustrated, Richard says it is impossible for him, until Shimoda reminds him of swimming in the earth, walls being just vertical earth. That night, when Shimoda observes it is a great way to run the universe, allowing everyone to do whatever he or she wants, Richard adds a proviso, "as long as we don't hurt somebody else." A shadow frightens Richard. Shimoda walks toward it and leads back a lean, wolf-like fellow dressed in evening clothes and a lined cape. He speaks with an indistinct East European accent and seems uncomfortable in the light. Richard tries to put him at ease but jumps back when he asks to drink some of his blood. The wanderer has not chosen this lonely, painful life and seems to think Shimoda will force Richard to submit. When Richard threatens violence, the vampire admits Shimoda has made his point, smiles, and fades away At a cafy in Ryerson, Ohio, Richard asks Shimoda if he gets even a little lonely and proceeds to talk about the experience of meeting people for mere minutes. Over tasty hamburgers covered with sesame seeds, Shimoda declares, humans are magnets, naturally able whenever they want to attract anything they want and leave all else untouched. One need not do anything, for cosmic law takes care of it - like attracting like. Simply be what one is, ask, "Is this what I really want to do?" and act only if the answer is yes. This takes imagination, not faith. 85 Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach follows his bestselling Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which I loved. I can’t say the same thing about this book, and let’s get my bias out of the way, I detest books where you have a “sage” trying to show you your errant ways, directing you to the proper path. Or it could be my introverted self, speaking, getting annoyed at the notion of some well-meaning person forcing you to speak, when you do not want to. I love learning, and I am open to learn from others, but it has to be done in a certain way, and the way it is done in this book, would most certainly irritate me. Now that I have gotten that off my chest, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach is very philosophical, and the author uses his flying experiences as a basis for this very imaginative work of fiction. The story is about Richard Bach’s imagined encounter with Donald P. Shimoda, a self-proclaimed messiah. Shimoda pretty much likens himself to Jesus the Messiah in the Bible, performing many miracles. People can touch him and be healed, he walks on water, crowds of people flock to him, and someone shoots (crucifies) him for his beliefs and he rises again. Shimoda gets tired of this way of living, so he quits his lifestyle as a religious leader, reinventing himself as a barnstormer, who travels across the United States, selling 10-minute helicopter rides for $3.00. Shimoda’s aircraft of choice is a gold and white Travel Air 4000 biplane. Richard Bach is a disillusioned writer, and a barnstormer, also selling 10-minute helicopter rides for $3.00. One summer day, while flying his biplane just north of Ferris, Illinois, Richard Bach sees an old Travel Air 4000, so he touches down, and meets Shimoda for the very first time. The two enter into a student-teacher relationship, where the former messiah is the teacher. Shimoda gives Bach the Messiah’s Handbook, a book full of wisdom, and it is special 86 because there are no page numbers, and whenever you open it, the book opens to the page you need the most. Wisdom from the Messiah Handbook includes: Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. You teach best what you need most to learn. You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for 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 wish. Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t. In Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Shimoda and Bach travel across America, giving biplane rides. The former messiah dispenses his wisdom, teaches Bach how to perform miracles, and to reflect more deeply on the meaning of life. The book explains that the world that we live in is an illusion, the things we think are real, are not, and so is the underlying reality behind it. After all the teaching Bach receives, he concludes that each of us have to focus on our own spiritual quest, allowing others to attain their own enlightenment. We are also responsible for our own happiness. After this, Bach becomes a self-proclaimed messiah. Although I think that Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach is fantastical, according to Wikipedia, “A number of personal development teachers have cited “Illusions” as a major influence on their life path, including Dr. Joe Vitale, Bob Doyle, Brad Yates and Mike Dooley.” 87 Chapter V Conclusion Introduction: Bach’s books were mostly related to flying in some way. Aviation had always been his passion but his teachers at school made him realize his talent for writing. So he decided to incorporate his love and talent in the form of his books. His early books were about airplane flying such as in ‘Stranger to Ground’ and later flight was used as a metaphor in his books. His popular book ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ was published in 1970. This book was about a seagull that flew for his love of flying rather than searching for food. The book was published by Macmillan Publishers because others had refused to do so. ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ had some amazing pictures of seagulls flying. This book became the number one bestseller. With less than ten thousand words ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ managed to break all records since ‘Gone with the Wind’ by selling more than a million copies in 1972. This success story ran widely in the media making Richard Bach’s success eminent. It was also made into a feature film under Paramount Pictures Corporation. Another book by Bach namely ‘Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah’ was published in 1977. This was a story about a man who meets a messiah who is going to quit his mission. Richard Bach has numerous fans all over the world. He also came on a social website and replies to fan mail personally. He has been interviewed many times on the radio and his interviews are also repeated from time to time. Some of Bach’s other books include ‘ A Gift of Wings’ (1974), ‘ There’s No Such Place as Far Away’ ( 1979), ‘ Running From Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit’ (1995), ‘Out of my Mind: The Discovery of the Saunders-Vixen’ (1999). 90 of as purposeful. Life embodies a ‘plan’, but one that does not specify ends, only methods acquired iteratively. Inanimate processes can be cyclic but not iterative: they do not learn from past mistakes. 2. Life is also a process through which energy and materials are transformed; but so is non-life. Life exists at many levels. Life is also a process through which energy and materials are transformed; but so is non-life. The difference is that the process of life is intimately linked to story it contains, whereas non-life is indifferent to the story we impose upon it. Yet life is only a story, so it can act only through matter. Therefore life is by nature a toolmaker. Its tools are potentially everything that exists, and its workshop is potentially the whole universe. So why do humans risk undermining the life of which they are part? Because they try to impose upon it a story of their own making. Yet humans, the ‘tool-making animals’, are themselves tools of life, in an unplanned experiment. Life is self-organising chemistry which reproduces itself and passes on its evolved characteristics, encoded in DNA. In thermodynamics terms, it has the ability to reduce local entropy or disorganisation, thus locally contravening the third law of thermodynamics. But what is life really about, if anything? The two possibilities are, life is either a meaningless accident arising from the laws of physics operating in a meaningless universe, or it is a step in a planned ‘experiment’. I say ‘step’, because this cannot be the end. The current state of life is as yet too unstable and undeveloped for it to be the end. And I say ‘experiment’ because the evolutionary nature of life suggests that its future is not known. If therefore the universe itself has a purpose, it seems most likely to be to explore what the outcome of the evolutionary experiment would be. 91 But what will be the outcome? If, as many physicists now believe, the universe is only information, then harnessing all the resources of the universe in one giant evolutionary process could plausibly provide a useful outcome for a species clever enough to create the universe in the first place. On this interpretation, life will ultimately organise all the physical resources of the universe into a single self-conscious intelligence, which in turn will then be able to interact with its creator(s). 3. Life is the embodiment of selfishness! Life is selfish because it is for itself in two ways: it is for its own survival, and it is for its own reproduction. This desire is embodied in an adaptive autocatalytic chemical system, forming life’s embodied mind. Anything that is not itself is the other; and the collection of others constitute its environment. The organism must destructively use the other to satisfy its reproductive desire, but on achieving this, it produces an additional other – but now one that also embodies its own selfish aim and the means to satisfy this aim. Therefore, even by an organism satisfying its desire, it makes the continuing satisfaction of its desires ever more difficult to achieve. A partial solution to this dilemma is for genetically-related entities to form a cooperating society. The underlying mechanism of evolution is therefore the iteration of the embodied desire within an ever more complex competitive and social environment. Over vast numbers of iterations, this process forces some life-forms along a pathway that solves the desire for survival and reproduction by developing ever more complex and adaptable minds. This is achieved by supplementing their underlying cellular embodied chemistry with a specialist organ (although still based on chemistry) that we call its brain, able to rapidly process electrical signals. Advanced minds can collect and process vast inputs of data by ‘projecting’ the derived output 92 back onto its environmental source, that is by acting. However advanced it might be, an organism is still driven by the same basic needs for survival and reproduction. The creative process, however, leads the organism towards an increasingly aesthetic experience of the world. This is why for us the world we experience is both rich and beautiful. In our scientific age, we look to the biologists to define ‘life’ for us. After all, it is their subject matter. I believe they have yet to reach consensus, but a biological definition would be something like, ‘Life is an arrangement of molecules with qualities of self-sustenance and self- replication’. This kind of definition might serve the purposes of biologists, but for me, it has five deficiencies. First, any definition of life by biologists would have little utility outside biology because of its necessary inclusiveness. We humans would find ourselves in a class of beings that included the amoeba. ‘Life’ would be the limited common properties of all organisms, including the lowest. Second, the scientific definition of life is necessarily an external one. I think that knowing what life is, as opposed to defining it, requires knowing it from within. Non-sentient organisms live, but they do not know life. Third, in the scientific definition, there is no place for life having value. However, many would say that life has value in its own right – that it is not simply that we humans value life and so give it value, but that it has value intrinsically. Fourth, there is the question of life as a whole having a purpose or goal. This notion is not scientific, but one wonders if the tools of science are fit to detect any evolutionary purpose, if there is one. Fifth, for the scientists, life is a set of biological conditions and processes. However, everywhere and always, people have conceived of a life after biological death, a life of spirit not necessarily dependent on the physical for existence. The scientific definition of life is valid in its context, but otherwise I find it impoverished. I believe there is a hierarchy of living beings from the non-sentient, to the sentient, to humans, 95 No matter what your race, religion or gender, when you first step outside your door in the morning and feel the fresh air in your lungs and the morning sun on your face, you close your eyes and smile. In that moment you are feeling life as it should be. No defining, no understanding, no thinking. Just that feeling of pure bliss. For that is what life is. Of all Webster’s definitions of ‘life’, the one for me that best covers it is, “the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual.” Indeed, life is a continuum of accomplishment, failure, discovery, dilemma, challenge, boredom, sadness, disappointment, appreciation, the giving and receipt of grace, empathy, peace, and our reactions to all sorts of stimuli – touch, love, friendship, loss… One can either merely exist or try to achieve, working through the difficult times, perhaps learning a thing or two. Everyone has a story. I’ve been surprised when learning something new about an acquaintance or friend that must have been very difficult to manage or survive; but there they are in front of me. It’s how you come out on the other side of those challenging times that is important. How you land, get on with it, and keep on truckin’. 5. Life cannot be planned: there’s fate, and there’s simple bad luck. Failure can bring crushing disappointment, or you can try and make a new plan. A person can waste an inordinate amount of time mourning what they don’t have, or plans that don’t work out. But who wants to waste that much time regretting? Life has happy surprises, small moments to cherish. It’s a matter of weighing the good and bad times – the challenge is to balance both, ending up with a life looked back on that was worth the mighty effort. I’m not meaning to sound like a Pollyanna – I assure you I’m not – it’s just more pleasant to strive for a modicum of equilibrium. If I can manage that, I’m good. “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, 96 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act V, Scene V) These words of Shakespeare’s Macbeth summarize interesting ideas about the nature of life. The first line expresses two of the three marks of existence as per Buddhist thinking, Anicca, impermanence, and Anatta, non-self: a “walking shadow” is as insubstantial and impermanent as anything imaginable; a “poor player” neither creates nor directs his role, and the character being played only exists because of an author. Macbeth’s entire statement, particularly the last sentence, expresses the third Buddhist mark of existence: Dukkha, dissatisfaction. The stage metaphor in the second line represents boundaries or limits. Scientific research into the nature of life often focuses on the material, energetic, and temporal limitations within which life can exist. The temporal limit of life is known as death. In the spirit of this interpretation, the idea of being “heard no more” could imply that life constantly evolves new forms while discarding older ones. Macbeth hints at the wisdom of mystery traditions while anticipating the revelations of genetic science by stating that life “is a tale”. Now, this refers to the language-based, or code- based, nature of life. Readers may consider this in relation to DNA and RNA, and also in relation to John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (The implications of the phrase “told by an idiot” exceed the scope of this inquiry.) In five concise and poetic lines, Shakespeare defined life as an impermanent, non-self- directed, unsatisfactory, limited, ever-changing, and ultimately insignificant code. 97 6. Life is the realisation of its own contingency. But that’s not the end of it; it’s merely the means towards the creation of meaning. Life is thus a constant process of becoming, through creating values and meaning. Life is therefore perpetual transcendence, always moving into the future, creating the present. Life is also acceptance: the acceptance of finitude; acceptance of one’s responsibilities; acceptance of other human beings’ existence and choices. Life is neither fixed nor absolute, it is ambiguous; life is the possibilities entailed by existence. Life is the consciousness of humanity; it is perception of the world and the universe. So life is sadness; life is death. Life is suffering and destruction. But life is also happiness; life is living. Life is joy and creativity. Life is finding a cause to survive, a reason not to die – not yet. It is youth and old age, with everything in between. Overall, life is beautiful – ugliness is fleeting. Corpses and skeletons are lugubrious; living flesh is resplendent, all bodies are statuesque. Human life is love and hate, but it can only be life when we are with others. Life as fear and hatred is not real life at all. For some, life is God. We would all then be His children. We are nevertheless the spawn of the Earth. If the ancients could do philosophy in the marketplace, maybe I can too. So I employed some modern technology by texting the question ‘What is Life?’ to all my contacts. I didn’t explain the context of the question, to avoid lyrical waxing. Here are a sample of replies. Life is: being conscious of yourself and others; a being with a soul; experience; what you make it; your chance to be a success; family; living as long as you can; not being dead; greater than the sum of its parts; complex chemical organisation; different things to different people; a mystery; a journey; don’t know; a quote from a song, “baby don’t hurt me”; life begins after death. I asked a regular in my favourite café. They said, “man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” A person suffering from a degenerative disease answered: “life is sh** then you die.”