Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“‘You looked lonely,’ I said across the distance between us.”

Richard and Don continually speak of loneliness. This initial greeting between them signifies the roles they will play in each other’s lives. Richard and Don’s friendship and enlightenment form a cosmic connection between them that transcends physical limitations. Their meeting is the end of their mutual loneliness.

“I want to believe that there’s another principle somewhere: we don’t need airplanes to fly, or move through walls, or get to planets. We can learn how to do that without machines anywhere. If we want to.”

Richard says this to Don when they first meet, and it is the first indication that Richard will be open to Don’s teachings. This belief is the foundation for all the philosophies Richard will learn on his journey to enlightenment and indicates that Richard is open to the impossible.

“Of course you can quit! Quit anything you want, if you change your mind about doing it. You can quit breathing if you want to.”

This quote encapsulates the motif of quitting. Don gives himself the permission to quit, change his mind, and follow his own happiness. Don suggests that not allowing a person to quit is constructing a new limitation for them. Quitting relates to the theme of The Freedom to Be.

“It’s not me they want, it’s the miracles! And those I can teach to somebody else; let him be the Messiah.”

Don admits in this quote that his followers do not care about his message, only his ability to heal them. They continually ask Don to perform miracles that he knows they are capable of doing if only they listened to his message. However, the crowds only want the spectacle of his abilities, not the wisdom of his words.

“Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.”

This excerpt from the Messiah’s Handbook is created for Richard to help him understand the structure of the journey he is about to undertake with Don. He will first learn, then do, then teach. This creates a cyclical relationship between all the potential messiahs of the world.

“You are lead through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don’t turn away from possible futures until you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them. You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.”

This is the handbook’s suggestion when Richard is indecisive about staying with Don and learning his philosophy. This message urges Richard to be open to the possibilities but gives him permission to disregard whatever doesn’t make him happy.

“Listen! […] This world? And everything in it? Illusions, Richard! Every bit of it illusions! Do you understand that?”

Exasperated, Don says quite simply to Richard that his entire reality is an elaborate illusion of his own design. This is an explanation of one of the novels key themes, Letting Go of Illusions and Perceived Limitations, and its namesake.

“If you learn what this world is, how it works, you automatically start getting miracles, what will be called miracles. But of course nothing is miraculous. Learn what the magician knows and it’s not magic anymore.”

In this quote, Don explains that an acceptance of the impossible graduates an act from the status of miracle to an everyday occurrence. Once a person understands how something works, it no longer seems like magic, but logic.

“When he said that he looked lonelier than I had ever seen a man still alive. He didn’t need food or shelter or money or fame. He was dying of his need to say what he knew, and nobody cared enough to listen.”

Don tells Richard that he avoids crowds because he cannot communicate with them in the way he would like. This observation by Richard clearly defines what Don is seeking. Don is trying to work through his desire to say what he knows, which is in conflict with people’s lack of interest in his message.

“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.”

The Messiah’s Handbook presents this thought as Richard considers the possibility that he could have divine powers. This quote encapsulates a running theme about preconceived limitations inhibiting true freedom.

“They are unhappy because they have chosen to be unhappy, and, Richard, that is all right!”

Don explains that people do not always choose a more positive story for themselves because they find something compelling about horror or negative aspects of reality. The Freedom to Be includes the freedom to be something other than happy if that’s what a person wants.

“You can hold a reel of film in your hands […] and, it’s all finished and complete, beginning, middle, end are all there that same second. The film exists beyond the time it records, and if you know what the movie is, you know generally what happens before you walk into the theater […]. But in order to get caught up and swept away in it, in order to enjoy it to its most, you have to put it into a projector and let it go through the lens minute by minute.”

This quote by Don encapsulates time’s role in Richard’s reality. In order to appreciate the full scope of his journey, Richard has to experience it minute by minute. Richard must live his whole life before he is given all of the answers to his questions.

“If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.”

The cloud could be obstacle or limitation, and Don’s philosophy is simply to remove it from the mind, which controls all reality. Richard has a difficult time accepting this because he thinks that removing the cloud—or any obstacle—takes a lot of effort and difficulty. Accomplishing the impossible with ease is one of the fundamental aspects of Don’s teaching, and the one that is most difficult for Richard to learn.

“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it however.”

When Richard is unable to make clouds disappear with the same ease as Don, he learns that the teachings are easy to comprehend, but his ability to truly become enlightened is a journey requiring patience and practice. The handbook offers this sentiment to explain this revelation. It is paradoxical in that achieving ease takes work; the two activities support each other rather than being mutually exclusive.

“How quickly we get used to miracles!”

Richard thinks this when he observes Don walking on water. Richard participates and also walks on water. This observation explains the idea that believing is what truly constitutes reality. Since Richard has opened his mind to the impossible, he can be a part of Don’s magic.

“The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not realty, although it can express reality if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.”

The Messiah’s Handbook attempts to answer Richard’s questions about the state of his reality. This quote also breaks the fourth wall of the novel and suggests that Bach’s theories might also be nonsense.

“When you say no to something I know is yes, that means you don’t like the way I said the question.”

Richard is learning to speak Don’s language. As Richard moves away from being the student, toward being a master, he learns to communicate in a whole new way. Richard learns to ask the right questions about life and the universe.

Do you think maybe if you say impossible over and over again a thousand times that suddenly hard things will come easy for you?”

Don reminds Richard the journey to enlightenment is a difficult one and that pondering the same limitations will not help him progress. Don is also reminding Richard of the limitations of impossibility.

“Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.”

This message in the handbook is in response to Richard pondering his connection with Don. Don explains that like attracts like, and this verse poses the idea that all aspects of your realty are a product of this attraction.

“Don’t you ever get lonely, Don?”

Richard no longer asks one-dimensional questions. What he is asking Don is if Don will be lonely without him, or if they both will be lonely without each other. Richard subconsciously senses an imminent end to their togetherness and wonders how he will cope without it.

“A magnet is not anxious about how it works. It is itself, and by its nature it draws some things and leaves others untouched.”

Don uses a magnet analogy to explain how like attracts like. He explains that some people and things will be drawn to Richard, and things that are not meant for him will be unaffected by his presence.

“The truth you speak has no past and no future. It is, and that’s all it needs to be.”

The Messiah’s Handbook seeks to help Richard define his truth. A person’s truth is not an action or commitment; it is a reflection of their own spiritual being. As Richard reaches the end of his learning from Don, he must understand how to separate his own truth from Don’s.

“You said that depending on people to care about what I say is depending on somebody else for my happiness. That’s what I came here to learn: it doesn’t matter whether I communicate or not. I chose this whole lifetime to share with anybody the way this world is put together, and I might as well have chosen it to say nothing at all. The Is doesn’t need me to tell anybody how it works.”

This quote encapsulates Don’s revelation. After he learns this lesson, he is free to move on from this lifetime because he learned what he needed to. This revelation ultimately leads to his death in the following chapter.