Richard Bach's novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull was first published in 1970. By 1972, the work had reached a circulation of one million copies and gained worldwide fame.

In terms of its genre, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” gravitates towards two epic forms: a story (due to its chronicle plot) and a parable (a short allegorical narrative containing teachings of a religious and moral nature).

The story-parable opens with the author's dedication: “To the True Jonathan – the Seagull who lives in each of us.” In it, Richard Bach sets the main tone of the narrative, aimed at revealing the main artistic idea of ​​the work: an attempt to convince the reader that he is free. Seagull Jonathan Livingston is each of us: what he could become if he rose above everyday life, strived for new knowledge and tried to know his true essence, which does not obey the laws of either space or time.

The classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull consists of three parts. The fourth was added by the author quite recently (in 2014) and has not yet reached a wide range of readers.

The first part of the story tells the story of a unique seagull named Jonathan Livingston. The first part is compositionally divided into two parts: in the first half the difference between the main character and the rest of the seagulls is shown (he is more interested in new flight techniques than in food; his parents do not understand him, who believe that he eats little (mother) and, if he is so drawn to new knowledge, he can study ways of obtaining food (father); he is not ashamed to fall into the sea, trying to achieve perfection in flight). In the second half, Jonathan Livingston, who has come to his senses after an unsuccessful attempt to develop high speed, experiences a turning point: having come to terms with the fact that he is a seagull and must live like everyone else, he goes home and suddenly realizes that he is no longer doing what he is capable of. seagulls - flying in the dark. New knowledge completely changes Jonathan Livingston's view of the world: he begins to transform its physical laws to suit himself, achieves great success in various flight techniques and finds himself expelled from the Flock. The seagull spends its entire subsequent life alone. New knowledge opens up not only spiritual prospects for him, but also significantly makes earthly life easier: Jonathan gains access to delicious fish living in the depths of the sea; it can fly far to the mainland and feed on land insects. Bad weather no longer bothers the seagull, as it can always soar above the clouds. Jonathan's earthly life ends with the arrival of two seagulls, shining like stars, who call him home.

In the second part, Jonathan Livingston lives a new life in another world - more perfect than the earthly one, but just as physically limited - for example, the speed that a seagull can reach. The concept of afterlife is built by Richard Bach in accordance with Eastern religions, which believe that Heaven is not a place, but only a path to true perfection. The last Jonathan passes under the guidance of the Elder named Chiang, who teaches his ward to move in space and time with just the power of thought. This, according to Chiang and the author himself, is possible provided that one recognizes oneself as a free being, devoid of any physical characteristics. Having completed his mission and learned everything that the new world can give him, Chiang goes upward - to other, more advanced knowledge, while Jonathan comes to the idea that he needs to return to Earth. The seagull sees in this a manifestation of true Love, which Chiang bequeathed to him to find.

The second part of the story, like the first, is divided into two halves. The second, extremely short in volume, serves as a preface to the third: in it the reader meets a new hero - another Exile, the seagull Fletcher Lind.

In the third and final part of the story, Jonathan Livingston, who received yet another reincarnation on Earth, becomes a teacher for Fletcher and six other Exiled Seagulls. He trains the first for three months, the rest for a month, after which he invites everyone to return to the Council Shore, thereby violating the Law of Exile and challenging the darkness and ignorance of ordinary birds. In this part of the story, the Christian idea of ​​love for one’s neighbor – the “dumb-witted” and imperfect – comes to the fore. “Learn to see the true Seagull in them, perceiving the best that is in them, and helping them to consider this best themselves,” Jonathan says to Fletcher, putting an exclusively Orthodox meaning into these words. The scene of the flight of Kirk Maynard, a seagull with a broken left wing, also becomes a Christian reminiscence in the story.

All the characters and events in Jonathan Livingston Seagull serve as an allegory to convey classical human ideas about the world. Seagulls are people who, for the most part, are concerned with material wealth (it is no coincidence that each hero has a first and last name). The flight of seagulls is a style of human life based on the immutable Law of the Flock (that is, the crowd), which does not allow one to go beyond the usual norms. The Council is a symbolic image of the court, which does not accept anything that goes against the Law, even if it can benefit the Pack. Jonathan's desire to understand the world is an attempt by individual extraordinary individuals to find out the meaning of life. The latter is thought of by Richard Bach as two-sided: on the one hand, a person must improve himself, on the other, he must help others in this. The latter, in the author’s opinion, is true Love for one’s neighbor.

Psychological analysis of R. Bach's story “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”

Books, of course, are different. But there are also works that make a person think about the question: what am I in the crazy, fleeting stream, whose name is Life?

The name of this man cannot be found in any more or less modern textbook on the history of American literature. Of course, a Russian textbook. In the West, his name has long been firmly associated with the best examples of modern prose. His name is Richard Bach.

The fate of the author himself is quite unique and interesting. All his life, R. Bach was obsessed with a single desire - to fly. At one time he was even a military pilot, but he resigned, realizing that he was being trained as a potential killer of hundreds, thousands of people. And then he started writing. Not immediately, sometimes it took a painfully long time for a thing to come out of his pen. “Illusions”, “The One and Only”, “Bridge Over Eternity”... “The Seagull...” was created over eight years. But what happened exceeded all expectations.

"The Seagull..." has been translated into thirty-three languages. Somewhere it was called a children's fairy tale, somewhere - a philosophical parable. There was one thing in common - she was loved. Interest in her continues unabated. What attracts readers to a short story about a seagull named Jonathan Livingston?

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a parable story written by Richard Bach. Tells about a seagull learning life and the art of flight. This is a sermon about self-improvement and self-sacrifice.

The story of the creation of Jonathan Livingston Seagull is surrounded by legends. Richard Bach claimed that he once heard the cry of seagulls and made out the words “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” in them. The voice that uttered these words forced the writer to sit down at the table and write a work that brought him world fame and became a masterpiece of world literature of the 20th century. This story is about the limitless possibilities of someone who knows how to dream, believes in perfection and loves life.

A brilliant example of a highly moral goal is the goal of life of Jonathan the Seagull, the hero of R. Bach’s work “The Seagull Called Jonathan Livingston.” Having achieved perfect speed, the Seagull strives to achieve the perfection of relationships based on love. “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” is a story-parable about a purposeful, independent bird who dared to ask himself the question of the purpose and meaning of life. She considered the purpose and meaning of life not only to search for food and exist according to the laws of the pack, she thought about the meaning of what her older brothers taught her. Her goal in life was to “find perfection and show it to people.”

Jonathan Livingston is an example of the fact that a living creature of nature, be it a seagull or a person, cannot help but dream.

To them he says: “We have the right to fly wherever we want and be as we were created.”

At the same time, the main character is not embittered towards his Flock, which first expelled him and then tried to kill him. Here are his parting words addressed to Fletcher: “You shouldn’t love a maddened flock of birds. You must... see the truly kind seagull in each of these birds and help them see the same seagull in themselves. That's what I call love."

The peculiarity of “The Seagull...” is that the book is filled with internal rhythm, even vibration, which directly affects the reader’s soul. That is why the works of R. Bach are sometimes called prose poems, although he himself denies this.

These lines from R. Bach's story “Illusions, or the Adventures of the Reluctant Messiah” can serve as the key to the writer’s creativity and fate.

The sky is not just a metaphor that runs through all of Richard Bach's works. Heaven is his life; he took to the skies hundreds of times on gliders and light aircraft made of wood and fabric, on combat fighters and high-speed airliners. He was extremely realistic about everything related to flights - from aerodynamics to the flight qualities of aircraft engines. But at the same time, he believed: “people could not fly for a long time, /.../ because they were sure that it was impossible, and that is why they did not know the simplest first principle of aerodynamics. I would like to believe that there is another principle: we do not need airplanes to fly /.../ or visit other planets. We can learn to do this without machines. If we want." We can learn not only to fly. Richard Bach is confident that a person can do anything he can imagine. The idea that supports this belief in him is that all reality in our world is just an illusion, and if we understand this properly, we can master reality and do whatever we want with it. This idea formed the basis of most of his books and, obviously, largely determined the course of his life.

Richard Bach (born in 1938) is a hereditary small-engine aviation pilot. At the age of eighteen, he sat at the controls of an airplane for the first time and since then has practically never parted with the sky. With the exception of a short stint in the US Air Force, his entire life was associated with small, lightweight recreational aircraft. On such machines, sometimes very old and unreliable, he more than once happened to fly all over America from west to east or circle for months among the fields of the Midwest, arranging paid air rides for local farmers. Sometimes he had to do more unusual work: for example, participate in the filming of air battles for the films “Von Richtofen and Braun.” In addition, from time to time he wrote short essays, articles and stories on aviation problems for various specialized magazines, where they were sometimes published.
Richard Bach is a born dreamer and inventor. Despite the fact that most of his books are emphatically autobiographical, all the facts are seasoned with a fair amount of fiction and often one gets the impression that he is simply mystifying the reader. This fully applies to the mysterious story associated with Bach's most famous book - the story "The Seagull Called Jonathan Livingston."
One day, while walking along the foggy bank of California's Belmont Shore Canal, Bach heard a voice say the words: "A seagull named Jonathan Livingston." Obeying this voice, Bach hurried home, sat down at his desk and wrote down the vision that passed before his inner gaze like a movie. But the vision was short, and there was no continuation. Bach tried to complete the story on his own, but nothing worked for him - until eight years later he dreamed of a continuation. In 1970, “The Seagull” was published as a separate edition and immediately became a bestseller. This book made the name of the great-great-great-grandson of Johann Sebastian Bach famous not only in the USA, but also in many countries around the world. The commercial side of the success of “The Seagull” (the sale of copyright alone brought Bach more than a million dollars) helped the writer put into practice one of the famous formulas: “Understand what you would like to do more than anything else in the world - and do it.” He returned to flying, now as an amateur pilot, and tried airplanes of various types and models, took up parachuting, and learned to sail a yacht. He directed a film based on his story “Nothing Accidental” and played one of the roles in it. Richard Bach did not abandon literary creativity all these years, writing a number of books. Of these, two received the greatest fame and recognition - “Illusions, or the Adventures of the Reluctant Messiah” (1977) and the fictionalized autobiography “Bridge Over Eternity” (1987) .

The plot of the story “A Seagull Named Jonathan Livingston” is simple: the seagull Jonathan Livingston brings his flying skills to perfection, but, faced with a hostile Flock, he finally turns into an outcast, seemingly dies and moves to Heaven, where he finds his true brothers, the true Flock , but returns from this bird Paradise to pass on his knowledge to all who are thirsty. However, the story is rightly designated as an allegory or parable, since its philosophical side is far from simple. Thus, it has long been noted that the story of Jonathan the seagull is, in fact, the story of a bodhisattva, a Buddhist saint who was able to free himself from the shackles of earthly conventions, but returned to Earth in order to help free other suffering beings. There is severe asceticism, asceticism, miracles, and the idea that Knowledge can be transferred only to those who are ready to accept it. Echoes of Buddhist philosophy are heard very clearly in the story, sometimes it is present here even in the form of almost literal quotes - for example, the belief in multiple rebirths that every living being experiences is expressed: “Most of us move forward so slowly. We pass from one world to another, almost the same, and immediately forget where we came from; we don’t care where they take us, we only care about what’s happening at this very moment. Can you imagine how many lives we must live before we have the first vague guess that life is not limited to food, struggle and power in the Pack. Thousands of lives, John, ten thousand. And then another hundred before we begin to understand that there is something called perfection, and another hundred until we are convinced that the meaning of life is to achieve perfection and tell others about it. The same law, of course, applies here: we choose the next world in accordance with what we learned in this one. If we haven’t learned anything, the next world will turn out to be the same as this one, and we will have to overcome the same obstacles again with the same lead weights on our paws,” this is what his mentor Sullivan says to Jonathan, who has already found himself in another, non-earthly world.

However, even from this fragment it is clear that the philosophy of Richard Bach differs significantly from Buddhism. Buddhists argue that suffering is an inevitable accompaniment of existence; the liberation they strive for is the complete cessation of existence, the return of the individual to the original and impersonal Emptiness that lies at the basis of all things. We will not find anything like this in R. Bach. First of all, he denies the tragedy of existence. “Your ignorance is measured by how deeply you believe in injustice and human tragedies,” all his books convince the reader. According to Bach, we create all our problems and misfortunes for ourselves because we do not know any other way of existence or consider it reprehensible. A world beyond our imagination, a world where we are all doomed to work to maintain our own lives, is an excellent excuse for the laziness and timidity of our imagination. Moreover, the liberation that Bach speaks of is not liberation from being or even liberation from one’s own self. “Your entire body, from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, is nothing more than your thought expressed in a form accessible to your vision. Break the chains that bind your thoughts, and you will break the chains that bind your body” (117), Jonathan tells his students. Having realized the world as his illusion, a person acquires qualitatively new opportunities and ultimately finds himself in a new world, which gives him even more opportunities for self-improvement. In The Seagull this world is called heaven; however, heaven is not at all the limit of attainable perfection. There is no limit: “what the caterpillar calls the End of the World, the Master will call a butterfly,” says the hero of “Illusions,” but every butterfly is just a caterpillar for the next stage of development.

Bach's story is also permeated with the ideas of Zen Buddhism: for example, Jonathan experiences the mystical experience of the Supreme Reality - a flash of comprehension beyond time and beyond the limitations of individual consciousness; this mystical experience is usually called awakening. Meditation is a mandatory path in achieving direct experience of the Supreme Reality. All the great achievements of mankind were created in inspired moments, when the mind of the creator was in a state of deep contemplation, strikingly different from the usual state of consciousness. Bach's hero is also depicted in a state of altered consciousness, when the meditator experiences a kind of “floating” that opens up other worlds for him. (“And then one evening, when Jonathan was soaring calmly and alone in the sky that he loved so much, they flew in. Two white seagulls that appeared near his wings shone like stars and illuminated the darkness of the night with a soft, caressing light”; “ The events of his earthly life moved further and further away. He learned a lot on Earth, this is true, but the details were difficult to remember..." /49, 65/.)

Bach expresses all these complex philosophical ideas with the help of artistic forms. Thus, the author gives the moment of Jonathan’s transformation through the implementation of the metaphor of enlightenment: “His white feathers sparkled and sparkled, and his wings became immaculately smooth, like polished records.” The change in the hero’s consciousness is emphasized by metaphors of light and height: “At dawn Jonathan resumed his training. From a height of five thousand feet, the fishing boats seemed like splinters on the blue surface of the sea, and the Flock at breakfast looked like a light cloud of dancing dust particles” (33); the futility of the illusory world, imagining itself to be real, is emphasized by the images of “slivers”, “a light cloud of dancing dust particles”. Very often, the literal and metaphorical meanings of the word merge: the real wind picks up a daring seagull, a powerful gust picks up the one who decided to find out (“Good intentions are forgotten, carried away by a swift hurricane wind... Such promises bind seagulls, the knot of which is mediocrity. For someone who strives for knowledge and once achieved perfection, they do not matter” /33/).

In this state, something that previously did not have much meaning for the hero (a fishing boat feeding the Flock, or bad weather that constrains other seagulls) simply disappears: “When /.../ he was finally able to spread his wings, the ship was /.../ below him and seemed like a point on the surface of the sea"; “... He flew in complete sea fog and broke through it to a clear, dazzlingly shining sky /... / at the very time when other seagulls huddled close to the ground, not suspecting that there was anything in the world other than fog and rain” ( 45).

The expression of the idea of ​​endless improvement in knowledge determines the features of the composition of the story. The first part depicts the spiritual awakening of an extraordinary being, all the earthly stages of his craving for something else. At first, “he couldn’t do anything” - either to stop being a seagull (“Why don’t you leave pelicans and albatrosses to fly over the water?”), or to remain one (“for several days he tried to do the same as everyone else, tried his best strength..."). “Curved wings,” a metaphor for uncertainty, make flying difficult, preventing him from experiencing the sky (“wind”) and the ocean (“the crooked wings slowed him down, and he flew so slowly that the wind barely whispered in his ear, and the ocean below him seemed motionless " /13/. It is useless to ask the hero “why?” (he is echoed by the tragicomic “why?” of the alarmed parents) until he decides to become himself, that is, to become “inquisitive” with a rejection of everything that has become obsolete (). his own “decrepit body”, the hostile Pack, the consciousness of his limitations) Jonathan ends his earthly existence.

The second part is dedicated to depicting the beautiful “heaven” and realizing that “heaven is not a place or a time. Heaven is the attainment of perfection." This explains the strange, at first glance, movement of Jonathan leaving the Earth (“He took one last long look at the sky, at this magnificent silver country where he had learned so much”; “And Jonathan Livingston rose up with two seagulls, bright as two stars, and disappeared into the impenetrable darkness of the sky” /33/): he falls from heaven to heaven; It is strange to define the sky as both brightly lit and impenetrably dark. This logical inconsistency should emphasize the difference between the two worlds and the last earthly sensations of a creature saying goodbye to the Earth.

“Heaven” helps Jonathan realize the main thing: “I was created perfect, my possibilities are limitless, I am a Seagull!”; to realize that, having perfectly mastered the technique of flight, he is prepared to “fly upward,” that is, to understand kindness and love.

The story of the earthly seagull Fletcher Lind, which concludes the second part of the story, is a brief summary of the history of Jonathan's earthly life, with the significant difference that Fletcher is overly self-confident (“He /.../ was still a young seagull, but he already knew that there was no bird in the world, who would have to endure such cruel treatment by the Pack") and vain ("Don't they understand how famous we will be if we actually learn to fly?). But the main thing is that he finds a Teacher who helps him “swing up.”

The third part is built on identifying the false and true understanding of the essence of flight, hence the opposition: students - Teacher, initiates - uninitiated. The author emphasizes that the difference between the students and the Teacher is not so great (after all, Jonathan also has a Teacher - first Sullivan, then Chiang), there is no gap between initiates and initiates, since in the main thing they are united - they decided to break with the routine of everyday life; but their fundamental difference is from the unenlightened, who reject Knowledge. The process of cognition involves not only the body (Jonathan and his associates are constantly improving their flight techniques), the intellect (the questions “what is this?” “how to do it?” are constantly heard), but also the spirit; therefore, to get closer to Knowledge means to gain wholeness.
This acquisition is given through the metaphor of flight, because for Jonathan everything in the existence of a seagull is flight, but even his students do not immediately decide to accept this: “... Not one of them /.../ could imagine that the flight of ideas is the same reality like the wind, like the flight of a bird."

“Your entire body, from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other,” Jonathan repeated again and again, “is nothing more than your thought, expressed in a form accessible to your vision. Break the chains that bind your thoughts, and you will break the chains that bind your body...
But no matter what examples he gave, the students perceived his words as an amusing invention, and most of all they wanted to sleep” (117).

And only when the seagulls realize that they are free, they are able to fly even with damaged wings, as happens to Maynard, one of Jonathan's students. The following significant dialogue takes place between them:

“- Maynard, you are free, you have the right to live here and now as your “I”, your true “I” tells you, and nothing can stop you...
- Are you saying that I can fly?
- I say that you are free.
Just as easily and simply as it was said, Kirk Maynard spread his wings - without the slightest effort! - and rose into the dark night sky" (128-129).

In the third part of the story, the gospel allusions are most clear, since it is here that the development of the theme of the confrontation between Jonathan and the inert Flock reaches its climax: “The usual loud quarrels and disputes on the shore suddenly died down, eight thousand eyes stared, without blinking, at Jonathan’s detachment, as if the seagulls had seen a giant knife raised above their heads” (121). Jonathan's students are still unable to overcome their rigidity of thinking, still halfway to understanding ( “Can we learn to fly like you? - a voice came to Jonathan from the crowd of seagulls. - You are special, you are talented, you are extraordinary, you are not like others. - Look at Fletcher! To Lowell! On Charles-Roland! On Jadi Lee! Are they also special, also talented and extraordinary? No more than you and no more than me. The only difference, the only difference, is that they began to understand who they were and began to behave like seagulls. His students, with the exception of Fletcher, moved restlessly. They weren't sure that was the case." /132-133/).

However, Bach is not going to show Jonathan as a tragic figure: next to him is the talented Fletcher, who no longer believes in the legends that the Teacher is the “Son of the Great Seagull,” but still doubts whether Jonathan was “a thousand years ahead of his time.” . Their conversation is given in a certain context - “after Training Flights at High Speeds”, so Jonathan responds to the traditional “misunderstanding” only with a “sigh”, and to the student’s lucky guess (“maybe we /…/ are ahead of the usual ideas about the flight of seagulls” ), as well as to his unifying “we,” reacts completely comically: “This is already something,” said Jonathan, turned over the wing and for some time slid through the air with his paws upside down” (133).

Undoubtedly, the hero's understanding of true love is closer to the teachings of Christ than orthodox ideas about Christian love (“I don’t understand how you can love a maddened flock of birds that just tried to kill you.” - Oh, Fletch! You shouldn’t love a maddened flock of birds! You don't have to repay hatred and anger with love. You have to train yourself to see the truly good seagull in each of these birds and help them see the same seagull in themselves. That's what I call love. ? /143/). It is also true that Bach’s hero is still not very similar to Christ: for a Christian, life is a test to which his virtue is subjected; For Jonathan, this is a training flight, the quality of which can always be improved. The cyclic composition of the story allows us to more accurately understand this idea: the flight training of a variety of heroes is shown many times - from the enlightened to those still in the darkness of ignorance, many stages of knowledge are shown, and the infinity of this process is shown. Therefore, the story ends with a symbolic scene of eternal flight - knowledge - love: “Fletcher... suddenly saw them all [the students - T.D.] as they really were, saw them for a moment, but at that moment he not only liked them - he loved them all. "The sky's the limit, Jonathan?" - he thought with a smile. And he rushed in pursuit of knowledge” (151).

It is fair to consider Richard Bach's work one of the most profound and inspiring philosophical allegories of the twentieth century. The path of the hero of the story is the path to freedom and unlimited possibilities of the human personality. “By claiming that you cannot do something, you deprive yourself of omnipotence” - this is the author’s credo; and he convincingly proves the practical value of this postulate. Bach is a storyteller and a fantasist, but his fantasies bring the reader closer to that True Reality, which is hidden from our eyes by the veil of everyday life. True, in order to achieve the Truth, one must make a considerable sacrifice - courageously reject boredom, that is, the limitations and colorlessness of one’s existence, and decide to fill it with miracles and adventures.

“This book by Richard Bach has a double impact,” wrote the famous American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury. “She gives me a feeling of flight and restores my youth.”

R. Bach. A seagull named Jonathan Livingston // Trans. from English Y. Rodman; S.-Pb., 2002. P.71. (Further references to this publication are given by indicating the page in the text of the article).

The parable was first published in 1970, and after its reprint in 1972 it became a truly bestseller and brought its author world fame. It is unlikely that anyone perceives this parable as a fairy tale “about birds”. The analogy with the lives of people and society is too obvious. The very dedication at the beginning of the book indicates that the story will be about us, about people: “To the non-fictional Jonathan the Seagull, who lives in each of us.”

To a certain extent, this short, deeply philosophical story is “must-read” for anyone who begins to engage in spiritual practice and self-improvement; for everyone who wants to explore the world, life, space, to understand what he will encounter along the way.

By engaging in spiritual practice, and after a while, returning to this book, you begin to understand its meaning more deeply and subtly. And now, a moment comes when it becomes completely clear: there is not a single superfluous word in this parable. Richard Bach himself admits that this parable was simply “dictated to him from above,” and he did not come up with it all himself. Later, in his book “Bridge Over Eternity,” he will describe how they tried to “reach out” to him.

But let's return to The Seagull. Why does it make such a strong impression on everyone for so many years? new reader? It is difficult to answer this question unequivocally, but one thing is certain: the curtain opens before us over the secret, intimate dreams that each of us keeps in the depths of our hearts - the opportunity to acquire inner freedom, meaningfulness of life, a broad vision and understanding of the world and the infinity of movement along the path of improvement . Together with Jonathan, we understand that nothing is impossible in this world, everything depends only on the strength of spirit and determination of the person walking. In any case, after reading this story, you suddenly stop and realize that you need to think about a lot, figure out a lot, understand a lot and, more importantly, a lot needs to be done.

Many facets of life that are revealed and become obvious in the parable, we are not always ready to immediately recognize in the everyday bustle. Recognize that we all “play” by the same rules, those described in “The Seagull.”

Unfortunately, people who set themselves goals higher than career, power, fame or material well-being usually “fall out” from the framework of standard society. From a “well-established track”, the ending of which is already known to everyone in advance and cannot be canceled. So Jonathan, of course, tried to “play like everyone else,” but his inquisitiveness and great desire to understand the essence of life did not allow him to do this. This, of course, left an imprint on his relationship with his family, but what he achieved later could only serve as a reason for his parents to be proud of their son. He never turned his back on others. Rather, he was tormented by the fact that the others “didn’t want to believe in the joy of flight, didn’t want to open their eyes and see!”

The attentive reader will understand that no miracles can serve as proof of any, even very high, level of human development. Rather, on the contrary, they can turn against the “miracle worker” himself, as happened with Jonathan. By expulsion he paid for the speed of his achievements, and the desire for his death became the response of the maddened pack to his revival of the deceased Fletcher. But she literally just deified him.

Both Jonathan's training and work in the parable are aimed at achieving greater and greater speed of flight. What speed are we actually talking about? It’s not about the speed of movement... It’s clear that this is just an analogy with the speed of understanding life, with the speed of one’s spiritual growth. Movement in this direction, the approach to this speed begins with the simplest and most familiar - horizontal flight, moreover, slow, i.e. from internal stop, internal silence. Then, more and more complex elements of aerobatics are gradually mastered, i.e. the ability to apply the acquired Knowledge in life. And in the perfect version, speed and movement no longer depend on either place or time (teleportation effects).

Perfection, as we know, is limitless. “Heaven is neither a place nor a time. Heaven is the attainment of perfection." After this world there is a next one - a higher one. In it, spiritual training is not a path for the elite, it is already the norm for everyone. This is the most important thing they do there. By the way, there are no descriptions of how they earn their living or have fun there. There are no sick or old people there. There is a completely different meaning and purpose of life. It is filled with conscious movement along the Path of understanding Life. And learning also begins with a simple thing - with meditation: Jonathan was immediately put to study, sitting with his eyes closed. And there is a way even further... this can be seen in the description of Chang’s departure and how the restructuring of his body took place - his body acquired completely different qualities and properties. It could transmit such types of energies that it was even difficult (painful) to look at it at the moment of transition to a higher world. And it becomes very clear that God or the next link of the mind (or whatever we call it) is a huge, infinite structure, a hierarchy of increasingly developed souls moving along the path of improvement with enormous tasks and responsibilities. And everything obeys the law: “We choose the next world based on what we learned in this one. If we have not learned anything, then the next world will turn out to be exactly the same as this one.”

Unfortunately, for the majority to understand that there is a path to spiritual improvement and that it is necessary to move along it consciously, it sometimes takes a frighteningly long time. To paraphrase Sullivan, these are thousands and thousands of lives before the first vague guess appears that life is not limited to food and the struggle for power. “And then hundreds more lives before we begin to understand that there is something called perfection, and another hundred until we are convinced that the meaning of life is to achieve perfection and tell others about it.”


But the main thing that I want to focus on is that the parable describes a way out of this state of affairs in society, when mercantile, selfish interests and the meaningless routine of life without a spiritual basis and purpose rule. The parable outlines the very idea of ​​building a community in which aspiring people could live and improve spiritually.

Everyone needs an example, and not somewhere out there - no one knows where, but here, in the middle of the “Flock”. Unfortunately, for our society, one person with any super skills or super abilities is not yet an example. An effective example is a group of like-minded people and a clear education system - a school that provides a spiritual, and not any other, education, and whose graduates are people of a different level of understanding of the world. Jonathan returned to the Pack precisely in order to create such an example and show a way out of routine everyday life to a meaningful, interesting life. He created such a group of students, like-minded friends, and after some time this clear example worked - almost the entire flock joined them. There were, of course, difficulties and prohibitions to communicate with the “exiles.” But no prohibitions will force people to give up the opportunity to learn to live better. Strive to be more perfect and happier, especially if you have an example before your eyes that clearly shows that all this is possible. After all, it is in the nature of any person to strive for the best.

The usual option is 65-70 years old, and in a cemetery. Is this so attractive? Here is Jonathan, who was not satisfied with this option, and ended up in a system - a “school”, where the norm is to train and study. Everyone learns Life there, and it’s interesting! To put their life on the line, for them it is, as it were, a matter of course. There is no trade there. If they are offered to move through space-time, then they will look for an opportunity to do this, to learn how to do it faster! And this is the middle link. The difference between them and the Pack is already so huge that it is simply pointless to talk about the top echelon where Chang went.

“The Seagull” clearly shows the scheme of giving Knowledge - through the construction of a “Spiritual Center” in society.

And the very name of the hero of the parable was not chosen by chance. Jonathan... these are Ivan, and John, and Nathan, and Ian... the most common names. Livingston... this was the traveler who discovered the Victoria Falls, that is, “Victory”.

Richard Bach is a born dreamer and inventor. Despite the fact that most of his books are emphatically autobiographical, all the facts here are invariably seasoned with a fair dose of fiction, and often one gets the impression that he is simply mystifying the reader. The above fully applies to the mysterious story associated with Bach’s most famous book - the story “The Seagull Called Jonathan Livingston.”

2.2 System of images, conflict, symbolism in the story “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”

One day, while walking along the foggy bank of California's Belmont Shore Canal, Bach heard a voice say the words: "A seagull named Jonathan Livingston." Obeying this voice, Bach hurried home, sat down at his desk and wrote down the vision that passed before his inner gaze like a movie. But the vision was short, and there was no continuation. Bach tried to complete the story on his own, but nothing worked for him - until, eight years later, he dreamed of a continuation. In 1970, "The Seagull" was published as a separate edition and immediately became a bestseller. There is perhaps no need to retell its simple plot here; We will limit ourselves to just a few comments concerning the strictly philosophical side of this allegorical story.

The story of Jonathan the seagull is, in fact, the story of a bodhisattva, a Buddhist saint who was able to free himself from the shackles of earthly conventions, but returned to Earth in order to help free other suffering beings. There is severe asceticism, asceticism, miracles, and the idea that Knowledge can be transferred only to those who are ready to accept it. Echoes of Buddhist philosophy are heard very clearly in the story; sometimes it is even present here in the form of almost literal quotes:

“Most of us move forward so slowly. We move from one world to another, almost the same, and immediately forget where we came from; we don’t care where they take us, we only care about what’s happening right now. Can you imagine , how many lives must we live before we have the first vague idea that life is not limited to food, struggle and power in the Pack? Thousands of lives, Jonathan, ten thousand more, before we begin to understand that there is something. , called perfection, and a hundred more, until we are convinced: the meaning of life is to achieve perfection and tell others about it. The same law, of course, applies here: we choose the next world in accordance with what we have learned in this one. If we have learned nothing, the next world will be the same as this one, and we will have to overcome the same obstacles again with the same lead weights on our paws."

However, even from this fragment it is clear that the philosophy of Richard Bach differs significantly from Buddhism. Buddhists argue that suffering is an inevitable accompaniment of existence; the liberation they strive for is the complete cessation of existence, the return of the individual to the original and impersonal Emptiness that lies at the basis of all things. We will not find anything like this in Bach. First of all, he denies the tragedy of existence. "Your ignorance is measured by how deeply you believe in injustice and human tragedy," he says. In his opinion, we ourselves create all our problems and misfortunes because we do not know any other way of existence or consider it reprehensible. A world beyond our imagination, a world where we are all doomed to work to maintain our own lives, is an excellent excuse for the laziness and timidity of our imagination.

Moreover, the liberation that Bach speaks of is not liberation from being, or even liberation from one’s own self. “Your whole body, from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, is nothing more than your thought, expressed in a form accessible to your vision. Break the chains that bind your thought, and you will break the chains that bind your body,” Jonathan tells his students. Having realized the world as his illusion, a person acquires qualitatively new opportunities and, ultimately, finds himself in a new world, which gives him even more opportunities for self-improvement. In The Seagull this world is called Heaven; however, Heaven is not at all the limit of attainable perfection. There are no limits: “what the caterpillar calls the End of the World, the Master will call a butterfly”; but every butterfly is just a caterpillar for the next stage of development.

This is the picture of the world that Richard Bach paints for us; and it must be said that some people find it quite inspiring. “The Seagull” helps people look at all the problems of everyday life from a bird’s eye view, realize the power of their consciousness and believe in the power of their own spirit. “This book by Richard Bach has a double impact,” wrote the famous American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury. “She gives me the feeling of flight and restores my youth.”

The main symbol, a wide strip running through the entire work of Richard Bach, is the sky. The theme of flight, sky, horizons appears, if not on every page of his works, then certainly on every second.

The sky is not just a metaphor running through the entire work of Richard Bach. Heaven is his life; he took to the skies hundreds of times - on gliders, on light aircraft made of wood and fabric, on combat fighters and high-speed airliners. He is extremely realistic about everything that concerns flights - from aerodynamics to the flight qualities of aircraft engines. But at the same time, he believes that “people couldn’t fly for a long time because they were sure that it was impossible, and that’s why they didn’t know the simplest first principle of aerodynamics. I want to believe that there is another principle: we don’t need airplanes to fly.” . or visit other planets. We can learn to do this without machines.

And not only to fly: Richard Bach is sure that a person can do everything he can imagine. The idea that supports this belief in him is that the whole reality of our world is just an illusion, and if we realize this properly, we can master it and do with it whatever we want. This idea formed the basis of most of his books and, obviously, largely determined the course of his life.

2.3 Universal and spiritual values ​​of teaching as the main criterion of R. Bach’s “Illusions”

To consider this aspect of the work of the great American writer, we undoubtedly must plunge into the world that the main character of the work “Illusions” Donald Shimoda, the wandering Messiah, offers us.

Donald Shimoda calls himself a "reluctant messiah." He says that all people are children of God, and that each of them is able to do whatever he wants. But his mission fails: even Richard Bach, Shimoda's most capable student, having learned several miracles, never achieved true omnipotence. Shimoda argues that human life is like a movie, and each of us watches exactly the movie that he wanted to watch. Thus, all the troubles and tragedies that happen to us in life are just consequences of the perversion of our taste (for example, an addiction to tragedy or horror) or an insufficiently successful choice of film. But we should remember that we write our own films and act in them ourselves, and therefore can change them at any time.

Another time he teaches Richard how to walk on the surface of a pond. He explains to him that water "is neither solid nor liquid. You and I decide for ourselves what it will be for us. If you want the water to be liquid, act as if it were liquid, drink it. If you want it to be air, act as if she were air, breathe her. After Richard actually manages to walk on water and breathe water, the question arises: is it possible to do the same with land: And Donald Shimoda demonstrates to him the following: “He easily walked to the shore, as if he was walking on a drawn lake. But the moment his feet stepped on the coastal sand, he began to sink and, having taken a few steps, went shoulder-deep into the ground covered with grass. It seemed that the pond suddenly turned into an island, and the land around him became the sea. into the pasture, splashing and raising dark, greasy splashes, then swam on its very surface, and then stood up and walked along it. Suddenly I saw a miracle: a man was walking on the ground!”

“There are better ways to move mountains,” Shimoda says in response to a line about a powerful tractor that can move mountains. Further, emphasizing the well-known gospel motif, grain appears - however, not mustard, but sesame, and moreover, in a rather unexpected context. “If you have the imagination of a sesame seed, nothing is impossible for you,” says Shimoda. For him, faith and imagination are synonymous; but the second word, in his opinion, more accurately reflects the essence of the matter.

All imaginary miracles are real insofar as they occur in an imaginary reality. Each of us is free to fill this reality with miracles and adventures - or to make it limited and colorless and earn our bread by the sweat of our brow. “In order to become free and happy,” it is written in his pocket “Messiah’s Handbook,” “you must sacrifice boredom. Such a sacrifice is not always easy to make.” And indeed: while Shimoda himself performs miracles, everyone treats him with reverence, as a new Christ. But as soon as he tells people: “Try it yourself,” they become indignant; some even call him the Antichrist.