37 pages • 1 hour read
Richard BachIllusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Richard sits alone in a quiet field and thinks about why Don chose to stay among the crowds after Richard left. He wonders what Don meant when he said, “It’s all illusions!” (83).
While going through his things, Richard finds the nine-sixteenths wrench Don had floated to him the day before. Richard tries, unsuccessfully, to make the wrench float. He finally gives up, wondering what the point of living is if everything is an illusion. Richard sings, loudly, a song he makes up about his airplane. In doing so, he forgets his questions about and the difference between reality and illusion. Before he falls asleep, Richard wishes Don well, wherever he is, and hopes he finds what he’s looking for. At that moment, the Messiah’s Handbook falls out of his pocket to a page that reads: “[Y]our true family is not of one blood, but/ of respect and joy in/ each other’s life” (84). Richard doesn’t understand how the passage applies to him and expresses suspicion about books in general. Then he goes to sleep.
Richard awakens at dawn as something brushes against his face. He swats at what he mistakes for a bug and hurts his hand: It is Don’s wrench floating in front of his face. Richard marvels at it, knowing that Don is miles away. Richard examines the wrench and then gives up, believing there’s a simple explanation that he’s missing. He cooks breakfast and, as he is finishing his pan bread, Don lands in the field in his Travel Air 4000. Richard tells Don he’s late and shares the bread. Don tells Richard the bread is terrible, and Richard gets upset. He wonders why nobody likes his pan bread—today’s is burnt and has some grass in it—and Don tells him that Richard thinks it’s good because he believes that it is. After arguing a bit, Don refuses the bread and opts for canned peaches.
Richard wonders how Don found him while flying over thousands of miles of prairie with no landmarks. Don tells Richard it’s because they are both miracle workers and need to stick together. He points out that Richard made the wrench levitate in his sleep, but Richard does not respond. Instead, Richard speculates to Don that they have some mystical agreement that Richard can’t remember; they met thousands of years ago, and now they’re meeting again. He wonders why Don isn’t happy and what he gets out of meeting people like Richard if he already knows all of life’s secrets.
Don doesn’t like that people want miracles but don’t believe in what he has to say. Hearing this, Richard realizes Don is lonely. Richard points out that if Don’s happiness depends on what someone else does, then he will never be truly happy. Don has an epiphany, tells Richard he is right, and happily falls asleep.
Chapter 7 Summary
Richard awakens to a blaring symphony. Don shouts for the music to stop, and soon it becomes a quiet celestial melody. Still, Don shouts for the music to stop, and soon it goes away. Richard is surprised to hear that Don thinks he is the cause of the music. Don offers no explanation and goes back to sleep. The Messiah’s Handbook falls open and reads, “Argue /for your limitations, /and sure enough, /they’re/ yours” (100). Richard doesn’t understand the connection or anything about messiahs.
Chapter 8 Summary
Don and Richard fly some passengers in Wisconsin. Afterward, they walk around town, and Richard asks Don about the meaning of life. Don doesn’t reply and instead insists that they go see the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Richard wants to go back to the planes—he’s already seen the movie twice—but he follows Don. While they are watching the movie, Don starts asking Richard why he is there. Richard, immersed in the story, insists that Don stop talking, but he doesn’t stop talking until another moviegoer shows irritation.
After the movie, Don explains that movies are like the illusions that people live in daily. When people become transported by motion pictures, they agree to believe certain things that aren’t really there to create a new reality. Don correlates movie-watching to the complexities of space-time and explains that all of reality is a person’s commitment to the illusion. Then, Don explains the concept of the Is: “The Is doesn’t even know about our illusions and games. It only knows Itself, and us in its likeness, perfect and finished” (112). Richard asks Don if he ever gets bored living in just one dimension. Don answers all of Richard’s questions with more profound questions. Richard jokes that he might have all this messiah stuff down in a week. Don says he hopes it doesn’t take that long.
Chapter 9 Summary
Don and Richard fly from town to town, picking up passengers. Richard notices that he does not care as much for his wealth or comfort; he cares much more about the lessons he learns and the experiences he has with Don. At some point, he realizes that the miracles he witnesses aren’t really miracles. The handbook instructs Richard to imagine a perfect universe, then claims the “Is” has imagined it better.
Chapter 10 Summary
Richard is sitting with Don, trying to make clouds disappear from the sky. He is unsuccessful and asks Don to remove a cloud, choosing the biggest one. Don easily makes the cloud disappear. He explains to Richard that he simply removed the cloud from his mind and that’s all there was to it. Richard chooses a tiny cloud and, after seven minutes of straining and focusing mental laser beams at it, the cloud goes away. He is excited, but Don insists he was too attached to the cloud, and that’s why it took so long to disappear. The handbook’s passage says that clouds don’t know where they are going or why, but people can lift themselves about the horizon to find the answer.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
This section begins Richard’s mentorship journey with Don. In Chapter 5, although Richard has left Don, it is apparent he cannot stop thinking about what Don had to say. When Richard attempts to levitate the wrench, it symbolizes Richard’s continuing desire to understand Don’s teachings, even though he remains skeptical. This initiative proves Richard’s potential for the role of messiah and highlights the theme of Letting Go of Illusions and Perceived Limitations. After failing to levitate the tool, Richard finally gives himself permission to stop worrying about trying to understand it all. Although this seems to deviate from Don’s teachings, quitting highlights the theme of The Freedom to Be and is a continuation of Don’s divine influence. Richard feels elated after deciding not to worry about levitating the wrench because he has the freedom to do or be whatever he likes. Richard’s singing is symbolic of this freedom to live whatever life he chooses. He makes the words up as he goes, living in the present and only worrying about himself and his biplane.
Richard does not put his first encounter with Don completely behind him. When he subconsciously makes the wrench levitate, it represents his inner self opening to the enlightenment of Don’s teachings. When Don arrives, Richard remarks that he is late, which confirms the idea that he has not completely dismissed Don. This also highlights a somewhat mystic connection between Don and Richard that goes beyond friendship.
The incident with Richard’s pan bread embodies the theme of The Individual Versus the Masses. Richard believes his pan bread is very good, despite Don and many others telling him it is not. Richard has already decided that the bread is good, so to him, it is. That is the core of Don’s philosophy: A person controls their own illusions. Even the crowd cannot disabuse someone of their beliefs if they are held strongly enough.
In Chapter 8, Don reveals to Richard that Richard is also a messiah. When Richard initially reacts in disbelief, this is representative of Richard being stopped by his own perceived limitations. Richard never considered that he had the ability to perform divine acts. His perceived inabilities are what truly inhibit him. As Richard sees Don create miracle after miracle, he becomes more comfortable with the idea that he may also be able to perform miracles. Richard, in a sense, gets used to the divine, and his perceived limitations fall away as he witnesses Don defying the illusions of reality.
When Don uses the analogy of movies being smaller realities where people allow themselves to be a part of the illusion, he defines the main principles of his spiritual philosophy. When the movie is playing and Don tries to engage Richard in conversation, it is shown how upset people can become when you try to remove them from their realities. Since Richard was so engaged with the film, the small interruption by Don has a large impact on Richard and on the other moviegoers. This foreshadows the impact Don’s teachings will have on the public.
At the end of the chapter, Don saying he hopes Richard will learn how to be a messiah in less than a week introduces an ominous tone. This, combined with Richard’s previous suggestion that messiahs die horrible deaths, creates an atmosphere of impending doom. It is a brief but important departure from the light, joking tone that characterizes many of Don and Richard’s conversations.
In Chapters 9 and 10, Richard becomes increasingly inquisitive and begins confidently asking Don about what it is like to be a messiah. The progression of Richard’s spiritual journey is rooted in these questions. Although many of the questions are never directly answered, Richard finds that he enjoys thinking about them. In Chapter 9, Richard is ascending to a higher plane of thought by allowing himself to ponder these larger questions, instead of focusing on materialistic things like profit. He begins to measure time qualitatively by what he learns, rather than quantitatively by days, towns, or numbers of passengers.
By the end of Chapter 10, Richard performs the small miracle of making a cloud disappear with Don’s help. Richard’s perception of reality is changing as he becomes accustomed to Don’s abilities and his own ability to mimic him. When Richard tries to make a cloud disappear, he learns that he must wholly commit to his new reality, just as he committed to the limitations that defined his previous reality.
