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 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
This chapter opens with an excerpt from the handbook that states everyone has the power to make their wishes come true, but this requires work.
On their day off, Don walks on water and invites Richard to join him. Richard walks on water and remarks on how easily he has gotten used to miracles. Then, Don explains to Richard that the land can also be liquid if he believes it to be. Don swims blissfully in the field, but Richard steps onto the land and immediately sinks in. Richard feels like he is drowning in dirt and calls to Don for help; Don tells him to help himself. Richard stops panicking, imagines the land as a solid, and climbs out.
He is covered in dirt and washing himself in the water, then goes to change out of his wet clothes. Don laughs at him, and Richard realizes there must be an easier way to have cleaned off. Don tells Richard not to forget their experience: It was neither a miracle nor a dream. Even though reality is an illusion, the beauty of their experience is real. A final passage from the handbook says that even though the world is an illusion, one can express reality there. They can also express nonsense or lies.
Chapter 12 Summary
The men are walking through a town, and Richard asks Don if he can walk through walls. Don says he does not like the question because it suggests that he exists in a limited space. Richard keeps trying to ask Don this question, but Don keeps insisting that Richard revise the question to express curiosity without assuming limitations. Don then explains that he doesn’t do anything, he just sees something as done and it is. Don reiterates that the wall and the body are both illusions. Richard says Don is getting through to him, but Don says the day he gets through is the day he leaves Richard alone. Richard is about to reply when Don turns sharply into a brick wall and disappears. Richard walks back to the planes alone.
Richard thinks Don does not live in the same world as everyone else, and Don, surprised, praises his observation. Don becomes disappointed though when he realizes that Richard did not grasp the scope of his own remark. Don explains that no one truly lives in the same world because each person has a unique set of experiences and self-constructed boundaries that make it impossible for anyone else to truly live in their world. The Messiah’s Handbook tells Richard that fictional characters are more real than flesh-and-blood people.
Chapter 13 Summary
Don and Richard sit near a campfire, and Don exclaims that it is a wonderful world where anyone can do whatever they want to do. Richard corrects him and claims that people can do whatever they like, as long as they do not hurt anyone else.
A man approaches their campfire: He is wolf-like, thin, and wearing a cape. Don and Richard welcome him and ask if they can do anything to help him. The man speaks in a heavily accented voice and explains that he needs to drink blood for sustenance, and without it he will die. He asks if he can drink one pint of their blood. Richard jumps up in horror. The man apologizes and explains that he will be in terrible pain if he does not get any blood. Richard threatens him.
The man stands up tall, drops the accent, and asks to be dismissed. Don tells him to go, and Richard realizes the vampire had been created by Don. Don explains that people cannot always worry about hurting others and reiterates that all people are free to do whatever they want to do. If they want to hurt themselves, they can, and if they want to hurt others, they can do that, too.
Chapter 14 Summary
Richard asks Don if he ever gets lonely. Richard explains how he often sees a woman he is interested in, but never stays in one place long enough to have a relationship. Don compares himself and Richard to magnets, claiming they can attract whatever they like by pouring out their “voltage” (146) into the world. Richard feels that he must have faith that he will attract the right people. For Don, faith is a word that people used before they understood imagination. If you have imagination, all things are possible to you. The whole world is just your imagination at work. Don prompts Richard to imagine something into reality, and Richard picks a blue feather. He looks all day and does not see a blue feather. At dinnertime, Richard is elated to find the brand name on his milk carton is “Blue Feather Farms” (152). Richard believes he has magnetized his first object. Don explains that if a person wants the actual object, they must visualize themselves with it when thinking it into being.
Chapter 15 Summary
Richard works on his plane, and Don flies a final passenger before coming to speak to Richard. Don asks Richard why he doesn’t have a real job and acts irresponsibly by making money as a biplane pilot. Richard recognizes that the question is a test. At first, he gives a long answer that contains the right elements—he lives to be happy and doesn’t care about impressing others—but the ideas become convoluted. Don humorously tells Richard that his answers need to be more concise and quotable. Richard draws himself up and puts on his best impression of a wise and all-knowing messiah. He and the world are free to live however they choose. Don laughs but tells Richard he must learn to keep it short or he will lose 99% of his audience, which doesn’t seem to bother Richard. He will say what he wants to say, however he wants to say it. Don tells Richard he graduated and refers to him as “Master.”
Chapters 10-15 Analysis
These chapters complete the second arc of Richard’s apprenticeship journey. By Chapter 11, Richard has come to accept miracles as commonplace, but his commitment to these new perceptions is tested when he almost drowns in the land. Don forces Richard to cope with his new reality when refusing to help him. This creates a crisis, which poses the idea that Richard’s new reality may be a danger to him, especially if he has any doubt about his newfound freedoms. This highlights the theme of Letting Go of Illusions and Perceived Limitations. Although Richard survives his near-drowning with good humor, the incident reinforces that limitations protect us and letting go can come with its share of dangers. This relates back to the parable from Chapter 1 about the bottom-dweller in the river: Letting go was painful, but enlightenment was worth it.
In Chapter 12, when Richard asks Don if he can walk through walls, he is really asking how Don manipulates space and time. Richard still seeks to understand the literal aspects of Don’s miracles, which shows that he still sees the world as grounded in reality rather than illusion. This question leads to a discussion about dimensions and space-time that suggests time is fluid and does not bind reality as many perceive it to, emphasizing The Freedom to Be. When Don walks through the wall at the end of the chapter, Richard does not attempt to do the same. This symbolizes the pace at which Richard is comprehending his new reality: The philosophies may be easy to grasp, but performing miracles and changing reality takes time and practice. Richard walks back to their planes, accepting and understanding this journey.
Richard’s interaction with Don’s fictional vampire in Chapter 13 teaches him a lesson about The Individual Versus the Masses. People have conflicting needs, and living authentically might mean infringing on someone else. The incident highlights Don’s teaching that the freedom to be anything includes the freedom to be selfish, to say no, and even to hurt others. This implies that even criminality is a valid life choice, a subject that Don does not directly address. In his philosophy, spirituality and morality are not the same. Morality can actually inhibit freedom; it is more of a character trait than a prerequisite of being.
In Chapter 14, when Don and Richard discuss the power of attraction, they are speaking about other people but also referring implicitly to their own relationship. It has been revealed on several occasions that Richard and Don have known each other spiritually in many different dimensions and lifetimes. Their likeness brings them together again and again. When Richard asks Don if he ever gets lonely, he is asking if Don is lonely without him. At this point in the novel, Richard recognizes that he and Don have a deep friendship rooted in their spiritual and cerebral connection. Don suggests ways that Richard can “magnetize” other like people or even objects to himself, and this is an ominous moment. This, among other remarks about the Master’s ultimate fate, foreshadows an end to his and Richard’s togetherness.
When Richard magnetizes the blue feather in Chapter 15, he manifests the words and not the actual object. This suggests that some of the answers a person seeks are not obvious or do not come in a form they expect. When Don suggests that Richard picture himself with what he is trying to attract, he is setting up the Epilogue of the novel, in which Richard thinks of Don in a dream, and they are able to communicate after Don’s death.
At this point in the novel, Richard displays an intimate knowledge of Don and his philosophies. Don and Richard no longer have a student-teacher relationship, and they treat each other as equals.
