Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach was a fun and interesting read. It is also short. I got the recommendation from Scott Adams’ blog. It was on his must read list of persuasion. It was advertised as a book that would open your mind about the world. I am not sure that it changed my fundamental belief system… but it was entertaining non-the-less.
The basic premise is an average man working in a mechanics shop is a messiah on earth much like Jesus. He gathers followers, has to quit his job because of the crowds, leads them and preaches wisdom, and then…quits. He leaves the crowd, goes to pray on his own, gets the go-ahead from God, and abandons his followers. They are stunned and he has vanished.
This is where our protagonist enters. He is a loner that flies customers for $3/ride in his little aircraft in the early 20th century in the Midwest. He is flying one day, spots another pilot, lands and sparks a conversation. He notices that this stranger never needs gas, never gets bugs on his plane, and can perform feats with it that should be impossible. They seemed bound together. He soon learns that the man he has friended is in fact our missing messiah. Not only that, this man claims that he is not special, that this world is all an illusion, and we can live in multiple realities at once. Life here is not real life, all illusions. He even has a handy little handbook for messiahs that he passes along to our man that happens to open to a passage the man needs every time it flips open. Convenient right?
What he soon learns is that our messiah isn’t the only messiah, in fact, there are a shit ton of these dudes. They are the enlightened ones that have realized that world is nothing more than illusions and it can be modified with mere thought and understanding. Add to that, our messiah and our protagonist are directly intertwined and our man just doesn’t remember. He also happens to be a messiah. He learns the art rather quickly and pretty soon we’re +1 at the messiah table.
It was fun to think of the world as completely malleable. That you can walk on water and swim in the earth. That you can suspend wrenches in the sky. That you could heal the sick. If only you realized that this world is not real and the other participants are all part of the illusion. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but it was far from profound. I don’t feel like I got a lot of valuable lessons from it.
But looking at it from the perspective of persuasion it is always great to remember that the world is subjective. No one sees the world they way you do. It’s easy to forget this. Your world view is shaped by your unique experiences, and even your current mood. Each one of us is a special little snowflake. And maybe that is the point, my world is an illusion compared to your view of reality. You can create other people’s realities by guiding thoughts and situations. In that sense the book is spot on. If you’re goal is to be persuasive, you must always remember that people’s beliefs and outlooks are malleable and you can use that to your advantage. If you want proof no need to look further than our current political situation/climate. It’s true that facts don’t matter. Facts are not what shape our worlds.
Deep Thoughts 