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Interview with Richard Bach
Adventures of the Spirit, 2nd Volume
Part 3 of 3 parts

THINKING ALLOWED
Conversations On The Leading Edge
Of Knowledge and Discovery
With Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove
COPYRIGHT (C) 1998 THINKING ALLOWED PRODUCTIONS
Reprinted with permission from Thinking Allowed Productions

MISHLOVE: But the particular passion that you have for flight seems to me to be so very analogous to the passion that you have for imagination. They both represent a kind of freedom of the spirit.

BACH: The way I keep my feet on the ground is to fly. That is my home. Those are my roots. My tree is inverted. My roots are in the air. There is somethingthat is so -- it's almost literally inspiring. You breathe differently. You're so deeply at home with this sense of sky. For me -- I guess I'm a slow learner -- it's very easy for me to think of myself as in fact a spiritual creature, when around me every day are clouds drifting by; when far below me are tiny little houses of a little planet that I have chosen. I chose to be born on this planet in this, quote, "place," in this, quote, "time," for my own good purposes, for the fun of learning these principles, and remembering who I am. And in communicating to whoever else is of my family --

MISHLOVE: Your larger family.

BACH: My larger family, who also wonder, "Why --"

MISHLOVE: Richard, if we look at the whole body of your work, in a way they all fit together. They're all so autobiographical, really. There's a sense in which, OK, you're here in this chair with me right now, and people will be in our audience at different times in the future, but I have a sense that you're living in the past, you're living in the future, you're living on other planets and in other bodies at once.

BACH: So many thanks to Silicon Valley for what's happening here. Because what used to be a yearning wish with a book -- a manuscript would go off to the publisher; the book would come out, and I'd say, "I wonder who's going to read this?" Wouldn't it be great if I could talk with a person who was drawn, magnetized to these same ideas? So much we have in common, but we'll never meet. I have a family that I will never meet."

And there was this kind of sorrow. And now, now along comes the computer; along comes wonderful cyberspace. And there is in fact, for the last four months, on CompuServe, there is a section that's called the New Age Section. If anyone, anyone in the world, gets up on CompuServe and types "GO NEWAGE," they will be presented with a little menu or something, and there's a section, it's called Section 14, "Illusions and Beyond," just for people who are interested in talking about this kind of idea. And here we meet.

And it has been utter fascination for me to watch this community expand. At first it was a very few friends, that became tiny little family, that became a little village, that became a community. And it's all perched out on the edge of space-time. It's like I close my eyes and I see it as if I'm watching San Francisco at night from a hilltop -- a sparkling web of light. And there are now several hundred people there. And none of us knows what each other looks like, or what our
financial status is, or social status, or what kind of car we drive, or what kind of accent we have, or what race we are, or what our education is. All we know is we share ideas, and we do it with joy.

Every once in a while a new light comes on line, and some soul will come in and say, "Hi! I had this craziest coincidence. I
just got on CompuServe two days ago, and I was looking at what was available, and here's this -- Well, I read Illusions some time ago, and it touched me, and here you've got a whole section to talk -- My name is ..." And suddenly there's "Welcome ... Welcome ... Welcome," and the whole shimmering web of silver lights just glitters and hums, and it is so fascinating to see this sense not only of community, but of deeper, expansive family, beyond borders. There's people from
Germany, from Canada, from all over.

MISHLOVE: It's as if the computer networks, which I'm also actively involved in, become an extension of our own nervous system, and it allows our souls to kind of flow across the planet.

BACH: That's right. There is no trivia; there's no chitchat; there is no, "How are you today?" "I'm fine." "Hey, how about them Mets?" or "Terrible weather we've been having." There is no talk of -- current events doesn't even come up. It's ideas right away.

The first question you're likely to get when you pop on line,
"What's the most important thing in the world to you? What matters to you more than anything else in all the world?" "Well, I was just saying hello." So there's this great, joyful, playful intercommunication, that anyone can be writing a message to anyone else, and the understanding is anyone who's watching can jump right in in the middle and say, "Here's the strangest thing that happened to me about that." I've thought I've been a little crazy, because three times in my life I could have sworn I have heard voices, and they have been at important times in my life.

So just for curiosity, about a week ago, two weeks ago, I wrote, I started a little thread, a little conversation, and said, "Anybody else hear voices?" Whop! People have come back in the most unusual way, from their own experience. One diver was, whatever he was, 90 feet underwater in a tiny little cavern, in a difficult situation, and heard a voice that said, "This way out," and felt himself being dragged. It was all work, because he had startled a moray eel, and all this stuff had come out and he couldn't find his way out again. He felt himself dragged out of there.

Now, in normal communication with anyone you meet, how long will it take you before you reach the point that he will feel free to share that experience with you? Months? Years? Sometimes never? Here, at once -- there are no masks, and the mind is open, and the spirit is so willing. It says, "Ask
me anything."

So there has been this delighted reunion of those of us who agree that we very well have chosen our lifetimes. We very well have looked down at that spinning blue ball, the third planet by the minor sun at the edge of a minor galaxy, by what is probably a minor universe, and said, "Looks
like fun." Now what? Now when we start sharing our remembering, when we start sharing, how does imagination in practice work for you? How does intuition guide you in daily life? No fantasies here. Here's what happened. And incidents will come in that are from -- it's like ourselves in rapidly multiplying bodies.

There is this close sense of spiritual, intellectual, playful unity, that it's OK to say -- a woman said last night on the line that she had a job at a convenience store, and she
quit the job because she thought it was dangerous. But just before she quit, a scruffy fellow walked into the store, smoking a cigarette, and talked with her -- suddenly, out of the air, talked with her about the Trinity, and used the cigarette as an example -- the unburned body, tobacco; the ash; and the smoke. He used this as a representative of the Trinity, and talked with her for a little, turned around, walked out the door.

She looked down; she looked up, and he was gone, and she said, "Was this an angel?" So now we're talking about, well, did he just sneak off in the fog? Why would a scruffy character walk in with a cigarette, of all things, and use that as a center around which to build a short conversation about the Trinity? I don't know.

I had to write her back and say, "Now what has that meant to you? Was your life changed? Did the Trinity mean anything to you, or was it just a curiosity? Was there some plan behind it?" And I'm always one who believes in plans. I don't think it's by coincidence that those people who are on that net have come there. And so then one thread is, "How did you get
here?" And there are fascinating stories, of how people just seem to stumble into this place.

MISHLOVE: Well, I'm going to have to invite you to participate on the Intuition Network computer conference.

BACH: Wonderful! Yes!

MISHLOVE: Along with other members of our audience. You know, it seems that I remember 20 years ago, as an undergraduate college student -- well, longer, really -- but people then were anti-technology. They felt that the growth of technology was somehow killing the human spirit. And here we see something very different.

BACH: Yes. It is the next step of -- civilization is playing with the idea of building its communities on the edge of space-time. As we speak, right now, people are talking to me, and I am talking to them. I-last-night am talking to them-now, and them-sub--all this vast twisting and tumbling of space-time is going on, and it will emerge in coherent communication on my computer screen this evening.

MISHLOVE: And as we speak now at this moment, at some future moment people are listening to us and saying, "I'm going to log on and answer them."

BACH: That's the kind of creature that I enjoy being -- that gradually says goodbye to space and time. First we'll play games with it. First we'll say, "Was this past? Was this future? Was this fiction? Was this nonfiction? Is this imagination? Is this reality?" And then finally realize we've been talking about home. That land beyond space-time is where we come from.

Even as a kid I used to yearn for the stars. I was an amateur astronomer, built little telescopes, and looking through
that eyepiece was like looking through the porthole of my spaceship. And I felt this deep homesickness that said, "Take me home. I'm stranded on this little planet. Somebody come and get me." And I realized that I'm not the only one who's felt that way.

Used to be if someone said, "Where's home?" I would point
up. But now I know up is just another direction in space-time, and that's the only way I knew how to point beyond space-time -- that if I could point beyond space-time I would point there and say "Home." But for now we're tourists on this wonderful planet, and we have magical powers that we can use, if we have
the imagination to do it. Imagination is something in this, and each of us has been given the key.

There's a cover of Time magazine that came out, and it was a
photograph of a young black murderer who was murdered, and it seemed to be such a tragic tale. And I thought, "Ah! Golly." Because I am waiting, I am someone who is waiting for someone aged nine, age eleven, to write a book about what it's like to be nine, because I've forgotten. This is waiting there for any
kid to write, and that kid would become an instant millionaire. His book, or her book, would be a huge best seller.

Just look out through your eyes, kiddo. Tell me, what do you see? What are you afraid of? What do you hope for? Write those down in your words and your language, and you will be a superstar. It hasn't happened yet because of the dragons that say, "Who cares about you?" There has to be a kid to come along that says, "I don't care what the dragons say. I will
say what I see and what I think and even if it's crazy, maybe somebody cares."

MISHLOVE: Well, let us hope that that kid is in our audience right now. Richard Bach, let me thank you once again for sharing so much of yourself.

BACH: Jeffrey, it's been wonderful. Thank you for having me.

MISHLOVE: It has indeed been a pleasure.

End Part 3 of 3 parts

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