The book Jonathan Livingston Seagull was so wildly successful in the 70′s that it became a talking point and a ‘must read’. It topped The New York Times Best Seller list and also became a Time magazine cover story.

Flashback

One of my prized books is Jonathan Livingston Seagull, written by Richard Bach. It is a very short book — a fable in novella form — that took the publishing world by storm in the early 70’s.

On the literal level it is an illustrated parable of a seagull that learns aerobatics. Jonathan, who is no more than “bone and feathers”, cares more about the techniques of flying than joining in with the flock in search of the daily necessities of life. The book was so wildly successful that it became a ‘must read’. It topped the New York Times Best Seller list and remained there for 38 weeks. It also became a Time magazine cover story.

It produced myriad reactions. Time magazine reported -

A bishop has denounced it for the sin of pride. The new director of the F.B.I is urging it on his top aides, explaining he wants their spirits to soar. A group of alcoholics in Ypsilanti Michigan use it to inspire members to recovery. The Christian Science Monitor has refused to carry ads for it.

The reactions were not surprising as we can only be certain of the narrative skeleton set down. It seems that the tale is no more than a peg on which to hang one cherished psychological, religious, spiritual and metaphysical musings.

Some see it as a parable of Christ’s life, others see Gautama Buddha in the role. Others who admit to understanding the allegorical nature of the tale suggest that the message is much more secular: don’t settle for the lowest common denominator, strive to be better.

Today

The 2014 reissue, with an additional Chapter inspired by the author’s near-fatal plane crash in August 2012, draws nothing but scathing comments from Heather Havrilesky over at Slate:

Reading Bach’s novella can feel like pinpointing the exact moment in American history when our disillusionment and outrage at society’s massive, grand-scale failures yielded to a new kind of personal arrogance, a championing of the individual over the group no matter the cost.

She gets even more pointed and rails against the no limits individualist psychology she claim that is promoted in ‘Jonathan’ and other such self-help books:

The fact that such “no limits!” individualist psychobabble has been co-opted not just by rock climbers and ultramarathon runners and marketing gurus and Presbyterian pastors but also by corrupt politicians, corporate thieves, hedge fund managers, and the NSA should come as no surprise.This, after all, is the allure and the danger of simpleton wisdom…

Sadly this viewpoint is in no way unreasonable, and the abuses she points to reflects the corruption — the result of deceptive marketing practices— of spiritual traditions that were enclosed in shiny new age packages.

And Havrilesky consoles herself with the thought that the publishing miracle of the 70's no longer causes a stir.

Remembrance

After this dismissive review, let me here try to recap how this book came to be fundamental in shaping my world view.

I remember civil rights marches, the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King, the Apollo program,Vietnam, Kent State, marijuana, Woodstock and the Kennedy brothers. It was a world of wrenching social change, stunning technological advances, hotly contested ideologies, an underlying spirit of restless experimentation and in general an intensified collective will to bring forth a new world.

In this milieu, I remember a lost 20 year old soul, soaring to delirious heights on this most unlikely vehicle of spiritual wisdom, wrestling with the judgement handed down by the Counsel of Elders to this dude Jonathan, for daring to defy the common-sense understanding that “you cannot eat a glide.”

…one day you shall learn that irresponsibility does not pay. Life is the unknown and the unknowable, except we are put into this world to eat, to stay alive as long as we possibly can.

The issue of how to be a useful member of society and satisfy these nebulous urgings to find life’s meaning, was a dilemma that I would confront for the next 40 years. It was the determination to reject the notion that life was the “unknown and the unknowable” that led to the fitful practice of yoga and meditation, the exploration of eastern wisdom books and the more enduring and fruitful exploration of the mantic arts — Astrology, IChing, and Tarot cards.

Just as Jonathan knew that there was more to life than “screeching and fighting with the flock around the piers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish and bread”, I too felt this material grind pointless. And while Jonathan felt flying was his thing, my energies would focus on a search for the hidden order I sensed behind every day life.

This search for a hidden order that hid behind our everyday existence, was based on the conviction that our supreme good lies in so harmoniously adjusting ourselves. And so I worked with Astrology, IChing, and Tarot cards as a way to to take snapshots of a hidden reality that guide our everyday lives. This led to determined and not always successful attempts to integrate these intuitive modes of perception into my daily life.

But that search and that practice provides me now in these waning years, a clarity of perception that perceives (through the marriage of intellect and compassion; head and heart), the web of relationships that bind us one to another and collectively to mother Earth — an intelligence that enables our existence.

Forty years on in a world overrun with spiritual self help primers this remains for me a spiritual classic. And this is by no means an isolated view. In Tom Butler-Bowdon book 50 Spiritual Classics, we find Jonathan Livingston Seagull in illustrious company:
Herman Hesse — Siddartha
St. Augustine — Confessions
Paramahansa Yogananda — Autobiography of a Yogi
Al-Ghazzali — The Alchemy of Happiness
Aldous Huxley — The Doors of Perception

That the reissue of Jonathan Livingston Seagull does not cause a stir, should not surprise us. It is only when our moorings are uprooted by widespread and sustained social upheavals and radical cultural change will we reach out for spiritual sustenance. And when such a time comes around again, there would emerge from the collective unconscious, yet another symbol of timelessness on which to hang our hopes.