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Richard Bach. Jonathan Livingston Seagull

To the real Jonathan Seagull, who lives within us all.

now with new short special movies between the chapters

- Part One
It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of agentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water. and theword for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of athousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was anotherbusy day beginning. But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, JonathanLivingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he loweredhis webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hardtwisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would flyslowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, untilthe ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierceconcentration, held his breath, forced one... single... more... inch...of... curve... Then his featliers ruffled, he stalled and fell. Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the airis for them disgrace and it is dishonor. But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wingsagain in that trembling hard curve - slowing, slowing, and stalling oncemore - was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts offlight - how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, itis not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was noteating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else. JonathanLivingston Seagull loved to fly. This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's selfpopular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spentwhole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting. He didn't know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes lessthan half his wingspan above the water, he could stay in the air longer,with less effort. His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splashinto the sea, but with a long flat wake as he touched the surface with hisfeet tightly streamlined against his body. When he began sliding in tofeet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in thesand, his parents were very much dismayed indeed. "Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like therest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans,the alhatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!" "I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what Ican do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know." "See here Jonathan " said his father not unkindly. "Winter isn't faraway. Boats will be few and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If youmust study, then study food, and how to get it. This flying business isall very well, but you can't eat a glide, you know. Don't you forget thatthe reason you fly is to eat." Jonathan nodded obediently. For the next few days he tried to behavelike the other gulls; he really tried, screeching and fighting with theflock around the piers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish andbread. But he couldn't make it work. It's all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a hard-wonanchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him. I could be spending all thistime learning to fly. There's so much to learn! It wasn't long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far outat sea, hungry, happy, learning. The subject was speed, and in a week's practice he learned more aboutspeed than the fastest gull alive. From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as hard as he could, hepushed over into a blazing steep dive toward the waves, and learned whyseagulls don't make blazing steep pewer-dives. In just six seconds he wasmoving seventy miles per hour, the speed at which one's wing goes unstableon the upstroke. Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at the verypeak of his ability, he lost control at high speed. Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight ahead first, then pushover, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, his left wingstalled on an upstroke, he'd roll violently left, stall his right wingrecovering, and flick like fire into a wild tumbling spin to the right. He couldn't be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times he tried,and all ten times, as he passed through seventy miles per hour, he burstinto a churning mass of feathers, out of control, crashing down into thewater. The key, he thought at last, dripping wet, must be to hold the wingsstill at high speeds - to flap up to fifty and then hold the wings still. From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, beakstraight down, wings full out and stable from the moment he passed fiftymiles per hour. It took tremendous strength, but it worked. In ten secondshe had blurred through ninety miles per hour. Jonathan had set a worldspeed record for seagulls! But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pullout, theinstant he changed the angle of his wings, he snapped into that sameterrible uncontrolled disaster, and at ninety miles per hour it hit himlike dynamite. Jonathan Seagull exploded in midair and smashed down into abrickhard sea. When he came to, it was well after dark, and he floated in moonlighton the surface of the ocean. His wings were ragged bars of lead, but theweight of failure was even heavier on his back. He wished, feebly, thatthe weight could be just enough to drug him gently down to the bottom, andend it all. As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded withinhim. There's no way around it. I am a seagull. I am limited by my nature.If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I'd have charts for brains.If I were meant to fly at speed, I'd have a falcon's short wings, and liveon mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget thisfoolishness. I must fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, as apoor limited seagull. The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull atnight is on shore, and from this moment forth, he vowed, he would be anormal gull. It would make everyone happier. He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land,grateful for what he had learned about work-saving low-altitude flying. But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done witheverything I learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I willfly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped hiswings harder, pressing for shore. He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the Flock.There would be no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn,there would be no more challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty,just to stop thinking, and fly through the dark, toward the lights abovethe beach. Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in thedark! Jonathan was not alert to listen. It's pretty, he thought. The moonand the lights twinkling on the water, throwing out little beacon-trailsthrough the night, and all so peaceful and still... Get down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly inthe dark, you'd have the eyes of an owl! You'd have charts for brains!You'd have a falcon's short wings! There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan LivingstonSeagull - blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished. Short wings. A falcon's short wings! That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny littlewing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tipsalone! Short wings! He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without amoment for thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightlyin to his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtipsextended into the wind, and fell into a vertical dive. The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour,ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at ahundred and forty miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had beenbefore at seventy, and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he easedout of the dive and shot above the waves, a gray cannonball under themoon. He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. A hundredforty miles per hour! And under control! If I dive from five thousand feetinstead of two thousand, I wonder how fast.. His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that greatswift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had madehimself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary.One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind ofpromise. By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practicing again. From five thousand feetthe fishing boats were specks in the flat blue water, Breakfast Flock wasa faint cloud of dust motes, circling. He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that hisfear was under control. Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings,extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged direcfly toward the sea.By the time he passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity,the wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move nofaster. He was flying now straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles perhour. He swallowed, knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed be'dbe blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull. But the speed was power,and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty. He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding andblurring in that gigatitic wind, the boat and the crowd of gulls tiltingand growing meteor-fast, directly in his path. He couldn't stop; he didn't know yet even how to turn at that speed. Collision would be instant death. And so he shut his eyes. It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that IonathanLivingston Seagull fired directly through the center of Breakfast Flock,ticking off two hundred twelve miles per hour, eyes closed, in a greatroaring shriek of wind and feathers. The Gull of Fortune smiled upon himthis once, and no one was killed. By the time he had pulled his beak straight up into the sky he wasstill scorching along at a hundred and sixty miles per hour. When he hadslowed to twenty and stretched his wings again at last, the boat was acrumb on the sea, four thousand feet below. His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull at two hundredfourteen miles per hour! It was a breakthrough, the greatest single momentin the history of the Flock, and in that moment a new age opened forJonathan Gull. Flying out to his lonely practice area, folding his wingsfor a dive from eight thousand feet, he set himself at once to discoverhow to turn. A single wingtip feather, he found, moved a fraction of an inch,gives a smooth sweeping curve at tremendous speed. Before he learned this,however, he found that moving more than one feather at that speed willspin you like a ritIe ball... and Jonathan had flown the first aerobaticsof any seagull on earth. He spared no time that day for talk with other gulls, but flew onpast sunset. He discovered the loop, the slow roll, the point roll, theinverted spin, the gull bunt, the pinwheel. When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was fullnight. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he flew a loop tolanding, with a snap roll just before touchdown. When they hear of it, hethought, of the Breakthrough, they'll be wild with joy. How much morethere is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to thefishing boats, there's a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out ofignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence andintelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly! The years ahead hummed and glowed with promise. The gulls were flocked into the Council Gathering when he landed, andapparently had been so flocked for some time. They were, in fact, waiting. "Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Stand to Center!" The Elder's wordssounded in a voice of highest ceremony. Stand to Center meant only greatshame or great honor. Stand to Center for Honor was the way the gulls'foremost leaders were marked. Of course, he thought, the Breakfast Flockthis morning; they saw the Breakthrough! But I want no honors. I have nowish to be leader. I want only to share what I've found, to show thosehorizons out ahead for us all. He stepped forward. "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," said the Elder, "Stand to Center forShame in the sight of your fellow gulls!" It felt like being hit with a board. His knees went weak, hisfeathers sagged, there was roaring in his ears. Centered for shame?Impossible! The Breakthrough! They can't understand! They're wrong,they're wrong! "... for his reckless irresponsibility " the solemn voice intoned,"violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family..." To be centered for shame meant that he would be cast out of gullsociety, banished to a solitary life on the Far Cliffs. "... one day Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you shall learn thatirresponsibility does not pay. Life is the unknown and the unknowable,except that we are put into this world to eat, to stay alive as long as wepossibly can." A seagull never speaks back to the Council Flock, but it wasJonathan's voice raised. "Irresponsibility? My brothers!" he cried. "Whois more responsible than a gull who finds and follows a meaning, a higherpurpose for life? For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads,but now we have a reason to live - to learn, to discover, to be free! Giveme one chance, let me show you what I've found..." The Flock might as well have been stone. "The Brotherhood is broken," the gulls intoned together, and with oneaccord they solemnly closed their ears and turned their backs upon him. Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew wayout beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not solituile, it was thatother gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; theyrefused to open their eyes and see. He learned more each day. He learnedthat a streamlined high-speed dive could bring him to find the rare andtasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean: he nolonger needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival. He learned tosleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind,covering a hundred miles from sunset to sunrise. With the same innercontrol, he flew through heavy sea-fogs and climbed above them intodazzling clear skies... in the very times when every other gull stood onthe ground, knowing nothing but mist and rain. He learned to ride the highwinds far inland, to dine there on delicate insects. What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himselfalone; he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he hadpaid. Jonathan Scagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are thereasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from histhought, he lived a long fine life indeed. They came in the evening, then, and found Ionathan gliding peacefuland alone through his beloved sky. The two gulls that appeared at hiswings were pure as starlight, and the glow from them was gentle andfriendly in the high night air. But most lovely of all was the skill withwhich they flew, their wingtips moving a precise and constant inch fromhis own. Without a word, Jonathan put them to his test, a test that nogull had ever passed. He twisted his wings, slowed to a single mile perhour above stall. The two radiant birds slowed with him, smoothly, lockedin position. They knew about slow flying. He folded his wings, rolled and dropped in a dive to a hundred ninetymiles per hour. They dropped with him, streaking down in flawlessformation. At last he turned that speed straight up into a long verticalslow-roll. They rolled with him, smiling. He recovered to level flight and was quiet for a time before hespoke. "Very well," he said, "who are you?" "We're from your Flock, Jonathan. We are your brothers." The wordswere strong and calm. "We've come to take you higher, to take you home." "Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast. And we fly now atthe peak of the Great Mountain Wind. Beyond a few hundred feet, I can liftthis old body no higher." "But you can Jonathan. For you have learned. One school is finished,and the time has come for another to begin." As it had shined across him all his life, so understanding lightedthat moment for Jonathan Seagull. They were right. He could fly higher,and it was time to go home. He gave one last look across the sky, across that magnificent silverland where he had learned so much. "I'm ready " he said at last. And Jonathan Livingston Seagull rose with the two starbright gulls todisappear into a perfect dark sky.

s

ee this.., just for a interfall,a break. More to come below..

Part Two
So this is heaven, he thought, and he had to smile at himself. It washardly respectful to analyze heaven in the very moment that one flies upto enter it. As he came from Earth now, above the clouds and in close formationwith the two brilliant gulls, he saw that his own body was growing asbright as theirs. True, the same young Jonathan Seagull was there that hadalways lived behind his golden eyes, but the outer form had changed. It felt like a seagull body, but alreadv it flew far better than hisold one had ever flown. Why, with half the effort, he thought, I'll gettwice the speed, twice the performance of my best days on Earth! His feathers glowed brilliant white now, and his wings were smoothand perfect as sheets of polished silver. He began, delightedly, to learnabout them, to press power into these new wings. At two hundred fifty mlles per hour he felt that he was nearing hislevel-flight maximum speed. At two hundred seventy-three he thought thathe was flying as fast as he could fly, and he was ever so faintlydisappointed. There was a limit to how much the new body could do, andthough it was much faster than his old level-flight record, it was still alimit that would take great effort to crack. In heaven, he thought, thereshould be no limits. The clouds broke apart, his escorts called, "Happy landings,Jonathan," and vanished into thin air. He was flying over a sea, toward a jagged shoreline. A very fewseagulls were working the updrafts on the cliffs. Away off to the north,at the horizon itself, flew a few others. New sights, new thoughts, newquestions. Why so few gulls? Heaven should be flocked with gulls! And whyam I so tired, all at once? Gulls in heaven are never supposed to betired, or to sleep. Where had he heard that? The memory of his life on Earth was fallingaway. Earth had been a place where he had learned much, of course, but thedetails were blurred - something about fighting for food, and beingOutcast. The dozen gulls by the shoreline came to meet him, none saying aword. He felt only that he was welcome and that this was home. It had beena bigday for him, a day whose sunrise he no longer remembered. He turned to land on the beach, beating his wings to stop an inch inthe air, then dropping lightly to the sand, The other gulls landed too,but not one of them so much as flapped a feather. They swung into thewind, bright wings outstretched, then somehow they changed the curve oftheir feathers until they had stopped in the same instant their feettouched the ground. It was beautiful control, but now Jonathan was justtoo tired to try it. Standiug there on the beach, still without a wordspoken, he was asleep. In the days that followed, Jonathan saw that there was as much tolearn about flight in this place as there had been in the life behind him.But with a difference. Here were gulls who thought as he thought, For eachof them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touchperfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to fly. Theywere magnificent birds, all of them, and they spent hour after hour everyday practicing flight, testing advanced aeronautics. For a long time Jonathan forgot about the world that he had comefrom, that place where the Flock lived with its eyes tightly shut to thejoy of flight, using its wings as means to the end of finding and fightingfor food. But now and then, just for a moment, he remembered. He remembered it one morning when he was out with his instructor,while they rested on the beach after a session of folded-wing snap rolls. "Where is everybody, Sullivan?" he asked silently, quite at home nowwith the easy telepathy that these gulls used instead of screes andgracks. "Why aren't there more of us here? Why, where I came from therewere.. " "... thousands and thousands of gulls. I know. " Sullivan shook hishead. "The only answer I can see, Jonathan, is that you are pretty well aone-in-a-million bird. Most of us came along ever so slowly. We went fromone world into another that was almost exactly like it, forgettiug rightaway where we had come from, not caring where we were headed, living forthe moment. Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone throughbefore we even gor the first idea that there is more to life than eating,or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is sucha thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that ourpurpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. The samerule holds for us now, of course: we choose our next world through what welearn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as thisone, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome." He stretched his wings and turned to face the wind. "But you, Jon,"he said, "learned so much at one time that you didn't have to go through athousand lives to reach this one." In a moment they were airborne again, practicing. The formationpoint-roils were difficult, for through the inverted half Jonathan had tothink upside down, reversing the curve of his wing, and reversing itexactly in harmony with his instructor's. "Let's try it again." Sullivan said over and over: "Let's try itagain." Then, finally, "Good." And they began practicing outside loops. One evening the gulls that were not night-flying stood together onthe sand, thinking. Jonathan took all his courage in hand and walked tothe Elder Gull, who, it was said, was soon to be moving beyond this world."Chiang..." he said a little nervously. The old seagull looked at him kindly. "Yes, my son?" Instead of beingenfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by it; he could outfly anygull in the Flock, and he had learned skills that the others were onlygradually coming to know. "Chiang, this world isn't heaven at all, is it?" The Elder smiled inthe moonlight. "You are learning again, Jonathan Seagull," he said. "Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is there no suchplace as heaven?" "No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and itis not a time. Heaven is being perfect." He was silent for a moment. "Youare a very fast flier, aren't you?" "I... I enjoy speed," Jonathan said, taken aback but proud that theElder had noticed. "You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that youtouch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or amillion, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit,and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is beingthere." Without warning, Chiang vanished and appeared at the water's edgefifty feet away, all in the flicker of an instant. Then he vanished againand stood, in the same millisecond, at Jonathan's shoulder. "It's kind offun," he said. Jonathan was dazzled. He forgot to ask about heaven. "How do you dothat? What does it feel like? How far can you go?" "You can go to any place and to any time that you wish to go," theElder said. "I've gone everywhere and everywhen I can think of." He lookedacross the sea. "It's strange. The gulls who scorn perfection for the sakeof travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake ofperfection go anywhere, instantly. Remember, Jonathan, heaven isn't aplace or a time, because place and time are so very meaningless. Heavenis..." "Can you teach me to fly like that?" Jonathan Seagull trembled toconquer another unknown. "Of course if you wish to learn." "I wish. When can we start?". "We could start now if you'd like." "I want to learn to fly like that," Jonathan said and a strange lightglowed in his eyes. "Tell me what to do," Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull ever so carefully."To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is," he said, "you must beginby knowing that you have already arrived ..." The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeinghimself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two inchwingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick wasto know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number,everywhere at once across space and time. Jonathan kept at it, fiercely, day after day, from before sunrisetill past midnight. And for all his effort he moved not a feather widthfrom his spot. "Forget about faith!" Chiang said it time and again. "You didn't needfaith to fly, you needed to understand flying.This is jast the same. Nowtry again ..." Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, closing his eyes,concentrating, all in a flash knew what Chiang had been telling him. "Why,that's true! I am a perfect, unlimited gull!" He felt a great shock ofjoy. "Good!" said Chiang and there was victory in his voice. Jonathan opened his eyes. He stood alone with the Elder on a totallydifferent seashore - trees down to the water's edge, twin yellow sunsturning overhead. "At last you've got the idea," Chiang said, "but your control needs alittle work... " Jonathan was stunned. "Where are we?" Utterly unimpressed with the strange surroundings, the Elder brushedthe question aside. "We're on some planet, obviously, with a green sky anda double star for a sun." Jonathan made a scree of delight, the first sound he had made sincehe had left Earth. "IT WORKS!" "Well, of course, it works, Jon." said Chiang. "It always works, whenyou know what you're doing. Now about your control..." By the time they returned, it was dark. The other gulls looked atJonathan with awe in their golden eyes, for they had seen him disappearfrom where he had been rooted for so long. He stood their congratulations for less than a minute. "I'm thenewcomer here! I'm just beginning! It is I who must learn from you!" "I wonder about that, Jon," said Sullivan standing near. "You haveless fear of learning than any gull I've seen in ten thousand years. "TheFlock fell silent, and Jonathan fidgeted in embarrassment. "We can start working with time if you wish," Chiang said, "till youcan fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin themost difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be readyto begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love." A month went by, or something that felt about like a month, andJonathan learned at a tremendous rate. He always had learned quickly fromordinary experience, and now, the special student of the Elder Himself, hetook in new ideas like a streamlined feathered computer. But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been talkingquietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop their learning andtheir practicing and their striving to understand more of the perfectinvisible principle of all life. Then, as he spoke, his feathers wentbrighter and brighter and at last turned so brilliant that no gull couldlook upon him. "Jonathan," he said, and these were the last words that he spoke,"keep working on love." When they could see again, Chiang was gone. As the days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time and againof the Earth from which he had come. If he had known there just a tenth,just a hundredth, of what he knew here, how much more life would havemeant! He stood on the sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull backthere who might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see themeaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb from arowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one made Outcast for speakinghis truth in the face of the Flock. And the more Jonathan practiced hiskindness lessons, and the more he worked to know the nature of love, themore he wanted to go back to Earth. For in spite of his lonely past,Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way ofdemonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen toa gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself. Sullivan, adept now at thought-speed flight and helping the others tolearn, was doubrful. "Jon, you were Outcast once. Why do you think that any of the gullsin your old time would listen to you now? You know the proverb, and it'strue: The gull sees farthest who flies highest. Those gulls where you camefrom are standing on the ground, squawking and fighting among themselves.They're a thousand miles from heaven - and you say you want to show themheaven from where they stand! Jon, they can't see their own wingtips! Stayhere. Help the new gulls here, the ones who are high enough to see whatyou have to tell them." He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "Whatif Chiang had gone back to his old worlds? Where would you have beentoday?" The last point was the telling one, and Sullivan was right The gullsees farthest who flies highest. Jonathan stayed and worked with the new birds coming in, who were allvery bright and quick with their lessons. But the old feeling came back,and he couldn't help but think that there might be one or two gulls backon Earth who would be able to learn, too. How much more would he haveknown by now if Chiang had come to him on the day that he was Outcast! "Sully, I must go back " he said at last "Your students are doingwell. They can help you bring the newcomers along." Sullivan sighed, but he did not argue. "I think I'll miss you,Jonathan," was all he said. "Sully, for shame!" Jonathan said in reproach, "and don't be foolish!What are we trying to practice every day? If our friendship depends onthings like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time,we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we haveleft is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in themiddle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other onceor twice?" Sullivan Seagull laughed in spite of himself. "You crazy bird," hesaid kindly. "If anybody can show someone on the ground how to see athousand miles, it will be Jonathan Livingston Seagull." He looked at thesand. "Good-bye, Jon, my friend." "Good bye, Sully. We'll meet again." And with that, Jonathan held inthought an image of the great gull flocks on the shore of another time,and he knew with practiced ease that he was not bone and feather but aperfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all. Fletcher Lynd Seagull was still quite young, but already he knew thatno bird had ever been so harshly treated by any Flock, or with so muchinjustice. "I don't care what they say," he thought fiercely, and his visionblurred as he flew out toward the Far Cliffs. "There's so much more toflying than just flapping around from place to place! A... a... mosquitodoes that! One little barrel roll around the Elder Gull, just for fun, andI'm Outcast! Are they blind? Can't they see? Can't they think of the glorythat it'll be when we really learn to fly? "I don't care what they think. I'll show them what flying is! I'll bepure Outlaw, if that's the way they want it. And I'll make them sosorry..." The voice came inside his own head, and though it was very gentle, itstartled him so much that he faltered and stumbled in the air. "Don't be harsh on them, Fletcher Seagull. In casting you out, theother gulls have only hurt themselves, and one day they will know this,and one day they will see what you see. Forgive them, and help them tounderstand." An inch from his right wingtip flew the most brilliant white gull inall the world, gliding effortlessly along, not moving a feather, at whatwas very nearly Fletcher's top speed. There was a moment of chaos in the young bird. "What's going on? Am Imad? Am I dead? What is this?" Low and calm, the voice went on within his thought, demanding ananswer. "Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly?" "YES, I WANT TO FLY!". "Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly so much that you willforgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to helpthem know?" There was no lying to this magniflcent skillful being, no matter howproud or how hurt a bird was Fletcher Seagull. "I do " he said softly. "Then, Fletch," that bright creature said to him, and the voice wasvery kind, "let's begin with Level Flight...."

Part Three
Jonathan circled slowly over the Far Cliffs, watching. This roughyoung Fletcher Gull was very nearly a perfect flight-student. He wasstrong and light and quick in the air, but far and away more important, hehad a blazing drive to learn to fly. Here he came this minute, a blurred gray shape roaring out of a dive,flashing one hundred fifty miles per hour past his instructor. He pulledabruptly into another try at a sixteen point vertical slow roll, callingthe points out loud. "...eight... nine... ten... see-Jonathan-l'm-running-out-ofairspeed..eleven... I-want-good-sharp-stops-like yours... twelve...but-blast-it-Ijust-can't-make... - thirteen... theselast-three-points...without... fourtee ...aaakk!" Fletcher's whipstall at the top was all the worse for his rage andfury at failing. He fell backward, tumbled, slammed savagely into aninverted spin, and recovered at last, panting, a hundred feet below hisinstructor's level. "You're wasting your time with me, Jonathan! I'm too dumb! I'm toostupid! I try and try, but I'll never get it!" Jonathan Seagull looked down at him and nodded. "You'll never get itfor sure as long as you make that pullup so hard. Fletcher, you lost fortymiles an hour in the entry! You have to be smooth! Firm but smooth,remember?" He dropped down to the level of the younger gull."Let's try ittogether now, in formation. And pay attention to that pullup. It's asmooth, easy entry." By the end of three months Jonathan had six other students, Outcastsall, yet curious about this strange new idea of flight for the joy offlying. Still, it was easier for them to practice high performance than itwas to understand the reason behindit. "Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlimited ideaof freedom," Jonathan would say in the evenings on the beach, "andprecision flying is a step toward expressing our real nature.Everythingthat limits us we have to put aside. That's why all this high-speedpractice, and low speed, and aerobatics...." ...and his students would be asleep, exhausted from the day's flying.They liked the practice, because it was fast and exciting and it fed ahunger for learning that grew with every lesson. But not one of them, noteven Fletcher Lynd Gull, had come to believe that the flight of ideascould possibly be as real as the flight of wind and feather. "Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip," Jonathan would say, othertimes, "is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see.Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body,too..." But no matter how he said it, it sounded like pleasant fiction,and they needed more to sleep. It was only a month later that Jonathan said the time had come toreturn to the Flock. "We're not ready!" said Henry Calvin Gull. "We're not welcome! We'reOutcast! We can't force ourselves to go where we're not welcome, can we?" "We're free to go where we wish and to be what we are," Jonathananswered, and he lifted from the sand and turned east, toward the homegrounds of the Flock. There was brief anguish among his students, for it is the Law of theFlock that an Outcast never returns, and the Law had not been broken oncein ten thousand years. The Law said stay; Jonathan said go; and by now hewas a mile across the water. If they waited much longer, he would reach ahostile Flock alone. "Well, we don't have to obey the law if we're not a part of theFlock, do we?" Fletcher said, rather self-consciously. "Besides, ifthere's a fight we'll be a lot more help there than here."' And so they flew in from the west that morning, eight of them in adouble-diamond formation, wingtips almost overlapping. They came acrossthe Flock's Council Beach at a hundred thirty-five miles per hour,Jonathan in the lead. Fletcher smoothly at his right wing, Henry Calvinstruggling gamely at his left. Then the whole formation rolled slowly tothe right, as one bird... level... to... inverted... to... level, the windwhipping over them all. The squawks and grockles of everyday life in the Flock were cut offas though the formation were a giant knife, and eight thousand gull-eyeswatched, without a single blink. One by one, each of the eight birdspulled sharply upward into a full loop and flew all the way around to adead-slow stand-up landing on the sand. Then as though this sort of thinghappened every day, Jonathan Seagull began his critique of the flight. "To begin with," he said with a wry smile, "you were all a bit lateon the join-up..." It went like lightning through the Flock. Those birds are Outcast!And they have returned! And that... that can't happen! Fletcher'spredictions of battle melted in the Flock's confusion. "Well sure, O.K. they're Outcast," said some of the younger gulls,"but hey, man, where did they learn to fly like that?" It took almost an hour for the Word of the Elder to pass through theFlock: Ignore them. The gull who speaks to an Outcast is himself Outcast.The gull who looks upon an Outcast breaks the Law of the Flock,Gray-feathered backs were turned upon Jonathan from that moment onward,but he didn't appear to notice. He held his practice sessions directlyover the Council Beach and for the first time began pressing his studentsto the limit of their ability. "Martin Gull!" he shouted across the sky. "You say you know low-speedflying. You know nothing till you prove it! FLY!" So quiet little Martin William Seagull, startled to be caught underhis instructor's fire, surprised himself and became a wizard of lowspeeds. In the lightest breeze he could curve his feathers to lift himselfwithout a single flap of wing from sand to cloud and down again. Likewise Charles-Roland Gull flew the Great Mountain Wind totwenty-four thousand feet, came down blue from the cold thin air, amazedand happy, determined to go still higher tomorrow. Fletcher Seagull, who loved aerobatics like no one else, conqueredhis sixteen point vertical slow roll and the next day topped it off with atriple cartwheel, his feathers flashing white sunlight to a beach fromwhich more than one furtive eye watched. Every hour Jonathan was there at the side of each of his students,demonstrating, suggesting, pressuring, guiding. He flew with them throughnight and cloud and storm, for the sport of it, while the Flock huddledmiserably on the ground. When the flying was done, the students relaxed in the sand, and intime they listened more closely to Jonathan. He had some crazy ideas thatthey couldn't understand, but then he had some good ones that they could. Gradually, in the night, another circle formed around the circle ofstudents a circle of curious gulls listening in the darkness for hours onend, not wishing to see or be seen of one another, fading away beforedaybreak. It was a month after the Return that the first gull of the Flockcrossed the line and asked to learn how to fly. In his asking, TerrenceLowell Gull became a condemned bird, labeled Outcast; and the eighth ofJonathan's students. The next night from the Flock came Kirk Maynard Gull, wobbling acrossthe sand, dragging his leftwing,to collapse at Jonathan's feet. "Help me,"he said very quietly, speaking in the way that the dying speak. "I want tofly more than anything else in the world..." "Come along then." said Jonathan. "Climb with me away from theground, and we'll begin." "You don't understand My wing. I can't move my wing." "Maynard Gull, you have the freedom to be yourself, your true self,here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.It is the Law of the GreatGull, the Law that Is." "Are you saying I can fly?" "I say you are free." As simply and as quickly as that, Kirk Maynard Gull spread his wings,effortlessly, and lifted into the dark night air. The Flock was rousedfrom sleep by his cry, as loud as he could scream it, from five hundredfeet up: "I can fly! Listen! I CAN FLY!" By sunrise there were nearly a thousand birds standing outside thecircle of students, looking curiously at Maynard. They didn't care whetherthey were seen or not, and they listened, trying to understand JonathanSeagull. He spoke of very simple things - that it is right for a guil to fly,that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands againstthat freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitationin any form. "Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Lawof the Flock?" "The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said."There is no other." "How do you expect us to fly as you fly?" came another voice. "Youare special and gifted and divine, above other birds." "Look at Fletcher! Lowell! Charles-Roland! Judy Lee! Are they alsospecial and gifted and divine? No more than you are, no more than I am.The only difference, the very only one, is that they have begun tounderstand what they really are and have begun to practice it." His students, save Fletcher, shifted uneasily. They hadn't realizedthat this was what they were doing. The crowd grew larger every day, coming to question, to idolize, toscorn. "They are saying in the Flock that if you are not the Son of theGreat Gull Himself," Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after AdvancedSpeed Practice, "then you are a thousand years ahead of your time." Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. Theycall you devil or they call you god. "What do you think, Fletch? Are weahead of our time?" A long silence. "Well, this kind of flying has always been here to belearned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to dowith time. We're ahead of the fashion, maybe, Ahead of the way that mostgulls fly." "That's something," Jonathan said rolling to glide inverted for awhile. "That's not half as bad as being ahead of our time." It happened just a week later. Fletcher was demonstrating theelements of high-speed flying to a class of new students. He had justpulled out of his dive from seven thousand feet, a long gray streak firinga few inches above the beach, when a young bird on its first flight glideddirectly into his path, calling for its mother. With a tenth of a secondto avoid the youngster, Fletcher Lynd Seagull snapped hard to the left, atsomething over two hundred miles per hour, into a cliff of solid granite. It was, for him, as though the rock were a giant hard door intoanother world. A burst of fear and shock and black as he hit, and then hewas adrift in a strange strange sky, forgetting, remembering, forgetting;afraid and sad and sorry, terribly sorry. The voice came to him as it had in the first day that he had metJonathan Livingston Seagull, "The trick Fletcher is that we are trying to overcome our limitationsin order, patiently, We don't tackle flying through rock until a littlelater in the program." "Jonathan!". "Also known as the Son of the Great Gull " his instructor said dryly, "What are you doing here? The cliff! Haven't I didn't I.., die?" "Oh, Fletch, come on. Think. If you are talking to me now, thenobviously you didn't die, did you? What you did manage to do was to changeyour level of consciousness rather abruptly. It's your choice now. You canstay here and learn on this level - which is quite a bit higher than theone you left, by the way - or you can go back and keep working with theFlock. The Elders were hoping for some kind of disaster, but they'restartled that you obliged them so well." "I want to go back to the Flock, of course. I've barely begun withthe new group!" "Very well, Fletcher. Remember what we were saying about one's bodybeing nothing more than thought itself....?" Fletcher shook his head and stretched his wings and opened his eyesat the base of the cliff, in the center of the whole Flock assembled.There was a great clamor of squawks and screes from the crowd when firsthe moved. "He lives! He that was dead lives!" "Touched him with a wingtip! Brought him to life! The Son of theGreat Gull!" "No! He denies it! He's a devil! DEVIL! Come to break the Flock!" There were four thousand gulls in the crowd, frightened at what hadhappened, and the cry DEVIL! went through them like the wind of an oceanstorm. Eyes glazed, beaks sharp, they closed in to destroy. "Would you feel better if we left, Fletcher?" asked Jonathan. "I certainly wouldn't object too much if we did..." Instantly they stood together a half-mile away, and the flashingbeaks of the mob closed on empty air. "Why is it," Jonathan puzzled, "that the hardest thing in the worldis to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it forhimself if he'd just spend a little time practicing? Why should that be sohard?" Fletcher still blinked from the change of scene. "What did you justdo? How did we get here?" "You did say you wanted to be out of the mob, didn't you?" "Yes! But how did you..." "Like everything else, Fletcher. Practice." By morning the Flock hadforgotten its insanity, but Fletcher had not. "Jonathan, remember what yousaid a long time ago, about loving the Flock enough to return to it andhelp it learn?" "Sure." "I don't understand how you manage to love a mob of birds that hasjust tried to kill you." "Oh, Fletch, you don't love that! You don't love hatred and evil, ofcourse. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every oneof them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean bylove. It's fun, when you get the knack of it. "I remember a fierce young bird for instance, Fletcher Lynd Seagull,his name. Just been made Outcast, ready to fight the Flock to the death,getting a start on building his own bitter hell out on the Far Cliffs. Andhere he is today building his own heaven instead, and leading the wholeFlock in that direction." Fletcher turned to his instructor, and there was a moment of frightin his eye. "Me leading? What do you mean, me leading? You're theinstructor here. You couldn't leave!" "Couldn't I? Don't you think that there might be other flocks, otherFletchers, that need an instructor more than this one, that's on its waytoward the light?" "Me? Jon, I'm just a plain seagull and you're... " " ...the only Son of the Great Gull, I suppose?" Jonathan sighed andlooked out to sea. "You don't need me any longer. You need to keep findingyourself, a little more each day, that real, unlimited Fletcher Seagull.He's your in structor. You need to understand him and to practice him." A moment later Jonathan's body wavered in the air, shimmering, andbegan to go transparent. "Don't let them spread silly rumors about me, ormake me a god. O.K., Fletch? I'm a seagull. I like to fly, maybe..." "JONATHAN!" "Poor Fletch. Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All theyshow is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what youalready know, and you'll see the way to fly." The shimmering stopped. Jonathan Seagull had vanished into empty air. After a time, Fletcher Gull dragged himself into the sky and faced abrand-new group of students, eager for their first lesson. "To begin with " he said heavily, "you've got to understand that aseagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, andyour whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than yourthought itself." The young gulls looked at him quizzically. Hey, man, they thought,this doesn't sound like a rule for a loop. Fletcher sighed and started over. "Hm. Ah... very well," he said, andeyed them critically. "Let's begin with Level Flight." And saying that, heunderstood all at once that his friend had quite honestly been no moredivine than Fletcher himself. No limits, Jonathan? he thought. Well, then, the time's not distantwhen I'm going to appear out of thin air on your beach, and show you athing or two about flying! And though he tried to look properly severe for his students,Fletcher Seagull suddenly saw them all as they really were, just for amoment, and he more than liked, he loved what he saw. No limits, Jonathan?he thought, and he smiled. His race to learn had begun.

it's not perfect speed, it's being there, it's

be!

1973 --------------------------------------------------------------- The New York Times, July 3, 1974 Des Moines, Iowa, July 2 - John H. Livingston, the man whoinspired the best-selling novel "Jonathan Livingston Seagull,"died Sunday at the Pompano Beach (Fla.) Airport soon aftercompleting his last plane ride. Richard Bach, a former Iowa Air Guard pilot, has said hisbest-selling book about a free-wheeling seagull was inspired byMr. Livingston. Johnny Livingston, as he was known, moved many years agofrom Iowa to Florida. He was one of the country's top pilotsduring the barnstorming days of the nineteen-twenties and thir­ties. From 1928 through 1933, Mr. Livingston won 79 firstplaces, 43 seconds and 15 thirds in 139 races throughout thecountry, many of them at Cleveland. He won first place and$13,910 in 1928 in a cross-country race from New York to LosAngeles. Mr. Livingston leaves his wife, Wavelle, two brothers an four sisters.

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