by Richard Bach
Someone camped not far away about then, listening in the dark, would have heard him laugh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He nearly remembered the dream, not quite. The last hour before sunrise, the pilot had fallen asleep. He had been back in school, or back at least in a place surrounded by empty blackboards.
There had been thousands of words on the boards, but all of them erased, rows on rows of chalk-film eraser-marks. Then came one board, just before he woke, with one word, not chalked but chiseled in stone:
Life
There was a half-second to see it before the blackboards spun away and he woke to first light east, clear dark skies.
A man who didn't remember dreams, Jamie Forbes grabbed the last fragment, held till it dissolved in the dawn.
The dream's my answer, he thought. At last!
Now, holding the answer, he went looking for the question. Life, he thought, life-life-life. Shall I write it down? Seemed silly, but the map lay on the right switch-panel console. He pulled his sleeve pen and wrote it: Life.
It had seemed so important to remember that. Minute by minute, it was looking sillier. Life. Okay. Seconds ticked. Okay became Now-what became Sowhat. Life. Nice word, but it could use a little context.
He climbed from the cockpit into cool air, mosquitofree, pretzel determined to be bread-stick. From the wing to the ground was a two-foot jump, felt like four.
Wuff, what a night. I am stiff, stiff, stiff!
There in the sunrise, before he took the chains for true . . . : No! I will NOT repeat after you! I reject your dull suggestion about my feelings I shall not trance myself sick or limited or unhappy. I am not stiff stiff stiff, I'm the opposite. I am a perfect expression of perfect Life, here and now. I'm limber as a snake, this morning. I feel zero pain, zero discomfort. I am in perfect health, full of energy, sharp, alert, rested and ready to fly!
At one level he knew he was playing at his dehypnotizing trick, at another he wondered if it might work.
To his startlement, it did. Stiffness disappeared, vanished in the first half of the first second he pushed the suggestion away instead of hugging it, some bloodsucking vampire pal, to his neck.
He practiced walking, in the predawn, as though he were perfectly un-stiff, and like some miraculous Bible healing he walked easily, relaxed and normal.
Applause, from an inner gallery. It was a miraculous demonstration, by reflex: near-instant denial of negative suggestion, affirmation of real nature, suggestion vanished into rejection-limbo, ability-to-walk restored in seconds.
This world, it really isn't what it seems, he thought, jogging now along the dim taxiway, tasting victory. Since it's going to be suggestions one way or the other, why not take the bright ones for true, instead of the drags? Is there something wrong with that?
I'll look at it this way: I'm rewiring myself. Every time, I'll swap the negative energies for the positive, and see what happens. God knows I've bought the downs long enough in this lifetime, now it's the ups’ turn.
Feels strange, that such a simple thing as— He interrupted at once. Doesn't feel strange at all! Feels natural, normal; feels right!
He smiled at himself. Let's not get carried away . . . No! I'm already carried away, with my rewiring. It works! Only stuff gets through my gates is positive lifeaffirmers!
I reserve the right to refuse negative suggestions from anyone.
Come on, growled this feisty new optimist within him to the forces of darkness, what's your next putdown for me? Roll 'er out. Take your best shot!
Jamie Forbes laughed at the battle for his mind, put his money on the new guy there.
Thank you, he thought to the teacher within. I expect you're gonna see big changes, starting now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
After the storms, the sky had gone wide open. Severe clear, as pilots say, the whole southeast.
Expect little puffs of cumulus around noon, thought Jamie Forbes, preflighting his airplane. Puffs building to thunderstorms again by mid-afternoon.
By the time the sun had cleared the horizon east, the T-34 was wheels-up and climbing, southbound. Air cool and smooth as buttered ice. He visualized his landing at home, a perfect touchdown, taxiing to the hangar.
Level at three-thousand five, an impish part of his mind became advocate of the devil; he pushed it onstage.
May not be a perfect landing. Something could go wrong. Engine could quit. Complete electrical failure. Wheels might come halfway down and jam.
He waited for the attack of his inner optimist on these dark ideas, denying them all. Nothing happened.
Oil line could break.
It could.
Aren't you going to say Impossible? No Negatives Allowed?
What's negative about an engine failure? Part of the reason you like flying is the unexpected. Oil line break is an event, a test. No more negative than a spelling test.
Of course. You're right.
You want to know negative, Jamie? Here's negative:
“I'm sick.”
“I'm trapped.”
“I'm dumb.”
“I'm scared.”
“I'm separated from my highest self.”
Negative is not the test, negative is what you get when you fail it.
Why not No Tests, replied the pilot, hypnotize my appearances into trouble-free flying?
Nope don't you want to know why.
Why?
Because you love passing tests, you love proving yourself.
The pilot considered that. Not just airplane tests.
Not just airplanes. All tests.
Why are you so confident, when I'm not?
Since you just bought a suggestion that you're not, I'll tell you why. I'm confident because I don't wonder if what I see around me are my own beliefs. I know they are. I know I bring them to me for important reasons. With your permission, I'll fill the Confident square for a bit, till you're comfortable doing it on your own.
Thank you, but . . .
But what? Are you planning to put a negative in that blank?
The pilot was not known for being slow of mind. He dropped “. . . I'll never be able to do this all the time” like a hot turkey.
Thank you, but . . . I don't need your help.
He sensed amusement from his higher self.
Good. Let me know if ever you do. 'Bye.
It felt a little lonely, his new friend gone.
“It does not feel lonely!” he said aloud. Not gone at all, but just met. Finding selves in high places, that feels fine, and they answer when I call.
The confidence he pretended flared into confidence he felt, his second instant healing of the day. Something had changed within Jamie Forbes. All this talk of Hypnotism by Culture was no empty play of words. The more he examined the idea the more he saw for himself it was true.
Answers to every question shall come to me in some clear way, including quick and unexpected, and from within.
The airplane slanted up through the top of the haze layer at four-thousand five, whisking by popcorn clouds dreaming giant futures. For a second its shadow fell on a layer of white mist, airplane silhouette in sharp black light, centered in a halo of technicolor rainbow, full-circle round.
Oh, my, the pilot thought. Flying airplanes, you get eye-pictures like this, half-second snapshots you carry forever. What a life!
The word on the blackboard, he remembered; isn't that interesting, the word from his dream. He puzzled a bit, why Life solitary, all others erased?
Do we have to tell you?
Hello again.
You wanted to know what's real, remember?
Since everything else is suggestions and appearances, yes, I did. Oh. Life? Life's real?
Level at five-thousand five, his thought-form propeller lever eased back toward Decrease, dropping the belief of revolutions from 2,700 per minute back to 2,400 on the not-there tachometer. Can't trust vision or hearing or touch to teach me Real, they're all part of my t
rance.
Yet I know, that I live. That's real. I am.
Have ever been, came the whisper. Shall ever be.
For all the fakery in now-you-see-it-now-you-don't spacetime, he thought, for all its suggestions and misdirections, its assumptions and beliefs, for all its theories and laws and pretending we're somebody we're not, namely erect-walkers on the cooling surface of spherical melted stone, one of a dozen planets drawing foreverspirals about a continuous nuclear explosion in a pinwheel galaxy in a fireworks universe; behind our mask, it's Life that's the never-born never-dying infinite eternal principle, and the real me is one not with dying fires but with It!
Us on our little belief of a home; ancient aliens in their belief of star-flung civilizations; spirit-creatures from beliefs of afterlives and dreams of dimensions beyond; inside we're all playing at symbols, we're each of us the spark and flash of undying Real.
He blinked at himself. What's this I'm thinking? How do I know this stuff?
It's because you fly airplanes, Jamie . . .
Oh, come on! That can't . . .
. . . and because like everybody, it's already within; you've known it all along. You're just deciding to remember, along about now.
Is it fun for you?
Creating worlds? It's fun, all right, doing it well. As you . . . as we all find out when we realize it's worlds we're creating, every suggestion, image, statement, affirmation . . .
I'm going to find out?
There's no going back, unless you're desperate for boredom.
The pilot balanced on the edge of what he'd been waiting a lifetime to learn.
Let me get this straight, he thought, tell me if I'm pointed in the right direction. We're floating around somewhere, we imagine a story that would be fun to live . . .
We're not “floating around somewhere.” Where'd you get that?
. . . we imagine our story, and so imagine ourselves into players who can act that story.
We don't need to be in any story, said his other self. But . . . OK for now. Go on.
We create ourselves out of imagination, suggestions and ideas; we attract ourselves into an environment where lots of folks are in the kind of trance we want to be in.
I shall remember that I created this world, that I can change and improve it by my own suggestion whenever I wish.
We can steer our story any direction any time, but our belief in spacetime is our sea, it's our stage, and soon as we forget we can change it, we live an uncreative trance instead of a creative one.
“Creative trance.” That's very nice.
We don't have bodies, we continuously imagine them. We become that which we constantly suggest to ourselves, sick or healthy, happy or hopeless, thoughtless or brilliant.
He stopped, waited for feedback. Silence. Hello?
I'm listening. Go on.
That's about it. That's where I am right about now.
That isn't where you are. You're way beyond that. But that's where you believe you are, and that's fine. Am I reading you right, dear mortal? You've just discovered your bluefeather wings; you've always had 'em inside, living your fantasy of flight. You're standing on a cliff a mile high, you're leaning forward, trusting, wings out, you're this minute losing your balance on the ground, hoping you'll find it in the air?
Yes! Finding my balance in the air!
Nice.
That was the last word Jamie Forbes heard from his higher self for a while. He spent that time listening to what he had just said, himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
By the time the first raindrop of the first storm of the afternoon touched the ground, the T-34 was landed, fueled, rolled safely into its hangar. The pilot drove home in the rain, let flying go, savoring time ahead with Catherine, at last. So much to tell her, so much he wanted to hear what she'd say.
He took the next day to remember what had happened on this trip, relived the flying, relived the listening and the ideas, put it down as much as he could, word for word. It came to seventy pages in the computer.
His students waited, patient as condors.
“What would you do,” he asked, next training flight in the little Cessna with Paolo Castelli, “if the rudder jammed?”
“I'd steer with the ailerons.”
“Show me.”
Then, “What would you do if the ailerons jammed?”
“So now the rudder and the ailerons are jammed, sir, or just the ailerons?”
“Both jammed. I'll freeze up on rudder and ailerons now, you can't use them.”
Long silence. “That can't happen.”
“Happened to me,” said the instructor. “Toolkit slid under the rudder pedals, sleeve of a little girl's jacket got pulled into an aileron cable pulley. That's how I learned what you're learning right now.”
“I don't know.”
“Doors, Paolo. Open the doors and watch what happens.”
The student unlatched the door, pushed against the torrent of wind outside.
“Man! It turns the airplane!”
“Sure enough. Give me a ninety-degree turn left, then one to the right. Doors only.”
Near the end of the lesson, the question had grown:
“What would you do if the rudder jammed, and the ailerons and the elevator, and the trim cable broke, and all the instruments failed and all the radios, and the throttle stuck full open, maximum takeoff power?”
“I'd . . . I'd use the doors, and the mixture control to shut the engine on and off . . .”
“Show me.”
It was hard work for his students, these chapters of their training, but instead of scared they flew away confident, after his lessons, came back for more.
At two thousand feet, he pulled the throttle back to idle. “Miss Cavett, that engine has quit yet again! Where will you land?”
The student relaxed for the fifth forced-landing practice of the flight. All routine: instructor pulls the power, student finds a field, glides into a landing pattern as though it were a runway. When her instructor sees that she'd make a safe landing, he advances power, airplane climbs back up to altitude.
But this time was different.
“That's where you're going to land?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “The brown field, next to the dirt road.”
“You'll land crosswind, across the rows?”
“No. Into the wind, with the rows.”
“You're sure you can make it?”
“Yes, sir. I'll make it, easy.”
Jamie Forbes pulled the mixture control to CUTOFF. The engine dropped from idle RPM to zero, the propeller shuddered to a stop, soft hushing silence of the wind, airplane become glider.
“Excuse me, sir, did you just . . .”
“Yes. Give me your best full stop landing, Miss Cavett, into your field.”
Jamie Forbes had thought that he specialized in flight instruction that pilots can't find, this side of their first emergency in the air. Now he knew it was something different.
I don't teach, he realized. I suggest, and the students teach themselves.
I offer ideas. Why not try opening the doors? Why not try flying by feel instead of instruments? Why not try landing in that hayfield full stop, then get out of the airplane and jump up and down in the hay, prove to yourself that bare ground's as good as any runway when you have to land?
Who said it? “You're not an instructor, you're a hypnotist!”
Maria! Flicker of a second, he was in the air over Wyoming.
I'm going to die and he's asking me about cake? Of all rescuers I get a crazy-man?
It was Maria Ochoa, she who took coincidence to save her life and touch mine, showed me how the world of spacetime works. Hypnotizing Maria was not some twenty-minute help I gave her, it was a gift she gave, to change me forever.
Dear Maria, he thought, wherever you may be right now, I shall pass your gift along.
Once in a while he'd get a letter, a call, an e-mail from a student, “So when the engine
stopped—well, while the engine was blowing up—I got the fuel off, the mixture off, prop full decrease, I heard your voice right beside me: Give me your best full-stop landing to your cowpasture, Mister Blaine. There was oil all over the windshield, Mr. Forbes, but I stood on the rudder, slipped the turn to final so I could see out the quarter-window all the way to flare. Not a scratch! Smoothest landing I ever made! Thank you!”
He kept the letters.
I am deeply grateful, on my journey, for the parenting and guidance of my highest self.
It was a grey morning, ceiling zero visibility zero in fog. He was sitting at his computer, writing a check for the hangar rent (I shall not lack for whatever I need to become the person I choose to be) when the telephone rang.
“Hi,” he said.
A woman's voice, a little nervous, on the phone. “I . . . I'm calling for Jamie Forbes.”
“And you have found him.”
“Are you the flight instructor?”
“I'm a flight instructor. I don't advertise, though. You called an unlisted number.”
“I want to learn to fly. Can you teach me?”
“I'm sorry, ma'am,” he said, “I'm not that kind of teacher. How'd you find this number?”
“On the back of a flying magazine. Somebody with a marker pen wrote your name and the number and ‘Good instructor.’”
“That's nice to hear. I teach the sort of things you want to know after you've got your license, though. Seaplanes, tailwheel aircraft, advanced flying. There's plenty of flight schools around, and if you want some extra training, later on, give me a call and we'll talk about it.”
“Don't hang up!”
“I was planning to wait,” he said, “till you said good bye.”
“I'm a good student. I've been studying.”
“That makes a difference,” he said. “What's a sideslip?”
“It's a maneuver . . . that seems odd, at first,” she answered, glad for the test. “You bank the airplane in one direction, but yaw it in the other. A sideslip keeps you from drifting in the wind when you're landing, it's the only way to go straight in a wind that would blow you off the runway.”