MindHacks.Org

Where do creative ideas come from? The brain? The mind?

For best-selling author Richard Bach, a Silva graduate, his creative idea came from a bird.

"It was the weirdest experience of my life"

Bach said this in an interview quoted in the November 1972 issue of Harper's Bazaar. "I was walking along one night, worrying about the rent, when I heard this voice say, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". But no one was there. I had absolutely no idea what it meant. When I got home, I suddenly had a vision of a seagull flying along, and I began to write. The story certainly didn't spring from any conscious invention on my part. I just put down what I saw."

". . .do what you love to do and you'll be guided."

Bach had written the first two-thirds of the book from a "dream-like" experience where a big seagull appeared to him and said, "Take dictation, I have a story for you." But the bird faded away before the completion of the story.

Bach told him he did not know how to get the bird to come back so that he could finish the book, until he took the Silva course.

Then he knew how to get to that "dream-like" level and how to invite Jonathan Livingston Seagull to this creative level to tell him the rest of the story.

Bach said in a Harper's Bazaar article that even before taking the Silva training, he'd come to assume that "there are certain 'hidden' capacities and powers which can be taught. I think there is a terrifically pleasant principle behind existence - do what you love to do and you'll be guided. It's a lot like flying a plane: You have to trust what you can't see."

Jonathan Livingston Seagull was an immediate hit. The book was a bestseller, and the movie based on the book was a huge hit. In fact, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the books that Bach wrote afterwards helped to bring about a spiritual awakening on the planet, by helping people to understand and accept their own spirituality.