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One evening the gulls that were not night-flying stood together on
the sand, thinking. Jonathan took all his courage in hand and walked to
the 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 being
enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by it; he could outfly any
gull in the Flock, and he had learned skills that the others were only
gradually coming to know.
"Chiang, this world isn't heaven at all, is it?" The Elder smiled in
the moonlight. "You are learning again, Jonathan Seagull," he said.
"Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is there no such
place as heaven?"
"No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it
is not a time. Heaven is being perfect." He was silent for a moment. "You
are a very fast flier, aren't you?"
"I... I enjoy speed," Jonathan said, taken aback but proud that the
Elder had noticed.
"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you
touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a
million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit,
and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being
there."
Without warning, Chiang vanished and appeared at the water's edge
fifty feet away, all in the flicker of an instant. Then he vanished again
and stood, in the same millisecond, at Jonathan's shoulder. "It's kind of
fun," he said.
Jonathan was dazzled. He forgot to ask about heaven. "How do you do
that? 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," the
Elder said. "I've gone everywhere and everywhen I can think of." He looked
across the sea. "It's strange. The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake
of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of
perfection go anywhere, instantly. Remember, Jonathan, heaven isn't a
place or a time, because place and time are so very meaningless. Heaven
is..."
"Can you teach me to fly like that?" Jonathan Seagull trembled to
conquer 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 light
glowed 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 begin
by knowing that you have already arrived ..."
The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing
himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two inch
wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was
to 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 sunrise
till past midnight. And for all his effort he moved not a feather width
from his spot.
"Forget about faith!" Chiang said it time and again. "You didn't need
faith to fly, you needed to understand flying.This is jast the same. Now
try 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 of
joy.
"Good!" said Chiang and there was victory in his voice.
Jonathan opened his eyes. He stood alone with the Elder on a totally
different seashore - trees down to the water's edge, twin yellow suns
turning overhead.
"At last you've got the idea," Chiang said, "but your control needs a
little work... "
Jonathan was stunned. "Where are we?"
Utterly unimpressed with the strange surroundings, the Elder brushed
the question aside. "We're on some planet, obviously, with a green sky and
a double star for a sun."
Jonathan made a scree of delight, the first sound he had made since
he had left Earth. "IT WORKS!"
"Well, of course, it works, Jon." said Chiang. "It always works, when
you know what you're doing. Now about your control..."
By the time they returned, it was dark. The other gulls looked at
Jonathan with awe in their golden eyes, for they had seen him disappear
from where he had been rooted for so long.
He stood their congratulations for less than a minute. "I'm the
newcomer here! I'm just beginning! It is I who must learn from you!"
"I wonder about that, Jon," said Sullivan standing near. "You have
less fear of learning than any gull I've seen in ten thousand years. "The
Flock fell silent, and Jonathan fidgeted in embarrassment.
"We can start working with time if you wish," Chiang said, "till you
can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the
most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready
to 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, and
Jonathan learned at a tremendous rate. He always had learned quickly from
ordinary experience, and now, the special student of the Elder Himself, he
took in new ideas like a streamlined feathered computer.
But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been talking
quietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop their learning and
their practicing and their striving to understand more of the perfect
invisible principle of all life. Then, as he spoke, his feathers went
brighter and brighter and at last turned so brilliant that no gull could
look 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 again
of 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 have
meant! He stood on the sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull back
there who might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see the
meaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb from a
rowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one made Outcast for speaking
his truth in the face of the Flock. And the more Jonathan practiced his
kindness lessons, and the more he worked to know the nature of love, the
more 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 of
demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to
a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself.
Sullivan, adept now at thought-speed flight and helping the others to
learn, was doubrful.
"Jon, you were Outcast once. Why do you think that any of the gulls
in your old time would listen to you now? You know the proverb, and it's
true: The gull sees farthest who flies highest. Those gulls where you came
from are standing on the ground, squawking and fighting among themselves.
They're a thousand miles from heaven - and you say you want to show them
heaven from where they stand! Jon, they can't see their own wingtips! Stay
here. Help the new gulls here, the ones who are high enough to see what
you have to tell them." He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "What
if Chiang had gone back to his old worlds? Where would you have been
today?"
The last point was the telling one, and Sullivan was right The gull
sees farthest who flies highest.
Jonathan stayed and worked with the new birds coming in, who were all
very 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 back
on Earth who would be able to learn, too. How much more would he have
known 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 doing
well. 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 on
things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time,
we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have
left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the
middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once
or twice?"
Sullivan Seagull laughed in spite of himself. "You crazy bird," he
said kindly. "If anybody can show someone on the ground how to see a
thousand miles, it will be Jonathan Livingston Seagull." He looked at the
sand. "Good-bye, Jon, my friend."
"Good bye, Sully. We'll meet again." And with that, Jonathan held in
thought 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 a
perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all.
Fletcher Lynd Seagull was still quite young, but already he knew that
no bird had ever been so harshly treated by any Flock, or with so much
injustice.
"I don't care what they say," he thought fiercely, and his vision
blurred as he flew out toward the Far Cliffs. "There's so much more to
flying than just flapping around from place to place! A... a... mosquito
does that! One little barrel roll around the Elder Gull, just for fun, and
I'm Outcast! Are they blind? Can't they see? Can't they think of the glory
that 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 be
pure Outlaw, if that's the way they want it. And I'll make them so
sorry..."
The voice came inside his own head, and though it was very gentle, it
startled him so much that he faltered and stumbled in the air.
"Don't be harsh on them, Fletcher Seagull. In casting you out, the
other 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 to
understand."
An inch from his right wingtip flew the most brilliant white gull in
all the world, gliding effortlessly along, not moving a feather, at what
was very nearly Fletcher's top speed.
There was a moment of chaos in the young bird. "What's going on? Am I
mad? Am I dead? What is this?"
Low and calm, the voice went on within his thought, demanding an
answer. "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 will
forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help
them know?"
There was no lying to this magniflcent skillful being, no matter how
proud or how hurt a bird was Fletcher Seagull.
"I do " he said softly.
"Then, Fletch," that bright creature said to him, and the voice was
very kind, "let's begin with Level Flight...."
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