Richard David Bach was (born June 23,1936 in Oak Park, Illinois) is an American writer.

Richard Bach attended Long Beach State College (now California State University, Long Beach) in 1955. He has authored numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970), Illusions (1977), One (1989), and Out of My Mind (1999). Most of his books have been semi-autobiographical, using actual or fictionalized events from his life to illustrate his philosophy.

He served in the Air Force Reserve as an pilot, and later became a barnstormer. Most of his books involve flight in some way, from the early stories which are straightforwardly about flying aircraft to his later works in which he used flight a philosophical metaphor.

Bach's book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, was significantly successful and the story, a was turned into a movie in 1973. The story is a fable about a seagull who flew for the sake of flying rather than merely to catch food.

He has retained a dedicated fan base throughout the years. In the 1990s Bach appeared online at Compuserve, where he answered e-mails personally. The website has since disappeared.

Bach had six children with his first wife, Bette, but they divorced in 1970. His son Jonathan is a journalist, who wrote a book about growing up without knowing his father, Richard, and then later meeting him as a college student. (Richard gave his approval; although he noted that it included some personal history he'd "rather not see in print"). (see Above the Clouds: A Reunion of Father and Son by Jonathan Bach (1993) ISBN 0-688-11760-0)

His second wife was actress Leslie Parrish, whom he met during the shooting of the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1973 and married in 1981; The Bridge Across Forever is based on their courtship. They divorced and he has since remarried.

Philosophy

Bach espouses a consistent philosophy in his books: Our true nature is not bound by space or time, we are expressions of the Is (see: Non-duality), we are not truly born nor truly die, and we enter this world of Seems and Appearances for fun, learning, to share experiences with those we care for, to explore - and most of all to learn how to love and love again.

Of his divorce, Richard Bach wrote:
"Leslie and I are no longer married. Soul mates, to me, don't define themselves by legal marriage. There's a learning connection that exists between those two souls. Leslie and I had that for the longest time, and then a couple of years ago, she had this startling realization. She said, 'Richard, we have different goals!' I was yearning for my little adventures and looking forward to writing more books. Leslie has worked all her life long, and she wanted peace, she wanted to slow the pace, not complicate it, not speed it up. Not money, not family, no other men or other women, separated us. We wanted different futures. She was right for her. I was right for me. Finally it came time for us to make a choice. We could save the marriage and smother each other: 'You can't be who you want to be.' Or we could separate and save the love and respect that we had for each other. We decided the marriage was the less important. And now we're living separate lives.
"I believe that Leslie and I were led to find each other, led through the years we lived together, and led to part. There's so much to learn! When a marriage comes to an end, we're free to call it a failure. We're also free to call it a graduation. We didn't say, 'I guess we weren't led to each other, I guess we're not soul mates after all.' Our graduation was part of the experience we chose before we were born, to learn how to let each other go."

                       

Courtesy of: http://www.inner-growth.info