Part Two

1

So this is heaven, he thought, and he had to smile at himself. It was hardly

respectful to analyze heaven in the very moment that one flies up to enter it.

As he came from Earth now, above the clouds and in close formation with the two

brilliant gulls, he saw that his own body was growing as bright as theirs. True, the

same young Jonathan Seagull was there that had always lived behind his golden

eyes, but the outer form had changed.

It felt like a seagull body, but already it flew far better than his old one had ever

flown. Why, with half the effort, he thought, I'll get twice the speed, twice the

performance of my best days on Earth!

His feathers glowed brilliant white now, and his wings were smooth and perfect as

sheets of polished silver. He began, delightedly, to learn about them, to press

power into these new wings.

At two hundred fifty miles per hour he felt that he was nearing his level-flight

maximum speed. At two hundred seventy-three he thought that he was flying as fast

as he could fly, and he was ever so faintly disappointed. There was a limit to how

much the new body could do, and though it was much faster than his old level-flight

record, it was still a limit that would take great effort to crack. In heaven, he

thought, there should 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 few seagulls were

working the updrafts on the cliffs. Away off to the north, at the horizon itself, flew a

few others. New sights, new thoughts, new questions. Why so few gulls? Heaven

should be flocked with gulls! And why am I so tired, all at once? Gulls in heaven

are never supposed to be tired, or to sleep.

Where had he heard that? The memory of his life on Earth was falling away. Earth

had been a place where he had learned much, of course, but the details were

blurred - something about fighting for food, and being Outcast.

The dozen gulls by the shoreline came to meet him, none saying a word. He felt

only that he was welcome and that this was home. It had been a big day for him, a

day whose sunrise he no longer remembered.

He turned to land on the beach, beating his wings to stop an inch in the 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 the wind, bright wings outstretched,

then somehow they changed the curve of their feathers until they had stopped in the

same instant their feet touched the ground. It was beautiful control, but now

Jonathan was just too tired to try it. Standing there on the beach, still without a

word spoken, he was asleep.

2

In the days that followed, Jonathan saw that there was as much to learn 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 each of them, the most important thing in

living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do,

and that was to fly. They were magnificent birds, all of them, and they spent hour

after hour every day practicing flight, testing advanced aeronautics.

For a long time Jonathan forgot about the world that he had come from, that place

where the Flock lived with its eyes tightly shut to the joy of flight, using its wings as

means to the end of finding and fighting for 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 now with the easy

telepathy that these gulls used instead of screes and gracks. "Why aren't there more

of us here? Why, where I came from there were.. "

"... thousands and thousands of gulls. I know. " Sullivan shook his head. "The only

answer I can see, Jonathan, is that you are pretty well a one-in-a-million bird. Most

of us came along ever so slowly. We went from one world into another that was

almost exactly like it, forgetting right away where we had come from, not caring

where we were headed, living for the moment. Do you have any idea how many

lives we must have gone through before we even got 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 

such a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our

purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. The same rule holds

for us now, of course: we choose our next world through what we learn in this one.

Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, 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 a thousand lives to

reach this one."

In a moment they were airborne again, practicing. The formation point-roils were

difficult, for through the inverted half Jonathan had to think upside down, reversing

the curve of his wing, and reversing it exactly in harmony with his instructor's.

"Let's try it again." Sullivan said over and over: "Let's try it again." Then, finally,

"Good." And they began practicing outside loops.

3

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 out fly 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 a back 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.

4

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 just 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 scream 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."

5

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

doubtful.

"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.