Communicating with God 
An interview with Neale Donald Walsch 
By Ravi Dykema

Rarely has an author touched so many lives with a single theme. Neale Donald Walsch transformed a late-night self-described conversation with "God" into an international best seller by the same name. Walsch says his books are God's actual responses to his own soul-searching questions. More books in the series soon followed. To date, Conversations With God, Book One (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1996) has sold more than 1.5 million copies and spent an astonishing 130 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. In each piece of the trilogy, God is presented not as a wrathful and judgmental being to be feared, but a kind, loving and understanding entity who wants us to be happy. Walsch says he was recently summoned by God to write Friendship With God: An Uncommon Dialogue (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1999), which details how to turn a relationship with God into a friendship. Communion With God, which tells how to elevate that friendship into a communion, is scheduled to be published by Putnam in the fall. Here, Walsch has a conversation with Nexus publisher Ravi Dykema.

RD: What is the primary message you received in the Conversations With God books?

NDW: It was, to put it poetically, "Go forth and teach ye all nations the new gospel." The first sentence of the new gospel is "We are all one." And that is really where Books 1, 2 and 3 completed. And Book 4 in the series, Friendship With God, adds to that and says that it is time now for us to bring an end to "better." The new gospel is two sentences: "We are all One," and "Ours is not a better way; ours is merely another way."

RD: An end to "better?"

NDW: An end to "better." That the idea of superiority is one of the most seductive ideas ever visited upon the human race. The idea that we are somehow superior to the next person in some way, by virtue of the color of our skin or our understanding of the "right way" to God or our gender or our national origin or our economic status. It's very seductive to the human race.

RD: What makes it so seductive?

NDW: Because it allows us to have more of what we imagine we need to be happy. It all began with a false thought that there's not enough of the things that we need in order to have a happy life on this planet. As long as we hold in our minds that there's not enough of the stuff we need, we're going to be in competition for it. But worse yet, we've decided before the competition begins who the winners are going to be. Going into the competition we say "Oh, by the way, if you're black and I'm white, I win before we start. If you're a male and I'm female, you win before we start." What Friendship with God says is that we've declared ourselves to be "better" out of our root thought that there is insufficient stuff to go around. And we also have a thought that not only is there not enough on Earth, but in fact there's not even enough of God. So we've set up a worldwide competition for God and for God's attention, and for God's love. We call that competition "religion."  

RD: Are religions really in competition?  

NDW: Listen to the sermons of any religion. Most say "We are the chosen people; you are not. Ours is the fastest and best way to heaven, and yours is not." In fact, it's worse than that. "Not only is yours not the fastest way to heaven," religions say, "if you continue to believe as you believe, you will literally fail to go to heaven. You'll go to hell, and be damned for the rest of all eternity." Ninety percent of the world's religions start from the point of view "I have the way to God. Ours is the better way." In fact, religions were the first institution on the planet to convince people that there was such a thing called "better."

RD: Where else does that "betterness" show up?

NDW: It has permeated all of our society. From religion, it's moved into political parties, economic systems, philosophical constructions and social inventions, all of which come from the place that says "Ours is the better way." In Friendship with God, God invites not only every minister, rabbi and spiritual teacher, but also every politician, every national office holder, every worldwide economist, every worldwide philosopher, every person who has any kind of impact on opinion making in the world, to say to their followers, "Ours is not a better way. Ours is merely another way."  I'm waiting to see some politician say, "Oh by the way, with regard to my tax plan, it isn't the better way. It's just my idea about it. See what you think."  

RD: You seem to think that some harm is resulting from this premise. 

NDW: Look around you. All the wars that we have-physical wars, as well as emotional, economic and psychological wars-are based on someone's idea that they have the better way in some area. We even go further than simply saying "Ours is the better way, and we're willing to defend our idea about that." We say to people across the border, "We're going to attack you because we notice that you don't agree with us." Look at Kosovo and Serbia. Anyone who thinks that was a political war does not understand the on-the-ground reality there. That was and is a war between Eastern Orthodox Christians and Muslims. It was a war of religion, disguised as political misunderstanding.

RD: Bring it a little closer to home. What harm is resulting from this premise of "better" in our homes here on the front range of Colorado?  

NDW: About 100 miles from here in Wyoming, we just strung a kid up and put him on a fence and let him die because we thought that not being gay is better than being gay. So Matthew Shepherd paid with his life. Not because two kids went crazy, but because an entire segment of our society fueled the engine of the experience of those two kids who strung up Matthew Shepherd, and caused those two kids to think what they were doing was okay. The idea of "betterness" sows the seeds of hatred that create their own outcomes in our society. 

RD: How does that idea of "betterness" start in our society?

NDW: Our competitive constructions begin in the first grade on the playground, and it begins so innocuously that we don't see what we're doing to ourselves. We put kids in uniforms and send them out on the soccer field and say "Oh, aren't they cute?" Until the kids start kicking each other, and we wonder, "Where did that come from?" It comes from a root thought of "betterness." Superiority does not exist in God's world. It cannot exist if we are all one. Differences do not mean divisions, and individuality does not mean superiority. But we've confused the two. In an effort to assert our individuality, we assume it's necessary to assert our superiority. And that is the grandest mistake made in the human experiment. When we step away from that concept and no longer allow it to drive the engine of our experience, our experience itself will change forever, and we'll create the paradise on Earth for which we have so long yearned, and of which we are, in fact, totally capable.

RD: I hear and read that last statement often: that we are capable of grand things, of Utopian civilization, of peace. Do you really believe it? 

NDW: Absolutely. But it will take a consciousness shift. It won't come about through legislation, through any exterior action by government. We don't take candy from babies-not because it's against the law, but because we know it's wrong. It's that inner law that drives the experience of man. When we change the inner law, which I call consciousness, then we change the exterior experience. And we're now in the process of changing those inner laws. We're beginning to see the human race reaching very nearly now toward critical mass, the first domino to fall. Once the first domino falls, all the rest of them will follow. 

RD: How are you and the others going to go about building the critical mass you describe?

NDW: The only way I know how: by using the tools of mass media and the internet and publishing, and by forming worldwide alliances of people who find themselves, if only temporarily, in positions of leadership with regard to the formation of public opinion. Through those kinds of activities, we're trying to create a reunification of the world itself, with itself. If there ever was an original sin-sin being a mistake-it's the idea of separation, that we are separate from each other and separate from God.

RD: So the alternative to seeing myself as "better" is seeing myself as one with whomever I'm looking at. As you've said, "There's only one of us in the room." But most people see the world as "other." How do we deal with that ongoing perception of separateness? 

NDW: First we extend our understanding of "other" to a deeper level. We do see "other" stuff, other people, places and things, but we don't understand what they are "other" of. They are other manifestations, and other expressions of the One thing that there is. When we understand that, we can hold the dichotomy of there being another, and it still being One. It's like going into a clothes closet and noticing that there are "other" clothes, many kinds of clothes. But they're still all clothes, and in fact all my clothes. And so when one looks around the world and sees other people, places and things, one says "Ah, yes, these are other expressions of who and what I am. And I am another expression of who and what that is. And I am not divergent from that, even though I am different from that."

RD: What happens when we come to that awareness?

NDW: As soon as you change the way you look at something, your decision about it changes automatically. And how you shift your perspective away from those negative judgements that cause you to think of things as "better" and things as "worse" is to say to yourself, "You know, I had a suspicion, even though I may not be able to reach it right now, that if I shifted my perspective on what I'm now observing, I may come to a different conclusion. Therefore, perhaps I shouldn't jump to the conclusion I've now come to, but allow myself to be conclusionless, or as kids would say, "clueless." Be clueless.

RD: If you get an inkling that your perspective may not be the whole picture, then you would want to suspend your judgments until you have a clear picture, or even suspend them perpetually.

NDW: Or do better than that. Come to a judgment that what you are currently experiencing is the best it could possibly be. Say "This is perfect for me right now. Thank you, God for the perfection of my life in this moment." Clearly it's perfect, or it wouldn't be happening, since God hasn't made a mistake in a very long time. And so on the days when I begin to see my life as imperfect, I do what God invited us to do, with three magic words that will change our lives: "See the perfection." And I see the perfection of things as they are, just as they are right here, right now. 

RD: That brings to mind what you say in one of your tapes: that one great expression of love is to say to your partner, "As you wish." 

NDW: Exactly. True love says to another, "My will for you is your will for you. I have no desire for you other than your desire for you." And to the degree that I do assert that I have desires for you that are not in concert with your own, and to the degree that I try to assert those desires and make you subservient to them, to that degree I do not love you at all, but merely love me through you." So people who truly love each other give each other the only gift that there is to give, which is the gift of total and complete freedom, where you say, "Your will for you is my will for you. As you wish." Which is what God says to us, of course. But we can't understand that, because we can't imagine a God who does that with us. We think that instead of saying, "As you wish," God says "If you break my commandments, you're going straight to hell." 

RD: But doesn't a healthy society, a humane society, require that people learn morals and ethics?

NDW: There are no such things as morals and ethics. They exist only in the moment because we agree that they do. As soon as one more than half of us changes our mind, it's not ethical anymore. Anyone who thinks morals and ethics are some kind of a standard that exists like an immovable pole stuck in the ground, has no idea about how life works. Nor have they been a very astute student of the history of the human race. Travel to Salem, Massachusetts, next week, and ask people whether it's okay to burn or hang witches in the town square. They'll probably say "No." But isn't that interesting, because the people who lived in that same city less than a couple of generations ago, did exactly that, and called it "right," by the way. 

RD: And as you pointed out, the culture inside the minds of the murderers of Matthew Shepherd thought that it was the "good" thing to do. 

NDW: Of course. So morals and ethics are really the agreements that the largest number of people reach, and therefore hold in common.  And they change, as they should, as time changes. As rightly they should, because a shift in a society's morals and ethics merely indicates growth and evolution. That doesn't mean that we should abandon our morals.  We should live the moral constructions with which we agree.  But we should not try to force someone else to be with us.

RD: So a problem arises when it appears to me that a person is living their morals, but also causing destruction or harm to another.

NDW: We have to understand that there are two people involved in every transaction, you and me. If you say, "I wish to punch you in the nose right now, or hurt your child right now," I would say, if I were a highly evolved being, "So be it with you. That is your choice.  Now let me announce my wish for me. My wish for me is to stop you from punching me in the nose. My wish for me is to not allow you to hurt my child. Now we'll see which one of us gets our wish." Instead, we say "No, you will agree with my point of view on this, or you're going to die here," even when the other person's point of view has no apparent ability to damage or hurt us. In the end, each of us must remain responsible for ourselves. We have to live our truth, and allow other people to live theirs. If you say, "I'm going to go murder your child right now," and if I stop you, I'm not sure that that is failing to allow you to live your truth so much as it is inviting you to decide on a different one. But I'm going to live my truth no matter what you do, and my truth is that I will always protect my children from harm. 

RD: Tell me some other ways that I and my readers might see the Oneness, the common source, that you suggest we all share, that in turn transforms our decisions and our perspective. NDW: That's like saying "Show me a way to fall in love." I don't know that I can show you a way to fall in love. And I don't know that I can show you a way to see the Oneness or to sense the Oneness. The best I can do is share my own experience. First is meditation. I notice that in my life, when I meditate, in the morning and in the evening of every day of my life, I find myself getting in touch with the actual experience, not a conceptualization, not a mental construction, not some idea of some philosophical framework, but the actual experience of my Oneness with All That Is. And when I emerge from that meditative experience, I know cellularly that I am one with the stove and the linoleum and the tree outside and you and everything else. That there's no difference. And I can't find words to explain how I know that. It's just a knowing-ness that has come to me through the meditative process-one way, not necessarily the better way, but one way to come to that awareness. 

RD: Did that start happening as soon as you started meditating, or did you meditate for years?

NDW: I didn't meditate for years, but I meditated for a while. A year, maybe two. But it can happen to somebody overnight. It can happen on the first meditation, or on a walk through the woods.  It can happen to somebody just communing with nature, camping out by a stream.  

RD: Do you think it does? Do you think that awareness happens to people who don't recognize it? 

NDW: Of course! And sometimes they recognize it and sometimes they don't. People have transcendent experiences and don't even know what they are, or become so afraid of them that they run from them.

RD: How common do you think that is?

NDW: Very, very common. People have had moments of illumination that have changed their lives just driving down the road, standing in the shower stall, making love, eating a good meal, whatever. You just suddenly know: "Whoa! I'm one with this glass of wine."  We've all had those kinds of flashes of transcendent wisdom. It's not uncommon at all. But I think what is uncommon is for people to latch onto that and hold it and cause it to be their truth, their functioning truth, their day-to-day, hour-to-hour reality. That's not easy in a world which seeks to deny that reality.

RD: When you have that experience you described in meditation of being one with whatever's there, and you said it comes fairly often, that implies that there are times when that's not your experience. 

NDW: Absolutely. The majority of time. 

RD: And assuming you're not seeing that Oneness now, it hasn't gone away. It's still there, it's still a reality-you just don't happen to be seeing it right now. But does it still influence your decisions?

NDW: Yes, because I retreat then to my intellectual understanding of what I've experienced. Suppose the attendant at the parking lot is yelling at me to move my car. In that moment I cannot honestly say that I'm experiencing Oneness with him. But at those times, I retreat to my intellectual capacity to retrieve what I have previously experienced and known on this subject. And I remember, "Ah, yes. This guy and I are one. I'm just not seeing that now. But if I were seeing that, how would I react now?"  Or as Conversations With God puts it, "What would Love do now?" Or as Friendship With God puts it, "Is this who you are?" If I can have the presence of mind to ask those questions, the answer will be given before I finish asking.  

RD: Just asking that will catalyze your experience? 

NDW: Often it will. And then I'll go to that experience of "Oh, I know what it's like to be frustrated with somebody who's not doing what you asked him to do. He's trying to operate this whole 200-space garage, people are driving in and thumbing their noses at him, saying 'I can take any space I want,' and then his boss is going to come down in a half hour and say 'Hey, those cars in reserved spots?  Why'd you let them do that?' He's trying to do his job, and I understand where he's coming from. He and I are one in this, because I've done exactly that in different circumstances." And then I can walk up to him as he approaches me, and I can meet his belligerence with awareness of our Oneness. And I can say to him, "Hey, you know what? I totally get where you're coming from, and I'm going to move my car now, because the truth is I was just trying to one-up you and get away with something here. Hope there's no hard feelings." And he looks at me like I'm from Mars, and just blinks his eyes and says "Oh, alright."  

RD: Are there other experiences that helped you see this Oneness in daily life? And were there teachers who were influential to you?

NDW: Well, everybody in my life has been a teacher, and some have been incredibly influential. If I were to name a few that had enormous impact on me, I would say Warner Erhard, Terry Cole Whitaker, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, now deceased, my mother, Barbara Marks Hubbard, Carl Rogers and Buckminster Fuller. 

RD: Can you name a few enterprises in the world you believe are working toward goals which are similar to yours?

NDW: Well, there is the United Religions Initiative out of San Francisco, undertaken by Bishop William Swing, the Episcopal Archbishop of California. He has had a vision of a one-world religion-not a single religion, but a united religions organization to which delegates from all the world's religions would come, much as they do to the United Nations. They would discuss the world's issues and challenges from a religious perspective and then present to the governments of the world the viewpoints of the world's religions meeting collectively. The point is to see what would happen if we applied spiritual principles, the highest spiritual principles held in common by man, to the deepest problems being faced by the human race.

And there are others. The Center for Visionary Leadership in Washington D.C. is doing some marvelous work. And there's Dennis Weaver's Institute for Ecolonomics in Colorado, which is an effort to merge the economy and ecology into one unified effort to create a better life for all of us. And there's the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, in which Barbara Marks Hubbard is working toward creating an International Peace Room. Michael Lerner's Foundation for Ethics and Meaning is another extraordinary organization. And Marianne Williamson's Global Renaissance Alliance is so inspiring that I decided to become a partner with her in it. There are many, many huge undertakings now occurring all over the planet, as there's a huge consciousness shift right now.

RD: Are you seeing a moonbeam of interest in the perspective that there is not really "better" and that Oneness is possible?   

NDW: I think the human race is losing patience with itself. We are becoming aware now that there has to be another way. And we do not know what the so-called "right" way is, but we do know what the "wrong" way is, "wrong" meaning it's simply not working. We are now able to admit that certain of our institutions-religion, economic institutions, political institutions-have not gotten us where we had intended or hoped. So it's time to re-examine these constructions, pull the best out of them that we can and slough-off those aspects that have not worked. It's a time of great change, as we begin to look with courage at all of these institutions. That's why we've seen communism fall in the past 20 years. That's why we've seen certain forms of capitalism coming to an end. That's why we see religions making massive changes in the way they now relate to the people. Pope John Paul II just announced on the 20th of July to the Catholics of the world that there is no such physical place in the universe as Hell. God is not a punishing God. God is not a deity that punishes or avenges. 

RD: The Pope was saying that? 

NDW: You bet. And what he said was the experience of hell is the experience of separation from God, which is self-imposed, not imposed by an avenging deity. So we're seeing some huge changes as even institutions as established as the Roman Catholic church are re-evaluating. That process of re-evaluation, which some people call evolution, is picking up steam 

RD: Do you think the new millennium has influenced that?

NDW: Of course. At the end of every year of our lives, there's a natural built-in mechanism that causes us to be retrospective. We ritualize the ending of a cycle, and it gives us a chance to look back and say "Well, how was that past year and how would we like our next year to be?" At the end of a ten-year cycle, we're even more retrospective. We realize "Oh, I'm not 40 anymore. Now I'm 50. Whoa. What does that mean? And how do I want the next ten years to look?" At the end of every hundred year cycle, we become even more introspective and reflective. And if we happen to be one of the tiny, miniscule number of human beings alive at the turning of a millennium-which, relative to the overall number of people who have ever lived on this planet, is about .000001 percent of the people-it's inevitable that we will become more reflective, and say to ourselves "My God, this is not a small shift here. This isn't like from the 1800s to the 1900s. This is from the one thousands to the two thousands." Now is a time to look back over what we've done this past 1,000 years, and to see if there isn't another way to get to where we say we want to go. 

RD: I felt that, too. 

NDW: People all over the world are experiencing it. Those of us who are alive at this critical seminal point in the history of the human race are enormously lucky and incredibly empowered. It is up to us now to consciously create, rather than just simply stand by and observe the evolution of the human race. How do we choose to evolve? Not how are we watching ourselves, not how are we observing ourselves evolving, but if we could choose the way in which we evolve, what would that choice be? That's the question we're asking ourselves now, and we're answering it.