I have had the honor of speaking to many extraordinary guests on my radio show.

Perhaps none has touched as many lives as Neale Donald Walsch.

My work as a political commentator draws significantly on his, and in many respects, I trace my belief that Love can and must be put at the center of our politics to his ideas, with which I first engaged while at college.

With that said, this extraordinary, elevating and thought-provoking interview speaks for itself.

ROBIN KOERNER: Welcome to Blue Republican Radio. My guest today is a certain Neale Donald Walsch, who is probably one of the best-selling authors of our time. He is the author of Conversations with God series of books, which I discovered about twenty years ago, and he’s been prolific: ten million copies of his books have been sold. He’s been translated into thirty-seven different languages and – this may surprise some of my listeners – but this gentleman has probably had more of an intellectual impact on me, and even my political work and writing, than perhaps anyone else. Certainly more so than anyone else I have spoken to on this show.

First of all, I would like to start by thanking you, Neale, on air, for the impact you’ve had on me, many of the people I know, and the millions of lives that you’ve touched through your writing.

NEALE DONALD WALSCH: Well, that’s very generous of you, Robin. Thank you very much for those kind words.

ROBIN: Well, thank you too. Let me just explain why I wanted to put you on a show where we normally talk about politics and economics. You wrote that, “your politics is your spirituality demonstrated, so too economics”. When it is said like that, I guess it’s obvious, but I think most of us don’t actually approach our politics – our trying to make our society better – with that in the front of our mind. Would you say that’s fair?

NEALE: Yes, I do think that’s fair. I think it’s more than fair – it is also the problem. The major problem facing the world today, in my observation and in my view, is that there appears to be a huge disconnect between people’s most basic fundamental beliefs about life, about themselves, and about this thing called “God”…if anyone even has a belief in this thing called “God.” Even those who don’t have a belief in God – those beliefs as well – impact their positionality with regard to economics, politics, and just about everything else in life. So when I say politics are your spirituality demonstrated, I mean exactly that. That politics is just a means by which we put into action, either by voting or in some even larger way in the democratic societies of the world, our most deeply held, most profound, most sacred-if you please- belief. If that’s not what politics is, if politics are not that, then politics are bankrupt.

ROBIN: Yes, that’s a good word and well used. You wrote, Neale, that all the following words are synonyms: “Think of them as the same thing: God, life, love, unlimited, eternal, and free. Anything which is not one of these things is not any of these things.” People who follow my work, listen to the show know that the slogan I work around in politics – specifically in politics – is, “liberty with Love.” … which, by the way, you might say almost doesn’t make sense: if love is freedom, liberty with love is almost a tautology – I suppose! I’m trying to put love into politics; love as maybe the bedrock. I think most of us get caught up in our own paradigms, in our own orthodoxies. We get a little righteous about what we believe, and it becomes a little more about being right than doing what is right.

NEALE: I think I’m going to disagree with you a tiny bit in terms of the semantical approach. I believe that all politics is love demonstrated as well. I think people do use politics to demonstrate their love, but it’s a question of what they’re loving. Every act is an act of love, I’ve been told and advised. Every single act, including every political act, is an act of love, so in fact I think people do use politics with full awareness that their political expression is an expression of what they love. So the issue is not that there is a disconnect between love and politics. The issue is: what are they loving? What does a person love? Do they love power; are they loving themselves more than the next person? Are they loving gold and diamonds, earrings, positions? Or are they loving other people? Are they loving the poor? Are they loving a particular philosophy? So your politics will demonstrate in fact exactly what you are loving. So politics in my experience, as I observe the world, in fact is the biggest demonstration of love. The question is not whether politics demonstrates what you love. The question is “what do you love?” Sometimes we think that if a person is not, let’s say, taking political actions, making political choices and decisions that affect the poor, the neglected, the undernourished and so forth of the world in a positive way, if they’re just looking out for themselves – then we say that they’re not acting in a loving way, but in fact they are! They’re acting in a very loving way: they’re simply loving themselves more than they are loving other people, or more than they are loving the poor and the downtrodden and the disadvantaged. But everybody is loving something. I think we need to really be clear about that. It’s an extraordinary point of view that has been given to me by some very high sources. Everybody loves something. Every act, therefore, is an act of love. Even the act of terrorism- even the act of cruelty- is an act of love. If people did not love something, they would not act cruel toward another person with regard to something else. If people didn’t love something, they would never act in a way that strikes terror in the hearts of other people. So it’s a question of not whether you’re loving enough, but what you’re loving and why. And that’s what people don’t understand. They think we need to teach people how to love. We don’t need to teach people how to love – all people know how to love. We need to teach people what to love, if they want to change their lives and change the world.

ROBIN: So that begs a great question: what would you have people love and how should we be teaching what to love?

NEALE: I would have people love first the highest source of energy in the universe, which I call “life” or “God” or – if you please – “freedom,” or “un-limitedness.” I would invite people to love that which has loved us so much that it has given us complete freedom to make the choices and decisions we wish to make in our lives, or at least the opportunity to express that freedom should we choose to do so. Or at least that’s the plan. A lot of people – millions of people – do not have that freedom. They live in societies and in situations where they don’t have the freedom to make the choices they want to make but the idea – the plan – was that they would. I would have people decide to chase their priorities in life. The fact is that 98% of the world’s people are spending 98% of their time on things that don’t matter. The fact is that we have our priorities wrong. There’s something that we do not fully understand here about life (the understanding of which would change everything). What we don’t understand is that we’ve got our priorities mixed up. We’re simply loving – if you please – and yearning for the wrong things. Wrong not in the sense of being morally wrong, wrong in the sense of being unworkable, dysfunctional, so we notice – with the most casual observation – that the way in which society operates (that is, the things that people prioritize) are simply creating a horrible, horrible mess in this world. We live in a world right now where 5% of the world’s people hold 95% of the world’s wealth and resources, and where 1% of the world holds 50% of the world’s wealth and resources and don’t seem to care very much, or show very much concern, for the fact that what I just said is true. We live on a planet, Robin, where as you and I are talking today, 2.6 billion people do not have indoor sanitation. 2.6 billion people don’t have toilets in their house! One and a half billion people do not have access to clean water, 637 children are dying every hour on this planet of starvation. We’ve all heard these statistics before from a variety of sources, and we all go, “tsk, tsk…that’s really a shame” and we mean it, we really mean it. It is really a shame, but we don’t think we can do anything about it. That’s where the disconnect is. Actually there is quite a bit we could do about it, and it’s just a matter of having the will to do so. What would create that will? Ahh, choosing to love something else other than ourselves, something else other than our priorities. I grew up, Robin, with the following priorities: get the girl, get the car, get the job, get the house, get the spouse, get the kids, get the grandkids, get the better car, get the better job, get the better house, get the better spouse, get more kids, get the grandkids, and finally at the end, get the office in the corner, get the sign on the door, get the retirement watch, get the cruise tickets, get the illness, and get out. That was basically my set of priorities. What’s been made clear to me in my conversations with God is: “wow, what a wrong set of priorities.” From start to finish, the wrong set of priorities.

ROBIN: Neale, you know what? We’re coming to the end of this first segment, and I think that’s a good place to end. We’ll be back in a few minutes. Thank you, thank you.

[Break]

ROBIN: I am Robin Koerner. I am speaking to the best-selling author of the Conversations with God series of books, Neale Donald Walsch. I have got this gentleman, who has been a big spiritual teacher in my life, talking a little bit about something that you all know that I am most interested in, which is making our world better – we hope – through politics. And we started a little bit by talking about love, and, Neale, your point is very well taken, but I would like to return to this word, “love.” I actually wrote an article recently where I did something that I quite often do, which is that I steal from you. I opened an article with the notion that made a profound impact on me when I read it in Conversations with God that the true three words – the three-worded sentiment of love – is not “I love you” but “as you wish.” “As you wish” seems to capture for me the idea of both what love is (inasmuch is it’s not about elevating yourself above the beloved but the opposite) and also encompasses this idea of freedom (what you love you want to be free or make free). Thinking of love in that way – is it possible to put that conception of love into our politics? Maybe on a national level or a global level. How do we do that and how do we deal with this balance, or tradeoff, or compromise between – which we often have in politics – compassion, and the use of force to deliver what we think is compassionate? There’s often this kind of tradeoff between helping and the reduction of freedom to be able to help, if that makes sense. Maybe through the state or some institution. How do we deal with that?

NEALE: If what we’re doing through the state is the reflection of the combined will or the highest thought of those people that the government serves, then it’s not really a reduction of freedom – it is an expression of freedom. That is, that is the basis upon which the United States government, and governments elsewhere in the world as well, are intended to operate. Where we get into a challenging situation and sometimes great difficulty is when the governance constructions of the state – the laws, the legislation, the rules, regulations, and so forth – do not serve us. For instance, to give you a simple if not a striking example, nobody argues with the red light at the corner. I don’t care what country you’re in, I don’t care where in the world you are – nobody has a problem with the fact that on street corners, the light turns red, then it turns green, then it turns red again. It’s the law, and we know that if we violate the law and somebody catches us, we’re going to be given a ticket and so on and so forth because we have broken the law. But nobody has a problem with that law because everybody in the world agrees. Why? Because we see that our survival is at stake. It’s very clear to us: we’re not going to violate the law. The red light is there for our own good. If it’s a question of governance taking place, if we’re pressured to follow the law, again, I announce, if we do not stop at the red light, we will be fined and we might even be put into jail if we do it consistently enough because we will be called a scofflaw. Guess what? We’re totally happy to have laws govern the human society so long as we agree with the laws themselves and the laws serve us, and many laws do. Let’s be fair, many laws do serve us, but there are some laws that do not. And increasing number, those are laws that take away our freedoms to the degree that what we intended (when we gave power to our government to assist us, to collectively move through our lives) has been ignored, or avoided, in fact – in some cases, violated.

You’re right; there is this extraordinary dichotomy right now where governments around the world, including the United States, now seem to be taking away freedoms as a means of guaranteeing our freedom. Striking that delicate balance is no small feat. It’s what creates political divisions, political differences between people. In the United States, the major difference is between the Democratic and Republican Parties, between Libertarians and others in the United States’ political structure who have enormous, not small but enormous, disagreements around this. I’m kind of a Libertarian at heart – I’ve gotta tell you I’m fairly conservative in my political views – surprisingly enough. Most people expect me to be liberal, but I’m socially liberal but fiscally, I’m fairly conservative in my political views. I’m most conservative when I believe that, if I had my way, there would be no government at all. No laws. No legislation. No governance whatsoever. Anyone would be totally free to do whatever they wanted to do, but I’m willing to acknowledge that our society as a culture, humanity as a cultural collective is not sufficiently evolved to live that way. Unless we see that our survival is directly at stake.

Let me make one little analogy here: I do a lot of visiting around the world. One of my favorite places is Paris, and one of my favorite places in Paris is the Arc de Triomphe. It’s a favorite place because it illustrates for me a dynamic that I observe throughout human life. If you’ve ever driven around the circle at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, you would understand why I call it “suicide circle.” That’s because thousands and thousands cars drive through that circle every hour from one side to the other. There are no lane markings, there are no traffic police, there are no signs, there are no lights, and a matter of fact, there is no control whatsoever. You literally take your life into your own hands—a “suicide circle” as I call it—around the Arc de Triomphe. Yet, there are fewer traffic accidents and far fewer traffic fatalities in that circle than there are 100 yards away at the Champs-Élysées. Well, they’ve all got traffic lanes, markings on the road, signs, lights, and even policeman in the busiest places, and there are far fewer accidents and fatalities around the circle. What does that tell us? It tells us that when there is no regulation whatsoever, people look out for themselves and for each other when they are clear that their combined best interest—in this case survival—are at stake; i.e., the fundamental instinct of humanity is to look out for the self and for the other when we all agree on what it is we’re trying to do. We all agree what we’re trying to do around the Arc de Triomphe is to get across the circle alive, or without killing ourselves or anybody else. I noticed then that lack of governance, lack of control can work famously and wondrously so long as everyone agrees on the desired outcome.

The problem is: in unevolved societies, we can’t even agree on where we’re trying to go collectively as humanity. We can’t even agree, for instance (to use another striking example), we can’t even agree on whether it’s okay for gays to marry each other. It’s taken us hundreds of years to come to even a semblance of agreement in certain states in the United States that it’s okay to spend your life with another person in a married situation regardless of what their gender is. What a huge deal that’s been because we have misunderstood what God wants. We’ve actually created legislation, in the years past, that we imagine reflect the desires of our maker. In many cases, we’ve said it’s against the law of God—“it’s right there in the Bible, Neale, read the Bible”—and so we allow ourselves to create laws that change what have determined and defined to be the collectively desired outcome of an entire society. History is about the long struggle of human beings to agree with each other on where we’re trying to go, how we can best survive, and how we can best express who we really are. That’s the social, economic, political, and spiritual struggle challenge that is facing humanity and never more profoundly than on this very day.

ROBIN: Yes, yes. This is interesting. We’re coming to the end of the segment, but I love listening to you, Neale. You talk about the state and the laws that we have, some of which serve us and some of which do not, and it occurs to me—and I think I’ve written as much—that we are seeing now an increasing number of laws that seem to come out of fear. In the next segment, I want to talk a little bit about this because—you might disagree with me here—but I have written (it’s kind of short-hand) that it’s almost as if we’re living through an age of the politics of fear right now, especially since 9/11. There’s this sense in which there’s this kind of contracting, almost kind of reactionary, protective use of the state and law. It seems in that sense to be the opposite of loving use of the state and law. I’m giving you that as we go into the break, and you can come back and agree or disagree in the next segment. Thank you, Neale Donald Walsch.

[Break]

ROBIN: Welcome back to Blue Republican Radio. This is Robin Koerner speaking to Neale Donald Walsch, which is a personal privilege to me because he’s had a huge influence on my life through his books for the last twenty years. I want to talk to him in this segment about this idea of being driven by fear as opposed to love, and whether that is what is going on in our politics right now. Now, I understand… I take your point of what you said earlier, Neale, that in a way, our politics demonstrates what we love; it’s always demonstrating our love. Maybe, then, what I mean by “fear” is a love of something that we are concerned is being lost, and that we have to bring to bear legislation, the state, and all kinds of things, to save. Are we in that age? Am I right about that?

NEALE: There’s no question about it. Fear is a demonstration of love. Of course, if you didn’t love something, you’d be afraid of nothing. If you didn’t love something, you’d be afraid of losing nothing or afraid of not having something. I would say it’s all motivated by love, but you’re perfectly right, of course. The fearful aspect of demonstration of love is exactly what’s being demonstrated now. Not only in politics in the United States, but for that matter around the world. We live in a fearful society right now, and how could we not given how love is being demonstrated so dysfunctionally and so violently and so cruelly around the world? When people walk into a magazine office in Paris, kill the editors, and execute them by name because of cartoons that they drew that were offensive in some way to another person. Offensiveness is probably not a good idea, but do we kill people as a result of it? I mean, do we actually murder people because we’ve been offended by a cartoon that they drew or a statement they made? For that matter, do we behead people because they belong to our religious persuasion or are not living their lives the way we think they should, and then put pictures of the beheading up on the internet so that everyone can see and become scared about that? Of course we live in a society that’s fear-driven. How could we not? The question is not whether we are living in a society that’s driven by fear, the question is: what, if anything, can turn it around? Or are we going to slowly, in fact, disassemble ourselves or disassemble everything we’ve put together? In some ways, we probably should but not violently and not cruelly. Here’s the nature of what’s going on the planet right now: the fact of the matter is, what we’re discovering, human beings are now observing—and by the way, the human race is rapidly losing patience with itself—we’re able to see that nothing is working. That is, nothing—NONE—of the systems we’ve put in place on the planet are working to produce the outcomes for which we designed them. The political system that we put into place on the earth among the very societies of the planet was designed to create, if nothing else, at least a minimum of safety, security, and stability between nations. It’s produced, in fact, exactly the opposite. The economic system that we designed on this planet, which was produced nominally, to create at least, if nothing else if not equality, equal opportunity for people to achieve and to experience a minimal level of financial abundance and financial security. It has produced, in fact, exactly the opposite. The social systems we put into place on the planet, which were designed to create harmony, joviality, joy, companionship between people, and closeness between people, frankly, have produced exactly the opposite. Saddest of all, the spiritual systems that we have put into place, which were designed to bring us closer to God, and therefore, closer to each other, have produced exactly the opposite. In fact, not a single system we put into place has produced the outcomes for which it was designed. In fact, it has produced exactly the opposite. Humanity’s construction has therefore resulted in abject failure for the largest number of people. In fact, for all but 1% of people on the planet. Our challenge right now is to civilize civilization. Are we living in a fearful society? Of course we are because we can see that –read my lips—nothing is working.

ROBIN: I just want to get the perspective right here. What about the fact that now, as a human being living in this century, you’re less likely than a human being in history to die a violent death? You’re going to have a longer life expectancy. On average, we have more material comforts and people around the world are being pulled out of abject poverty and have access to some of the basic comforts that we’ve had in the West for a couple of generations.

NEALE: People like to use those statistics to prove that we somehow improved. In the 21st century—in 2015— have we made sufficient progress to brag? No one is suggesting (and I’m the last one to suggest) that we haven’t made some improvement. My god – in 500 years, we ought to have at least created a society where fewer people are subject to death and the lifespans are a bit longer. Hello! Is our present situation something to brag about simply because it’s better than it was 500 years ago, or 300 years ago? Is this where an advanced civilization ought to be? Where one and a half billion people go to bed hungry tonight. Is that what we’re talking about? That 2 out of 10 people go to bed hungry tonight? That 2.6 billion people have to go to the bathroom outside? I don’t want to hear about bragging about how it’s better than it used to be. Excuse me, if we could put a man on the moon; if we can cure polio and bring an end to major diseases; if we can make the extraordinary advances we have made, when can we create a life of dignity and create a civilized civilization for all but 1% of the world or 5% in a stretch of the world’s people? Are we satisfied in saying that 80-85% of the world’s people are living in abject poverty and say, “well, you know it’s better than it was – the poverty isn’t as bad as the poverty used to be.” Excuse me, that’s not good enough for me. I don’t want to hear statistics that prove: “hey, more of us are living now than lived before; more of us have washing machines and vacuum cleaners.” Really? Really?

ROBIN: Thank you for clarifying. Absolutely. I get you, which really preempts another question that I want to ask you: how do you feel we can change our political discourse so that we can reorient to really address some of the general and fundamental issues? I am asking that holding in mind another quotation of yours which captures a thought I try and share in my work, which is the following: “No one gets righteousness,” you said, “not even those you’re trying to help.” And I think there are a lot of us who see what you’re now describing and we all have our pet solutions whether it’s the Democratic Party or the Libertarian or the Republican, whatever it may be. We take our righteousness out to the world, and we try to convince: “we have the answer, if only you follow my way.” A lot of us have been doing that quite well-intended, and yet still here we are in the world you’ve just described me. How do we change that?

NEALE: By altering our fundamental beliefs. The problem is then that we insist on trying to change the world at the level of behavior, rather than at the level of beliefs. So we pass laws, we write up legislations, we give sermons, we give speeches, we write articles. We do all that we can to try to convince the world to change its behaviors, but we abjectly refuse to say very much about changing the beliefs that sponsor those behaviors. We are loathed to question the prior assumption when it comes to our beliefs. Let me explain something to be real clear here. The one thing that we are loathed to do in the area of our behaviors that we are not loathed to do anywhere else. In science, we question the prior assumption immediately. As soon as we have a discovery we’ve made scientifically, we put it to the test: we question the prior assumption. Is there possibly more to know on this subject? This is something we do in technology. We do the same thing in medicine. For instance, if you’ve come up with a medical discovery or a cure, the first thing we do is put it to the test. We are skeptics – we question the prior assumption. But in our most fundamental beliefs, our beliefs about who we are, about our relationship to each other, about the purpose of all of life, and about the thing that some of us call “God,” “Allah,” “Brahman,” “Yahweh,” “Jehovah,” or whatever word it pleases us to use to refer to that ineffable essence we call the divine – in that hat particular area of our life, which happens to be ironically the most important area of all, we refuse to question the prior assumption. As soon as anyone gets up and says, “Is it possible that this particular spiritual teaching might be wrong? This teaching about God, about us, about who we are, about our relationship to each other. Or at least, if not wrong, at least incomplete not fully accurate… Is it possible that there’s something we don’t know here, that we don’t fully understand, the understanding of which could change everything?” As soon as anybody gets up and even raises that question, they are accused of “blasphemy,” “apostasy,” “heresy.” We put them down because, in the area of our beliefs, we’re not supposed to question the prior assumption. And here’s the prior assumption (there are two that we are loathed to question): 1) the assumption that we are separate from God and from each other. We live in a world of separation that says that we are separate from deity, if there even is a God, and separate from each other whether there is or is not a God. This is what I call a separation theology. You know what, Robin, there is nothing wrong with that if that’s your belief system. Fair enough if it begins and ends there. But the problem is, it doesn’t end there because it’s a global separation theology, and that’s what we’re talking about here. All of the world’s religions – not a few of them— all—every one– of the world’s great religions insists that we are separate from God. That separation theology produces separation cosmology; i.e., a cosmological way of looking at life that says, “Everything is separate from everything else.” Which in turn produces a separation psychology; i.e., individual psychological profiles that allow us to feel alone in a crowd. That separation psychology produces separation sociology, that is entire societies that have understood themselves to be “other than” and “separate from” other societies. And ultimately, that separation sociology produces separation pathology, pathological behaviors of self-destruction, observable everywhere we turn on this planet today. That’s what we have to do today—to answer your question—change not our behaviors but beliefs that generate those behaviors and support them. The beliefs from which those behaviors emerge, chiefly among them – our belief in separation, that we are separate from each other, separate in a sense from all of life on the planet—in the sense that we are observing it but have no control over it, and separate from the thing that some of us call God, divinity, or whatever word we want to use to refer to that ineffable essence that is the divine.

Now, if we changed our mind about separation, we would then change our behavior automatically because we would not allow our right hand to slap our left. We would not do to others what we would not want done to us. But since we think there is such a thing called “another,” we can go ahead and do things to others that we would never do to ourselves. If the things that ISIS right now is doing to others were done to them, they would call it “abject cruelty,” and they’d become furious, but they’re now doing it to others in the name of righteousness. This is not true just of that particular phenomenon, but it is the truth throughout human history. It’s merely the latest example of the same. The second belief—there are two major beliefs that we have to change—the second belief is our belief, as I mentioned earlier, that we are even after the appropriate outcomes individually and collectively, when in fact it’s just the opposite. We’re spending 98% of our time on things that don’t matter. But don’t tell anybody that! Let them go out there to get the guy, get the girl, get the car, get the job, get the house, get the office on the corner, get the promotion, get the bigger car, get the bigger house, get the stuff, get the stuff, get the stuff. We live in an extraordinarily materialistic society, and you can’t talk humanity out of it. It feels that they have to somehow get these things in order to feel secure, ignoring completely the teaching of every great spiritual master that has walked the planet. ALL of them have said—each in their own way—“seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added onto you.”

ROBIN: It’s interesting, Neale—I have so many thoughts here. You actually brought up the word, “libertarian,” earlier, saying you have libertarian instincts. Thinking about libertarians—I know many and I work with many: on the one hand, there’s a celebration of individualism, but there’s also a celebration of voluntarism, of acting freely. It occurs to me that—if we could celebrate individualism while understanding that we are all part of the whole, part of the One – celebrating the individual but not the separation of the individual – then perhaps then we would find that we would need less force of the state; we would need less force in our society.

NEALE: You’d need no force. There’s no force that comes into your home on Thanksgiving Day and makes sure that everybody gets a piece of the apple pie. There’s no force used there. It’s even more obvious. If Uncle Charlie shows up at the front door: “Hey, I just got back into town, I’ve been gone for a couple years. I heard that this is your Thanksgiving Day – mind if I come in?” “Come on in! There’s enough food for all of us!” We find a way to even invite people who weren’t originally invited to sit down at the table, and you know why? There’s no force used for heaven’s sake. The better angels of our nature make it very clear to us what the appropriate response is to family. However, when we think it’s not family, when it’s the person across the street who comes to the door, rings the doorbell, and says, “Would you have a little extra for me?” We say, “Sorry because you’re not part of our family. Take care of yourself” We have misunderstood what voluntarism will produce. I agree with voluntarism – we should have a society with no laws whatsoever, but if we change our beliefs about who we are, we would in fact voluntarily make sure that everybody gets enough. We would never allow, if we were a civilized society, 623 children to die every hour of starvation. We would simply not allow it.

ROBIN: Beautiful. Thank you, Neale. We’re coming up to the end of the third segment, the long segment. We will back for just 2 ½ minutes in a little bit to close the show. Thank you so much for being with me, Neale, and I look forward to just hearing from you about what you’re working on now.

[Break]

ROBIN: I’ve had a very exciting hour with Neale Donald Walsch. I don’t really go in for heroes, but Neale has been one of the biggest influences on my life as I’ve said. And those who know his work and know mine will perhaps now, if you listen to this show, see more of his thought in my work than perhaps you realized was there. I would like to just close the show by asking you to share with my listeners what you’re working on now. I believe you do have a new book coming out? Tell us a little bit about that.

NEALE: Well, I’m working on two things: first of all, the advancing of my latest book into the world. The book is called God’s Message to the World: You’ve Got Me All Wrong. It talks about seventeen statements that human beings routinely make about God that are in fact false. There’s a true and false quiz in the book and we invite people to answer “true” or “false”: “God is to be feared? True or false? “God demands obedience? True or False; “God’s love is vengeful and God’s love can turn to wrath? True or false? And other statements as well. The book explores those statements and explains why our thought—the thought of many people—that those statements are true is what has created the dysfunction in humanity’s experience of itself. The second project I’m involved in is called the “Evolution Revolution.” On March 12th, we are going to stage an evolution revolution on the earth in cities, towns, and villages across the planet in which we place on the church house doors all over the world, as Martin Luther did in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1570. We’re going to echo his action and place on the church house doors all over the world –on the doors of synagogues, mosques, temples, and houses of worship everywhere—one thousand words that would change the world. And 10,000 people are going to be doing that on March 12th. If anyone wants more information on how to become a spiritual activist in that regard, they just have to go to evolutionrevolution.net. The name of the book again – God’s Message to the World: You’ve Got Me All Wrong. Thank you very much, Robin, for the opportunity to share my latest projects with anyone who might have a modicum of interest.

ROBIN: Thank you, Neale. You mentioned spiritual activists. I just want to say to those who hold themselves to be political activists—many of whom listen to this show—that your politics is your spirituality demonstrated. So if you’re a political activist who is not a spiritual activist, you’re not a political activist. Thank you again, Neale. Thank you for taking this time, thank you for sharing your wisdom. It’s been a real pleasure to speak with you. Please visit BlueRepublican.org, and please check out Neale Donald Walsch’s work.

(Many thanks to Hema Gorzinski for transcribing.)