Neale Donald Walsch was experiencing a low point in his life when he
decided to write a letter to God, venting his frustrations. What he
did not expect was a response. As he finished his letter, he was
moved to continue writing - and out came some extraordinary answers
to his questions. These have been presented in the Conversations
With God books 1, 2 and 3, The New Revelations, and his latest book
Tomorrow's God amongst other publications.

Claire Williams and Anne Nash met Neale Donald Walsch during his
visit to the UK in June this year. Rob Dumbarton of Soul Searching
Promotions, the organiser of Neale's first UK event for four years,
kindly made the introduction for us.

Our first impression was of a gentle man who seemed a little
uncomfortable - perhaps he was apprehensive about what tone the
interview would take, after all he was completely unprepared as he
had never heard of or seen Paradigm Shift even though copies had
been sent to him to allow him that opportunity. Initially he seemed
to avoid eye contact but after a few questions he relaxed and began
to meet my gaze, then I saw the sparkle in his eye, which revealed
his passion for his mission.

After the introductions and few moments setting up our tape recorder
we got down to business with our first question:

Claire. How do you know that it's God talking to you?

... Because God is all there is and if it wasn't God talking to me
we would have to presume that there was something other than God
that exists. And nothing other than God exists'.

I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that there are levels of
consciousness awareness from which one may come as we move through
the experience known as life. I believe that these messages, and I
am by no means certain that all of them are, and in the books I say
so, but in the main I believe they are coming from a very, very high
level of consciousness from an elevated awareness that I call God.
And I believe this because the product of the messages clearly has
the potential to improve the human condition.

I asked someone once how can I know that these messages are coming
from the highest place and that person said to me, simply ask your
self the question as you consider the messages themselves 'what
would happen if everybody did it?@. What would happen if everybody
took the message in each paragraph and applied it, would life be
improved or not? Now when I apply that measuring stick to most of
the paragraphs in the seven CWG books the answer comes up for me,
and the other 7 million people that have read them, that it would be
an entirely different and a much better world if we applied the
larger portion of these messages. So if they are not coming from God
the question becomes irrelevant, they are benevolent messages one
way or another and that is all that is really important.

Claire. How do you feel when you channel these messages.

Fulfilled, joyful, warm, often weeping with joy, tearful in a joyful
way and utterly peaceful. A feeling of time extending or
timelessness, so that when I finish I am always astonished at how
much time has gone by. It feels to me as though I've spent half hour
and I look at the clock and its like six hours, and I am always
amazed at that. I've been known to write without stopping for 14 or
17 hours and to me if feels like 2 or 3 hours; and I'll stop and
look at the clock and it's midnight, and I've been working since 6
o'clock the previous morning. I often can't believe that and I also
can't believe how little I've produced in 14 hours, you'd think in
that amount of time I'd have written half the book, have reams of
pages and screens full of data but I might only have 10 screens
full, and I think 'Is that it ... ?'.

I feel often is deeply rested to the point were I literally fall
asleep at the keyboard just where I am sitting. I want to say that
its incredibly tiring and exhausting, but I don't feel exhausted. I
feel more rested like a very, very deep meditation, and so its very
difficult for me to stay with it, I have to shake myself and I write
a few things and try to stay with it, but,l can't, so that makes it
an interesting experience. I am clearly in an altered state of
consciousness when that has been occurring.

Claire. Does God speak to you in a masculine or feminine voice?

A voiceless voice, like the voice of your own thoughts.

Claire. For those of our readers who haven't read any of the
Conversations W'zth God books, could you give us an overview, a
brief summing up?

I'm often asked by interviewers if I could somehow sum up the
books, that if God had one message to bring to the world what
would it be. On television they ask me to sum up in one sentence.
Yes, I can sum up the message in the books in one sentence.

God's message to the world is 'You've got me all wrong'.

If we reject that sentence and say 'that's not true' then our
conversation about the books is ended, as there is nothing further
to discuss. But, if we embrace the possibility that there might be
something to that sentence then suddenly we open a huge discussion.
If it is possible that we have God all wrong then what is right,
what would be the accurate rather than the inaccurate understanding
of God? It's a very appropriate question because what we think about
God directly and vividly impacts what we think about and how we
treat each other. Our ideas about God have formed and continue to
form to this day our civil and civic laws as well as the interactive
constructions of our time.

For example, in the Evening Standard yesterday (June 2004), there
was an article that talked about the election in the United States
where Catholics were told by the Bishop of Colorado Springs that a
vote for John Kerry would jeopardise their salvation. Now, I bring
that up because some people think I am exaggerating when I say that
our thoughts about God affect our thoughts about life and our
thoughts about each other and they don't see the connection. But you
see, if the Bishop of Colorado Springs, a major official in the
Roman Church, if he is saying that a vote for John Kerry will
jeopardise your place in heaven then we immediately retreat to the
fundamental question 'What does God want?'. Is it possible to offend
God to such a degree by casting a vote in a particular way that he
sends us to hell? Its not a small question.

I could give you 50 and more examples of this where we create civil
laws based on our ideas about what we think God wants and requires
of us. It is demonstrably true, and so that if we have God all wrong
that might be why we are having so much trouble on earth in our
regular non-religious day-to-day activities. So to summarise

The books, 1 through 7, suggest not only that we have God all wrong,
but in what areas we have God all wrong in, and how we could change
the world entire, if we simply shifted our ideas about God, or even
entertained the possibility that such a discussion would be worth
having, because you must understand that most people who have a firm
belief in God won't even talk with you about the possibility that
their beliefs may not be complete 'that there may be something left
to understand here. So it is the dangerous position of most of the
world's exclusive externalised religions that all of the questions
have been answered, and all that we need to know on this subject we
need to know. Just read the book, whatever book it might be, the
Koran the Bhagavad Gita, the Book of Monnon, the Bible, the
Upanishads, just read the book its all there. That is an
extraordinarily dangerous position that holds humanity back from
experiencing the process of its own evolution.

Now we have evolved in every other area of human endeavour, our
technologies have advanced in ways we could never have dreamt of 20
years ago much less predicted. So, too, our medical sciences have
thrown us into the future before most of us are even ready for it.
Even in the area of political science we have made some slow and
begrudging progress in how humanity views itself, hence the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, the bringing down of the Berlin
Wall, and, the liberalisation of China.

In virtually every area of human endeavour we have seen this forward
movement out of our willingness to challenge the assumptions on
which the present is based, every area except the area of human
theology. Human theologians by and large refuse to entertain any
serious challenge to the assumptions on which the present is based.
In theology we find ourselves attempting to move into the 21st
century with moral and ethical constructions that were created many
thousands of years ago. It is akin to going into a 21st century
operating room with a very sharp stone and presuming to do brain
surgery.

My books in summary, argue that unless we do embrace at least the
possibility that there might be something we don't know here, the
knowing of which might change everything, that humanity is doomed to
self destruction, and time appears to be running out. I cannot see
how we can escape altering life as we know it on this planet forever
in the days immediately ahead - I'm talking in the next 10 to 15
years, not the next 50 or 100 years. Humanity can no longer afford
any more of its temper tantrums, we are as children playing with
matches in the dynamite room and we are refusing to admit that that
is true.

My latest book 'Tomorrows God' suggests that we will in fact explore
those questions one way or another. Either as a preventative measure
because the visionaries among us persuaded us to see that the past
must be reviewed in order to look at the future in any significant
way, or we will do it as a remedial measure after the world has
utterly destroyed life as we know it. Please let me make it clear
that I don't think the earth itself is going to be destroyed, I
don't see the end of the world coming, but I think it absolutely
possible that we will see the end of life as we now know it.

'Tomorrows God' is an astonishing book in that it makes a flat
prediction that we are going to create a new God in the next 30
years, no question about that, the only question is whether we do
that as a preventative or as a remedial measure - we are going to
create a new idea about God, life and about each other, a new
cultural story will be created on earth in the next 30 years, it
will be what 1 am describing as the second renaissance.

The first renaissance occurred on the planet between 1300 and 1600
roughly and included the reformation of the church in 1570 to 1623.
It began in Italy and spread throughout Europe and in those 300
years everything that humanity was experiencing as a collective
changed, how we experienced life, commerce, industry, relationship
with governance, our relationships to each other, medicine, art,
death, everything, everything changed. From 1300 to 1600 its like
two different planets in the way that we handle ourselves, that's
going to happen again but it won't take 300 years it will take 30
years, because now we have the ability to communicate immediately,
instantly and rapidly all over the world. The Internet has reduced
by 90% the amount of time it takes for social revolution to take its
effect on humanity at large. We are watching now what Barbara Max
Hubbard described as Conscious Evolution. We are now going to be
consciously participating in the re-creation of our own society
whether we know it or not.

Claire. Is there a possibility that the Conversations With God books
could become another bible that is followed blindly to the letter,
could the groups established around the world become like the
churches-we have now? Isn't there a danger that that could happen?

Of course there is.

Claire. Is there anything that you are putting in place in the work
that you are doing to prevent this happening?

Sure, answers to questions like yours in magazines like you Publish.
I say `Don't do it!', `Stop it! Don't even think about it!' The
books themselves argue against it, the books themselves exhort
readers not to do that - that's one thing that's not contained in
the bible by the way - there is nothing in the bible that says don't
make this your holy book. My books however contain that statement
repeatedly - do not make this your next holy book. Simply use it as
a reference point; simply use it as a means for opening discussion -
if people do nothing more than substitute this book for their last
best idea of how it should be then we will have accomplished nothing
at all.

Claire. You mention in Tomorrow's God about 'working to create a new
spirituality' how would you define this?

It's a spirituality that allows human beings to experience and
express their impulse towards the Divine in a way that does not make
others wrong for the way that they are doing it. It's a spirituality
that steps away from dogma of any kind and uses as its focal point
and foundation the simple and direct in the moment experience that
human beings are having about life around them. It's a spirituality
that allows us to notice that the words God and Life are
interchangeable in fact, and in no way separate from each other.
It's a spirituality that allows humanity to freely change its mind
about itself and about the world in which we live. Our present
spiritually simply doesn't allow us to do this as it doesn't allow
us to ask questions.

A few years ago I asked Sir John Templeton the question 'if the
world could use one thing right now what do you think it could be'
immediately he said 'humility theology'. I asked him what he meant
and he said 'theology that is willing to admit that we don't have
all the answers'.

Anne. Isn't this very similar to the Gnostic view which defines a
new spirituality as different from the ancient beliefs, moving away
from dogma and the church and religious structures, and being more
about going within?

Let me make something clear, I am not suggesting in any way that we
abandon or reject our present faith traditions. The treasures that
our wisdom traditions have brought to us are incalculable and should
be honoured as the treasures that they are in the main. The
observation here is while 90% of what the world's exclusivist
religions have brought us is good and true' and extraordinarily
useful and beneficial in the highest way, 10%, of it is not. So we
are not suggesting that people abandon their traditions, but that
they work within them to expand, enlarge and grow them in order that
they might embrace ideas about God and life not heretofore explored
seriously by those religions. So we are asking people who belong to
those wisdom traditions and institutions to unlock the remaining
wisdom that awaits its own revelation. We don't believe that they
have it wrong but that the, have it incomplete.

Anne. Which again is what the Gnostics said, they didn't believe
that you had to go via the church to reach God, they said we could
go within and go straight to God that way?

I think one can do both, one can be a Gnostic, go inside, without
abandoning one's exterior faith tradition. I am urging people who
belong to faiths of all kinds to work within their wisdom
traditions, if it feels comfortable and good for them to do so, to
awaken those faiths and institutions to the new spirituality and the
possibility of a new way of embracing life and God. I'm calling for
the second great reformation. I'm asking everyone to become a modern
day Martin Luther to post 'The 5 Steps to Peace' as oppose to
the '95 Theses' and attach them to the church-house doors.
Because 'The 5 Steps to Peace' given to us in 'The New Revelations',
my second to last book, would change the world in 48 hours if they
were embraced and rendered functional in the lives of people
everywhere.

The first step is that humanity announces and declares that it is
willing to accept the possibility that there is something in the way
we are currently living our lives, something in our current
understanding about life that is not working

Claire. I have read Conversations With God books 1, 2 and 3 and am
in the process of reading 'Tomorrow's God'. For me everything you
had to say was said in the first two and a half books, why do you
continue to write? This question pushed a button and Neale became
quite angry at this point. As the blast wave of emotion swept over
me I mentally vowed never to interview anyone ever again! ('till the
next time ... ) He soon calmed down though and found he could see my
point.

Well I would disagree with you; much of what is said in 'Tomorrow's
God' was not said in the first 2 or 3 books.

Much of what is said in 'Tomorrow's God' I would defy you to find in
the first books. And a great deal of what was said in 'The New
Revelations' wasn't found anywhere else so in fact that is not true.
I would challenge you to look through 'The New Revelations' for
instance and count the number of statements there that are not found
within any of the previous books, and then you'll come back and say
yes there are about 345.

The books may all feel the same and that's why they may seem as
though they say the same things, but in fact you must read the books
very carefully.

All the books in the CWG cosmology build one upon the other and are
presented to the world in increasing levels of complexity and
sophistication both in terms of the information they bring us as
well as in terms of the solutions they suggest. Book 1 is focused
and directed largely on our interpersonal singular experience of
life. Book 2 talks about our collective experience of life on this
planet. Book 3 talks about the cosmology of life itself both on and
off this planet. So the context within which the conversation occurs
continues to get larger. 'The New Revelations' for the first time
takes what is presented in the first 5 books and says what would
happen if we applied this to' the currently functioning systems of
governance and economics on the earth and answers the question 'how
could September 11th ever have happened?

And 'Tomorrow's God' makes a bold prediction that is not, contained
in any of the previous books, and the second half of the book
focuses directly on how our world would begin to look if we embraced
the concepts and rendered them functional within our daily
lives.

So I would gently disagree but I would accept your assessment that
the contextual feel, the feel of resonance created by all seven
books is nearly identical and if one where not looking for specific
comments you could think after reading a few pages 'this is the same
old stuff'. And I am hoping that the world will give the books a
much closer review than that as I believe 'Tomorrow's God' to be the
single most important book of our time.

Claire. You've developed quite a large organisation around you -
what was it that led you to do that.

The thousands and thousands of letters that have come to us from
around the world. I am talking about over 75 thousand letters and
emails. The vast majority of which have said in one form or
another 'What can I do? This series of books has utterly changed my
outlook on all of life, now I am sitting here with a great deal of
frustration - why can't it be like this out there. Why do I have to
be the only one, why can't everyone embrace these ideas'. After I
received the 50 thousandth letter/email I realised that I can't
allow this book to become yesterdays ice cream, just a fad, and the
seven million people who have read them will not allow me to. The
book has been published in 34 languages, in virtually every place on
the earth, it has become one of the most widely published spiritual
books of all time, so the publishing industry tell me. A thousand
people were in Rotterdam the other night to hear me talk about this
book (Tomorrow's God), 800 people plus turned up in Stockholm two
nights ago, I understand there are roughly 800 people plus who have
already booked for tonight's event in Watford. This is a social
phenomena that is nothing to do with me, people wouldn't even
recognise me if I walked down the street. This absolutely means that
the message in these books is touching people in a very deep place
and causes them to say I want to do something, what can I do. The
organisation Humanity's Team was created as a direct result of that,
as well as the events of Sept 11' which made it clear to me that it
is a now or never time in the human experiment.

Claire. Tell us more about Humanity's Team

Humanity's Team is a grass roots movement by people around the world
who believe as I do, that our beliefs create our behaviours
and 'unless we see a fundamental shift in the most sacred beliefs
held by humanity we will not see a change in our behaviours. Unless
we see that change our world will not be the world we want to gift
our children, or our grandchildren with. The world today is not
facing a political problem even though we keep on trying to solve it
with political means.

The world today is not facing an economic problem even though we
keep trying to throw money at it, or withhold money from it in the
form of sanctions, or whatever, in order to use money as the
manipulator of the day. Nor is it a military problem, obviously,
even though we also keep trying to throw bullets and bombs at it.
The problem facing the world today is a spiritual problem and
Humanity's Team is about gathering together all the people on the
planet who agree with me and having come to that understanding to
know that whatever we do, doing it together. Multiplies and
increases exponentially the power and focus. Therefore Humanity's
Team has as its mission the one simple statement 'To change the
world's mind about itself'. We call this a civil rights movement for
the soul, a great civil rights movement for humanity, freeing
humanity at last from the oppression of these ancient beliefs about
God and about life and each other.

Our intention is to put Humanity's Team communities on the ground in
cities and towns and villages around the, globe and those
communities in return will offer classes, workshops, seminars,
retreats and programmes of every kind allowing people to come to a
place of willingness to at least explore the possibility that there
may be something that we don't understand here about life and about
God, the understanding of which would change everything. Our
differences do not have to produce divisions, our contrasts do not
have to produce conflicts, and there is another way.

Claire. In a recent interview with Kindred Spirit magazine they
portrayed you has having taken on the job of World Saviour Is that
how you see yourself.

I hope that what i said to them was that we are all the world's
saviour and we are all the hope of humanity. When anyone says to
me 'are you the world saviour?' I say 'you bet I am, PS so are you'.
Now, if they are going to eliminate the postscript as we've done
with so much of the bible, eliminated all of Jesus' postscripts, his
follow up remarks, then we take everything he said out of context
and create a new context in which anything can be made to sound
absurd.

I would never hold myself up as being the one and only saviour of
the world, however, if some one says 'are you the saviour of the
world?' I'd say 'you bet I am, and so are you and so is everyone
else', and until we get that the world will not be saved. I'm am
ready and willing to play my role, indeed I am playing my role.

Claire. Paradigm Shift is aimed at people who are raising their
consciousness through the process of ascension. What &do understand
ascension to be about.

I am concerned with life here on this earth, and I am looking for a
Paradigm Shift to occur while we are still embodied on the planet,
or those who are embodied after us will never know the wonder, the
glory and the exultation of the life that God created for all of us
here. So I must say to you that my interest in ascension at this
point is purely academic.

My interest in redemption is profound. I think that humanity has an
opportunity now to redeem itself by that I mean to save itself from
its own worst ideas about itself and to create the collective
experience that God intended us to create. I should make it clear
however as I say those words that I see no division between God and
us, God is not some super-being living outside the universe having
the same characteristics and living out the same limitations and
emotional strain as you and me. I think God is embodied in and
experiences and expresses itself through each one of us. So really
it is about living up to our own expectations, our own ideas. We
need to get back to original intent with regard to the creation of
life on earth. I would like to urge all people everywhere as they
consider these more esoteric opportunities and possibilities, such
as ascension, to simultaneously look at the on the ground day to day
reality, that we as Ascended Masters are creating quite
unconsciously on this planet we have chosen to inhabit, and to see
what we might do to create here the world that we would chose to
ascend to. Let us raise the level of our consciousness and elevate
our own experience during our time on this planet. That is the
ascension in which I am interested.

Anne On your website it says that you get around 200 questions a
week. Does that make you feel frustrated that people it yet or happy
that at least they are coming to ask?

My first feeling makes me aware that there are about 6 billion
people in the world and I've reached 70 million of them and that's
not nearly enough. That makes me aware of the extraordinary
challenge placed before humanity to bring to itself new
understandings and grander visions. But I'll tell you I am
undaunted. As George Bernard Shaw said, 'there are those that see
the world as it is and say why, I dream of things that never were
and say why not'. So I see these questions that come in and I am
acutely aware that there is a world of people who have not even
heard of this material.

Ends.

For further information about Neale and his work go to www.cwg.org
For details of Neale's visit to the UK in 2005 contact Rob Dumbarton
at Soul Searching Promotions on 01934 429148,
www.SoulSearchingPromotions.co.uk www.paradigmshift.info
www.humanitysteam.com