Conversations with God : An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1) (Hardcover)

by Neale Donald Walsch (Author) "In the spring of 1992-it was around Easter as I recall-an extraordinary phenomenon occurred in my life..." (more)
Key Phrases: uncommon dialogue, highest choice, Sponsoring Thought, Eternal Truth, Holy Ghost (more...)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 211 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (October 29, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399142789
• ISBN-13: 978-0399142789
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,213 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,445 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #1 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Occult > Spiritualism
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• This is item 1 in The With God Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How Does God Communicate to Us?, September 9, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Let me begin by saying that Amazon.com requires me to rate the book in order to write a review. Actually, I have no idea how to rate it because I'm not sure what the book represents. So my three star rating simply means "not rated." If compelled to, I could make an argument for anything from one star to five.

I read this book on the advice of a friend. He told me the book was "fascinating." I certainly agree.

The main thing I would like to say in the beginning is that this book shares some elements with Christianity, but is certainly not Christianity of the sort that most people will recognize. So if you do not like to read books that are at odds with your version of Christianity, avoid this one. It will be a one star book for you.

The author tells us that he had been writing down his religious and philosophical questions on a yellow legal pad for years. One day, he began to hear answers. He then wrote those answers down. What was "dictated" to him becomes the backbone of this book.

I have no way of knowing what the real source of these responses to the questions in the conversations is. It could be Divine communications. It could be Satanic ones. It could be a manifestation of the author's psychology. There are a lot of other things it could be. You'll have to decide for yourself. If you have a spiritual advisor or counselor whom you respect, that would be a good subject to discuss with her or him.

I found myself empathizing with the author's perspective of the conversations. "I am . . . deeply embarrassed by my own life . . . ." "Yet I am encouraged by God to grant myself forgiveness for my failings and not to live in fear and guilt but to always keep trying -- to live a grand vision. I know that's what God wants for all of us."

There were several concepts in the book that I found to be new, and which added to my spiritual perspective. One was: "The truth is, God talks to everybody." That made me think about ways that I could pay more attention to what was going on to me and inside me as ways to know God.

A second one was the notion that the Ten Commandments are there not to be obeyed merely, but as ways for us to test ourselves on how well attuned we are to God's way.

As someone who loves to work on creative activities, I liked the many affirmations about God wanting us to create the goodness we desire through our thoughts and deeds. "There is only one reason to do anything: as a statement to the universe of Who You Are."

About two-thirds of the way into the book, the conversation lost me. There were extensive discussions of reincarnation, infinite universes, gods beyond gods, and moving from being a killer to being someone imbued in love. That material did not resonate with me in either a religious or a spiritual sense.

The most unexpected part of the book for me was that the voice of God (as described in the book) is a very colloquial and humorous one. It is hard for me to equate this God with the God of Moses and Jesus Christ. But that may just be my limitation. To give you a flavor, the language is much like that in the George Burns movie of many years ago, Oh God.

If you are curious about other perspectives on spirituality, you will enjoy this book. If you are looking for a different perspective than the one you have today, especially one that is less threatening, you may find this to be enlightening.

Let me share with you the three laws in the book: "The First Law is that you can be, do, and have whatever you can imagine. The Second Law is that you attract what you fear. Love is all there is." God describes Himself as having no needs, but three desires: (1) that people know and experience Him (2) that people know and experience who they are and (3) that the whole process of life is a constant joy, continuous creativity, and never-ending experiences of total fulfillment.

May your life be filled with valuable spiritual experiences and guidance!

62 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hinduism on the cheap., October 29, 1999

By	David Marshall (Nagasaki, Japan) - See all my reviews

There is nothing "uncommon" about the dialogue in this book. Over the past several years I've read and heard the channeled revelations and apocryphal Gospels of a good number of religious innovators like Mr. Walsch. His teachings show the typical limits of such literature. Unlike, say, Joseph Smith, who preached about Pilgrims on the moon, Walsch was smart enough to avoid dishing out many hard facts, but some of the few he did give, he got wrong. And the philosophy he tried to build around them is a watered-down version of all the most harmful religious theories of the last several thousand years.

What Walsch appears to be trying to write is a Socratic primer for people raised in the Christian faith who would like to convert to Eastern thought but find the Bible getting in their way. Apparently he thinks if he inserts enough, "Thus saith the Lord" at the head of enough 90s New Age cliches, his readers will fall on their faces before their bedroom mirrors and confess, "I am God." But even when he lobs his "God" softball question after softball question, his smart-aleck "God" seldom hits the ball out of the infield of mushy monistic psychobabble. We are all gods. Suffering and evil are in our minds. There is no such thing as wrong. You are the most marvellous thing in creation; it was your parents who dragged you down. Listen to your feelings; you are the authority for all truth. Hell is ignorance. The church is lying. Sex is wonderful; go out and have as much of it as you like.

"Conversations with God" is Hinduism on the cheap (reincarnation, but no karmic debt, moral binds, or caste obligations), or Zen Buddhism for weekend mystics. It's nothing we haven't heard from every New Age guru and pop psychologist in the last three decades, from Jim Jones to Bagwan Rajneesh and Shirley MacClaine. We even someone else is to blame, Christianity is the opiate of the people, etc. . .

Walsch's God is clueless about the true history of both Western and Asian religions, has no mature and balanced philosophy of rules and freedom, and appears to have gotten most his ideas about the Bible from Humanist Society comic books. His version of how the Gospels took shape, that the New Testament writers "never saw Jesus in their lives" but wrote stories "passed down from elder to elder" proves the man knows nothing about the early church. Even modern critics, though they seldom put it in so many words, admit that the Gospels must have taken form within the lifespan of Jesus' original followers.

Who was Walsch really channeling? The whole routine has come to sound familiar. "God never said anything nasty about death. Just do what you like! Take a bite! You will not die, but will be as gods, and know good and evil." Sometimes I wonder if the devil is really so unimginative Then again, these lines Chinese Culture

142 of 173 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Confirmation of Truth, January 9, 1999

By A Customer

When I first read Conversations with God by Neal Donald Walsch, I found many of his new concepts about God, while ringing of truth, difficult to fully accept. Recently I received a suggestion from a close friend to read An Encounter With Prophet by C.A. Lewis. Thankfully, I followed my friend's advise....

Reading this second book confirmed what Walsch said and more. These two books read together are strong evidence that God is indeed talking to us now, giving us new information.. Consider for yourself if it is mere coincidence that two books written about the same time by heretofore unknown authors, neither having any formal religious training, residing in different parts of the country having no relationship that I can discern, could both reveal, strikingly similar but previously unheard of concepts about God.

Consider the following startling similarities:

Walsch says God never gave us the ten commandments. Lewis tells us how and why Moses invented the Ten Commandments. Walsch says There are no shoulds or shouldn't. Lewis says God does not recognize our concepts of sin. Walsch says you have assigned devilish characteristics to God. Lewis says God does not have any character defects. Walsch says .God judges and condemns no one and nothing. Lewis says hell does not exist and explains how man came to believe in this concept.

Walsh quoting God says, " I am not pleased with suffering, and whoever says I am does not know me." Lewis tells us how to handle death of a loved one, abortion, incest, perversion, lust, suicide, murder, without experiencing suffering, judgment or guilt.

If you want confirmation of what Walsh says read An Encounter With A Prophet.