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...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Blasphemy! Heresy! Who does this man think he is, claiming to speak directly to God?! Jesus did it, Muhammad did it, the Jewish prophets did it, but none of their Gods had the sardonic wit or raw verve of Prophet Walsch's God. Neale Donald Walsch isn't claiming to be the Messiah of a new religion, just a frustrated man who sat down one day with pen in his hand and some tough questions in his heart. As he wrote his questions to God, he realized that God was answering them... directly... through Walsch's pen. The result, far from the apocalyptic predictions or cultic eccentricities you might expect, turns out to be matter-fact, in-your-face wisdom on how to get by in life while remaining true to yourself and your spirituality.

Product Description
Conversations with God Book 1 began a series that has been changing millions of lives for more than ten years. Finally, the bestselling series is now a movie, starring Henry Czerny (The Pink Panther and Clear and Present Danger) and Ingrid Boulting (The Last Tycoon). Produced and directed by Stephen Simon (producer of Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come) and distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films and Fox Home Entertainment, the theatrical release is set for October 27, 2006. The movie is the true account of Walsch (played by Cierny), who went from an unemployed homeless man to an "accidental spiritual messenger" and author of the bestselling book

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: #1,127 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 1 in The With God Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 67 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

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Move Over, L. Ron Hubbard, Here Comes Neale Donald Walsch, July 13, 1998

By A Customer

In this example of a Fast-Food Religion combination platter of basic Christian philosophy, Do-Whatever-Feels-Right Pop Psychology and bizarre New-Age Mysticism, author Neale Donald Walsch, a writer with a clear God-complex, presumes to speak for God in an imaginary conversation of mostly upper-case "Me" sentences. He substitutes " feelings" as a source of the knowledge of God more authoritative than The Bible (p. 8) and later (p. 67) demotes the writers of The Bible mere recorders of oral history.

As his diatribe progresses to everyday life, he indirectly blames eating animal meat for most illnesses, though he only mentions blocked arteries. This teetotaler tells the reader not to drink alcohol and conveniently proclaims Jesus' miracle of turning water into wine as an imperfection in Jesus -- Mr. Walsch probably would have liked to have Jesus turn water into organic carrot juice.

Written in Question and Answer format and almost all short words and sentences that even Hemingway could not have made any shorter, the book should have appeal to the marginally literate. Its Do-Whatever-Feels-Right philosophy should give anyone enough justification to live a 1960s Free Love lifestyle. In my favorite line, p. 61, God said through Mr. Walsch that "Hitler went to Heaven."

The last chapter, though it mostly contains marketing phrases to sell future volumes, also has plently of blather of "karmic lessons" and the 647 (yes, six hundred forty seven -- not a typing mistake) past lives the author has had, but all without "karmic debt." On p. 204, Mr. Walsch says that "someday -- perhaps in Book Two" he will even tell the reader how psychic energy and psychic abilities work. I think I will skip that one -- and all further volumes of this garbage.