Communion with God »

NEALE DONALD WALSCH Neale Donald Walsch is the author of Conversations with God Books 1, 2, and 3; Meditations from Conversations with God Books 1 and 2; and the Conversations with God Book 1 Guidebook. In addition to running his foundation, ReCreation, he lectures and hosts workshops throughout the country. His books have been translated into 22 languages. He lives with his wife, Nancy, and his dog, Lady, in Oregon.

Actor EDWARD ASNER is known for his Emmy-winning role as Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and later continued in a spinoff series, Lou Grant.

In 1992, Neale Donald Walsch—depressed, in poor health, unhappy with his life—wrote an angry letter to God. His frustrated questions—What does it take to make life work? What have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?—poured out onto a yellow legal pad. Before he was through, his pen stayed suspended over the paper, and a reply was whispered into his mind by a voiceless voice:"Do you really want an answer to all these questions, or are you just venting?"

So began an uncommon conversation—a powerful, inspiring dialogue between God and man that has touched the minds, hearts, lives, and souls of millions of people around the world.

Communion with God is the latest in a series of books chronicling Walsch's extraordinary experience.

Publishers Weekly

A stand-alone title to complement Walsch's bestselling Conversations with God series, this too-general spirituality manifesto borrows from most major religions while chastising all of them for their judgmentalism, with Christianity getting the harshest treatment. Walsch continues his tradition of writing in the first person as God, but this time there is no human counterbalance, making this no longer a conversation so much as a prophetic indictment. He begins by describing the "ten illusions of man" that have been perpetuated in unhelpful "cultural stories"--i.e., Biblical stories--and then helps readers understand and use these illusions in an effort to make their own realities. Walsch reassures readers that such things as failure, requirement and ignorance do not actually exist, but are among the ten illusions. We are part of God, he explains, and since God is perfect, so are we. Walsch seems to believe that his ideas are groundbreaking, but they are garden-variety New Thought concepts adapted for a therapeutic age. His once-innovative technique of writing in the voice of God has also lost its luster; God's prose is having an off day, as evidenced by Walsh's predilection for sentence fragments and stream-of-consciousness thought patterns. A superior work in general spirituality is Andrew Harvey's The Direct Path: Creating a Journey to the Divine Using the World's Mystical Traditions, which is in harmony with Walsch's declaration that "all paths lead to God" but offers outstanding writing and a more humble tone. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.