'Conversations with God' says you are God,
but the Buddha says you aren't even yourself.
One book,
sold 13 million copies worldwide,
translated into 37 languages,
and spent 137 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Countless people said after reading it,
"I finally understand the truth of the universe."
This book is Neale Donald Walsch's 'Conversations with God.'
It says,
God is not an old man on a cloud judging you.
It says,
there is no distance between you and God,
because you are a part of God.
It says,
all the pain and joy you experience
is created by you.
It says,
there is no hell in this universe,
only two fundamental source codes: love and fear.
Sounds beautiful, doesn't it?
Many feel a sense of weightlessness after reading it,
as if they've been embraced by the universe.
But today,
I want to do one thing.
I want to put this book under a Buddhist microscope.
Not to prove who is right or wrong,
but to let you see something:
Exactly how far this book goes,
and exactly where it stops.
Hello,
everyone.
I am Wang Lijie.
This is the series 'Deconstructing Masterpieces through Buddhism.'
Previously, we explored seed and season in 'Flowers in the Mirror,'
'parikalpita' (imaginary nature) in 'Dream of the Red Chamber,'
the 'Mind Monkey' in 'Journey to the West,'
incompleteness in 'Gödel, Escher, Bach,'
and 'Manas-vijnana' in 'Faust.'
Today, we look at a contemporary work
with massive influence in the global spiritual community.
To be fair,
'Conversations with God' did one very important thing right.
It tore down the wall that traditional religions built for billions.
What wall?
The wall of "You are a sinner,
God is above,
you must kneel and beg,
and He'll decide if he cares based on His mood."
For thousands of years,
countless people lived in the shadow of this wall,
fearing mistakes,
fearing hell,
fearing an almighty judge keeping score in a little notebook.
Walsch says,
it's not like that.
There is no judgment,
no punishment.
You are not a sinner;
you are an extension of God.
You came to this world
not to atone for sins,
but to experience.
This is a beautiful step forward.
In Buddhist terms,
it helped many escape from a heavy form of 'parikalpita.'
'Parikalpita-svabhāva'
is when your consciousness plasters labels onto reality
and then you mistake those labels for reality.
"God is above,
you are below,
you are guilty."
These are just a set of labels.
Walsch helped millions peel off those labels.
But here's the problem:
After peeling off the old labels,
he pasted on new ones.
The old label said you are a sinner;
the new label says you are God.
The old label said the world is full of suffering.
The new label says everything is an experience you chose.
The old label says you must obey.
The new label says you should create.
Much more comfortable, right?
But if the Buddha were present,
he might smile slightly
and say,
"You've swapped for a nicer pair of glasses,
but you're still wearing glasses."
Alright,
let's break these down one by one.
The first core proposition:
All Things Are One.
Walsch says,
everything is God.
You are God.
I am God.
The stone is God.
The stars are God.
There is no separation,
only Oneness.
At first glance, this sounds like Buddhism's "Dependent Origination and Emptiness."
Buddhism also says all things are interdependent.
Nothing is completely independent.
Indra's Net in the Avatamsaka Sutra means exactly this.
The universe is like an infinite net,
where each node reflects every other node.
But if you look closely,
you'll find a fundamental difference.
Walsch's "Oneness" has a foundation.
That foundation is called "God."
All things return to One.
But where do they return?
They return to God.
This "One" is substantial and real;
it is the ultimate entity.
The Buddhist concept of "Emptiness" has no foundation.
Dependent Origination doesn't mean all things return to One.
It says all things can't even return to "One."
There is no ultimate entity,
no thing called "God" or "The Source"
waiting there for you to return.
I previously used chip architecture to explain Laozi's "Tao produced One,
One produced Two,
Two produced Three."
Tao corresponds to the laws of physics—
invisible and intangible,
yet constraining everything.
"Three" corresponds to the operating system;
it's a higher order emerging from underlying rules.
The "God" Walsch speaks of
is actually closer to a Super Admin account in a massive game.
The admin is omniscient and omnipotent within the game world—
able to change weather, revive characters, and rewrite plots.
From any player's perspective,
it is God.
But the admin account itself runs on a game engine.
The engine runs on an OS.
The OS runs on a chip.
The chip runs on the laws of physics.
The admin didn't write the laws of physics;
it is a product of those laws emerging layer by layer.
Buddhist Emptiness and Taoist Tao
point to the lowest level: the laws of physics.
Walsch's God
points to the Admin Account.
They aren't even in the same dimension.
You might think this distinction is abstract,
but its impact on your spiritual path is vital.
If there is an ultimate "One,"
your spiritual journey becomes a homecoming.
You move from separation to unity,
from human to God.
The destination is certain,
the direction is clear,
and the journey is warm.
But Buddhism says
the "home" you want to return to
does not exist.
It's not that you haven't arrived home yet;
It's that that home never existed at all.
You think you are on the way home,
but the very idea of "going home"
is why you can never reach the end.
This isn't pessimism;
it's a freedom deeper than you can imagine.
Only when you no longer need a destination
can you truly see the ground beneath your feet for the first time.
Let's look at the second proposition:
You create your reality.
Walsch says
your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs
shape everything you experience.
If you want to change your life,
just change your thoughts.
This is extremely popular in spiritual circles.
The Law of Attraction,
Manifestation—
much of modern spirituality is built on this foundation.
We have previously deconstructed "Manifestation" on this channel.
Today, let's look at it from another angle.
Buddhism's Yogacara school does say, "The whole world is representation-only."
Meaning the world you experience
is a manifestation of conscious activity.
The colors you see, sounds you hear, and emotions you feel—
these aren't forced upon you directly by an external world,
but are constructed by your consciousness.
This intersects with Walsch's view.
But Yogacara then asks a question Walsch never touches:
The "I" that says "I want to create my reality"—
who is that, exactly?
In Yogacara,
this "I" has a name:
Manas.
Manas is that voice in your heart that keeps saying,
"This is my thought, my choice, my creation."
Buddhism says
Manas itself is constructed;
it is not a real creator.
It is an automatically running program of attachment.
So, the phrase "You create your reality,"
under the surgical light of Buddhism,
contains an unexamined premise:
That there is an entity called "you."
In Walsch's system,
the soul is real.
The soul evolves through lifetimes of reincarnation,
becoming more whole through continuous experience.
The soul chose your parents,
chose your hardships,
and chose your lessons.
Everything is an arrangement of the soul.
The Buddha would likely say one thing to this:
You've packaged reincarnation as a school,
packaged suffering as a curriculum,
and packaged attachment as a choice.
You make people feel safe,
but at the same time, you make them stop questioning.
The Buddhist "no-self" (Anatta) doesn't mean you lack consciousness,
but that the program running continuously in consciousness,
the background process that labels "this is me, these are mine,"
is not your original face.
Taking this program to be the "soul"
as an eternally evolving subject,
is, from a Buddhist perspective, the most sophisticated form of attachment.
You can recognize coarse attachments:
greed for wealth, sex, and fame.
Most people can see those.
But the attachment of "I am an eternal soul in evolution"
is almost unrecognizable to anyone.
Because it is too beautiful,
too comforting,
and too meaningful.
Yet, for 2,500 years, Buddhism has repeatedly done one thing:
help you see the attachments that you don't even realize are attachments.
Alright.
The third proposition:
Love and Fear.
Walsch boils all human motivation down to two things:
Love and fear.
Every action you take
is motivated by either love
or fear.
There is no third option.
Choose love,
and you move toward God.
Choose fear,
and you create suffering.
Many people find life suddenly clear upon reading this.
They once felt the world was complex,
but now realize
there are only two buttons.
But Buddhism would say
you are flattening the 3D into 2D.
Buddhism doesn't use the concepts of "love and fear."
It core concepts are the Three Poisons: greed, anger, and delusion.
Notice,
there are three,
not two.
Greed isn't just the opposite of fear.
Greed itself contains a mechanism you might not notice:
The more you love something,
the more you fear losing it.
Love and fear aren't two separate buttons;
they are two sides of the same coin.
When you press the "love" button,
the "fear" switch is flipped automatically.
Furthermore, Buddhism highlights a third factor Walsch barely discusses:
Delusion,
also known as ignorance.
Ignorance isn't fear,
nor is it a lack of love.
Ignorance is not even knowing that you are wearing glasses.
It's not that you're choosing wrongly;
it's that you don't realize you ARE choosing.
Walsch's solution is to "choose love."
This is good advice for daily life,
but Buddhism's direction isn't to choose a specific emotion,
but to see the mechanism creating the "chooser" behind all emotions.
Choosing love vs. choosing fear,
from a Buddhist perspective,
is still spinning at the level of "choosing."
True freedom
exists before the choice happens.
Let me use an analogy.
Suppose you are dreaming.
In the dream, there are two doors.
One says "Love,"
and one says "Fear."
Walsch tells you
to always choose the door labeled "Love."
Within the dream,
that is indeed the better option.
But the Buddha is saying something else.
He isn't telling you which door to choose;
he is telling you
that you are dreaming.
One gives you better options within the dream;
the other wakes you up.
That is the real distance between these two systems.
There's another proposition worth highlighting separately:
the idea that "there is no hell."
Walsch repeatedly emphasizes in his book
that there is no hell,
no judgment,
and no punishment.
God won't throw you into a fire for making a mistake.
All experiences are neutral;
they are experiences chosen by your soul.
This resonates with Buddhism,
but there are also gaps.
Where is the resonance?
Buddhism indeed doesn't believe in an external judge.
There's no King Yama on a high platform reviewing your record.
Such imagery was added later by folk religion.
The Buddha's original concept of karma is very clean:
it's a mechanism like physics.
Whatever you do
leaves a seed in your consciousness;
that seed, given the right conditions,
it will produce the corresponding result.
No one needs to judge you.
Just like when you put your hand in a fire,
God doesn't need to punish you—
you'll get burned yourself.
But where is the fracture?
Walsch says there is no hell,
and stops there.
He gives you a massive comfort:
you won't be punished.
Buddhism speaks of something more complex.
There is no external judge,
but there is an internal chain of causality.
You won't be punished by anyone,
but the seeds you sow will bloom.
Moreover, the way seeds work is non-linear.
It's not that doing one bad deed inevitably brings one retribution.
Seeds can lie dormant,
they can accumulate,
and they'll sprout at moments you'd never expect,
in ways you'd never imagine.
So Buddhism's stance on "hell" isn't a simple "no."
Buddhism says,
what you call hell is not a place;
it is a state of consciousness.
When you are scorched by hatred beyond help,
you are in hell.
When you are so driven by greed that you can't rest,
you are in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
These aren't places you go after death;
you're cycling through the Six Realms while you're alive.
Walsch removed the fear of hell.
That's a good thing.
But he also removed something more important:
the awe of causality.
Not fear,
but awe.
You don't have to fear fire,
but you'd better respect its heat.
The causality of Buddhism is like that heat.
You don't need to fear it,
but if you ignore it,
it will still burn you.
This is a hidden loophole in Walsch's system.
When you tell someone, "Everything is an experience chosen by your soul,
there is no right or wrong,"
you indeed release them from fear,
but you might also disable their alertness.
Some people, after reading Conversations with God, might say,
"Since everything is just an experience,
it doesn't matter what I do."
This wasn't Walsch's intention,
but his system lacks a firewall to prevent this slippery slope.
The Buddhist view of karma is that firewall.
It's not meant to scare you;
it's meant to help you see clearly.
Every thought,
every action,
plants a seed in your Alaya-vijnana.
These seeds don't vanish just because you say, "I choose love."
You have to see them,
understand how they operate,
and then transform them in the right way.
This is not driven by fear;
it is driven by clarity.
Like an experienced driver wears a seatbelt not out of fear of crashing,
but because they know better than a novice that physics doesn't negotiate.
But having said that,
I must say a few words in Walsch's defense.
He did something truly remarkable.
He helped millions escape from fear and guilt.
Behind thirteen million copies sold,
are thirteen million people who once felt sinful
and were finally allowed to breathe.
Do you know what that means?
It means thirteen million people turned to a certain page one night,
shed tears,
and said,
"I don't have to be afraid after all."
That is no small thing.
For those who have never wondered about their relationship with the universe,
"Conversations with God" might be one of the best places to start.
It lowers the barrier to spiritual exploration,
helping tens of millions take that first step.
You can't mock someone who helps others take their first step,
because before that step,
many don't even know which way to go.
But what Buddhism does
begins precisely after that step is taken.
Walsch helps you peel off the label of "sinner,"
but then pastes on the label of "God."
Buddhism says,
"Peeling off the label is great,
but why stick on a new one?"
Walsch helps you move from a "world of fear" to a "world of love."
Buddhism says,
"That's nice,
but why live in any 'world' at all?"
Walsch sets your soul on a journey back home.
Buddhism says,
"Look back for a moment;
where does that voice saying 'I want to go home'
actually come from?"
And have you noticed an interesting structural issue?
The book is titled "Conversations with God."
A conversation.
One person asks,
one God answers.
This format itself implies a premise:
that you and God are two separate things.
You are here,
God is there,
and there is a distance between you that needs a dialogue to bridge.
Walsch says all things are one,
but he writes in a dualistic way.
An "I" asking,
a "God" answering.
If everything is truly one,
who are you talking to?
The left hand talking to the right?
In Buddhism, this problem doesn't exist.
The Buddha is not a god,
not a creator,
not universal consciousness.
The Buddha is someone who has woken up.
The difference between him and you isn't one of species,
but of state.
He is awake;
you are still dreaming.
What he does isn't answer questions for you,
but helps you see
that your questions themselves are part of the dream.
Do you know what this is like?
It's like someone wearing red-tinted sunglasses.
Everything they see is red,
and they find it distressing.
Walsch comes along and says,
"Don't wear the red ones,
swap them for these blue ones."
Suddenly the world becomes beautiful.
The person puts them on,
and indeed feels much better.
The Buddha also comes along.
He doesn't hand you any glasses.
He asks you,
"Have you ever thought about
trying to just take the glasses off?"
The person says,
"If I take them off, what will I see?"
The Buddha says,
"Just look and see."
That is the difference.
One gives you a better filter;
the other lets you see the world without filters.
Someone might ask,
"So what if I see it?"
"What is a world without filters like?"
Buddhism's answer is this:
"I cannot tell you,
because the very language I use to tell you..."
is itself a filter.
The Buddhist scriptures you read are a filter.
Even this video you're watching is a filter.
If even Buddhist Dharma should be let go,
then how much more so for non-Dharma?
But one thing is certain:
The moment you take off all your glasses,
what you see is not nothingness,
nor darkness,
nor loneliness.
What you see
is what you were already seeing before putting on any glasses.
It has always been there.
It needs no name.
Call it God,
call it Emptiness,
or call it the Tao;
these are all just fingers pointing.
The moon being pointed to
is not found on any finger.
So,
if you are trapped by the fear and guilt of traditional religion,
"Conversations with God" likely the key you need right now.
Pick it up,
open the door,
and walk out.
But once you're out,
remember one thing:
Keys are for opening doors,
not for worshiping.
You wouldn't place a key on an altar
and kowtow to it every day.
You use the key to open the door,
you walk out,
and you find there are more doors outside.
Keep walking,
and you'll realize the door itself is just a concept.
Walk further,
and you'll find the person walking
isn't as substantial as you thought.
At this stage,
you probably won't need to talk to any God.
Conversation requires two people,
and you begin to sense
that those two were always just ripples in the same stream of consciousness.
Ripples don't need to talk.
What they need
is perhaps just to quiet down
and see that they are water.
Have you read "Conversations with God"?
At what stage of your life did it appear?
If you asked the Buddha to review this book,
what do you think he would say?
I'm curious about your thoughts.
I am Leo Wang.
See you next time.