Saturday, July 15, 2006

What God Wants

I finished reading Neal Donald Walsch's "Conversations with God" - parts I, II and III with a scientific curiosity bordering on religious fervour. 
His latest is "What God Wants" billed as the "most dangerous book you will read".  All his work is highly recommended reading for anyone who aspires to being secular, fair, open-minded and spiritual. Check in your notions at the cover of the book and proceed.

It is exciting to read his work, because it is a journey through uncharted territory. He is drawing on the common denominators of human perception and understanding when writing on such subject matter. His writing is truly non-denominational - truly secular. What fascinates (me), then, is that this is a trip through the collective conscious. Reporting a conversation with God is as exciting as it gets - this is the granddaddy of any close encounter of the Third Kind.

His claims ring true and feel perfectly logical possibly because its all based on some kind of collectively agreed upon knowledge. 

How does one conduct a discussion about something of which the participants have no direct experience ? You have to draw on something akin to "common sense" - a set of beliefs or logical notions that are common to the vast majority - I want to call this principle "symmetricity". Living beings seem to be soothed, calmed and regaled by a certain underlying universality of proportions - of "form"; Maybe the golden ratio of the Vitruvian man is part of this paradigm.

Apparently, a certain "symmetricity" of outer and inner forms (inner forms - of which musical cognition, thought and pattern recognition are subsets) produces a strong validating experience. For good or bad this is highly valued by human beings, and Walsch could be using this to make such a far out premise sound convincing.