Becky: We have just been through an election in this country and I found that a lot of the election manifestos were all based in fear, if you don’t vote for us, something bad will happen, if you don’t do this, then something bad will happen, and I certainly found, because I work as a psychic counselor and a medium, I found through my work that just trying to get people to get hold of the higher aspects of themselves, and I use the words, getting in touch with your inner God which is kind of a spiritual wording for that, but it is in a simple way to understand, and one of my clients was saying to me that don’t you think that that’s a pretentious way to see yourself. Do you think that that is something that we struggle up against and that we are quite happy to see ourselves as low, but we don’t like to embrace, for example, when we see someone embracing the inner child, but we never describe ourselves as embracing our inner God?
Neale: Well I agree with you. If we understood that we were to God as the wave is to the ocean, we would have very little difficulty embracing ourselves in that way. That the ocean is what it is, and a wave upon the ocean is an expression or an individuation if you please of the ocean, it is not the ocean or the totality of it, yet it is the ocean, but in microcosmic form. So in terms of what it is, there is no difference. That the wave is made in the likeness of the ocean, and it is a part and parcel of what the ocean is, yet it is not the ocean itself. So what people I think push back from the table at, is when they to try and think of themselves as the ocean, but they know perfectly well that they are not the ocean, but if you see that you are a wave upon the ocean made up of precisely what the ocean is made up of in microcosmic form, some people can say now I can go there, I can see myself as that, but what they don’t understand is the whole process, because the wave crashes upon the shore and it disappears and it no longer is, that’s the great fear. The fear of humanity is the fear of death, and it is a profound fear that resides within all individuals but when you tell them that the wave does not die when it crashes on the shore, it merely recedes into the ocean, first it displays itself and manifests itself, it gives evidence to the glory of the ocean itself, and then as it recedes back into the ocean, having expressed itself fully upon the shore of life, it reinvests itself in the ocean and fuels or provides the ocean with another portion of itself that allows the ocean to sustain itself as what it always is. What I am trying to say is that the wave crashes upon the ocean, the ocean doesn’t become any less, it is not emptied so, as each wave hits the shore, the ocean becomes less and less, and by the end of the day, the ocean is less than what is was at the beginning of the day. In fact the volume of the ocean stays precisely the same, because the wave returns to the ocean and reinvests itself in that which is. We are exactly that way in relationship to what we call, in human terms, God. We are in fact that which God is and we are each an individuation of what God is, the wonder of the wave crashing upon the shore of life with all the glory of the ocean itself. And who hasn’t stood upon a beach and watched the waves crash upon the shore and experienced the wonder of life in that moment? Who hasn’t looked at that spectacle and said there is a metaphor here, there is a metaphor here, there is something more going on? That is why we are so touched by nature in all its forms, because whether we are looking at the waves crashing upon the ocean on a starlit night or looking at the stars themselves, we see the metaphor for God all around us, and we are touched deeply by that, and we struggle in vain to understand our place within all of it. And yet the understanding is very simple and very clear. So there is nothing pretentious at all, nor is there anything inappropriate about imagining ourselves as being an individuation of what God is.
Becky: I imagine that because of your books, there must have been a certain amount of religious types of people who have not liked what you had to say.
Neale: I don’t know about that, I have not heard from anyone about that.
Becky: I’m very pleased, because I sort of imagine that what you have had to say would be challenging. I kind of imagined that you might have had a lot of animosity from people with a very strong religious background.
Neale: Aside from the occasional stray e-mail or one letter out of 500, I can’t say that I have been touched or affected by that in any way to any major degree or in any significant way.
Becky: I’m really pleased I would have thought that would be something you would come up against.
Becky: I tell you what I come up against; marginalization. That is I am marginalized by the media. A point I make in my latest book is that I have had five, not 1, not 2, not 3, but 5 New York Times bestsellers in my life and the New York Times has not reviewed a single one, so it is possible to have a book on the New York Times Bestseller’s List for two and a half years and have the paper itself, the literary and critic section itself, completely and utterly ignore you. So what happens is that I am largely marginalized by the media of the world. You would never get an interview with me in The Guardian, in a thousand years, so as far as the major media is concerned, the BBC or NBC in New York, I don’t exist. It’s like I have been largely marginalized, but in spite of that, the fact that no-one will announce that I exist, my message is there, over 70 million people have read my books, but it has been a largely underground movement.