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Guy Spiro: Marianne, we are talking on the day of the Vernal Equinox and the first day of war.

Marianne Williamson: This war is beginning on the Vernal Equinox. That's very interesting.

GS: Saddam needs to fire his astrologer. He invaded Kuwait when Mars was retrograde, a real bad time to do that. Not that there's ever a good time to start a war.

MW: What do the stars bode for this war?

GS: We've been in a very heavy period since Spring of 2001, with Saturn opposed Pluto.

MW: How long does that last?

GS: Saturn opposed Pluto runs for about two years. The last time we had one was in the mid 60s when the cities were burning and Vietnam was ramping up. So that's the kind of energy it is. Over the last two years, how many people have transitioned? It's been a really dark period, businesses have closed, partnerships have ended and so forth. This Saturn opposed Pluto is what has driven the 9/11 energy and everything that's come after that. What we'll find come June and on through the summer is that the energy will lighten up significantly but we'll be dealing with the fallout for years.

MW: Yes, I think for generations.

GS: It's interesting how short our memories are. I read a recent interview with you that was done in an L.A. publication and you were talking about how the left, or the democrats, stayed home and didn't vote in 2000. They did the same thing in 1980. That's only twenty years ago. Where are our memories?

MW: I hope I'm not deluding myself, and I don't think that I'm the only person who thinks this, but it does seem to me that this war has awakened a lot of people and that there is a new political impulse. A new concern rising up. I will be surprised if we don't see this reflected in the next few elections. I could be wrong, even foolishly optimistic, but I don't think so. I think that many people are being awakened at last from their political stupor.

GS: It seems that we need some kind of radicalizing wake up call every couple generations.

MW: Well, you know, it's that old thing. If you don't hear it the first time, the universe bangs a little louder. I don't know how much louder the banging can get than this. There's an old French saying, if you don't do politics, politics do you. I think a lot of people in the higher consciousness community have thought that they could basically ignore political issues and just focus on their own private concerns. At this time in our history, though, that is ultimately impossible. All of us are impacted in time by the great political and societal forces that swirl around us.

GS: During the 70s, 80s and even much of the 90s, among counter culturalists there was a split between the political and the spiritual.

MW: My book, Healing the Soul of America goes into that quite a lot.

GS: We won a tremendous victory several years ago when the Cold War ended. I've been saying for a long time that the Cold War didn't end because our system was better than theirs, or because we could outspend them. Both of those things may have been true, but the Cold War ended because mass consciousness rose up and struck it down through the mechanism of the Global Peace and Prayer Meditations.

MW: I think all of those things worked together.

GS: When 9/11 happened, it was apparent that the people behind it were trying to start World War III. I thought and wrote pretty extensively that it would be very important for us to participate and support all of the Global Peace and Prayer Meditations that were surely going to be popping up all over the place. And theyve only just started now?

MW: It took this to awaken people the way we need to be awakened. This war beginning has altered the ground beneath us. I was passionately opposed to this war, but now that it's here, the imperative for action seems a little bit different to me. My first prayer, my first thought when the war started was "God forgive us." It's forgive my country, it's forgive every country. It's forgive the human race, that we still have not evolved past fighting wars. Almost everyone in this war is a victim. Almost everyone. The tragedy is so immense. So I think that the work to be done, the focus to be concentrating on, is building the fundamentals of peace. Martin Luther King said that there is negative peace and positive peace. Negative peace is when there's no outright war but an underlying tension and anxiety. That's the world we've had for quite awhile. Positive peace, King said, can only be built upon the presence of justice and brotherhood. I think that we have to ask ourselves how to create a world in which war is no longer inevitable. In which little children ask their parents, "Is it true that people used to fight wars?" and the parents can respond, "Yes honey, it's true, but that was a very long time ago." As Buckminster Fuller said, we are at an age where either war will become obsolete or humanity will become obsolete. We are now too technologically advanced for war and humanity to exist side by side. So that is the challenge. That is the mission of everyone alive at this time.

I am participating along with many others in a lobbying campaign to establish a U.S. Department of Peace. A bill by Congressman Dennis Kucenich of Cleveland will be introduced on April 8 in the House of Representatives. I am part of the Global Renaissance Alliance which is hosting a conference in Washington, D.C., from April 6-8 studying the non-violent principles of deep democracy and citizen activism. People can find out more about that by going to my website, www.marianne.com, which will take you into the Department of Peace website. I think it will be a very exciting conference. So many of us are at a place now where we are awake. We no longer need to be convinced that our mission is to radically transform our society. We now have a critical mass of people saying What do we do? Just tell me what to do? So I think that the Department of Peace legislation is one thing that people can do to make a difference. This is such an extraordinary time in history I can't imagine anyone wanting to sit this one out.

GS: This is the best time in history to be alive. It's a toystore of a lifetime. One of the things I'm struck by is that in our country the military budget is equal to the military budgets of the next twenty countries.

MW: We spend now about 400 billion dollars a year on our military. This is something that people should take a moment and think about. We spend over a billion dollars a day on our military. At the same time, if you make the slightest recommendations of a million here or a million there to make our schools worthy of our children, to make sure they have enough paper and supplies, to make sure that teachers get paid decent wages ... We are often told, "But where would the money come from? We don't have the money." There's such a profound distortion of values in our society that has crept up over the last few decades. We have basically made money God. We have organized our principles and our society along economic principles rather than humanitarian principles. And I believe, as I'm sure many others do as well, that if we had spent a fraction of our military expenditure over the last four decades on helping to alleviate human suffering around the world, spending our money on building hospitals, building schools and other humanitarian kind of aid to people around the world, I don't think we'd be where we are today.

GS: That's exactly my point. From a strictly dollars and cents point of view, it would cost less to do a global Marshall plan than it does to dominate the world militarily.

MW: I agree with you.

GS: It's not a question of the money, we have the money. It's a question of vision and leadership.

MW: It's about our values.

GS: Who do you see on the left with anything like this vision and leadership ability potential?

MW: I think there are many democrats that take that kind of view. Remember the Democrats have been out of dominant power positions for quite awhile. I believe that Dennis Kucenich is articulating a profoundly spirit centered worldview within the political domain. I think that the problem with the Democrats in many cases is not that they don't have the right views but that they are often way too timid, to the point of cowardice in their willingness to express those views. I would think and hope that this last congressional election proved to Democrats that the best way for the Democrats to be in power is to actually talk like Democrats.

GS: After Kennedy torpedoed Carter in 1980, I'd thought we'd seen the last of the left shooting itself in the foot. Then Ralph Nader comes along and does the same thing to Gore.

MW: Yes, well of course, Kennedy didn't run as an independent.

GS: No, but he robbed Carter of a second term.

MW: By running?

GS: Not only by running, but if you remember the convention, when Carter finally narrowly won in the end, he walked across the stage and stuck his hand out to Kennedy. Ted folded his arms and turned his back on him. The left stayed home and didn't vote. It wasn't really a landslide. Reagan won the vast majority of the states but by narrow margins. It was actually very close.

MW: You may have an excellent point, I haven't thought about it quite that way.

GS: If we don't learn these lessons from history they are going to repeat over and over.

MW: Well, two things. First of all, Americans are woefully undereducated about history, period. Number two, A Course in Miracles tells us that it is not up to you what you learn, it is merely up to you whether you learn through joy or through pain. So we will learn the lessons both individually and collectively that it is now our turn to learn. Whatever we need to learn in order for our souls to evolve, we will learn. If we learn through pain, that pain, as we know from our collective experience, could be, God forbid, global catastrophe. Let us pray not. What all of us can do individually to make sure that that's not the way we learn is to devote our lives as much as possible, deeply and fervently, to the cause of peace, however God gives us the vision and the power to achieve and reflect that peace. There are many things that we can do in concert with others. The Global Renaissance Alliance is a network of peace circles around the world, www.gra.org. This kind of work is growing more popular. We want to feel that we are part of an emerging movement of peace. A new peace movement. A spiritually centered peace movement. A transcendent force is rising up.

Best-selling author Marianne Williamson will be the speaker for Unity of Chicago's 25th Anniversary benefit on Wednesday, May 7 at 7:00pm. The event will be held at the Pick-Staiger Concert Hall at Northwestern University, 1977 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL. For tickets, contact the Pick-Staiger Box Office at 847/467-4000. Tickets are $60 and include a copy of "Everyday Grace," Ms. Williamson's new book. All proceeds to benefit Unity in Chicago. For more information visit the Unity in Chicago website at www.unitychicago.org.

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