Springtime for Humanity

Talking with Angels for a New Beginning

The book, Talking with Angels, documents the incredible dialogues that took place among four close-knit, young Hungarians during the late stages of World War II. As a hate-inflamed world threatened their very survival from without, they encountered extraordinary, luminous forces from within. Over seventeen months, they met every Friday at three o’clock, as Hanna closed her eyes and recited the powerful words that came to her. Gitta transcribed them like a scribe, and Lili took notes. All—including Joseph—derived new direction, meaning, and hope.

These forces, which they came to identify as angels, enveloped them in numinous Light until three of them met their deaths in Nazi concentration camps in 1944. Only Gitta Mallasz survived, to bring their story finally to the world, 33 years since it began. First published in France, the book became an international bestseller and has been translated into multiple languages, including English.

Here is what Gitta would later say about the book: “You know, those words are like seeds that were sown by the angels. They lay dormant in the earth for 33 years. They finally broke through the hard crust of the surface for the first time in 1976 with the publication of the French Dialogues in Paris and from there, they spread like wildfire—no, like Lightfire. Now the new, the Springtime of humanity is here—and these words represent a very real possibility for all.”

Here is a sample dialogue from which Springtime germinated, immediately after Nazi troops invaded Hungary, closed off all roads to Budapest, and started their mass arrests:

– The lack ebbs, the seed swells,

the weighing scales are being filled.

Here above, burning eyes are watching:

Now you live rightly.

Indeed, we did everything necessary, but with calm….

– Your hand is ready

and my sword does not cut: it protects.

I am amazed that our inner attitude is more important to the angels than the outer danger….

– The new unfolds,

The ACT is not burden, but seed

from which sprouts the new.

Danger passes; the seed remains.

A gentle breeze arises and, in the proper moment,

the ACT sprouts: the ACT sown in you by the Divine.

Take good care of the seed; it is so small!

It can be lost through the smallest crack….

I cut only what is bad.

You have come a long way in a short time.

You have left the old behind you.

But woe unto you if you look back!

The house has caved in: you can no longer live there.

You had to leave it at the decisive moment.

Woe unto you if you look back!

For behold:

ahead of you, the way is already free….

what has been, is dead.

What shall be, will never be lost.

Many of the dialogues unfold in this metaphorical, sometimes esoteric, manner, but all are equally powerful, and all are applicable to the present. In fact, I used to keep Talking with Angels by my bedside and open to a random page, to find equal inspiration and equal relevance in all of them! They meet my measure for the ultimate: all are maximal.

(In case anyone wonders how one can be a scientist and listen to angels, or be a psychiatrist and have a master’s of divinity, as I do, I will say that the two are not incompatible. Life and death rather oppose each other, and we are at the very place where only science and faith together could be the antidote to our current Death Spiral.)

Gitta explained these dialogues as preparations for what was to come. They had the feeling of living on the edge of a cliff, as “collective blindness” was on the rise, alongside a flood of political lies. “If something were promised by the Nazis,” she said, “one could be sure that just the opposite would occur.” An overwhelming desire for the truth—ultimate truth—welled up in them before the world of deception, brutality, and all-pervading evil in which they found themselves. And, as happens when there is great thirst, the act of seeking leads to finding.

This is how they came to encounter the angels. All but Gitta were Jewish, but none were religious. Their bookshelves held the Bible but also the Bhagavad Gita, Lao Tse, Meister Eckhart, and other philosophical texts. The nondogmatic angels led them to see that earthly existence is only part of the whole, and death is not something to be feared.

Through their ACT, they could be a bridge between the created world and the creating world. They are the seed of: “We through the Divine, the Divine through us.” Just when there seemed to be no outer solution, inner transformation was possible. And spiritual awakening came at the very darkest hour of their lives.

(In my view, René Descartes’ “Je pense donc je suis [I think therefore I am]” is just as valid a beginning of inquiry as Anselm of Canterbury’s “Credo ut intelligam [I believe so that I might understand].” Negating one or the other can be destructive, such as our current nuclear crisis—science only—or anti-abortion femicide spree—faith only—while negating both is catastrophic, such as in the Trump pathocracy—destruction only.)

Creation could not be complete without the participation of the human, and, as the angels put it:

Truth is.

Love grows….

New awareness creates.

This is the great Springtime of Humanity.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee will hold a live session on:

“How to Navigate an Increasingly Dangerous World”

This Friday, January 3, 2025, at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT on Zoom. A paid subscription is required to receive a link the morning before. Thank you!

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, and cofounder of the Violence Prevention Institute. She became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that emphasized the importance of fit leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on fit leadership, in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads, and two critical statements on fit leadership. Dr. Lee authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials.