JSR: What is it to be a prophet? Does a prophet really speak the word of God? I am so confused; for I will put words in God’s mouth, never hearing them from God, and yet they will take on the appearance of wisdom and truth. Am I, then, a false prophet, who will receive a chastisement on the Last Day?

Ezekiel: You worry too much about the state of your soul; if you were truly wise, you would not constantly act only to avoid hell, but would do what is right, not what is wrong in the name of what is right only to avoid hell (and then go there), or what is right merely for the sake of the heavens (and then miss them completely). If you were truly wise you would not worry in the least about going to hell, but would say rather, "Well I suppose there are many in hell and many in the heavens; does it really matter which my own soul will go to? It is insignificant, after all, where any particular soul will go; so if I go to hell I suppose I won’t be any worse off than the others down there; what does it matter, after all?" And you would also say at on the Last Day, at your condemnation, "I suppose God is just in sending me to hell; so there it is: what does it matter?" But humans do not work this way and are constantly terrified of pain; they really worry about so many phantoms and hobgoblins that they practice something as holy as Religion only to desecrate it by making it a means to a selfish end in the afterlife.

None of the holy books we have are God’s word, and there will never be written God’s word; for God is the silent principle in all things, throughout hell and the heavens and the earth, and no one can speak for him and he never says anything. What we call the holy books are only inspired by human poetic genius; and indeed they are filled with the wisdom of God (what is in humans that is God, for God is in everything and nothing is that is not It). Nothing in your books is hidden from any human being, but it is already inside of each; and nothing you have to say is wisdom that is not already known by the stupidest child, or the most desperate junkie. The holy books we have are inspired by this poetic genius, the same genius that inspired Whitman and Tennyson; and indeed their works are just as much scriptural as anything in the Bible, Qur’an, or Bhagavad Gita. There is this poetic genius in many works of literature, including but not limited to our holy books; but none of it is the word of God, for when one is with God, words become activities, completely meaningless; and when one believes in words, one is not with God. You are no more a prophet than any of our best poets; if you are a false prophet you are only so because your writing is not so good as theirs, and you can only be accused of being a bad writer. If you do have this poetic genius, you are not a holy man for it; you are only someone inspired by a poetic spirit such that infects and possesses many sinful and dissolute men; and if you do not have it (though sometimes you suppose you do when you are feeling haughty), you are merely an uninspired writer, with nothing to offer the world. So do not take yourself so seriously: do not say, "Prophet or false prophet," but say rather, "Good poet or bad poet," and you will do well. If you are a prophet, this simply means you are a poet; and if you are a bad poet, this is all being a false prophet is. You are a little voice, with mouths in your heart, writing the words that come into your heart; you do not have any power over anyone, you do not have any say in what goes on in the world; you do not seek office or authority; so stop taking yourself so seriously, and merely write your nonsense for your loneliness as you always have: chances are, not more than a dozen people will ever read it, and then it will disappear from the earth.