Oprah calls spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson "the best prayer writer, sayer, giver that I have ever known." In a "Soul-to-Soul" special on "Super Soul Sunday," Oprah and Marianne go deep and talk about prayer, God, love, death and more.
In this clip, during the course of a lightning round of questions, Marianne shares with Oprah her thoughts on some of life's most challenging questions.
"What is the soul?" Oprah asks.
"For me, it's the truth of who we are," Marianne says. "The light, the love which is within us... Michelangelo said when he got a statue, that he would go to the quarry and get a big piece of marble, and the way he imagined it God had already created the statue. And his job was just to get rid of the excess marble. So that's what we're like: Inside is a being that God has already created; our job is to get rid of this excess -- useless fear, thought forms of the world -- that actually hide the light of the soul."
"What is your definition of God?" Oprah asks.
"An all-encompassing love that is the source of all, the reality of all, and the being through which I am," Marianne says.
"What does prayer mean to you?" Oprah asks.
"The constant communication with God," says Marianne.
Marianne also shares with Oprah her own personal prayer: "To be the woman that God would have me be, and to do the things that he would have me do."
When Oprah asks her what she thinks happens when we die, Marianne says she believes death will be extraordinary, like a fabulous light show. "I mean, I don't want to rush there, but... all the blinders are off," she says. "The Course in Miracles says one day you will realize that death is not the punishment but the reward. And it says that birth is not the beginning of life but a continuation. And physical death is not the end of life but a continuation. And one day we will realize that the body is just a suit of clothes and that death will one day be experienced as just taking off a suit of clothes when they have served their purpose."
"Super Soul Sunday" airs Sundays on OWN at 11 a.m. ET.