Bob Dylan Interview for 20/20 (1985)

“I want to figure out what’s happening. I did look into it. It didn’t necessarily make life easier, but it definitely made it clearer. Again, a lot of things, really—hard to say in a few words what I gained from it. But it’s always easier if you understand something than if you don’t. If you don’t understand something, you’re just tossed about. If there’s a storm coming up, it’s always much easier on you knowing that it’s only going to last a certain time.

Is there another world after this one? This is a testing ground. This is a place you have to work certain things out. You have to work out where your place is and who you are. But we’re all spirit—that’s all we have. Just walking, dressed up in a suit of skin. And that we’re going to leave that. You make of it what you make of it. Nothing’s forever—everything is temporary. You don’t leave any nice place behind. You just have to have some kind of focus on what you need and what people force you to need. It’s only your work you’re leaving behind.

At a certain time, all the people from history will stand up. I believe in the resurrection. There are certain things—certain knowledge—that I’m not sure is available right now on a mass level. It may be sometime, because some of it is a little extreme. It might go against what a lot of people already think. A lot of what’s happening today throughout the world operates under something like a spiritual religious order, but it’s actually happening more in terms of a financial empire. And this is from what I can see—it has nothing really to do with spirituality or the next world, or the soul—the trip that the soul’s on. I could go deeper, but I’m not sure how much of it I want to state right out and say, because I’m not sure how much of it applies here. Oh yeah, sure—I think this whole thing’s got to end. Well, there’s a messianic kingdom that would be coming in. When it comes in, some people say tomorrow—I don’t particularly think it’s going to be tomorrow, but I believe it’s going to happen.”