Ä Area: Metaphysics/UFOs and correlation ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 101 Date: 09-04-96 12:42 From: Don Allen Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: 01:A convo with.. [01/09] ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ A Conversation with Neil Douglas-Klotz Scholars and linguists are taking a closer look at the origins of our religions and our holy books. Here, the author of Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus and the newly published Desert Wisdom: Sacred Middle Eastern Writings from the Goddess through the Sufis discusses hidden information whose time to be widely known has come. How disturbing and refreshing is this effort by Neil Douglas-Klotz to recover the original language, the native Middle Eastern language, the Aramaic that Jesus spoke! How much expanded heart consciousness and prophetic juice might result from hearing, for example, that what we have translated as "be you perfect" really means "be you all-embracing," ... that "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" also means "soften what's rigid inside and you shall receive physical vigor and strength from the universe"; that "blessed are the pure in heart" means blessed are those "whose passion is electrified by deep, abiding purpose"; that "heaven" in Aramaic means, in fact, "the universe"; and that the overly familiar words "lead us not into temptation" can be translated in this way: "Don't let surface things delude us, but free us from what holds us back." Can we get any more cosmological than that? Do the words of Jesus not take on new life and vigor in this version of his saying? -- Matthew Fox, from the foreword to Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus by Neil Douglas-Klotz (published by Harper & Row - 1990 by Neil Douglas-Klotz) The Monthly Aspectarian: Neil, I'm curious about your background, where you started in your search and how you came to do what you do. Neil Douglas-Klotz: Almost twenty years ago, I started out on a spiritual search of my own and tried to look for what motivates people to actively make change. At the time, I was working mainly as a journalist looking at the causes of history . . . and the actions of the activists in the events of the seventies . . . and what it took for behavior to change. It didn't seem as though people were just changing their ideas; [it looked more like] it was the changing ideas that helped people change their behavior. It seemed to me there had to be a level beneath that which caused people to make change. And that caused me to change, or not to change. This was, essentially, what took me to my spiritual search. TMA: A lot of people who were activists at that time did not opt to go into spirituality. They thought it was a cop-out. ND-K: I think there is an aspect of the spiritual path that can become too introverted and it forms all sorts of acting outwardly. But in any case, I think there is a certain point in time where we need to really take stock and discover a different set of inner resources -- unless one wants just to completely burn out and give up. TMA: There are some bitter ex-activists out there. ND-K: Exactly. So looking at that took me on a search primarily through yoga, which led me fairly quickly to Sufi for some reason, which is an unknown. It just happened to be happenstance, circumstance, synchronicity, whatever you will, and I found my way onto this mystical path. That took me to California, where I connected with people who were continuing the work of the Sufi Buddhist teacher Samuel Lewis, who was the founder of the Dances of Universal Peace. That was almost twenty years ago, and it pretty much continues since that day. In editing Samuel Lewis' diaries, letters and unpublished manuscripts for publication, I ran across references that he was interested in chanting the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic. As many Sufis are, Samuel Lewis was interested in the way sound is active. In the older sacred languages, the sound of words don't just have meaning; they're actually very, very creative in the same way that the traditional mantra is . . . in the sense of using sound to change consciousness. ___ Psplit * 2.02 * Split/Post Processor! [Continued to 02/09] -!- FMail/386 1.02 ! Origin: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work (1:3618/2)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) )))))))))))))) Ä Area: Metaphysics/UFOs and correlation ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 102 Date: 09-04-96 12:43 From: Don Allen Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: 02:A convo with.. [02/09] ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ TMA: This would be the use of the Word. ND-K: Correct. It's called wasina. Since the Dances of Universal Peace themselves are based on chanting sound, he'd listen to the sound to change his consciousness. Well, if he felt that his chanting the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic would be something to investigate, maybe I should investigate it. So that was essentially what set me off on this hunch, sort of, for the inner Aramaic language. I came across a transliteration of the prayer that could be chanted insofar as you do the chant just on one note. It's traditional to begin the chant when you don't know what it may offer. It's just a chant in the heart on one note. From that meditation then, sometimes comes, in the way that we were taught, the melody and movements which can clarify as group movement, circle movements, which is how the dances basically evolved. I began to work with this chant almost entirely in an experiential sense, and began to have experiences that were different than those of the other chants that we used in the Dances of Universal Peace -- which might be Arabic or Sanskrit or Hebrew or the many different traditions that are represented. From this chanting work, then, did in fact come melodies, come movements, which became what we call "series" of Dances of Universal Peace that went with the prayer, which is in Aramaic -- and then later on, also the Beatitudes. I had language studies in my undergraduate days and I had majored in languages and linguistics and that sort of thing. Learning languages came easy to me . . . and as part of becoming involved in the Sufi path -- not a necessary part, but a part that I wanted to do -- I also began to learn Arabic so that I could have some better sense of what the Arabic of the Koran offered. The Sufi tradition about the Koran is that no translation is actually appropriate or possible, because as one of my Koran teachers said, each statement translates five or six or ten different ways. So, the translation at the moment is what you experience -- the way your life experience interacts with what's being said from the statement. It's not something to make religious dogma about, it's something to be experienced in moment-by-moment fashion. TMA: That's not the level of understanding that you find in the media. ND-K: No. You could say, though, that the media only presents the worst side of Islam. I sometimes say that if CNN had been around during the Crusades of Christianity, the Crusades would have had a bad reputation also. But you can't judge all Christians by the fundamentalist movement just as you can't judge all of Islam by the fundamentalists. I focus my work in a field that's called spirituality -- that is, focusing on spiritual practices and experience. That's a ground that predates organized religion as we know it. TMA: Organized religion . . . meaning social control. ND-K: Well, ultimately, if you take the long view of it, yes, religion is social control for the purpose of bringing people together. Organized religion as we know it is only, say, two to three thousand years old. But human beings were trying to make sense of their lives in a sacred way for ten times that long, back to at least twenty thousand, perhaps even thirty thousand years ago. This involved art, music, poetry, drama, all the elements of, let's say, the sacred symphony -- but it wasn't religion as we know it. Religion only becomes possible when you narrow the meanings, especially of mystical or visionary statements . . . and are able to say I believe X, Y and Z and not A, B and C. But the mystical path is always one of opening up meaning, opening up experienc e. So you could say this is the ground that unites all traditions, but particularly in the Middle East. The fact that we only see the Middle East as a series of warring religions, conflicting religions, has to do with the West's very ambiguous and often conflicted relationship with the Middle East. TMA: And it's also a function of some of the esoteric being kept secret. ND-K: That's certainly true, and there's a reason for that. We extracted modern religion, so to speak, from the Middle East; we extracted science from the Middle East, which was kept alive during the European Dark Ages by Islam; and now we're extracting the oil from the Middle East. It's always a matter of taking something. We're mining it out without honoring the ground of the tradition. Strip mining, so to speak. For better or for worse, that has been the progress of modern religion and ___ Psplit * 2.02 * Split/Post Processor! [Continued to 03/09] -!- FMail/386 1.02 ! Origin: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work (1:3618/2)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) )))))))))))))) Ä Area: Metaphysics/UFOs and correlation ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 103 Date: 09-04-96 12:43 From: Don Allen Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: 03:A convo with.. [03/09] ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ modern culture in general. It's unclear why the Middle East is so important to modern development, but it is. Anyway, to get back to the story. I didn't really do any of the translations from the Aramaic until I went to work for Matthew Fox, the ex-Dominican who started the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality. This was back in 1987. Matt said to me, Well, Neil, these dances are great and the chanting is wonderful, but if what you're saying is really true, then you should really go and retranslate key statements of Jesus from the Aramaic. Although one part of me rebelled, the other part said, Oh well, I'll do this. What took me the longest was actually hitting upon some poetic form that would allow maybe five, six, seven different layers of the translation, the interpretation, to be interwoven so that the listener in English would have a similar affect to that, say, as a listener who would hear in the Aramaic. That is, you would hear many different proximal meanings according to your life experience, according to your spiritual state at the moment. That's difficult to do with language, but once you accept that, you're successful. What was important also, from that work, was not just to get a translation, but also to interlayer that, interweave the work with body prayer -- which is the euphemism for meditation that is body oriented, produces breath, sound, body reverence, the basic elements of spiritual practice. TMA: This is kind of an aside, but I have to acknowledge that I was at a family gathering on Sunday where there was a Jesuit, and he was at work on a body prayer book. ND-K: Oh yeah? Many Christians are becoming increasingly interested and realize that to pray from the head up is only partial praying. It's just one level. There has been tremendous interest in the Christian community in body prayer in general. We think it's coming to the grassroots of many Christian congregations; not the high echelons, not to the academics per se, but certainly the grassroots. TMA: It's really very interesting work. In my own background, I sat in church as a little boy and said, Hey, wait a minute. Everybody in this room is going to heaven and everybody else is going to hell? Something's wrong here. So I picked up my Red Letter version of the New Testament and figured, Well, okay, I'll just read. And in the process, I became confused. In later years, it became apparent to me that Jesus didn't say all the stuff that they say He said. Definitely the early church fathers put words in His mouth that He never said. What do you have to say about that? ND-K: Yeah, there's various ways to determine that. In looking at the Aramaic, in using the Syriac-Aramaic gospel as my source, I try to go mainly for the things that are controversial to a certain degree. I look at internal consistency within this language as a whole and at the poetry that He uses. There is this quite profound poetry that's available in Aramaic where you have internal rhymes of various words, words that sound like other words -- known in English as assonance, alliteration. There's a certain poetic voice that Jesus identifiably speaks in. A lot of the problems of our translations of Jesus have to do with a narrowing to just one meaning of the many possible meanings that are there in the Aramaic . A good example of that is where Jesus reportedly is saying at various points, pray, or ask -- [beshemEH], transliterated from Aramaic. This word can mean to pray with my experience, with my sound, in my tone, from within my attitude -- it's almost like saying "pray from within my shoes." It can also be translated "pray in my name," but that's only one of many possible translations. To understand the word from a Middle Eastern mystical viewpoint, you have to understand what "name" means. Name means sound, tone, light, atmosphere; the way in which a person's name expresses their -- vibration, perhaps you could say, but that might be almost anacronous -- the word shem, my vibration or my essence. Pray in the sense of joining with me in my essence. It's a vibratory experience. Now see when you limit that through a Greek translation, it's like straining it out through a sieve. All the Aramaic, all the Middle Eastern mystical or non-mystical meanings stay on this side of the screen, and all you get pulled out through the Greek language system is Pray in my name. Well, you can make a lot of that, theologically speaking. TMA: And a lot of people have. ND-K: And it wasn't intended to be done so. There are big differences ___ Psplit * 2.02 * Split/Post Processor! [Continued to 04/09] -!- FMail/386 1.02 ! Origin: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work (1:3618/2)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) )))))))))))))) Ä Area: Metaphysics/UFOs and correlation ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 104 Date: 09-04-96 12:43 From: Don Allen Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: 04:A convo with.. [04/09] ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ between Aramaic and Greek. The Aramaic has only one preposition indicating both inner state and what happens among us. So for instance, when Jesus is reported as saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," or "The Kingdom of Heaven is among you," in both cases he said the same thing in Aramaic, because "within" is "among"; it's intimately linked with "among." That is, my inner state, what I experience, is always going to affect the way I treat my outer reality. The way I affect the different voices within me affects and implicates in the way I treat the different voices outside of me, and vice versa. So these are always interchangeable. But in the Greek language system, you can't have that. For Greek, mind is not soul, soul is not spirit, spirit is not body -- with all this dividing out. That makes certain philosophical possibilities very easy in Greek. Greek is a very philosophical language, but it's not embodience of a mystical language. It doesn't present those possibilities. So this is a lot of what I was finding in Aramaic. It's just a completely different kind of language. Then like Alice down the rabbit hole, I began to chase these different key sacred words back in time and then also forward in time, noticing how certain sacred terms, important healing terms, are used over and over, whether it's a slightly different form of Hebrew or in Arabic or in Canaanite or even in Babylonian. A lot of these terms become interlinked and are used similarly in all the different traditions, whether they were religious or pre-religious. This is what took me to the work that's in Desert Wisdom [see extract in The Monthly Aspectarian, May, 1995], which is essentially maintaining that there is a native Middle Eastern tradition out of which religion was extracted. If we look at it again as a native tradition, we begin to see some of the gaps, what was left out of so-called modern mystery religions. TMA: In looking at your work and some of the things that I've seen, it seems to me that they really had a much better grasp on things. ND-K: Well, they had a fuller grasp in that their view of life included intimately being connected with nature . . . and with each other. TMA: They understood the oneness of nature. ND-K: Well yeah, essentially because they were still living in a sacred universe. That is, they looked at life around them as being sacred. They looked at nature as sacred. They looked at nature as an expression of unity. That's something we've lost -- and somehow, if we're going to recover a sense of living in harmony with nature, we'll recover that. Unless we have the will, the desire . . . unless there's a change in consciousness that re-places us in the sacred cosmos, which includes nature, we're not going to have the will to make the changes we have to make. TMA: One of the things I've found -- I don't know which of the books I found it in -- is that what we think of as Hebrew, the block letters, were actually Chaldean. ND-K: The Chaldean alphabet, which is now used for modern Hebrew -- you could say that it's another version of Aramaic, and the Aramaic alphabet also has significant power in that many of the early alphabets were put together with sound meaning in mind. The shapes of the letters also indicate certain mystical truths or simply point to certain energetic realities in the words that are put together on this level -- and also on a rational mind level. TMA: Have you gotten into that end of it? ND-K: Yeah, well, this is essentially the basis on which I do a lot of my translation, using this which in Hebrew or Jewish mysticism is what is called a midrash or midrashic approach. That is, to expand the various roots of the words to all their possibilities, and then interlayer the possibilities to record the translations. This tradition of using this sort of expanded or open translation still exists to a small degree in that there are still Aramaic Christians in the world. But it's entirely new to the Western Europeanized Christians. They're still all involved with the Greek manuscripts. TMA: They really think that they've got the original in the Greek. ND-K: A lot of the problem is, you have 100 years of research based on that. To overturn that is going to take -- TMA: "You're not going to want to throw all that away." ND-K: That's 100 years on which reputations have been built. So whether ___ Psplit * 2.02 * Split/Post Processor! [Continued to 05/09] -!- FMail/386 1.02 ! Origin: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work (1:3618/2)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) )))))))))))))) Ä Area: Metaphysics/UFOs and correlation ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 105 Date: 09-04-96 12:43 From: Don Allen Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: 05:A convo with.. [05/09] ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ or not Jesus ever spoke Greek -- which most people didn't since most of them were unlettered peasants, outcasts and homeless people -- they would not have been speaking Greek. There's a reluctance to look at the Aramaic for, even, say, parallel meaning. The main scripture scholarship today is involved with trying to take apart pieces of the Greek manuscript to try to find out where the stitches were put. We should get back to the mindset of the people that were doing the editing and trying to cobble together whatever manuscripts they used. TMA: We do know that it's probably true there wasn't somebody following Jesus around writing down what He said. ND-K: Probably not. Again, you have to remember, in all these traditions, people's memories were much better than what we can do today. Today it would be impossible. No doubt large sections -- perhaps most of the important parts of the Hebrew scriptures, were passed down orally for hundreds if not thousands of years. That may seem an extreme statement, but if we look at the Hebrews' Book of Genesis, it's extremely compact. It would be very easy to pass it down in a storytelling sort of fashion, for years and years and years. Even the Koran has an oral element to it. It wasn't written down either. People would memorize this, and there were various people in various cities to memorize it for safekeeping so that nothing would be changed. Their memories would always be prepared. Well, this is also very possibly what happened with the sayings of Jesus. This is why I'm primarily interested in the sayings and looking at them internally in Aramaic. Asking, What's the internal consistency? Does it make sense? Is it identifiably what he's talking about in another sense? TMA: The additions put in by the early church fathers to bolster their case -- would those additions leap out at you when you look at it? ND-K: They are fairly identifiable. Jesus has a particular way of speaking that's extremely poetic, that's very subtle, and he's always making the most of a few words. Some of the interpolations that have occurred are fairly obvious, especially when they get into things like baptizing in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit -- these sorts of things, because everywhere else, Jesus talks about, for instance, [Aramaic word] which would translate as "The Sacred Breath" or "The Source of all breathing" -- it doesn't make much sense. What's more important is the way in which our own breath connects with the human community, so if there's only one breath that we all breathe . . . and in this cosmology, there has to be a source for that breath to return to, and that's The Sacred Breath, The Holy Breath which later becomes, in Greek, a spirit or a ghost. TMA: When the George Lamsa Bible became known to me, I got a copy of it. I pulled out my old Red Letter version of the New Testament and was struck by how similar they were. The differences were not as marked as I thought they would be. ND-K: This is part of the interesting journey of George Lamsa. He came to this country pretty much directly from his training as an Aramaic scholar, interpreter, being born in a nomadic family. He came to Europe and the United States where people didn't even acknowledge that there was anything like Aramaic Christianity. It was completely new. People were still saying Jesus spoke Greek, and some people even said Jesus spoke English. Probably serious scholars didn't, but the average everyday person never thought that Jesus spoke a Middle Eastern language. As Lamsa describes his journey in a lot of his unpublished papers, what he set out to do was to educate people that there are Aramaic Christians in the world -- there are still today. They think in a more down-to-earth way than, say, the Greek-based theological development of Christianity, and he set out to correct the worst of the grammatical errors that were there in the gospels -- and he remembers those as several hundred. By grammatical errors, I mean, for instance, in the prayer that Jesus gave, the King James says, "Lead us not into temptation." The Aramaic says Wela tahlan l'nesyuna, "Don't let us enter forgetfulness or temptation or be lost in the superficial." That the difference between "Lead us not" and "Don't let us enter"; that's a grammatical mistake. That's a major grammatical difference. TMA: It has to do with whether the dots were below or above the letters. ND-K: According to Lamsa, yes. He says he only set out to correct the worst of these mistakes, and that if he had done anything else, he would never have gotten it published back in the 30s and 40s. But again, in ___ Psplit * 2.02 * Split/Post Processor! [Continued to 06/09] -!- FMail/386 1.02 ! Origin: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work (1:3618/2)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) )))))))))))))) Ä Area: Metaphysics/UFOs and correlation ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 106 Date: 09-04-96 12:43 From: Don Allen Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: 06:A convo with.. [06/09] ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ his unpublished writings, he indicates where he would have gone if he felt there had been an open forum. And he would have gone definitely much more toward the mystical. He had a very interesting relationship in that his patrons, the people who initially funded his work, were not scholars, were not the academics. They were, in some cases, industrialists, moneyed people who were interested almost in a sort of fundamental or charismatic way about what is Jesus really saying. Not all this liberal scholarship nonsense, no, but what was he really saying? There was sort of this alliance that a lot of Lamsa's work was funded by and so he didn't want to go too far . . . but again, as I looked through several thousand pages of his unpublished manuscripts, he does point to where he wanted to go. TMA: Thomas Jefferson wrote his own version, taking out what he thought had been added later by church fathers. Have you had a chance to see the Jefferson Gospels? ND-K: No; I know of it. TMA: I haven't had a chance to see it yet, either. I'm dying to see what he thought should be in and shouldn't be in. ND-K: Yeah. Again, it's another one of these renditions where Jefferson just says, Well, this is what I think, just intuitively. TMA: "There's no way he said this." ND-K: Right. "Out with that." And a number of people have done that. TMA: I became involved in metaphysics in the late 60s and was into different types of paths and so forth, and I had just about written off Christianity as being viable until I discovered the New Thought churches. Then, well, okay, not only is it salvageable, but his teachings as they were understood properly are as clean and as viable a way as anything anybody else has, including the Buddhists and the others. ND-K: There's plenty of wisdom there. TMA: Yeah, they do a lot of good work. Well, I'm curious about the other thing we spent a lot of time on, and that was Jesus. He is obviously one of the biggest teachers for the West for the last age, but there's a lot more out there. Different, but not contradictory. ND-K: Again, it's seeing different things from different points of view, different takes on things. But again, as I was looking at in Desert Wisdom, you see really the similarity of a number of mystical, prophetic voices in the Middle East, the way in which they're emphasizing certain themes that seem to be unique to that native spirituality. When you look at the level of cosmology -- the way people place themselves in nature, the way they make sense of their world, the creation stories, the way they treat each other, and then also in terms of the psychology, the way we look at our inner selves -- a lot of the Middle Eastern mystical voices, a lot of the Native Middle Eastern tradition, is really based on some very profound insights. TMA: It seems to me that they all come back to tapping into the I AM. ND-K: Yes, that's an important way of looking at it. The Native Middle Eastern tradition presents a paradox. It presents it in the first verse of Genesis, which if you look at it, says berêshith, which would mean visionary power, almost as though happening in a dream first, the Being of the universe -- or whatever we call That which was, is, and will be -- established or brought into actuality two main habits of the cosmos and the universe as we know it. One is the way in which we are all individuals, the way in which we are uniquely diverse from each other, and each has a purpose for being here. No two faces are alike, no two planets alike; that abundant individuality in the cosmos. But at the same time, a parallel habit, way of looking, way of being, is the way in which everything is interconnected. In the Hebrew mystical way of looking, this is êth-ha, which is usually translated as "earth", and shâmaîm, which is usually translated as heaven. When you try to squeeze it out through European-Greek language thought it becomes -- TMA: That's what you come up with. ND-K: Yeah, because you get "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth," and this conjures the images that heaven is later and ___ Psplit * 2.02 * Split/Post Processor! [Continued to 07/09] -!- FMail/386 1.02 ! Origin: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work (1:3618/2)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) )))))))))))))) Ä Area: Metaphysics/UFOs and correlation ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 107 Date: 09-04-96 12:43 From: Don Allen Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: 07:A convo with.. [07/09] ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ it's the reward we get and it's the pie in the sky and earth is what we have to put up with now. TMA: Well, you have the One. If you're going to have the illusion of separateness from the One, that is dependent on duality. ND-K: It is, in a certain way. In some ways in, say, the Genesis passage, which is repeated in many different mystical voices, not just the Biblical ones. We need to make sense of our lives on two levels: We need to keep one eye open on our individuality and a sense of diversity, what we need to do to fulfill our purpose. We need to keep our other eye open on our relatedness, on the weave. So we have the I and the weave of our existence. If we have only one eye open, we'll see things in only one dimension. With both eyes open, then we can see in a way that these make sense simultaneously. And you can say that this is the mystical or prophetic or visionary experience, which more and more people are realizing it's important to cultivate. TMA: All that, such as we can apprehend, is a balance of the two. ND-K: Right. This unity is really one of the main sacred names in the Middle East -- then it has to include everything. It even has to include duality. It has to do with the ripe and the unripe. TMA: What we perceive as good and bad. ND-K: Correct. It has to include forgetfulness. It has to include not always being integrated, not always being holistically aware, so to speak. It has to include all these aspects. Especially when I went back through Genesis, I could see the way in which this aspect of randomness, of chaos and darkness . . . it is not dishonored at all. In fact, it's honored equally as something that empowers the continued development of the universe. Dark is not demonized, light is not put on a pedestal, so to speak. You see that the way in which they dance together is a lot more clear. TMA: Neil, what was your religious background as a child? ND-K: I was raised in a fairly traditional branch of the Lutheran Church, and at the same time, my parents were also interested in alternative spirituality, particularly that of Edgar Cayce. Somehow they held this intention and harmony in their lives. My father was also one of the first chiropractors and so from the beginning, he was interested in alternative healing. At that time, a chiropractor wasn't at all recognized . . . so he was on the fringe. When I got married a while back, my mother took my partner and said, "Here, I want to show you how to raise my son." And my mother shows my partner my childhood astrology. She'd always kept it a secret. So there was more going on than even I knew at the time. TMA: It's lucky you had that kind of background. ND-K: It was, actually, it was a good head start. At least the openness, the perceived openness. TMA: So do you identify yourself now as belonging to any one tradition? ND-K: That's difficult. I sometimes say, in my recent family past, there's a lot of Jewish. I was raised as a Christian and I spent about the last 20 years studying a very ecumenical branch of Sufism, so you can say I'm a Middle Eastern mystic, that I follow the path of Middle Eastern mysticism because even sometimes the word "Sufism" gets in the way . . . its original meaning just means "mysticism." TMA: How do you see the work that you're doing, and the work people are doing along the same lines, as applying to now and helping the transition that the world is going through? ND-K: Well again, I'm working with taking people in various traditions who are looking, working the same way. Essentially what we're saying is, we need to re-evaluate institutions that we've used over the last 1,000 years, to bring us together. We need to look at the aspects, the ways in which religion has brought us together and the ways in which it has split us apart and split us from nature. The people, you could say, that I consider to be in my circle are those people who tend to see the earth and our relationship to earth and nature as the primary ground. All scriptures come from there; as theologian Thomas Berry says, that's where all the spiritual paths come ___ Psplit * 2.02 * Split/Post Processor! [Continued to 08/09] -!- FMail/386 1.02 ! Origin: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work (1:3618/2)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) )))))))))))))) Ä Area: Metaphysics/UFOs and correlation ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 108 Date: 09-04-96 12:43 From: Don Allen Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: 08:A convo with.. [08/09] ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ from. If we can re-cover that ground and bring practices into the open that can help us sort of unlearn the modern split from nature, then we're bringing about this big change in consciousness that we're going to need in order to do the social action to [that leads to] political action. We need to have it happen. These are difficult matters as time is running out. TMA: Do you think time is running out? Do you follow the gloom and doomers? Do you take that approach? ND-K: I wouldn't overemphasize it, but when you look at the condition of the topsoil, the diversity of species decreasing every day, ozone, and this level of things . . .it's easy to look at that, and if this is what it needs to give us a sense of immediacy, a sense of being in the present moment to each other and the earth, so be it. Maybe this is what we need, as Thomas Berry and others talk about, to evolve into a whole new relationship, not just between humans but between humans and the environment. This may be what's needed. TMA: What's your take on the ages, such as the age of Pisces, the age of Aquarius? ND-K: I tend not to think in those terms, actually. I know back in the 70s we were talking about a new age, but at that time the words "new age" meant something quite different than what they mean now. At that time, new age meant actually getting involved in the spiritual path, doing spiritual practice and really cultivating your own awareness. "Don't put any false heads above your own." Now "new age" has become almost the reverse of that. TMA: The media has done a number on it. ND-K: It has done a number on it, so you always have to determine whether to give up the term -- in other words, let the media have it -- or to try to maintain the real sense in which there is a new era coming. So now people are shying away from the term "new age," but many of us are still sticking with the term, so it's a change of consciousness which will happen from the fringes first. But then, as Riane Eisler and others are pointing out, it develops from the fringe and then gradually becomes the common consciousness of humanity. This is the way we have to go. TMA: It's happening in a big way. ND-K: Yeah. So I'm very positive about that. I keep my work definitely in that vein, whether I call it new age or not. A lot of our choices that we're making today have to do with simple things. There is a lot of wisdom we can learn from all the native traditions, whether it be American, Asian, Middle Eastern. But a lot of our choices come down to choices between love and fear. If we fear diversity, if we fear "the other," if we fear the other in ourselves, we're going to be more easily able to be manipulated by the media, by the politicians, into responses that are based on fear rather than love. And a lot of us are trying to say these are your choices, these are the ways to cultivate love. Really deep, sensitive actions rather than the fear that spreads us apart. Neil Douglas-Klotz is the author of Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus and the newly published Desert Wisdom: Sacred Middle Eastern Writings from the Goddess through the Sufis. (Both books include translations and commentary, and body prayers. In Matthew Fox's Foreword to the former, he states, "Douglas-Klotz's dedication to bringing the mystic out of self and others through the Dances of Universal Peace is highlighted in the practical and bodily prayer forms that he recommends for recovering the living, breathing Scriptures. He teaches us truly to pray the Scriptures anew, to understand prayer as more than reading or talking.") Douglas-Klotz is on the faculty of the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality in Oakland, California, and is the founding director of the International Center for the Dances of Universal Peace. He leads workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. . . . Send comments and suggestions to tma@lightworks.com ___ Psplit * 2.02 * Split/Post Processor! [Continued to 09/09] -!- FMail/386 1.02 ! Origin: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work (1:3618/2)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) )))))))))))))) Ä Area: Metaphysics/UFOs and correlation ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 109 Date: 09-04-96 12:43 From: Don Allen Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: 09:A convo with.. [09/09] ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This WWW server is maintained by peterk@info1.com Copyright © 1995 by TMA Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1995 by Information One, Inc. All rights reserved. ___ Psplit * 2.02 * Split/Post Processor! [End 01 through 09] -!- FMail/386 1.02 ! Origin: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work (1:3618/2)))))))))