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)))))))))