Nuggets From Neil Douglas-Klotz's Call
ServiceSpace
--Pavi Mehta
7 minute read
Aug 5, 2021

 

Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Neil Douglas-Klotz.

Neil Douglas-Klotz, a Sufi poet, musician and renowned scholar in religious studies and psychology, is a pioneer in the radical translation and transliteration of Jesus's words in the original language to reveal a mystical, feminist, and cosmic Christ. When Douglas-Klotz first learned the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, he recited the words and then chanted the sounds over and over again. “My body began to feel feelings I hadn’t felt before. It was a visionary experience, a hal [expanded state, in Arabic].” He has engaged in deep exploration of the body, mystical and expanded states of consciousness, and the early pre-religious ways of the three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—which he explains reflect movement of a universe that is holistic, fluid, and conscious.

Our time together included two profound guided prayers by Neil. Here are a handful of luminous nuggets from the conversation that was moderated by Cynthia Li:

On the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic

Abwoon is the first word that is usually translated "our Father," and D'Bashmaya is multiple words [together] translated "which art in heaven".The translation is, if not wrong, very misleading in that Abwoon is more a process than a being. It is an activity of creation, always being created and recreating. And this process, according to the Aramaic, is D'Bashmaya. D' means "it's moving somewhere. It has a direction, it has a purpose, and it's also within us. And it's also within nature, within everything that we consider to be reality or that appears to be reality. You could say it's within reality itself, and also in some paradoxical way, this whole reality is moving somewhere. It has some purpose. And this was the way the ancients in the Middle East, which we now call northwest Asia, I believe, envisioned the great mystery or reality itself.

On starting to chant in Aramaic

I began to chant the prayer, Jesus's prayer, in Aramaic. It was the early 1980s, and I didn't exactly know how to pronounce the words, but there was a friend of Samuel Lewis who was a Jewish rabbi who helped me a bit because they know a bit about these things. This was Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi of blessed memory, who was a wonderful mystic in his own right who passed a few years ago. And he helped me with this, and I began to chant it and to feel the words: Abwoon D'Bashmaya. Then, at some point, these sounds and movements began coming through in a way that I resisted describing for many years because many people would think it was too strange and too weird when channeling was still considered to be rather odd in those days. Now I think it's somewhat more acceptable

On the altered state of consciousness he experienced while chanting

It didn't come completely out of the blue. What I can say about the Sufis is they do have a technology of retreat of taking (kilvad), and this technology was still alive at the time. And there are certain practices that you go through to set the space. It's common to most traditions that have an active vision quest or retreat-type methodology. I wouldn't say that they're all that different from what I've experienced over the many years since then. You set the space, you protect, you purify, you clarify, you set your clear intention and then you open yourself. That's basically it, but if you do it in a ritual fashion, any ritual fashion, the universe cooperates with you and the voice of guidance then that is meant to be yours comes through.

On the particular stream of Sufism he was drawn to

What attracted me to this particular stream of the Sufi tradition were these body prayers called "Dances of Universal Peace"that Samuel Lewis created. They are circle dances using sacred phrases, simply put. There are other sacred circle dances. For instance, those that the Wosien and the Findhorn people created are also wonderful, but they don't involve chanting. I was drawn to the chanting aspect and the chanting-with-moving aspect of all of this. And this seemed to me a way to deeply embody the meditative practices so that one could begin to, in Samuel Lewis' words, "...experience meditative states with one's eyes open..." in life. In action. And then, in addition, he created certain forms of walking meditation which again have links to Buddhist walking meditation and other forms in the Sufi tradition that also allow one to use some of this practice in one's everyday life. So this is really what attracted me.

On his academic training

I did learn Aramaic properly, over many years. And to really understand what was going on with me I had to both go deeper into the Aramaic and study and get a degree in somatic psychology (not semantic). I did study semantics later, but I got a degree in somatic body-based psychology. I did this because it seemed as though the ancient Semitic languages themselves don't have this body-mind split that we inherit from Descartes or Plato or whatever. This was always a both/and for them. Then later, I also got a PhD in Hermeneutics, which is the science of interpretation of ancient Semitic languages. So I learned to talk in scholarly language because I wanted to just put it out there and see who really knew about these things.

On the Aramaic alphabet:

Each letter in the ancient Hebrew and ancient Aramaic alphabet--and this is also true in classical Arabic and Koranic Arabic--each letter was seen by the ancients as a living being, as an activity. These are not just scribbles on a page words, they don't just simply describe an outer reality that's already there, but sounds, letters, and words are the way in which, I'll say this carefully, that reality-- the great Mystery, speaks and is speaking the universe into existence.

Examples of what is lost in translation

Wherever in the gospels it says, or Jesus is quoted to have said, "Believe in me", he uses the preposition Bet. We had it in d’bwashmaya. Now the preposition Bet, which is the second letter of the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabet, means with or alongside of or within, all at the same time. So really Jesus is saying, have trust, which is the word for belief. Don't believe in a concept, have the same trust as though you are with me and within me. And it's the same where he says to his students, at one point, pray in my name. What he says is pray beshemi, pray within my shem, within my sound, within my atmosphere. You could say within my feeling or with and within. So it's always with and within and alongside of. This is why in Luke and in Matthew, in one of these you have the kingdom of heaven is within you and in the other, you have the kingdom of heaven is among you. It depends on which translation you read. In both cases he always said both, because within and among is the same preposition. Now that's hard to get your head around unless you start to look at reality, or outer reality, differently than we do today.

Advice to the young?

I would say, gosh, I don't want to give advice. Learn, learn how to be in silence. Breathe one -- as Jesus says, breathe one holy breath where the name comes to live. And the name doesn't mean any particular name. It's just breathe with a conscious breath. Open yourself. You will know what to do. You are in a difficult, difficult position, much more difficult. We thought we were in difficult positions back in the seventies when I was in my twenties. It's hard to compare, but it seems very difficult, more difficult to me now for young people. So trust yourself, trust that there is help from the Unseen and hopefully we'll make it.

On what he's learned of forgiveness

Well, you know, I always start with the linguistics, but you know, Jesus talks about forgiveness as untying knots. This is even in Prayers of the Cosmos. Well, now we find that our knots are much more knotty. 2000 years later, the knots just keep on coming. And so I hope we're going to get better at it, and I hope I get better at it. But it is a process of untying. Now, sometimes knots just disappear. If you've got a tangled cord and you're trying to like, you're working at it and all of a sudden you just go like, oh, well, what the heck.
And you just, and you throw it down, the cord, and it untangles itself. If you've ever had this experience it's like, it's quite actually wonderful. So, we do sometimes have this help. And so we can, there are different sacred phrases from different traditions we can ask for help for forgiveness. So I learned to ask for help. Help! Leave guilt out of the picture. Guilt just pulls you back to memories of the past and, you know, ask for help and then do your best.

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For those interested in accessing Neil's audio recordings, and/or the prayers we heard in Aramaic, visit www.abwoon.org.

Much gratitude as ever to all who enable these offerings from behind the scenes.

 

Posted by Pavi Mehta on Aug 5, 2021