Some of what we’re doing in the new program is working with many of these sayings, but we begin with a very simple body prayer, which is simply intoning, breathing gently to ourselves this word in Aramaic, Ina-Ina, which means “I-I.” Connecting my own sense of self, the way it is just in this moment, with a sense of awe or sense of unity that is throughout the whole cosmos, and gradually building and strengthening that connection so that there’s an easier pathway between the big picture of life and what I have to deal with in my everyday life. So should we try a bit of that?
TS: Yes, let’s do it!
NDK: OK, let’s do it. If you would place one hand lightly over your heart and feel your breath rise and fall there. And just simply breathing Ina-Ina, the “I-I.” Through these words that Yeshua/Jesus spoke, we’re connecting to his way of prayer, his way of being. And this is also support. We follow in his footsteps. He’s going ahead of us in the caravan of creation. This doesn’t exclude a connection with him or through him. But he’s also asking us to dive more deeply into our own inner self and connect that through him to the greater sense of life, of reality, of the Holy One.
Breathe the words first, Ina-Ina. Feeling the breath rise and fall. Hand lightly touching the heart. The heartbeat there as our own inner rhythm as well. And let’s intone very softly to ourselves these words, again, using the resonance of the also to bring us into rhythm, into ripeness.
[Intoning] Ina. Ina. Ina. Ina. Ina. Ina. Ina. Ina.
So however that comes out for you. Don’t worry about how that sounds. Focus more on the feeling. Focus more on the rhythm, the vibration, the breathing. We continue to breathe with that feeling, letting the breath go deeper, deeper. Connecting with our own sense of self as it is growing, evolving, changing, whatever that may be.
In this way of looking, it’s never a thing, the self. It’s moving, changing. It’s evolving every moment. It’s not really something we can hold onto. But we connect that momentary sense of our self, our life, our known, our problems, our challenges, with a greater picture and greater reality. With those who have gone before us, who have inspired us, and through them all the way back to the beginning of the caravan. Back to the first beginning, back to the one being or that mysterious something that connects all beings throughout all of life. Aman. Aman. Thank you.
TS: It’s interesting that you’re calling these teachings and these sayings the “I am” sayings, but at the same time you said that that’s not actually the correct translation.
NDK: [Laughs] That’s correct. This is bit of a joke, yes. A bit of a paradox. But people know them as the “I am” sayings, so we ended up using that in the title. Really, the new program is retelling most of the story of the Gospel of John. And as I say, in short form, it’s really Jesus preparing his disciples for him leaving and trying to point them back to themselves, to dive more deeply into themselves as a source of guidance rather than relying on him because he realizes that he’s not going to be around much longer.
So retold in that sense, these “I am” sayings really become him pointing to different pathways, different meditative pathways that they can use after he is gone. But also connecting to him in breath, in vibration. As he says in one of the sayings, really from his way of looking, in his tradition—and it’s not really true of all traditions—everyone travels together. No one travels separately. He says, “You connect to me. What you’ve seen in me is just me reflecting back to you your own divine nature, but you think it’s me. But we all travel together. So if it helps you to connect to me after I’m gone, to connect to me in breath and vibration, I will be there for you. That will be there for you, but keep traveling. Keep going further.”
And so the teachings evolve, I find, in this very deep way. A way that reviews, that recapitulates, all of his major teachings in the Lord’s Prayer and The Beatitudes, but actually, in a more deeper and a more urgent way, we could say.
TS: But going back to this paradox that these are really the “I-I” teachings, but that here you have to call them the “I am” teachings in order to actually communicate. You are writing in English, you’re writing in a different language than what was the original Aramaic, so you’re dealing with this issue all the time, I imagine?
NDK: Yes, to some extent, you’re dealing with glossing certain things. Then after “glossing” we say, “this is what we’re talking about.” For instance, in the first line of Jesus’ prayer—we’re talking about the line that was translated, “Our father, who art in heaven.” Now let’s look at that in the Aramaic, and what are some of the other, more expanded deeper meanings around that. So you’re always sort of dealing in translation. And the way that I’ve worked around that is to keep opening up the translation rather than to let it be limited to one particular translation, or to say, “OK, this is the definitive translation.” But keep opening it up.
You know, I’ve been gratified to see that as people have used my books, [and as] they’ve used the recorded programs that I’ve done through Sounds True through the years, they have written to me and say, “Here, I’ve done my own Midrash and this is what I’ve gotten from it. Here’s another version or way of looking at it.” And that’s very gratifying for me, because it means that it keeps the words and teachings living rather than let them be set in stone or set in immutable clay.
TS: It also seems that when you made that comment that there is no “being,” very like “am” in Aramaic, it made me thing about how the language itself that we speak also shapes our view, our way of being. I wonder what you might have to say about that in relationship to Jesus.
NDK: That’s very much true. Originally when I started this work, Tami, I thought, “Well, it’s just a matter of a few different words.” I mean, they are important different words, as I mentioned. But then I began to say that it is a whole cosmology. It’s a whole way of looking. It’s a different psychology. It’s a different way of looking at time. It’s a completely different way of looking at time.
As I was mentioning in that meditation, the ancient Semites tended to look at time really not as a separate past, present, and future, but more as a, what I sometimes now call, “caravan time.” That is that the past is pulsing ahead of us. The present is here now with us in a community with which we’re traveling. And the future is coming along behind us. So it’s almost exactly the opposite of the way Western philosophy looks at it, which is, “We’re heading toward the future and the past is behind us and it will never affect us again.”
No, they looked at it almost the opposite way. We’re falling in the footsteps of our ancestors, and then as the Native Americans sometimes say, “There are those who come along behind us or after us, and those are our children and our children’s children.” We have to really be careful and pay attention to what we’re leaving for them.
So it’s a whole huge shift, and this idea that there is no “being” verb [in Aramaic] is one of the biggest ones. No one is anything. You could say, “I am not this and not something else.” The whole notion of the self slides away. But the self is something that you can hold onto, or that is an object, or that the soul is something that can be saved or invested or cashed in or any of these ideas. Again, most of these we get from later Greek philosophy, and the ancient Semitic mysticism is much deeper than this. And Jesus participates in this.
So yes, that’s why I’m still doing it, I suppose, after all these years, because I’m still finding things that are new.
TS: Now, this is curious to me what you’re saying about the nature of time. How is the Aramaic different such that time is different?
NDK: It doesn’t have a strict separation between past, present, and future. And by not having a “being” verb, it doesn’t objectify an object into particular states. If you look at the ancient Hebrew scriptures, if you look at the Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, you don’t find any really of these types of “being” verbs. You have everything being in motion. You don’t have any verbs that mean “to stand still, to sit still, to be still.” That is, to be motionless. What is usually translated in the Hebrew scripture as “be still and know that I am God,” really is the saying, “Be silent. Listen. Listen and hear.”
So as I say, it’s much more of a vibration sound. These are vibration and sound languages, rather than looking at life from the outer appearances and then objectifying and saying, “Well, it’s this and not that.” You know, things are fluid. Things are in motion. And we don’t generally think about that in terms of the Bible, or in terms of Jesus or Christianity, because as I say, we have strained out through this completely other philosophy where from one standpoint, it’s just becomes very curious.
TS: Now, you were talking about your new program on these “I am” teachings, and in the program you refer to this in some contexts as “secret teachings.” I’m curious, what about them was particularly secret?
NDK: Well, I suppose they aren’t secret anymore. [Laughs]
TS: Well, open secret now.
NDK: I suppose that we use the word “secret.” We went back and forth about this. [These were] secret in the sense that they were teachings really for his close circle. So there were some things that they gave to his inner circle and that he wanted them to know before he left. And it’s not exactly clear if they always understood him either because he had to keep coming back to various themes again and again. But I would say that it’s more of an inner circle teaching rather than what he was expressing outwardly to everyone else.
One often finds that with teachers, as they are about to leave, that they try to leave something, leave some transmission, so to speak. They try to pass that on to a few people—one, two, or maybe half a dozen if he or she is lucky.
TS: And what were some of the central themes of this inner-circle teaching?
NDK: Some of the central themes are first that he wanted really his closer circle, his close disciples, his close students to—as he says in the Gospel of John very clearly (it even says it in the King James [Bible])—he wanted them to do the things that he had done and greater than these. And the way that they would do that is not by idolizing him or putting him on a pedestal, but in trying to look towards where he’s pointing them. Look toward their own connection, Ina-Ina, through him to sacred unity. And there were various ways that he was pointing out that this could be done.
When we connect to our inner self in a deeper way and realize, “OK, it’s changing and moving within this greater caravan of life when we connect to the bigger picture,” that is a doorway that allows us to move more fluidly between different avenues, different aspects of ourselves.
It’s also a sense of guidance or direction, which is the saying that was translated later as “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In Aramaic, this really looks something like, “If you connect Ina-Ina, this will show you the path. It will show you the sense of right direction”—that is, when you come to a crossroads, that’s the so-called truth. And also it’s “the life.” But in this case, it means “life energy.” So he says that this connection, this deeper connection through simple presence, eye-to-eye, is the past. It’s the sense of direction. And also it’s the energy to travel.
This just makes perfect sense to me. I mean, this is something that I use every day, actually. Come back to the breath. Come back to presence. And, OK, there’s the path. With breath, with sense of connection, I can decide what I need to do, not to do, and also gives me some life energy to keep traveling.
TS: So I can hear in this, Neil, your excitement and the discovery that you’ve had the experience of discovery in finding some of these original words and sayings and how meaningful they are. I’m curious if you’ve ever come upon some of these original Aramaic and just been like, “Oh my God, I just don’t get this at all. I just don’t get it. It just doesn’t make any sense to me”?
NDK: Well, that’s happened many times, Tami, actually because I started out (this was 30 years ago) just with the prayer. Just with Jesus’ prayer. And I thought, “Well, that’s enough! The rest I can’t deal with.” It’s too complex. But the more that I start to do little bits, little bits, little bits, pieces of the puzzle started to fill in. More and more started to make sense. But there are still some things that I haven’t worked on. And I don’t know if I ever will.
Some people want me to do an entire retranslation of the New Testament, but I’m probably not going to do that. You know, even just getting all of the sayings of Jesus done would be quite a job for one person’s life if you do it in the way that I’ve done it, which is unpacking each thing to look at all the possible, multiple layers or some other ways that people can get into it. As I say, there’s no sense of being definitive. I’m just adding my bit into what people have done before me. Hopefully someone will pick it up after I’m gone as well.
TS: You know, Neil, the conversation has been very generous and open and I really appreciate that. But I’m curious, before I let you go here, if you feel that there are any major misunderstandings or misconceptions about Jesus because of bad translation work that you want to be clear—that you get an opportunity here, from your knowledge of Aramaic, to set the record straight?
NDK: You know, because of this different nature of time in Aramaic, the whole notion of a Judgment Day is very problematic. The more I have looked at it, it’s inconceivable to me that Jesus could have imagined a Judgment Day the way that people currently talk about it or that any of the Hebrew Prophets could have imagined it either. I even extend that into Islam because some branches of Islam believe in a certain type of apocalyptic Judgment Day. And Mohammed couldn’t have known anything about it either, again, simply because the language wouldn’t have allowed them to do it.
Their idea of judgment was of discrimination, of decision, in the moment. In connection, as we were working with Ina-Ina, when I connect to the Holy One through whatever prayer or through whatever meditation, then I have the ability to decide what is important in my life at this moment and what is not important. I have to discriminate. I have to discriminate what is ripe and what is unripe. What’s ripe for me now and what’s unripe for me.
And so does our society: our culture has to discriminate and decide, “OK, what we [formerly] thought was good to do as a culture maybe now is no longer ripe.” But it’s not saying that this is all relative. But this is the actual Judgment Day. The Judgment Day, as many mystics have said, is really here and now. In each moment. Each breath can be a judgment day. So I would say that’s, as a parting bit, that is what I would leave you with.
TS: OK, and just two final things. I’m not letting you go quite yet. The first one is: I’m curious, of the teachings of Jesus that you’ve encountered through your research study and practice, what is currently the hardest one for you to live into?
NDK: Ah. Well, the hardest one for me to live into is, I would say, the difference in lifestyle. When I go on personal retreat, and when I go into nature, then I can really feel much closer to this person Yeshua/Jesus. But you know, I live a life, as many people do, I have a wife and I have work I do. I’m living in the world. I’m not living as a wandering ascetic, although I do travel a lot. So, you know, he had a different mission in life, so to speak. That is, Jesus did. He came. He left very powerful sayings. I believe he left very powerful practices. But then he left, however we believe he may have left. But he left by time he was 30-something. I just pushed passed 60.
So it’s a different sort of trajectory of my life path, really, and for that I have to look to other prophets and messengers to see how I can follow in their footsteps in a good way as well as live my own life.
TS: And then, finally, Neil, I wonder if you could leave us with a few phrases, a paragraph of Aramaic, and the translation. Something that is particularly meaningful to you, just as a closing?
NDK: OK. I’ll leave you with this. This is from the Gospel of John. And this is one of Jesus’ final sayings, at least according to the Gospel of John, to his students, his small group. [Speaks Aramaic]
This is translated beautifully in the King James, “Love one another as I have loved you.” And the Aramaic gives us this additional dimension: the aheb—the word for love, in this case, in Aramaic—is like love that grows from a small seed. It grows in the darkness, unknown [at] first, and then slowly blossoms. And this, I feel, is how we have to look at life, at relationship these days. We have to respect, tolerate differences. This is the type of aheb love according to Yeshua. It just begins with mutual respect and then perhaps gradually we can learn to live better with each other and respect these differences more and more.
And this is, I think, the most problematic thing in our culture today. With globalization, we’ve globalized our differences as well as our similarities, and we know a lot more about other people’s differences as well as about their deeper similarities to us in a certain way. So I think this is still a koan—if I can borrow a term from Zen Buddhism—not just for Christians, but anyone who wants to participate in Jesus’ spirituality. [Speaks Aramaic]
How can we love our inner self? How can we love our evolving self? How can we love those around us? How can we respect, live together and keep moving together?
TS: Wonderful. I’ve been speaking with Neil Douglas-Klotz. He’s created a new audio learning series with Sounds True called I Am: The Secret Teachings of the Aramaic Jesus. He’s also the creator of two other audio learning sets with Sounds True, very complete courses: one on The Healing Breath: Body-Based Meditations on the Aramaic Beatitudes, as well as a program called Original Prayer: Teachings and Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus. Neil Douglas-Klotz has also published with Sounds True a book called Blessings of the Cosmos, a unique collection of Jesus’ benedictions and invocations for peace and healing. Neil, thank you so much for being with us on Insights at the Edge.
NDK: Thank you, Tami.
TS: SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey.
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For more inspiration join an Awakin Call with Neil Douglas-Klotz this Saturday, "Breathing Life into Words, Prayers and Scriptures." More details and RSVP info here.
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