Pump.
My name is Rick Archer, Buddha at the   Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations  with spiritually Awakening people.
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He is an  internationally known scholar in the fields   connecting religious studies, comparative Semitic  hermeneutics.
And you know, what does that mean?  the name of Hermes, the Greek god.
And Hermes,   the tradition of Hermes is that language can  heal you or language can kill you.
So he was   the trickster.
And so hermeneutics is the big  language, the scholars word, it's a language for   the whole interpretation theory around languages.
you studied comparison between various  interpretations of the Semitic languages.  that they shared a common worldview   and they shared a common way of looking  at life, which I can speak about later.  is one of those languages, I presume?  you are so you're an internationally known scholar  in the fields connecting that, and psychology   as well as a poet and musician.
You are the  author of Prayers of the Cosmos, Desert Wisdom,   the Hidden Gospel, the Genesis Meditations, as  well as co-author of The Tent of Abraham with   Sister Joan Chittister, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow.  You're also the author of a new book, Revelations   of the Aramaic Jesus, which we'll be talking about  today.
You were the past chair of the Mysticism   group of the American Academy of Religion and are  active in various international colloquia, and   conferences dedicated to peace and spirituality.  One of your mentors is Sheikh Fadhlall a Haeri,   whom I interviewed on BatGap, about a  year and a half ago, delightful man.   And I want to read a quote from your website  before we get rolling, because I liked it a lot.   "It is a real blessing if one can find companions  on the path with whom one can share honestly,   and who are dedicated to the awakening of self to  soul through the constant albeit often painful,   massaging of the heart by life's circumstances.  When well massaged, any pain of rigidity, the 'ow'   of life, is superseded by the awe of the souls  eyes looking through one's own." There we go.   So, I'd like to ask you just, if we could spend a  few minutes.
Some people are pretty self-effacing.   They don't to talk about themselves a lot.
But I  always like to give people a glimpse of who the   person is that they're going to be hearing for  the next hour or two.
Because many of them want   to know, on what authority or based on  what study or knowledge or experience,   the person is saying the things they're saying.  And so give us a bit of your background.  anyway, thanks for inviting me, Rick.  an enjoyable week, you know, reading your   book and just thinking about the things that  you've been discussing.
I'm going to have a   lot of fun today.
I hope everybody enjoys this.
know and didn't want to know about Jesus.
exactly right.
And most people are afraid.  I was born in a sort of alternative family in a  suburb of Chicago, Illinois, and my father was   one of the early chiropractors in Illinois.  So my two brothers and I were raised with,   we were raised with what I call the holy trinity  of Edgar Cayce, you know, the American psychic.   And Rachel Carson, of course, the great American  ecologist.
And then chiropractic.
So I mean,   I could spell chiropractic before anyone else in  my school even knew what it was, I'll tell you   that.
So we had this inner family sort of culture.  And as most children do, I thought everyone lived   that way until I started to go to school, and then  discovered that it's not the case.
So we had to   have, as I now call it, we had our inner family  story, which didn't involve any theology, really,   my parents were raised Christians, but they mainly  read us Bible stories at night.
They didn't,   you know, they weren't fussed about that.
But we  needed an outer cover story, as I now call it,   in our community.
My father did.
We did, I  suppose, because he had to work there.
And it was   quite conservative.
So my brothers and I were sent  to quite conservative Christian elementary school.   This was Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, if  any of your listeners know what that was about,   or is about, they softened up a bit after that,  but we had to learn large parts of the King James   Bible by heart and all of Luther's catechism by  heart and all of Luther s theology by heart and...  Garrison Keillor was always going on about,   right? In his Prairie Home Companion? is good on Lutherans, actually.
But these were...  yeah.
So anyway, you know that that did serve me,   because I still remember large parts of the Bible,  obviously.
But when I finally sort of exited   all of that and made it to university, I went  as far away from Christianity as I could.
And   I basically became involved as an investigative  reporter in the anti-war movement, and because I   had a background in it, then in the Food and  Drug Administration, investigations of the   Food and Drug Administration, and, you know, the  adulteration of drugs and all of this stuff.
So   that's what I originally started working as was a  consumer investigative reporter in New York City.   And I wanted to I mean, I'm, you know, he wanted  to know, the background, this is where I came to   how I'm doing it.
But, you know, I had an  editor in New York City, one of the bigger   consumer publications, and he liked my work,  but he said, Neil, you know, this is all too   positive.
You know, you have to make people more  afraid.
If they're afraid they'll buy more of more   of the magazine.
This is all pre-internet,  you understand, Rick, this is this is all   pre-Reagan, actually, too, as far as that goes.  So in those days, the US still had, excuse me for   saying so, somewhat of a free press.
And it took  the form of alternative newspapers and magazines,   and university and college newspapers all across  the country.
And I ended up working for an   alternative news service that syndicated stories  to all this huge network that was active in the   well, it was in the late 70s, and the early 80s.  And I was one of the investigative reporters.
So   however, I was working 60-70 hours a week as you  do in your 20s.
This was happening.
I read a poll,   a Gallup poll, and it asked people, you know,  as Gallup polls used to do, these opinion polls   do? They would say, for instance, the poll I was  reading, given that there's no solution to the,   to the problem of nuclear waste, is nuclear  energy a viable solution for our energy?   And 70% of the sample said no.
And then about 50  questions later, they asked people, if you had   to give up something, because we no longer had  nuclear energy, would you be willing to do it?   And the same percentage said no.
So this I should  have known, but I was somewhat idealistic and   naive.
And I had an early burnout in my mid to  late 20s.
And then I had to decide for myself,   you know, Neil, how do you make decisions  in life? Do you may always make them on   the basis of facts? Or do you make them on the  basis of something else? Major life decisions?   And if it's something else, what is that  something else? How do you make decisions?   And that led to this sort of inner search  that I went on, which would now be called,   I suppose a sort of spiritual search, really.
And  I went to various groups I wasn't really satisfied   with anything was happening there.
And then I did  end up with the Sufis.
And the Sufis were broad   enough, at least at that point, they weren't so  institutionalized, that you could go your own way,   really, you could try to integrate whatever wisdom  you could find from wherever you could find it.   And that was important to me.
Now, because I  had--I'll finish this story because it takes   you to where we can jump off from--because I had  editing skills.
And I had worked professionally,   which few people in the hippie generation had  actually in some cases, I was put to work,   archiving and editing the diaries of the person  who started the Dances of Universal Peace, Samuel   L.
Lewis.
And in his diaries in his letters,  he says, I want to do two things before I die.   I want to start the Dances of Universal Peace,  so people can eat, pray and dance together.   And that's my peace plan.
And then I also want  to learn to pray the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic.   And he had done the first, but he had not done  the second.
And that was a moment that struck   me.
I still can recall the moment you know, right  now.
It's just like, it stopped me in my tracks.   And I knew that if this if this was something,  it would have something to do with sound,   with feeling, with the connection of music  and sound through the words, which is what   the Sufis do.
And what most Middle Eastern  chanting, all the Middle Eastern traditions have   chanting.
So they all do this.
And so I began  to hunt around.
I began to investigate.
Okay,   who knew Aramaic who could help me do that?  You know, I didn't think it was that difficult,   because I had been raised hearing different  languages anyway, in my household, you know,   a little bit of German, a little bit of Polish, a  little bit of Russian, mostly English, of course,   but, you know, I had to sort of had a sort of  ear for language.
And I thought, okay, well,   you know, how hard could it be? So this is  where I began to chase down Aramaic really.  do they...
with Sanskrit,   it's considered that the sound value of words  is as important as their meaning.
And in fact,   it's considered that there's a correlation  between the vibratory quality of the name   for something and that thing.
So in other words,  whatever the word for apple may be in Sanskrit,   that somehow that word has a vibratory, the  sound of that word has a vibratory quality,   which in some way corresponds to  the vibratory quality of an apple.   Do they have something like that in Aramaic? actually, Rick, I would say that most ancient  languages have this and if they've survived into   today, that is sort of been sieved out of them,  winnowed out of them, this way of looking at life.   The ancient Semitic languages, and here I'm  talking about, ancient Hebrew, Egyptian, old   Canaanite, Babylonian, Aramaic, and even up until  the classical Arabic of Muhammed-- the Arabic   that Muhammed was speaking before they made up  grammar around it.
All of these have this idea.
We   could say they arise from a nomadic experience, a  nomadic experience of peoples in this area of the   world, Southwest Asia as I think we now call it or  the Middle East as we used to call it, traveling,   traveling, traveling, always moving.
And so all  of the languages arise out of this where the sound   the letters are sounds, and the letters  and sounds are not just naming things   that are outside of oneself, but they  are making a relationship to those.   They are acknowledging a link that already  exists between myself say and the apple,   or myself and the tree.
So it wasn't like  I'm here and the trees there and you know,   isn't that a nice tree and oh, the poor tree  or, or you know, it's gonna be piece of lumber   someday or whatever.
It's like, I feel that the  tree is part of myself.
And the tree is a being   that is not just the physical what we call the  material object, but it is you could say--you   could call it the spirit, the faerie, the  genius.
I mean, all these words are used in   different world traditions.
It is the living deva  of the tree in some of the Sanskrit traditions.   This was not just people making up mythology in  those days.
This is the way they perceived outer   reality.
Their outer reality was like a dream  life that was on the outside, as one author once   put it.
And I think that's a good way to look  at it.
The inner sense of the subconscious that   we have today, my dream life is my dream life,  my emotional life is my emotional life.
Okay,   that evolved over 1000s of years.
Before we didn't  have this sort of inner-outer separation, as much   as now.
The individual self was not so developed.
what you just said, that a language in which  there's a correlation between name and form,   or between sound of words and the objects they  represent, would enliven the relationship with   those objects.
I think you were just  kind of saying that but, you know,   through chanting, or even just speaking the  word, you're kind of creating a fundamental   mutuality between yourself and the object.
either the object or the person, for instance, who  said the words.
Like let's say it's a shaman, or a   mystic or a prophet, or someone like that --a holy  person, you know.
If you are chanting--chanting   is usually what was used around world cultures--  chanting or speaking those words, you could   through the language and through a feeling of,  for lack of better words we would call devotion   or love, you can make a connection with or  through that person.
And this is, I think,   one of the keys of chanting really.
there's some verse about through  yagya, which is a form of, you know,   ritualistic chanting, one enlivens the  gods, or the devas, and they in turn   benefit you.
There's this mutual sort of...
Reinforcement thing going on.
Yeah,  there's a mutuality.
So it's not just,   "oh, praise Jesus." You know, Jesus is up there,  and how wonderful.
It's meant to open a channel,   if you will.
So it's a two way street, if  you will.
There's a communication both ways.  said, if you believe in angels, you're saved, but  if you actually see them, you're probably cursed.  acceptable theologically.
I see.
You might get in trouble.
who see them, a few friends anyway.  you know.
In fact, one friend, when I found out  that he saw these things, I was in an elevator in   the San Francisco airport.
And he had told me that  he sees them.
And I said, you know, are there any   I n this elevator? And he didn't really say much.  But when we got off, he said, they just said to   me, don't point us out to people.
If they're  meant to see us, they'll see us.
This week,   by the way, there were three he said.
absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, now so called modern  science, poo poos all this stuff, Rick, but,   I mean, how much do we really understand  about most of the way the universe works?  understand about the way the so-called  algorithms that control the stock market   and the economy work? I mean, this  is, these are robots, basically.
And,   you know, they're determining people's futures  in some way.
So, I mean, we put our trust in   the economy or this or the markets.
But what does  it actually mean? I mean, honestly, you know....  not stocking up on all the things of the world   because, you know, they're gonna turn to dust or  whatever, and you can't take them with you? Well,   I mean, slaughtering the verse...
do say this.
Honestly, it's but you know,  we're living...
well, I don't want to....  want to ramble, I rant a bit.
You know, we're a   couple of old hippies, we can blow off some steam.
in such a way that we have a much more  individual human self.
That's where I   was going before.
We're much more separated  from each other and from nature.
And also,   we're much more deluded by the idea that only  outer reality, so-called material reality,   exists.
Those are the two big delusions of modern  life.
They did not exist 2, 5, 100,000 years ago.   They had other delusions, most likely other  challenges.
So we've evolved in that way you   could say.
It's a devolution in some ways.
We've  evolved in the sense of individual human rights.   This is an evolution of human consciousness.
But  along with that goes more individuality, more   we going to do with this separateness? One of the   things Jesus--who came at a sort of cusp when this  consciousness is really starting to change....   Yeshua, in his Aramaic name, Yeshua came to show  us, okay, how to make this shift in a healthy way,   so that we don't end up well, basically, sort  of where we are.
Not that everyone is there,   but mostly what the news reports is the  results of, you know, more selfie, selfish,   isolated, materially hypnotized culture.
lot of people who are trying to overturn the  materialist paradigm, you know, which is that   everything is fundamentally material, and the  brain creates consciousness and so on.
And I'm   sure you're aware, they, they are up against a lot  of blowback from academic institutions, and so on,   you know, whether they're a student in them or a  faculty.
Then it threatens their career course,   and their tenure and so on, if they  start talking that way.
So there's,   there's a lot of resistance to seeing  life from a more spiritual perspective.  because there's so much invested in all of this,   whether in academia, in technology, the scientific  community.
Even in the spiritual community,   you have a lot of an equivalent  sort of thing going on, actually,   where people mistake the symbols of spirituality  for, you know, actually, anything real.   You know, instead of the emperor with  no clothes, you have the clothes with   no emperor, basically, in in many cases.
were just saying, kind of reminded me of the issue  of polarization that's rending society these days.   And isn't there some verse in the Bible where  Jesus says something about I came to pit, you   know, son against father or some such thing? And  it sounds like he was advocating polarization or   separating the sheep from the goats or something.  You know what I'm talking about that verse?  talking about, in modern terms, of the need to get   over one's conditioning from one's family, and  from one's culture.
And in the time of Yeshua,   Jesus, the family culture for most people, was  pretty bleak.
These were all underclass people,   as we would now call them who had been oppressed.  Taxed into penury and slavery basically,   by empires for generations.
And so, in these  types of families, a lot of dysfunction appears.   What we would now call, people living under  this trauma.
And so they would have all these   what we would now call in psychology,  liminal disorders, dissociative states,   abuse, all of this was going on.
And a lot of what  okay, there is another realm, there is another  dimension or other dimensions in the unseen,   but here are ways to access them in a healthy way.  You've had this, this conditioning, so to speak,   abuse, whatever.
I mean, you have to understand  that at the time of Yeshua, there was virtually no   middle class.
It was all you know, even maybe even  a smaller upper class than what there is today,   as unimaginable as that may be.
And so the  local ruler, he could just come and say, "Well,   now you owe this and if you can't pay it, I'll  take your son or I'll take your daughter.
It's   like that and...
what is the effect of that on,  on a family or on a son or on a daughter.
So, he's   pointing out, that you have to, at this point,  separate from that.
Maybe you can go back and heal   it later.
But you'd have to separate from that.
discussion of the book.
We're already sort of  doing it but let's shift a little bit more.   Firstly, let's establish that Jesus actually  existed Have you ever read the books by Tim   Freke and Peter Gandy about whether or not  you know, Jesus even existed and they kind of   reference all these traditions which tell similar  stories as we're told around the life of Jesus?  stuff, actually.
Because people are always   asking me about it.
I don't put much, much...  here's a couple of things.
If Jesus did not exist,   he wouldn't appear all over the Qur'an.  Unless you believe the conspiracy theory   that the Qur'an is just a Christian aberration,  which is another conspiracy theory.
I mean,   you can sell books with these things.
But  there's, there's no reliability to it.
I mean,   these sayings, this type of wisdom,  whether it's Jesus or Bhagavad Gita,   or Gautama Buddha--people don't make this stuff up  by committee.
I mean, it just doesn't happen.
This   happens when individual people open themselves  in a deep way to whatever that is-- the "great   Mystery"--and something begins to come through  them.
Later, it gets made into a religion.   Later, it gets made into a religion.
That's  the whole story, you know, of all these,   of all these so-called "great religions." when it gets made into a religion, that  soon begins to fail to resemble what the   guy who established it was actually saying,  unfortunately.
And we'll get into that,   you know.
And eventually becomes, in many cases,  the polar opposite of what he was advocating.
I   mean, I've seen you know, memes on the internet  of Jesus holding AR-15.
You know, with love...  what's happening with Buddhists in Myanmar.
Or,   you know, with Hindu nationalism in India,  you can go on and on with this.
And of course,   we don't even have to mention Islam.
So....
Mahesh Yogi.
On this topic, he used to say  knowledge crumbles on the hard rocks of ignorance.  the existence of Jesus, we won't debate that.
splash back there.
I mean, wow....  made a splash.
Yeah, exactly.  written down? I mean, he obviously wasn't   followed around by a stenographer.
And, and there  are accounts of private meetings he had with like,   the woman at the well and various other  instances where nobody else was there.  one else was there.
I know.  you know, come to us and when was anything   first written? Did it go through decades of you  know, oral transmission before went into print?  hat on here, Rick, even though I'm not changing   my hat.
This is the stuff that dreams are made  of? No, this is the stuff that PhDs are made of,   in the religious studies and biblical studies  fields, the so-called "transmission history" of   the Gospels.
How does it go from Jesus's mouth  to whatever was written down on the page? Did   it for instance, go through various people make  scribbling little notes here in different places?   And then did people compile these different  notes? Or was there some source document? Or   did it simply result from people's memory? Because  we know in non-literate cultures, memory is much,   much better than it is in in literate cultures.
studies.
So the different so-called gospels,   perhaps they simply arise from different  different groups' remembrances? "Well,   we remember him saying this." And then Thomas  group says, well, no, we remember him saying   this.
And the Mary Magdalene group says, Well,  we remember this.
So and it goes on like that.   You know, my point with most of this is that, if  you look at all of them together, if you look at   them through an Aramaic lens, that is through  a native language lens, a native Semitic lens,   it's still the same Jesus.
Really, it's still  the same Yeshua, just different people remember   different things, because we're human.
And we need  different things.
I mean, look, if you go to your   spiritual teachers, and you go to any spiritual  teacher, and you ask 10 people, what did you   remember from that? They'll give you 10 things.  And this is even given you know, that we have much   poor memory then in people's did 2000 years ago.
that we have much poorer memory.
And I don't  think that point has ever come up on BatGap   before but that's recognized and other cultures  too.
You know, for instance, for 1000s of years,   the Vedas were just handed down orally, and they  weren't, they weren't distorted.
I mean, and they   had these very elaborate methods of memorization.  They had to do them forwards and backwards and   you know, this way and that, and people devoted  their lives to that.
And then finally, when we   entered what the Hindus called Kali Yuga, Veda  Vyasa came along and said, "Everybody's really   gonna get foggy now, so we better write it down."  So he kind of got the whole thing written down.  same with these texts.
I mean, whether it   is the Hebrew scriptures or the Gospels or things  like this.
So the earliest? It's in pieces.
But   if we boil it down to what we have today, the  earliest Greek version is only about 100 years   older than the earliest Aramaic version.  And if you consult the Aramaic Christian   scholars on this, they say, that's because  we never kept old manuscripts.
You know,   we didn't want them to get too old, too frayed.  So we ritually recopied them, checked them,   and then burned the old one.
So we didn't keep...  we were not a relic culture....
They're basically   nomads.
You know, they don't keep old things, they  keep fresh things.
And they don't carry around old   stuff with them just because it becomes a relic  or John the Baptist thumbnail or God knows what.  the way that it was done.
So the Aramaic   Christian scholars, they say, if or when  he spoke anything, he spoke it in Aramaic,   and our version, is going to be a lot closer  than any Greek version.
And that's the sort   of the point of view I go from.
So did Aramaic.  In terms of it being written down, did Aramaic   precede Greek or Greek precede Aramaic? Or was  it kind of simultaneous, different people writing   it down in their respective languages? simultaneous, really.
Okay, because most of all  of Jesus's listeners were Aramaic speakers---   remember poor, underclass.
Only a few of them  would have understood Greek or Latin if they   were collaborators with the Romans.
And that would  be a very, very small minority of people.
So...  Greeks hanging around in Jesus's   vicinity? Or was it mostly Romans? Speaking...
have also spoken Greek, because it's a trade  language.
a language of commerce all the time.   But, but Aramaic is very, very old language in  the Middle East, it's most likely that when, if   you remember your Bible at all--I don't know much  you remember---when the ancient Hebrew people were   carried into captivity by the Assyrians and by the  Babylonians....When those who came back came back,   they were speaking Aramaic, rather than  ancient Hebrew, the Hebrew that they were   spoke before.
The people who still speak a form  of so-called Ancient Hebrew, not modern Hebrew,   are the Samaritans, who live in Israel and  other parts of the Middle East.
They were   the ones who were left behind when these other  people were carried off by the empires in the   fourth, fifth or sixth centuries BCE.
So they  say they maintain that older pronunciation.  book that there were literally hundreds of   different gospels, all kinds of different source  documents, and that under the Emperor Constantine,   it was winnowed down to the four gospels that  are widely recognized today.
And then obviously,   there have been some other finds in recent  decades, you know, Gospel of Thomas and   the Dead Sea Scrolls and all that stuff.
Magdalene, Gospel of Judas, all these good  things.
But they all had to be hidden.
They   had to be hidden otherwise they would have been  destroyed at that time.
Now the answer Emperor   Constantine is left with a quandary, a conundrum,  which is still the that of modern politicians.
How   do you simplify things for a bureaucracy? If  the Roman Empire is going to become Christian,   what does "Christian" mean? So we have to boil  all this down.
And up until that time, as one   scholar describes it, what you had was all these  little individual groups all over the Middle East,   who were Jesus people in some ways.
They start  out, let's say, in the Egyptian desert.
A mystic   who goes into the desert, he has experiences, he  has visions--or it could be she, too because there   were "Desert Mothers" and "Desert Fathers." They  gather people around them.
These ascetics, these   mystics, if you want to call them that.
And so the  community that gathers around them-- they're not   really up for going into the desert and starving  themselves and seeing visions.
They just want a   community.
So then the question is, how do we  determine what holds this community together?   So the community begins to write little mission  statements --as we would call them today for a   corporation.
And the mission statements would  be like, Okay, we're going to gather and say a   prayer.
And then here's the statement of who  we are.
And these early mission statements   become the early creeds of Christianity.  And then Constantine boils them all down,   simplifies it all to four gospels, one creed,  this is it.
Everything else out, that's it.  way some modern fundamentalist Christians say,   well the Bible is inerrant word, the literal  word of God.
And not a word can be modified   or reinterpreted or anything.
It's just like  set in stone, this is what God said or wants   to have said, it just seems kind of rigid? again, people, you know look around....
I mean,  you've got your midterms coming up in a few days.   And this religious right is a very powerful  force.
It has been for a long time in the US,   even when I lived there, it was very  powerful.
So people are afraid.
People are   want to maintain control over life, they want  it to be the way it used to be.
But you know,   it ain't gonna happen.
Life is change, face it,  friends.
You know, get out of the outer selfie,   grasping bit.
And find where it's really coming  from, find where your self really comes from.   That's what Yeshua was pointing his people to.
the US Constitution.
I mean, you know, we're  fussing over what these guys thought in 1781,   or whatever it was.
Who had no idea what we're  going to be dealing with today.
And in fact, I   read the other day that Jefferson figured that the  Constitution might last about 19 years and then   would have to be completely revamped.
Anyway....
idea maybe? >>Rick   I understand your book to be.
It's an attempt   to find fresh interpretations of the words that  Jesus may have spoken.
By looking at the original   Aramaic that he probably used, or the words he  probably used in Aramaic.
And then considering   what the different meanings of those words would  have been in the context of his society.
And   how did you do this? Did you find enough original  Aramaic text to work from? Or did you like have to   take the English Bible and like figure, alright,  what would this have been in Aramaic before it   went through whatever it went through to become  English? And then, you know, going back to the   Aramaic, this is what this verse might mean, as  opposed to what it's usually thought to mean.  first rather than the second.   It's it makes no sense to go back from English.
there original Aramaic renditions of the Gospels? Peshitta, which is what the Assyrian Christian  churches use, or actually all Aramaic speaking   Christians today use this Peshitta text of the  Gospels.
And although that particular Aramaic,   if you will, is a little bit newer, that  is, not quite as old as the one Jesus spoke,   all of the major words are the same.
All the  words he must have used, if he said anything,   remain the same.
And this is my main point with  scholars, because I often have to lean on them   about this.
If or when he said anything, he said  it in Aramaic.
And basically the language--the   major, major words, like the word about spirit,  or breath, or blessing, and good and bad,   and all this stuff, all these words are the same.  And they remain the same.
From ancient Hebrew,   even into classical Arabic.
A lot of it remains  the same really.
It's a shared cosmology.   It's a shared worldview.
So anyway, this this  book...yeah, thanks...we're backing into the book!  we end up with the King James Bible or whatever   the various modern versions of the Bible are?  Did somebody go back to the original Aramaic   and go from there jump to English, or did it go  through Greek and Latin before it got to English.  in most cases, in some cases through Latin,   but it went through Greek.
It has to do with the  Reformation and the invention of the printing   press.
Again, the Aramaic Christians point  out that, "We always have these scriptures,   these scrolls, if you will, in our homes for  maybe 1500 years, whereas for you Europeans,   it was illegal and punishable by death, even to  own a Bible if you were not a priest.
This is   pre-Reformation.
So you could be executed for  having a Bible in your home.
Most people don't   realize this.
So they think "well fundamentalism."  So the King James Version was a translation of the   King James scholars at the time.
It's actually,  in many cases very poetic, although very wrong,   in most cases.
But in other cases, it's just  theology that has interpreted the heck out   of it, and twisted the meaning incredibly.
out one thing, which I think you'll agree with,  which is that is this is not just a matter of   translating things accurately from  one language to the other.
But,   I mean, you hear people say, "What would Jesus  do?" And when I hear them say that, I always   think, well, you kind of have to be Jesus, in  order to do that.
You have to be in Jesus's state   of consciousness to act as Jesus would act.
And  if you're in some low level of consciousness, you   simply cannot do what Jesus would do.
And the same  would be true.
Same point applies to translating   scriptures from one language to another, if you  are incapable of grasping the profundity of some   statement, because you're just not at a level of  consciousness, which could grok the meaning of it,   then how mutilated is the translation going to be? as you say, it's not just a matter of the language  then.
The word for spirit actually means breath.  So cross out spirit wherever you see it in the   New Testament, write in breath, and see if that  changes the meaning for you.
It's not just about   that, although that's a good thing.
But it's about  the consciousness, it's about the cosmology, it's   about the way of looking at life that Jesus had.  And again, this is, as you say, you have to have   this sort of spiritual gestalt, if you will, where  you get into the feeling of Jesus.
If you read the   Gospel of John, which I have in the new book, this  is actually what he's advocating.
"Feel it like   I'm feeling it, look at it through my eyes, feel  it as though you're embedded in me.
And then it'll   all make sense to you.
You've had me here in the  flesh for these years, and now I'm, I'm scarpering   off, I'm leaving.
So you're on your own, but you  know, you can feel me if you make a connection   from your self to your soul.
And I think that's  one of the main points of the book, really.
I was   trying to bring together 40 years of work in one  book, really, I started out with his little book,   Prayers to the Cosmos in 1990.
And then I did  various things over the next 30 plus years.   And this book is really meant to bring it all  together, and place it in one view for people   along with--as well as I could do it-- some  guided meditations, some contemplations, whatever   you want to call them, which I think are really  some of the keys to the book.
Because as `I say,   you have to feel it.
You have to you have to  experience it, rather than just, you know,   hold it up here (in the head).
something to be said, for trying to imagine  the inner state of a great soul like Jesus,   trying to feel into it.
But that still doesn't  mean one totally gets it.
But Jesus assured people   that they could totally get it and, you know, as  evidenced by works that they could potentially   perform as he did, and even greater works, as  he said.
But we don't see too much--well, we see   some evidence of that kind of thing.
You know,  various saints levitating and things like that.   But anyway, I think one should always approach  this stuff with humility, and not make snap   interpretations of things, but realize that  one's interpretation is probably going to   continue to evolve as, as one's self evolves.
yeah, there's no question of that.
Any anything  that's wise, you know, wisdom words, if you want   to call them that, they will continue to deepen  like seeds, they'll continue to grow new plants   in oneself.
Otherwise, I don't want to be stuck  with what I said 20 years ago, or 30 years ago,   about something.
Why would you do that? I mean,  Jesus doesn't actually point people to him.
He   says, look through me, go through me is what  your small self to the source of that self, which  Jung would call the capital S self.
Or in Aramaic   is really called the ruha, the soul, ruha.
You  know, connect, make that inner connection and   then you'll know what to do.
You don't need me to  tell you, you don't need some scripture or some   holy person to tell you, you'll know what to do.
taking various verses from the Bible and  then looking at the original Aramaic, and,   you know, reinterpreting the verse based upon  what it might have meant if you understand the   Aramaic.
And since you just mentioned this thing  of Jesus didn't say to people "look to me." Why   don't we start with that verse there's so often  quoted of "I am the way the truth and the life,   no man cometh unto the Father, but  by me," which fundamentalists use as   an exclusionary kind of, you know, thing.
God so loved the world...."  that stuff in there.
But all these sayings from  the Gospel of John, that are translated, "I am,"   do not actually say I am.
Because, and for  this I'll have to take a pause before I say   it for all of you listening.
The ancient  Hebrew languages do not have a verb   that is translated as "am," or "are" or "is," a  "being verb." They do not have this.
Why? Because   as you recall, I said they're nomadic, they come  out of a nomadic experience.
So you can't say,   here I am, and this is never going to change."  Everything is changing.
So what he's saying in   the gospels, in the Gospel of John is literally  an Aramaic, "ina"--I, plus another "ina." Ina-ina.   Two "ina's" together.
That means I and I-- like  the Rastafarians talk who about the "I and I." You   know, the connection of the individual "I", to  the source of my, my self my "I." Not my eye,   but my individuality.
Smallest self to the biggest  Self.
Smallest self to biggest, that's what he's   talking about.
Yeah.
So if you connect this way,  this is the way he says.
This is really literally   the path is what he says.
Then he says, ina-na  urha--urha is a path.
Then shrara is the sense   of right direction, which way to go when you come  to a crossroads.
He uses this word very often.   For instance, "you shall know the truth, and the  truth will make you free." He says in Aramaic,   "if you know, if you find the heart's direction,   of the ripe direction, then you're free.
You know,  that is the truth.
So he says here and John "Inana   urha shrara...
I am the way, the truth-- the  sense of right direction, or the heart's GPS.   And hayye, which is universal in the ancient  Semitic languages, means life energy.   He doesn't mean life somewhere else, or life on  a cloud somewhere.
This is life energy that is   throughout the universes, seen and unseen.  So he says, if you make this connection,   you will have your path, you'll know which way to  go.
And you'll have plenty of energy to travel the   path.
Now, on the other bit, the exclusive bit, he  says...well, this is-- as he understands it-- and   I'll give you a gloss on this, it's more exact  in the book.
Yeshua says, "as I understand it,   this is the way everyone has gone.
This is the  way everyone gets to where I've gone is that they   follow this interconnection of small self to  big Self, of you could say, of self to soul.   So this is his experience.
This is the way  it goes, you know.
You can go directly,   or you can have somebody help you, I'm  helping you.
But you know, you have to   start with dealing with your individual self.
you have to if you want to get water, you  have to hook the pipe up to the reservoir.  to help you to go through them.
Middle  Eastern traditions are strong on this,   or you can go direct, you don't have to have you  could say help.
Some people just-- and you have   you've had many of them on your program.
They  just wake up one morning and boom, you know,   life has changed.
And that happens too....
that verse, you're basically it basically  says, you know, if you want to be free,   or you know, you can't even say to reach your  full potential you have to connect jiva with   Atman.
You have to connect the individual  consciousness with universal consciousness,   and then you'll be good to go.
you're good to go.
And the rest of it is all  him giving you different stories, metaphors,   you know, to help-- how would we say it"--corral  his students into that experience, if you excuse   the sheep metaphor.
He does use that at some  point.
So it's you know, he uses story language,   he uses metaphor, parables, things like this.
you know, if we, if we believe that Jesus  did all the things, he was reputed to do,   all the miracles.
It's remarkable how abundant  they were, I mean, he must have been making such a   stir healing all these people and multiplying  loaves and fishes and walking on the water.   And I mean, if they were anybody, like doing  carrying on like that, in today's world, they'd   be like, all over YouTube.
And on the  evening news and stuff like that, it's,   I mean, it must have been quite a shock.
remember that we're 2000 years earlier or so in  human consciousness.
So the understanding of the,   I'll switch to psychology language here--the  understanding of a "liminal realm", a realm   between the realms, between this every day and  the unseen, is that more people are open to that.  who are able to see demons, or devils, or things  like this.
And these can be shared experiences   even.
So, I mean, one of the things that struck  me about his healings is that it says in the usual   you know, and he "preaches," and everybody   flocks to him.
Well, the word for "preach"  in Aramaic just means he announced himself.   And so he comes to the village and he says, "okay,  here I am, have you heard about me?" It's not like   he's giving him a Sunday sermon.
And because they  people were living under this traumatic reality,   and they were living in these dissociated  states, all these people pour out to be healed.   I mean, and some of these dissociated states  would lead to, as we would now call them,   physical ailments.
And so because he can make this  connection and healthy connection to the unseen,   he's able to, he's able to heal them.
It's  as simple as that, because how is it that   we're all these ailing people running around  in Palestine at the time? I mean, you know,   was every other person sick? Well, it's because,  again, because they were all living under a   traumatic reality and had been for generations.
where the people of Somalia.
People have been so  traumatized by, you know, decades of brutality.   That's an interesting point you made about how  that the consciousness of the people was much less   what we were talking earlier about the materialist  paradigm that dominates today.
It was much   more subtle than that, in a way or in tune with  the, you know, deeper levels at which, you know,   things like angels or, you know, all that  were considered normal, and, you know,   just part of people's understanding.
it was, I would call it it's,  it was much more embedded, Rick.  was more embedded in each other, in nature, and  all of this.
Now that has a downside if you're   in a so-called dysfunctional family, as we would  use in today's terms, or if you're living in a   terrible reality.
But this is why people were, you  know, having these unhealthy states, if you will.  take some other verses.
So you've, you know,   interpreted the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes  and all kinds of verses that are, I've always...   you hit some, you know, a lot of the greatest  hits, like if a house divided itself against   itself cannot stand and all that.
So, let's,  we couldn't possibly cover them all.
But--and   when those of you who are listening live, if  there are particular verses you'd like Douglas   to comment on, Neil to comment on, send them in  through a question and maybe he can comment on   that one.
But what one would you like to do next? do is it's about the words for Good and Evil,  which are very key in in the Gospels because,   for instance, Jesus is quoted as saying, "A good  tree bears good fruit and an evil tree bears evil   fruit." So how does this tree become morally evil? He's not talking about....
is.
This is the King James Version translation.  "Good tree bears good fruit or evil tree bears   the word for good in Aramaic, the word that's   usually translated as good from the Greek actually  means ripe, R I P.
E.
That is, at its right time,   its right place.
Again, think nomadic reality.
You  know, think timing, you know, being in the moment,   all of this.
So a ripe tree bears ripe fruit and  an unripe tree bears unripe fruit.
And you might   say, "Well, Jesus, that's a no brainer." But he's  saying to his students, "look around you look at   nature, live the way live the way nature is.
Live  as a ripe tree, don't live as a as an unripe tree,   time at the right place with the right action.
And   then this then becomes the word-- the form of the  word takes the main word for "blessing" in the New   Testament.
So for instance, all of these so-called  word for "blessed are"-- we use no "are" because  you've heard me say that before.
But the word for   blessing means ripe, ripeness.
For instance,  in the first Beatitude, usually translated   "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is  the kingdom of heaven." He says, ripe are those--   ripening are those-- who "lemeskenae b'ruh"--  who are able to find their home in the breath.   Poor in spirit is the King James translation.
But  "lemeskenae" means that the person is holding on   to the breath, to their breathing, as though  it were their first and last possession.
Which   actually it is.
I mean, it's the first thing that  comes into our bodies, when we come into life,   it's the last thing that leaves.
He says when  you when you hit rock bottom in this way,   then things begin to open up for you, then you  have, then comes to you "dilhounie"-- is coming   to you-- "dilhounoie malkuta." Malkuta--not  kingdom actually queendom in Aramaic, because   it's feminine gender.
Then comes to the sense of  empowerment, of vision, vision with empowerment,   that is throughout the whole cosmos.
You have  a much bigger home then.
You have a sense of   vision with the energy to accomplish a vision in  life.
So but you have to sort of go to the what,   you know, the 12-Steppers call, you know,  rock bottom, and start from there really.  a 12-Stepper would where you've just you know,   really bottomed out and you're desperate?  Or do you mean rock bottom in terms of some,   you know, deeper fundamental level of reality  that you connect with? For that can be thought   of as a foundation or a rock bottom too? one.
I mean, the people to whom Jesus spoke  the Beatitudes in Matthew seem to have been,   really at rock bottom.
They were homeless, they  had nowhere to go.
They had been driven off   their land, they, you know, maybe driven  out of their family.
And so literally,   they didn't know where to go or what to do.
And  so he begins to give this, you could say....  with them proceeds through the Beatitudes.
From  starting with finding your home in the breath,   to acknowledging the places that are mourning  or grieving or confused in you.
And then   it goes on and on through the different  Beatitudes, the so called Beatitudes.
Yeah.  is, Yeah, I know things are really rough for   you people, but I have something to teach you  here, which will actually bring you fulfillment   and inner happiness, regardless of your  outer circumstances and might in fact,   improve your outer circumstances.
it's not just the words again, imagine  that there is an atmosphere of this person,   as one has in authentic spiritual teachers  today, where one sort of can feel that.  you can feel their way of being with of  being and perceiving and living with that.  where shall we go? out here, but I want you to choose if possible.
I started with the prayer of Jesus, the so-called  Lord's Prayer, although I argue there's no word   in Aramaic that is actually well translated as  "lord." That's a medieval feudalistic concept   that gets layered over onto the Gospels.  So I just call it the prayer of Jesus,   the one that he gives in words.
So we can look a  little bit at that.
I'll dip into a bit of that.   But I'd like to remind people that Jesus didn't  always pray in words.
When it says he went into   the hills and stayed overnight praying, it doesn't  mean he's mumbling words to himself all night.
You   know, he's talking about in another place in the  gospels, "pray just with my atmosphere, that means   in silence, you know, pray with my "shem," the  word for atmosphere or light, or the light that   you feel through my atmosphere.
Just pray that  way.
Pray in the silence, pray with that feeling.  around a spiritual teacher like that, you've   probably experienced it.
And I know I have.
You  can, entrain with the teacher's consciousness...  in that atmosphere.
And, you know, shift into  something very profound, just by mere proximity.  thing.
You don't need any special apparatus.   You can, you know, if you feel  your breath and feel your heart,   you're there.
You don't need anything special.  actually.
I mean, the only reason I'm doing   all this with Jesus, is because many people will  have been burdened with Jesus in their childhood,   as I was to some degree, although not as bad  as some people.
And so when they go into other   traditions, Vipassana or anything, Advaita this or  that, they may reach a certain point where their   childhood comes up to them.
And part of that  childhood is sort of fear and loathing around   Jesus, basically.
Jesus phobia, I call  it, and that prevents them from actually,   you know, going a little further.
So, for  a lot of people that have come to my work,   that's how they, they found their way to it.  They went elsewhere.
And then they figured,   well, I guess I better heal this too.
So...
series on television called "Anne with an E,"  which is based on Anne of Green Gables.
And   there was a there's a part of the story where  the missionaries or this Christian people are   taking young Indian kids away from their parents  and locking them in these residential schools.   Which we've heard a lot about recently, because  the Pope went and apologized for that.
But,   and one of their phrases was kill the Indian to  save the child.
And they were literally killing   many of them, but they're also just, you know,  brutalizing their whole traditional understanding   in order to supposedly save them.
I mean, it  makes my blood boil.
Sometimes when I think of   the number of people who've been...
the genocides  that have been committed in the name of religion.   And I'm afraid that Christianity might, if you  look at the whole history of all religions, it   might be in the lead in that unfortunate regard.
we can segue into that briefly.
I mean, I  would agree in that a misinterpretation,   not only of the Gospels but also of the whole  Bible, empowers colonialism, racism and ecocide.   And one of the key verses I point to, which  when I did my book on Genesis, I re-translated   was one of the most egregious mistranslations,  deliberate mistranslations in the history of   translation.
Which is the verse in Genesis that's  usually translated, "Be fruitful, multiply,   dominate and subdue the earth and rule over..."  and then dot, dot, dot, it's all the other ones   that created in Genesis before the human.
Well,  the Hebrew doesn't say that.
The Hebrew says,   Yes, you will be fruitful.
And you will multiply.  Learn how to manage, learn how to manage your own   "earth," that is, your own earthiness, your own  material existence.
Learn how to manage that.   And then it doesn't say rule "over" the fish and  the animals and the trees.
It says, "rule together   with," "rule along with," or "rule from within"  these other beings.
This is a total mistranslation   of a Hebrew preposition.
This preposition has  never meant "over" over its whole history,   either ancient Hebrew or modern.
So this just gets  right into it because ruler said.
well, it has to   say that because we have to dominate.
You know, we  were, we are now in charge and we're gonna go...  in, you know, among the Incas and we   want to we want it so let's go there.
you native peoples are not using this land, so  you're not there.
You don't exist.
It's like that.  getting back into rant mode.  there's so many injustices, you know.  It's so ironic, tragically ironic,   that so many injustices have been perpetrated in  the name of what should be the greatest blessing,   you know, that a person could possibly have  in life.
You know, the blessing of knowing   God and experiencing God, It's just so twisted.
say, human consciousness developed in such a way  that now we're stuck with everything that this   has resulted in.
It's is in front of us.
I mean,  it's all in front of us.
So how are we going...  like the condition of the world,   the condition of the environment, all that How are we going to use this human self, which is  now separated? How can we turn? How can we return   as the Hebrew mystics talk about.
And again,  this is where Jesus is constantly giving this,   you could say, his mode, his map--although the  map is not the traveling-- to turn from your small   self to the big self, your self to your soul.
From  the breath, which is only living in this body,   this material form for x number of years, and  towards the breath, which is everywhere and   all the time, and before my birth, and after my  death.
Before my, you know, my original face,   and after my last face, if I can paraphrase  the Buddhists on that one.
So, we have to,   we're either going to make the shift or we're not.
of a verse.
Because I think of, you know, deep  spirituality as being the ultimate solution to   the world's problems.
So, you know, the verse  says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven,   and all else should be added unto  thee." Yeah, let's work on that one.  although it's not in this new book, it says,   "If you're going to, if you're going to aggravate  yourself and run around and pursue anything,   do that first about finding....
And this word  "kingdom," again, it's "malkuta" in Aramaic--it's   actually queendom, feminine gendered--- and  it means a combination of a vision with an   empowerment.
A lot of your interviewees have  had this in these awakening moments they've had,   because it's not just that they had a vision  of something somewhere else.
But this was   downloaded into them in the sense that was  empowering to them, whether they're a psychic,   or you know, an online mystic or whoever they  are.
So they have this sense of the malkuta.   And this malkuta is throughout "shemaya," he says,  the kingdom of heaven.
Heaven, not up there, but   heaven being the realm of light and vibration that  is everywhere around us, underneath us, above us,   and within us.
As I called it another book, sort  of the wave reality that the new physics people   talk about, rather than the particle reality.
So  he says, don't fuss yourself too much about all   the particle reality, find first this connection,  this connection to that which is always on,   and which you can always rely upon.
And then you  will have a real non duality, because everything   will be included.
You'll have the individual  self included, but it will be included in that   which is empowering it, every breath.
good word.
And I see that inner world as  being the potentiality from which the whole   universe is arises.
And if a person is cut off  from it, and I bet you there's some Bible verse   about this, then they are like a plant that has  cut off from, you know, contact with the ground   or the nourishment from the earth.
Whereas  if they're deeply connected to it, then it   just pours into their individual life and through  their individual life, to all whom they contact.  right, Rick.
The verse I think you're alluding to,   is the one where he says...
this is like  another one of the ones that people make   a lot out of in Christian fundamentalism,  the so-called sin against the Holy Ghost.   Well, Jesus talks about...
sin in Aramaic  means to cut yourself off from something.  the mark? I've heard it translated...  depends on which word for sin.
The Greek is   actually the same but the Aramaic is more  sort of like cutting yourself off.
I know   I've heard this thing about missing the mark...
yourself off from the source of your nourishment.
It's the same word in Aramaic, within and among  are the same word.
And this again, points to   what I was mentioning earlier on in our talk,  that, okay, my within-ness, what I now call my   subconscious, my psychology, this is  also connected to what is around me.   It's not like my inner life is just my inner life  and it doesn't affect anything.
No, my community   life affects my inner life, my inner life affects  my community life.
So this "within" and "among,"   they had this whole sort of intertwined in the  ancient times.
I mean, the gospel of Thomas, he   talks about-- similar verse-- he talks about the  so-called "malkuta d'Alaha," the kingdom-queendom.   What I have called "the I can the cosmos," as  though it's arising within you and then spreading   around you.
So that includes both of the meanings.
you were about to start talking about the  Lord's Prayer and then I sidetracked you   onto something.
So you want to come back...I mea culpa is necessary.
Well, the prayer again,  you know, the place of prayer, for many people   is fraught, that it is difficult, because, you  know, devotional practice, while it can be heart   opening, it can also lead to its abuses.
And  one sees that in many aspects of fundamentalist   religion, not only Christianity, but other types  of religion, because you're placing God out   there somewhere.
You know, it's like up on some  throne, or this or that or other thing.
And again,   I hope I've said enough, in the time we've talked  together to indicate that Jesus was not coming   from this sort of place.
He's coming from a place  where a prayer is like a chant, if you will, that   helps attune you to different realities within  your soul.
So that you can make that connection   that we've been talking about, between self and  soul.
And so he begins with this beautiful word in   "dbashmaya...dbashmaya." "Oh thou, oh breathing,   oh creating source, oh parenting source throughout  the cosmos.
And again, why idealize at all? Well,   because to idealize, I have to invoke, you could  say, my imaginal sense, as Henry Corbin calls it.   I have to envision the best of what I can imagine  and place that as something for me to grow into.   So this is the function of prayers in general,  that you know...
okay, you're gonna pray to   Krishna, that's fine, but be Krishna.
You want  to be a Buddhist, be a Buddha! So praising is   about finding a doorway, opening a doorway in  one's heart, so that the heart can turn easily   between self and soul.
This is the key place  of the heart in ancient Semitic prayers or in   ancient Semitic culture in general.
Again, ancient  Semitic languages, they don't have words for mind,   really, or brain or you know any of this  other stuff.
They only have a word for heart.   So he says "abwoon d'bashmaya," Oh thou breathing  life of all, creating one, throughout the whole   cosmos.
Create a space, empty me a bit, to create  that presence here.
"Nitkadash shmakh." What they   usually translated as, "hallowed be thy name."  Well, hollow oneself so that that sound, that   vibration of the cosmos, can resonate within you  there of Reality.
And then it goes on from there,   basically.
And, again, he talks about "malkuta,"  then this leads you to this, "I can," this   vision with the empowerment.
And then you're  ready--and this is the payoff-- then you're   ready to bring heaven and earth together.
Then  you're ready to, with your own heart's desire,   hearts will...
"Let your heart's desire come  through me." This is the one translated as   "let your will be done on earth as it  is in heaven." Well, it's not willpower,   and it's not someone else's will.
It says let  your heart's desire--"nehwe sebyanach, nehwe   sebyanach," let your heart's desire be done  through me.
And so that will bring heaven   and earth together in my life.
God's heart's desire, you're saying...
heart of Reality, you don't have to use  the G-word, let the heart of --whatever   the great mystery--come through my heart, and  then bring my life together.
So that I connect,   connect, my individual experience  in life with my communal experience,   my communal experience in life in my world.  In other words, what am I going to do now?   You know, that's wonderful that I have  this moment of illumination.
But what now?   And do I have to go out and convert everybody  else to my moment of illumination? Well, no,   but you have to find out what is yours to do? And  then do that very well.
And this is what Jesus   points to.
The rest of it is all about.
Okay,  now what do we do in our communal life? Well,   we can share bread and not hoard more bread than  we need to hoard.
"Bread," meaning not wheat,   or even gluten free bread, but any food.
So the  word for bread, "lachma," can just mean any food.   Could be emotional food, mental food, like that.  Sometimes I fear I've hoarded too much Aramaic   biblical food, but I tried to give it away as  fast as I can.
So I hope people spread it! And   then it's about releasing, untying, forgiving.
And  the main thing about the line about forgiveness,   which is usually translated, "forgive  us our trespasses as we forgive those   who trespass against us"....
"Trespassing"  is about going over somebody's boundaries.   The Luke version has again, a sense of untangling  knots, a slightly different word in Luke's   remembrance of the prayer.
Or maybe Jesus said  different ways different times-- people do that,   go figure! So untangle these knots....
So  if you can "unstep" an overstepped boundary,   do it.
And then everything will be released at the  same time.
So it's not as though if you do this,   then you get the reward later.  No, it all happens simultaneously.   It's not like an if-then thing.
And then  the words that give people a lot of problem.   Mistranslations here.
Usually translated,  "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us   from evil." And why the heck would God lead  us into temptation? Well, mistranslation.   The Aramaic says clearly "let us not enter"  "nesyuna," which really means forgetfulness.   And forgetfulness is a big theme in the Middle  Eastern, spiritual traditions.
This is why the   Sufis have a practice called "dhikr," which is  remembrance.
So the "nesyuna" is the opposite   of this.
We also find it in Arabic, classical  Arabic, and it means forgetfulness of where we've   come from, of our original face, of where we're  going, you know, of the bigger picture of life.   Don't forget, don't forget! But then he says  also "ela patsan men bisha," "set us free from   "bisha"--unripeness.
Again back to that word I  mentioned half hour ago.
Set us free from not   acting at the right time, at the right place  in the right moment with what is mine to do.   And then, you know, it ends with a beautiful sort  of praise statement or a dedication.
And Semitic   languages also had this sort of dedication that  one has in Buddhism, too, where you would say I   dedicate this now for the benefit of all beings.  Well in Aramaic, you offer it up in different   ways.
And then Jesus offers one way at the end  of the Aramaic prayer.
He says, "for all of this   can" and the vision and the energy and then what   is usually translated as glory is really song  or music.
You could say and this music of my   life is returning to you.
And we move on.
Amen.
as you mentioned and...
You know, what do you make of converting  people, speaking in tongues, handling snakes,   being saved.
You know, I guess handling snakes is  kind of a rare one.
But, you know, some of the...   certainly speaking in tongues is more common than  that.
And then, you know, converting others to   save them, because they're all going to hell  forever if we don't save them.
And, you know,   we are saved, because we believe such and such.  I mean, they derive these beliefs, or they use   various Bible verses as excuses for these beliefs.  How would you reinterpret some of the common   verses which are basic to those behaviors?  Well, if we stay with conversion for a bit,   there's a basic misunderstanding of what  the soul is for Yeshua, or the real Self.   It's all over the Gospels.
It's called "ruha."  It's similar and related to the word for breath.   It's that always-on part of us, if you will.   And there are terrible Mistranslations  or confused mistranslations throughout   the King James and other versions of the  Gospels, where the word "self" and "soul" and   you know, "life" are mistranslated as one another.  This confuses things.
Because for Yeshua, we don't   need to save our soul.
No one needs to save our  soul.
We need to simply let our soul save us.   That is, redeem us, show us what to do.
We don't  need to save our soul.
Let your soul save you!   That's his basic message.
So what does that do to  conversion? Well, I mean, if you look actually in   the Gospel in the book of Acts, and I ventured  a little bit into Acts in the new book--just not   too far! But all of the early people who come  to the Jesus movement, we could call it that,   or one of the Jesus movements, they don't have  theology.
There's no theology being preached to   them.
The people like Peter, they're just saying,  receive that receive "ruha d'qoosha," receive the   breath, receive the sacred breath.
"We received  it from Yeshua, this transmission, if you will,   this atmosphere.
Here we'll give it to you  if you want it.
And, you know, end of story,   you know.
And communities form around this.
Only  later, as I mentioned, you do have theology,   mission statements, on and on and on like  this.
So it's all about transmission and   people being attracted naturally, not about  going out and converting the poor heathen.  weren't pushy.
They were sort of like, you know,   come if you want, here I am.
And, you  know, if you don't want, then fine.   There's that kind of attitude, apparently.
say Jesus was not spectacularly successful in  looking at the long history of things.
But on   the other hand, his immediate disciples seem  to have had something.
They seem to have had   whatever you want to call it, some real--for  want of a better word-- spiritual magnetism.   No doubt, some went off the rails,  but they had something that people   would be attracted to them, basically.
Jesus wasn't sort of spectacularly successful? at the long history of Christianity.
yeah.
I wouldn't blame him for that.
Jesus for you know, what has been done.
And...  You could look at that in any religion.
It's true.   But you know, we don't know...
the story  is not completely written.
So we won't,   I won't pre-judge anything.
And that's,  you know, I run into that quite a bit.   The thing about snake handling and all that.  Well, people like to prove their faith.  phenomenon.
There are, although mostly unknown  to Westerners, there are some Sufi groups who do   things similar, in terms of piercing themselves  with skewers, in the same sort of fashion, to   prove their faith in the unseen shaykh, basically.  So I'm not a member of one of those groups.
I'm   still you know, unpierced but, I'm not a member of  any.
But this has been known throughout history,   this sort of ascetic practice to show you know I'm  going to rely only on "that," whatever that is.   And we're going to trust that and go for that.  So I'm not so down on down on all that.
I mean,   no one's gonna force you to go into snake  handling, are they? So? Not likely? I mean, the   other thing....
I think that's in Peter somewhere  or something like that.
And, you know, I think   Peter-- excuse me, if I am misremembering to those  who are better on their Bible than I am-- I think   it's Peter who is bitten by a snake and yeah, he's  fine.
He's...no problem a poisonous snake, by the   way.
So you know, this all gets extrapolated  from little bits in the Epistles, that is,   the letters that come later from Paul and....
off of snakes! Snakes are good,   but I won't go into snakes.
Okay, never mind....
woods, they're really cute.
They lie on  the sun on the trail.
And I'm careful...  in a lot of Middle Eastern cultures.  to Kundalini there, maybe.
So,   this is a popular one.
"I and my Father are one." here, this is again in the gospel of John, chapter  a punctuation mark in a particular story.
But  I'll tell you the short version.
He's called   in front of the scribes, that is, the temple  officials, several times, particularly in the   Gospel of John.
And they ask him by what right are  you doing these things.
And he says, at one point,   "before Abraham was, I am." Again remember,  there's no "am." So he's pointing to,   I'll get to your passage in a moment....
by 1000 years, or two or whatever...
And because the Middle Eastern way of looking at  it's as though the past is in front of us.
The  ancient Middle Eastern way of looking at time,   and the future is behind us.
And we're  all traveling-- again, remember, nomadism.   So we're following our ancestors, we're  following the best of our ancestors.
And we   want to make sure that we leave something for  our children who are coming along behind us,   and our children's children.
So there was  a sense of continuity and constant travel.   So when Jesus says, "before  Abraham," he means you could say,   the idea, or you could say, the archetype, to  use a Jungian term, the archetype of the human,   of the complete human being, the completing human  being, was there before Abraham.
It was there in   the heart of the great Mystery, when all this  happened, and when self separated from soul to   some degree, and Adam and Eve and all that great  stuff.
And you know, then we get challenged.
And   so the idea of a person that could turn easily,  turn his or her heart easily, from self to soul,   and back again, this was already seeded in  the cosmos before Abraham.
And then they say,   then the scribes say to him, you know, "you're  hardly 30 years old, how are you saying you're   before Abraham? You know, what's that about?" So  he says, Well, you know, then he says, I, "ina"   --not I and the Father are one but he says, "ina  wa aby had hnan." Had to pull it out of the memory   banks! I and that breathing life of all, the  creating source of the cosmos, live together.   We are one living together.
Now that is a  paradox in the sense that how can you have one   and be together? This is about non-duality,  actually.
So you have a oneness, a unity,   that is also a togetherness.
Possible?  Well, for Yeshua, it was possible.
So   he's not saying he is God.
But he's saying or  he's not saying he is the great Mystery.
Well, how   could that be because he's in a body and you know,  his soul is part of that great Mystery, is living   within that great Mystery within Alaha (which is  the word he uses for Reality or, so to speak, God.   He's embedded within that Reality, that is, living  together.
And the word "hnan" in Aramaic, comes   later into Arabic actually and is a word for love.  So there is a love relationship, in this living   togetherness with the creating source with the  cosmos, you know, with this birthing, fathering,   mothering of the cosmos.
And that doesn't get him  in, that doesn't cut any dice with them either.
So   he "gets out of Dodge" and leaves Jerusalem again.
there verses--are there verses in the Bible,  which describe God as omnipresent, omniscient,   omnipotent, those words? All of that is Greek construct from the  Creed's Rick.
And we have it and other   religions too.
I mean, yeah, you know, but your basic Christian would agree  with? That God is omniscient and   omnipotent and omnipresent, and all that? the question then what is this? should beg that question.
But usually it's   construed in such a way that this omnipresent,  omniscient, it's up in the cloud somewhere,   and it's in some transcendental reality, that  is, in what I would call a Platonic heaven.  if it's up there, and we're down here and...  in some corner someplace.
what shall we do here? I've got all these   six pages worth of...
I took of....
I got I took  all the verses, the actual verses from your book,   because I put them on six pages and 13 point type,  and I'm just sort of whatever would catch my eye.   Well, there's the Only Begotten Son thing so god  His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in  him should not perish but have everlasting life."   Actually, I've had instances where Christian  evangelists or something have called me on   the phone out of the blue, and I start talking  astronomy with him in terms of how many planets   there must be in the universe and by odds, how  many of those must be inhabited? And then I say,   well, is Jesus on tour? And does he  spend 33 years on each of them? And,   and if the universe is only 6000 years old,  and how does he get around that? Is it like   Santa Claus somehow? Does all the households  in the world on Christmas Eve? They hang up?  with sometimes Jehovah's Witnesses come   around here.
Yeah.
And I used to say, "Do  you want to know, like, the word is actually   pronounced.
And they run the other way? the conversation with the Jehovah's Witness.
literature and I give them literature back.
door they knocked on? they don't know.
But anyway, where are we with....
son," yeah.
Well, ask the next time,   what "only begotten" actually means.
Yeah, what it  says, the "only born," beget, to be got? Anyway,   the Aramaic has nothing...the Aramaic says, "fully  integrated." "Alaha loved the worlds of diversity,   that is, so-called material reality so much, that  Alaha...sends a fully integrated human being.   So that whoever has-- not "believes in" him, but  whoever believes and has trust, "like" he does.   This is again another preposition thing.
So Jesus  never says to people believe in him, he says,   "have the same trust, trust with me, trust within  me, or believe with me.
It's really not about   beliefs or concepts.
It's about having trust that  there is this only Reality, Alaha he calls it.   And that this is the ground of being, again to  use another Buddhist term.
This is the ground,   this is where we come from and where we're going.  "So whoever has the same trust I do, will not,   you could say, will not disappear with their  individual form.
But they will continue.   Like the breath will continue, like your  breath will continue from world to world."   And whether that implies reincarnation or not--I  don't know if we want to go there or not.
But,   you know, you can read it whatever way you want.
we define the word trust, that maybe trust is  the first step.
You know, like, if you have as   much faith as a grain of mustard seed, that whole  idea, then you can move mountains.
And it's more   like you get your foot in the door with a certain  amount of trust, but then there's a lot more than   just trusting or believing, there's actually  undergoing the transformation necessary to be   able to function or experience as Jesus did.
you know, that's what he keeps pointing people to,  you know.
While he's there, they trust Him, they   trust his atmosphere, they trust his being.
And  then towards the end of the Gospel of John, he's   trying to tell them, "Okay, how are you going to  do this after I'm gone?" You know, what, what's,   what's gonna be there for you? So develop that.
Good point.
All right.
I'm going to fire some  questions at you, which means we're going to   jump around a bit from one topic back to  the next.
But of a lot of people send in   questions and I want to ask them, are a lot of them.
So let's not go too long on   every one but just say whatever you feel needs to  be said.
So this this one was sent in the other   day.
Sarah Page from Ascot, England.
Did Yeshua  die on the cross? I have had what sounds like   "ashea," come to me in meditations, but I'm still  unsure of its true meaning.
So can you shed light   on this, so two questions basically there.
Again, as I was just mentioning, you know,  I've read a lot of books about this, too.   That he didn't die on the cross.
He was  revived with aloe and went to India.
And all   of this is possible.
I'm not saying it's not  possible.
It is possible.
On the other hand,   already, at the same time, the different gospels  report that after his so-called crucifixion,   different people had experiences of him,  partially in the body or not in the body,   or in what we would take as  spirit body, or all of this.   All of this was there for them.
And that  should, should not be a surprise because   he actually promises this, again at the end  of the Gospel of John that he says, you know,   "I'm going and then but there will be a place  where you can connect with me." This is the   so-called "my house with many mansions." "I go  to prepare a place for you." And the place is   not a physical condominium somewhere in heaven.  It's a state of consciousness is the word that's   used there.
In Hebrew, it's called a "makom,"  in Aramaic it's called an "`atra," that is, a   state of consciousness.
Like the prophets go into  in the Hebrew Bible, like Ezekiel or Isaiah do,   when they have these visions.
"There'll be a place  where you can go and contact me.
It's just there."   And then he goes on to say, how they contact him,  you know, what methods they're going to use to   do that.
So that's clear, of course.
Did he die  on the cross? Some part of him, no doubt, died.   But not the rest.
Not the real bit.
he supposedly came out of the tomb, three days  after he was crucified, in reasonably good shape,   makes it seem like his physical body must have  died, it must be some spiritual body, because   he wouldn't have been up for coming...
unless  he had some miraculous self-healing abilities.  theories about this.
You can read the books,   Rick, and you know, he's up in India, his tomb  is in Kashmir in Srinagar, and it's possible.   I'm not saying it ain't possible.
attitude.
Who knows? Okay, some more  questions.
So, next one, from Hasim   Sadka.
Do people from different faiths see angels  or divine beings of other faiths? Hmm.
And if you   don't know, you're can just say.
I don't know.
it would be possible.
if you're tuned to multiple faiths.  you're a Christian, you die.
Do you see Jesus?   If you're a Hindu? Do you see Krishna? If you're  a Buddhist? Do you see Buddha, you know, when you   go to heaven? In other words is the initial,  at least the antechamber of Heaven fashioned   to make you feel comfortable when you get there? passage in John I mentioned, he says, "in  that place, there are many mansions, many   places you can go." You could you could go a lot  of places, and don't forget about the non-aligned   people.
They're not necessarily Christian,  Buddhist, this or that.
And so, you know,   what about for them? They may, you know, anything  could happen.
And it's a big mystery out there.  in the Gita where Krishna says that,   anybody anywhere, if they have any sort of faith  or expression of, you know, religious whatever,   I accept that.
I honor that.
I appreciate that.
It  doesn't have to be in any particular form or even   to him or anything else.
Alright, so, question  from Travis Rybarski in Richland, Washington.   On your website, there's a quote from Jung, which  states that Christians must create their own yoga,   rather than borrow from China or India.
Could  you explain why you liked this quote? To me,   it seems like a very good thing when Christians  borrow from their elder sibling traditions.  context of what it is.
I mean, Jung says, which   I basically agree with, if you're raised in a  particular way, at some point you're going to have   to confront that and deal with it, and heal with  it.
In order to go further.
Of course, it's good   to borrow.
I mean, it's good to learn many things.
Qur'an says, you know, "seek wisdom even  unto China." So I don't see any problem   with that.
But Jung did feel that...
well, Jung  actually felt if you read Peter Kingsley's work,   that his form of therapy would become this  Christian yoga, but then it gets perverted   into a you could say, a more materialistic  psychological technique.
For many people, not   all.
And the visionary spiritual capacity that he  had, that Jung had envisioned for it was sort of   pushed aside.
And that's from Peter Kingsley.
And  I would encourage people who disagree with me to   read his book Catafalque, which is about Jung and  Jung's legacy and all of that.
He'd be another   good one for your program, if you can get him.  But...
We actually reached out to him years ago,   and he was sort of potentially interested  and we haven't followed up on it.
So maybe,   yeah, maybe one of these days.
This is from Daniel  Ramirez from San Antonio, Texas.
Several prominent   Western spiritual teachers talk about the deep  undercurrent of unworthiness that plagues us in   the Western world, connecting this to our founding  mythology of the Garden of Eden, and our supposed   core of original sin.
Is it possible to be raised  in the West and escape that fundamental feeling   of unworthiness? Further, is there a path for  us to create a new life affirming mythology?  speak from experience.
I was raised with all   this original sin stuff, at least in in school.  I mean, so it was like that.
Again, this is a   misinterpretation of the Adam and Eve and the  serpent story.
And again, I have that in my book,   Original Meditation, how that should actually  how that one is reading that.
But basically,   it's about, you know, if you look at that,  it's again like a Sufi story or a Zen story,   you know.
You've got the original human  beings.
And they are given a choice.   You know, "here, you can eat all of this, but  don't, don't eat that." And what is this tree   that they can't eat? Well, the so-called  "tree of the knowledge of good and evil,"   which is basically about having preference.
In  other words, I like this, and I don't like that.   So when does that happen in human consciousness?  When is the human self become able to choose   between what it likes and what it doesn't like?  When does that part of the human self evolve, such   that we're no longer so embedded in this natural  reality that I've spoken about earlier, that we've   individuated? And now I have a choice? And who  is it that said, I think it was the Buddha said,   "the great way is not difficult for those who have  no preferences," something like that.
And so this   is all about the human self-evolving.
It's not  good or bad.
It's not "original sin." It's just   what happened.
And it's what happens to children  as we grow up.
I mean, we grow up and we're sort   of embedded in this beautiful childhood,  or for many of us, it's fairly beautiful.   Some, obviously, not so much.
But at some  point, the self of the child, myself as a child,   begins to awaken and I, you know, there you go.  So it's the same that humanity goes through.  conversations with friends recently   about judgment versus discernment.
And kind of  relates to the question we were just discussing.   Jesus said, "judge not lest you be judged,"  right? And maybe you can give us a spin on that   verse.
What it what do you make of that phrase,  "judge not lest you be judged" in the whole   consideration of having preferences, which are  healthy in life if they're not out of proportion?  having preferences, because the Aramaic   word Jesus uses for "judge" here, I mean, in  this passage you mentioned and also in John,   it's really about, it's based on the word "din,"  DN, which means to find what is one's, you could   say, what one owes to life.
Okay, now I'm in  this form, I've come into this human form,   from wherever, and what is mine to  do in life? What do I owe, you know,   what is this? What is the preciousness of this  human existence? And what do I owe back to life   for, you know, for having this life.
And  this is the word he uses for "judge," but   it's really more, as you say, it is more really  like discriminate.
Discriminate what is yours   to do what is not yours to do? You know,  you have something that you owe to life.   Okay, pay it.
You know, but don't try to pay  everyone's debt and don't try to, you know,   convert somebody else to pay your so-called  debt to life.
And by life I mean, you know,   this preciousness of this existence that  we have in these names and forms for   as long as the breath is in this flesh, as Jesus  would call it.
So it's, it's all about that.  have thought you'd interpret it that way   or go into that from that comment.
But there's  definitely a feeling of giving back.
You know,   there's some verses in the Indian tradition  of "thy gifts, My Lord, I surrender to thee,"   you know, it's like, these are not mine, these  gifts I have.
They're there for me to pass on   or to serve as an instrument of the Divine.
is determining what is mine to do.
I mean,  Jesus could have stayed at home in Galilee   and never gotten in trouble.
Basically, he was  pretty safe there.
But he goes in Jerusalem,   he throws over the moneylenders' tables, and all  this stuff, upsets people.
And he didn't have to,   but he felt okay, that's mine to do.
So  he did it.
You know, and there you go.   Sometimes you have to upset people, and...
whole topic, too.
I mean, one's dharma, you  know, what is mine to do? And to what extent   are one's behaviors or actions motivated by a  sort of individual consciousness? And to what   extent are they just an impulse of the Divine  for being channeled through one's individuality?  journey of challenge of our lives.  Now.
I mean, the "din" in the Qur'an-- we'll  just segue a little bit into Qur'an.
The   Quran uses the same word as "din," which is you  could almost is very similar to dharma really,   if you look at the way dharma is used, mystically.  So the "din" is this, you know, what is mine,   what is really my path to do? And unfortunately,  in most translations of the Qur'an, this is   translated as religion.
So people think well, this  is all about Islam or about some institutionalized   form of Islam.
But it's not.
You know, it's  about finding your own, your own "din," your own   way of proceeding, your own way in life.
What  is mine to do, and what is my path? Doesn't mean   you can't join with others.
And it helps to join  with others at some point, but at a certain point,   probably not going to be.
Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, you know, that  if possible, let this cup pass from me.
And then,   after all, let thy will be done.
Yeah.
I mean, can you imagine yourself, knowing that   you're going to be beaten half to death and then  crucified.
And on the eve of that, and what you   would have been feeling or going through?  Some people have gone so far as to say that   they distinguish between pain and suffering.  And they, you know, have said that, you know,   Jesus was at such a deep level, that while  his body was experiencing pain, he was just   residing in heavenly bliss.
Deep within and wasn't  actually suffering.
Have any opinion about that?  it's very possible.
I'm not there.  it's certainly possible.
Yeah.
a fuss made in Christianity about Jesus suffering,  and there was that horrible Mel Gibson movie which   I spared myself the experience of seeing.
suffered for you." So you're gonna suffer and....
that as he took on a lot of karma.
And  if you if you connect yourself with him,   then you become the beneficiary of some of  the you know, some of that absolving of karma.  think you know, that's I have....   I'm not so sure about that.
I think Jesus was more  about, as I was mentioning, you have to find your   own way, basically.
He can help you at a certain  point.
But you go through him, like a door,   "go through me like a door," and then keep going.
help themselves" actually a passage in  the Bible.
Is that just a common saying?  that's a fairly common thing,  don't believe it's in the Bible, but I'm sure  I'll be corrected by someone on the chat.  a question from June Waterman in Midland,   Michigan.
What would be a good resource or book  geared toward lay people about the most true or   realistic representation of the ministry of Jesus? have to be self-serving and say, I think one we're talking about here? Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus.
good place to start, actually.
And see if   it makes sense to you.
That's all I can say.
I liked it.
It was funny because I use this  voice translation software to turn written   text into voice so I can listen to it.
And you  should have heard what it did with the Aramaic.   But fortunately, the passages are short, so it's  just like brief little pieces of gibberish.
Okay,   here's a question from Rizwati Freeman in Los  Angeles.
I'm wondering about the scripture in   which Jesus tells a woman to go and sin no  more, after castigating the men who were   chastising her.
In other words, "let him  who was without sin cast the first stone."  too.
So this is John 8.
And as the Gospel says,   they're trying to get Jesus in trouble.
And so  they bring him this woman, who is supposedly,   as it's usually translated, caught in adultery.  And what is usually overlooked is that   Jesus starts writing something on the  earth.
This is in the gospels.
He starts   writing something on the earth...  It's not clear what he is writing.   And then he says, "let the one who is without  their own tangles, which is about sin, sin is in   this case, the word for tangles, let the one who  doesn't have their own tangled relationships, or   doesn't have tangled relationships in their path,  let them cast the first stone.
And so he's writing   and writing and writing.
And then the Gospel says  that the people begin to sort of filter away,   the ones who are the accusers, and the oldest  go out first.
Now, why does it say this? Well,   this is speculation on my part, but I would  speculate that the oldest have more tangled   relationships and things in their past than the  younger ones! And so they put down their stones   first, and they all leave.
And then Yeshua  says to the woman, he says, "well, okay,   no one has anything against you.
No one  owes anything against you.
I don't owe   anything against you." Again, he uses this  word for usually translated as "judge." "So   try not to get tangled in the future." is a bit of a curveball question-- but what do   you make the Christian political base in the  US, who will support people who are, you know,   obviously dishonest, and, you know, are, you  know, adulterers, and so on, because they want   to get Supreme Court justices appointed, or  just get their political party in power? And   they really don't care how corrupt the politician  is, as long as they get their way in Washington.   I wonder what Jesus would have said about  that.
Jesus would not be pleased! I mean,   I was ranting to my wife about this last night,  as we were watching the US election news,   and "you don't know how bad it is," I told  her, you know, you think Russia is bad.   Because of the way the Russian Orthodox churches  in bed with Putin.
You know, you've this has   been going on for generations in the US from  my experience, and it's just built to a head   now where they can completely overlook, you know,  all the things that you say, because they believe   somehow that God is going to rule the country.  Their limited image of God, so to speak, is going   to rule the country in some way.
It's delusion.
a house divided against itself  cannot stand because I mean.  into that verse just a little bit.   Well, again, there's a similar thing in Thomas,  too, where he says....
Remember this thing that we   talked about this "only begotten," this fully  integrated human being where self and soul are   turning easily from one to another, the heart  is turning.
So this is the fully integrated   human being, this is where we want to be.
And  so it's all one but the heart is turning easily.   But the "house divided" you know, you've got part  of you over here and part of you over there and   part of you doing this.
And this can happen on  the inner could say the so called inner as we   now call it or it can happen on the outer.
We know  one can be very divided in one's outer occupation,   too much so, but one can also be very divided  inside if one does not become more integrated   whole, on the inside.
And again, just as  a parenthetical, the word that's used for   "perfect" in Aramaic in the Gospels is this  word to become "whole" or "complete." Not to be   according to some exterior standard perfect.
"be ye therefore perfect," he was  saying "be whole and complete."  because you're never really complete.
It's just   that you're completed in the moment.
And  then as life unfolds, this life unfolds,   more completing will be required.
this house divided against itself cannot stand  is within the context of Jesus being accused   of Satan giving him the powers that he had.
And he  said, Satan doesn't good, do good stuff.
If Satan   is doing good stuff, he can't stand because the flip side of that is these politicians   who are doing, you know, lying and cheating and  stealing and, you know, corrupt in various ways.   How can they be representatives  of anything worthwhile?   It's like, no, that won't stand.
is again, we see this happening with Christian,  some aspects of the Christian tradition, not all   by any means.
Some aspects of Buddhism.
Again,  I mentioned Myanmar.
Some aspects of Hinduism.   Of course, Jewish religion.
You can go on  about this.
Just as with the human self,   there's a tendency now for spirituality to be all  sort of "out here-ness." You know, it's all about   the symbols.
It's all about the trappings.
It's  all about how much control I feel I have over my   external life, my so called material life.
Well,  of course, you want this, because the soul already   has control of everything, but you're looking in  the wrong place.
The soul already has freedom,   and everything, you're looking for, the "ruha."  But you know, you're looking to try to control   this outer reality.
And it ain't for that.
It's  for learning how to turn back and how to return.  the verse, "you shall know them by their fruits."  unripe, he says.
You know them by their ripe   fruit or their unripe fruit.
So.
But there's  a lack of awareness of what unripe fruit is,   it seems, in the instances you're speaking of.
sense.
But then sense isn't very common.
So here's  a question from Jason Harms in Manhattan, Kansas.   "Thank you for sharing your insights, Neil.
It's  fascinating.
It's fascinating.
In your research,   have you found that the original meanings of  any of these translated texts support or do not   support a non-dual understanding of existence? earlier in the talk, I'm not sure if  it ran by people.
But what you have is   what you have is more of a  view of--not a split-ness,   not a two-ness but a continuum, a polarity  of all these qualities.
Self and soul,   everything.
And this continuum means that,  okay, here I am individual, in this time, space,   and here, I'm everywhere and all time.
And then  there's a place where they both come together.   So it's like the North and the South  Pole.
The magnetic field of the two poles,   it meets somewhere.
And then in this  middle, you have attraction from both.   Similar also to what the Chinese tradition  has as the yin and the yang-- there's a   little bit of this, and a little bit of that.  we'll add a dot in this and a dot in that.   So it's more like this in the ancient Semitic  languages.
And so that makes the Unity you see.   You could say that the Yin and Yang is dual,  but it's not actually because it s nondual.   It's just this is a way of viewing life, so that  you're not in denial and just in an abstract,   so to speak, mental non-dualism that, you know,  refuses to recognize what the needs of this   moment are.
And Jesus was all about the moment.
a lot of modern nondualists or neo-Advaitins, as  they're called, have this sort of mental concept   of it which they mistake for realization, and  do not give proper importance to the relative   world.
And you know, dismiss it as illusion and  you know, continually emphasize that there's   really no person.
And so I thought that it becomes  very harmful for people.
I did an interview with a   woman named Jessica Eve, a couple of months ago.  And that was our main focus was the downside of   conceptual non-duality versus the genuine article.
certain sort of passivity with that.
what's the use of doing anything?  Aaron Fish in London.
Jesus said, pluck out your   eye or cut off your hand if they offend you, as  this is better than what you will experience in   hell after you die.
I'm not quite sure that's  the way he said it.
But the times Jesus talks   about hell make it hard for me to reconcile what  he was saying with the universal and compassionate   God.
Do you have any thoughts on this? Again, this is a reading of a later  Christian notion of hell back into the   ancient Semitic afterlife, which has nothing  to do with this hell of punishment actually.   And again, even into the Qur'an, this notion  the initial as a time of purification, anything  that the individual self is holding on to,   this is gradually for one of a better word,  purified, sweated out of you can I say? And   then the soul, the eternal part of one's being,  travels further, travels on and on and on.
So   Jesus sometimes uses quite extreme language.  And again, it depends on who he's speaking   to when he tries to shock people.
He does use  shock therapy.
He's like a Zen master, he uses   some sort of shock phrases.
But he's trying to  point out that, you know, whatever you do here,   in so-called this life, this will have an  effect on your experience of the afterlife.   And they very definitely have a feeling about  the afterlife that there is mercy and compassion   and there is time to purify and then for the  soul, you can say that individual self, to be   gradually dropped.
And then the soul to travel  onwards, if you will.
And that's just a very   loose cosmology of ancient Semitic mysticism.  There is a bit more in the book on that.  mentioned, you mentioned, reincarnation earlier,   some feel that reincarnation was part of  early Christianity, but was edited out.
Like   Yogananda says it was edited out at the Council  of Nicaea.
As you've been poking around in all   these ancient things, have you come across it? are, you know, little bits of allusion to it  throughout the Gospels.
Because if you recall,   there's one instance where Yeshua asked  his students, well, who do people say I am?   And then the students, the disciples say,  "well, some people say you're Moses reborn,   and some people say, you're this person reborn and that notion was in the culture, that a particular   being, a particular prophet could--or some quality  of that prophet or some aspect of that prophet--   could be reborn in a new body, so to speak.
reincarnation? Is it part of that? again, there's no one Sufi point of  view on that.
And some well, you know,   it's again, similar.
I mean, one of the great Sufi  teachers of the 20th century, Hazrat Inayat Khan,   once said, "the afterlife is like a recording,  and it plays the music we created in life."   And so we're going to at least at some  point--and this is early in the process,   as he imagines it--we're going to hear  this music that we created in our life.   Is it great music, is it harmonious  music, not so much? Or you know,   it's going to be there and then we keep traveling  further on.
And Inayat Khan....
I don't think this   is this is necessarily a generally Sufi point of  view, but Hazrat Inayat Khan talks about that, in   his cosmology/cosmogony, there are souls leaving  and souls coming.
And they exchange things,   sort of like a Middle Eastern marketplace  on the way, and so Mozart's heading out   and somebody else is heading in, and he says,  "Hey, here, you can play the piano like me." So,   and he goes on like that.
So I get I hope I'm  not making this too....
But I think that's a   rough paraphrase of what he talks about.
we've been going on for a pretty long time.  And it's been a lot of fun.
Are there any   concluding thoughts that you want  to leave us with? Or anything? Or   even a song if you want to sing something? I still have a voice, Rick.
I'll turn on "original  sound," and I'll play you out with a little bit of   the original, one of these chants that came to me.
it came? You kind of cognize it or something? go with this work, and people can find them on  my website, they all happen on spiritual retreat.   So this is an aspect we haven't talked  about, but music as inspiration.
You know,   this is the way chants, authentic chants that have  a deep effect, they come when they're being given,   so to speak, in inspiration.
And so this came to  me on a retreat 40 years ago, actually.
And it's   the first line of Jesus's prayer in Aramaic.
And  I heard a voice and the voice said, "you know,   this isn't just for you, share this with other  people.
So I went home and I said to my wife,   "well, you know, am I crazy, what's going on  here?" So she said, Well, it's just try it,   you know, see what happens.
You know, that's all,  just try and see what happens.
So that since then,   a lot of this has spread.
And a lot of groups  do this sort of chanting now along with   Taize' music or other chanting or interfaith  chanting, things like that.
But anyway, this is   the first line of Jesus's prayer and  the words are "abwoon d'bashmaya."   And I'm going to have to for your engineer here...
Om, yeah, and "shemaya" is a bit like Shivaya.   But he's got these "oo" and "ah" sounds.
So  this is the sound of the first line which   is usually translated "our Father which art  in heaven," which is as I already mentioned,   not that at all.
There's no "in" only  but this reality is moving to and from   the reality that is in space and light and all  around us so.
Let's just do a wee bit of that.   [Chants Abwoon d'bashmaya] "breathing the words"  >>Rick   Very nice.
Thank you.
Nice guitarwork, you weren't  even looking, had your eyes closed the whole time.  so much.
Really? Dog is coughing down here.  I've really enjoyed this whole conversation   and getting to know you and reading your book  and I'll and I'll be...
I've already created a   webpage on BatGap for your interview, which I'll  post when you're when I get your interview ready   to post, and it contains links to several of your  books and also to your author page on Amazon,   which lists all of your books so people  can get, and also to your website.
So  your work and your continued helping people find   their way through all these wonderful interviews.
beneficiary, you know, I mean, you just, it helps.
sure.
It changes you too.
It's kind of a powerful technique.
I'm usually  high as a kite all day after an interview.  thanks to those who are listening or watching  and my next guests is going to be a very dear   friend of mine named Robin Chaurasiya, who lives  in? Well, at the moment, she's in London, but   she spent a lot of time in Himalayas but long  story with Robin, but she, her primary thing   that she has been doing in recent years, is  helping children who are born in the red light   district of Mumbai, get out of there and get a  good education and live a good life.
And she's   knocking herself out helping people all over  the world in the midst of, or in the face of,   daunting obstacles and challenges such as getting  beat up by corrupt policemen and all kinds of   horrible things that she's had to face.
But I  just love her so much for what she's doing.
And   anyway, that that will be my  next interview.
So stay tuned.