sophiaserpentia | Entries tagged with douglas-klotz neil

The Feast of the Epiphany is traditionally the holiest day of the Gnostic calendar. (It is also, totally non-coincidentally, the first day of Carnival.) I haven't observed it in a while... in fact for a long time I've lived as more or less an atheist, with no spiritual or esoteric practice whatsoever. So I've been meditating today on the idea of making space for the sacred. In my head and heart and in my life, mainly, though the final plan for my room (which I'll hopefully work on by this weekend) will involve setting up an altar.

I'll start with a few words from Neil Douglas-Klotz's The Hidden Gospel:

The word for holy in Aramaic, qadash, combines two old Semitic roots. The first (KD) points to the pivot or point upon which everything turns. The second (ASh) suggests a circle that unfolds from that point with power and heat. To become holy in an Aramaic sense then means to create separate space for whatever becomes the pivot of our lives, the axis on which our universe turns. In this way, we clarify the essence of our being so that we can find our unique place in the cosmic Unity. We fully individuate -- which feels like a process of separation -- in order to enrich the whole texture of the reality of Alaha.

This makes me mindful of a passage I have not thought of in a long time, the 37th Ode of Solomon:

I stretched out my hands to my Lord:
and to the Most High I raised my voice:
And I spake with the lips of my heart;
and He heard me when my voice reached Him:
His answer came to me and gave me the fruits of my labours;
And it gave me rest by the grace of the Lord.
Hallelujah.

Quite some time ago I unpacked an esoteric formula described by this passage, representing the readiness of the mystic to receive the ruach, the breath which is spirit and life. (See also the 8th Ode, which is more explicitly esoteric.)

Concluding my commentary on the passage I quoted the Gospel of Thomas: "Jesus said, 'Let the one seeking not stop seeking until he finds. And when he finds he will marvel, and marveling he will reign, and reigning he will rest.'"

"Rest" or "repose" or "silence" (alternately "the abyss") is found throughout the Gnostic literature as the companion (or residence) of the Root of All, implying that the repose of the individual mystic in prayer or meditation is one and the same as the ain soph, the cosmic limitless abyss that precedes the moment-to-moment manifest unfolding of all that exists and all that happens in the universe.

Making space for the sacred is both the beginning and the end of this process.

My previous entries marking the Feast of Epiphany can be read here:
http://sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com/107424.html
http://sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com/329818.html
http://sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com/482919.html

taken from

allogenes

The eight books in my collection that I am pretty sure none of you own, but really hope that you do because it would make you my very special friend.

1. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters. In addition to being a fascinating (if dry) read, this book taught me a lot about Valentinian Gnosticism but also opened my eyes about the ways in which Paul's epistles must have felt to the ancient mind and eye.

2. Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. A detailed translation of many early Christian scroll fragments used in spells and rituals. This shows how much early Christianity, in one place at least (as practiced in Egypt) was different in form and focus from the religion we know today. That really puts a lot into perspective.

3. Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe. Strange attractors, self-organization, and quantum physics, oh my! Nature can order itself into states of increasing complexity. Does this science take God out of the equation -- or does it show that God *is* the equation? Very thought-provoking book.

4. Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature. This book contains a fascinating argument that there are no "laws" of physics, but that there are "habits" which develop when nature solves problems and then repeats that solution. I'm not sure if I endorse every nuance of his theory, but I agree with it in principle and I think it is very eye-opening to see outside of the neo-platonic box of "eternal laws of physics" to see how well a scheme which has no element of permanence can work.

5. Dan Merkur, Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions. Merkur examines the nature of different kinds of mystical vision and the things which brings them about, and argues that Jewish, Gnostic, alchemical, and Islamic visionary mysticism rely on very similar esoteric altered states. (He doesn't make the argument in *this* book that they all rely on entheogens, but he does make that argument elsewhere. I agree with Merkur's thesis that there is a single strain of esoteric technique behind Jewish, Gnostic, Islamic, and alchemical mysticism, but I'm not convinced that it's related to use of entheogens.)

6. Christopher Bamford, ed., Rediscovering Sacred Science. This book contains a collection of essays about sacred geometry in a distinctly neo-Pythagorean fold. Fascinating stuff.

7. John Read, Prelude to Chemistry. I hate the title, but this book is the most readable, informative, and well-rounded introduction to alchemy, both physical and philosophical, which I have ever seen.

8. Neil Douglas-Klotz, The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus. This is a fascinating book presenting an argument that most of the meaning of Jesus' teachings was lost when they were translated from Aramaic to Greek. It contains a degree of conjecture, but even if it does not elucidate the "original and authentic" message of Jesus, it is very worthwhile as a mystical text in its own right. I have quoted from it several times in this journal (and indeed my very first entry contained a quote from this book), because it was very influential for me.

This post is meant as a starting point towards demonstrating the parallels between the philosophy outlined by Neil Douglas-Klotz, and the concept of the holomovement as developed by David Bohm.

From Douglas-Klotz's thoughts about God:

In Aramaic, the name Alaha refers to the divine, and wherever you read the word "God" in a quote from Yeshua, you can insert this word. It means variously: sacred unity, oneness, the All, the Ultimate Power/Potential, the One with no opposite. It is related to the name of God in Hebrew, Elohim, which is based on the same root word: EL or AL. This root could be translated literally as the sacred "The," since it is also used as the definite article in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic.

If we think deeply into this, we find it suggests that every definite "article" -- every unique being -- should remind us of the one Unity. If only one Being exists, then every other being must have a share in it. Individuality is only relative in this view of God. (The Hidden Gospel, p. 27)

Compare this to David Bohm's depiction of the cosmos as an undivided wholeness, and every "object" discerable as such as a hologram which, if we examine closely enough, would reveal information about everything in the cosmos. (Compare, also, Thich Nhat Hanh's description of "interbeing" as the state of existence of all things together and each thing individually.)

To generalize so as to emphasize undivided wholeness, we shall say that what 'carries' an implicate order is the holomovement, which is an unbroken and undivided totality. In certain cases, we can abstract particular aspects of the holomovement (e.g. light, electrons, sound, etc.) but more generally, all forms of the holomovement merge and are inseparable. Thus, in all totality, the holomovement is not limited in any specifiable way at all. It is not required to conform to any particular order, or to be bounded by any particular measure. Thus, the holomovement is undefineable and immeasurable. (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, p. 191)

The sense of all as movement depicted in Bohm's understanding of the cosmos reminds me very strongly of the image given by Douglas-Klotz of ruach:

God is breath.
All that breathes resides in the Only Being.
From my breath
to the air we share
to the wind that blows around the planet;
Sacred Unity inspires all. (renditions of John 4:24 "God is a spirit" based on the Aramaic; The Hidden Gospel, p. 41)

In both Hebrew and Aramaic, the same word -- ruha in Aramaic, ruach in Hebrew -- must stand for several English words: spirit, wind, air, and breath. Translations that arise out of European Christianity assume that only one of these possibilities is appropriate for each passage. However... when we meditate on the words of a prophet or mystic in the Middle Eastern way, we must consider all possibilities simultaneously. So "Holy Spirit" must also be "Holy Breath." (p. 41-42)

From the perspective of Sacred Unity, my breath is connected to the air we all breathe. It participates in the wind and in the atmosphere that surrounds the whole planet. This atmosphere then connects to the ineffable spirit-breath that pervades the seen and unseen worlds. (p. 43)

Postscript. I think too that the vision of Universe as described by Bucky Fuller can be reconciled with this. Fuller was interested in the geometry of stable forms, and so on the face of it his conceptualization might seem to be exactly opposite of Bohm's. However, Fuller included in his understanding of system and conceptuality the existence of "things" as unique unfoldings from potential. His views come close to dualistic Platonism, but I think he keeps from going over the "edge" and describes a monistic tension. In this context, then, chew on this:

Universe is the aggregate of eternal generalized principles whose nonunitarily conceptual scenario is unfoldingly manifest in a variety of special-case, local, time-space transformative, evolutionary events. Humans are each a special-case unfoldment-integrity of the multi-alternatived complex aggregate of abstract, weightless, omni-interaccomodative, maximally synergetic, non-sensorial, eternal, timeless principles of Universe. Humanity being a macro-to-micro Universe-enfolding eventuation is physically irreversible yet eternally integrated with Universe. Humanity cannot shrink and return into the womb and revert to as-yet unfertilized ova. Humanity can only evolve toward cosmic totality, which in turn can only be evolvingly regenerated through new-born humanity. (Synergetics, 311.03)

For a couple of weeks I've been wanting to post about my spiritual thoughts and inclinations, since they have evolved.

I recently described my views as closest to atheistic and I suppose that's basically correct. That is, there is no room in my views (if there ever really was) for a distinct being that possesses volition and intelligence and which guides the cosmos. However, there is a presence that I have felt in moments of stillness which I call for lack of a better word divine.

One of my inquiries regards the "substance" out of which the divine presence could be composed. To put that in more specific terms, what is it precisely that meaningfully distinguishes divine presence from mundane presence? The answer I keep coming back to is perception, which is why I continue to self-identify as "gnostic" (gnosis = perception). The presence of divinity is distinguished primarily by the (subjective or perhaps intersubjective) perception thereof.

In short, divine presence is distinguished against the background of the cosmos solely via human consciousness, and, as best we can determine, nothing else. That means that God is, in terms of the manifest cosmos at least, made of nothing, but it is a meaningful nothingness. I've arrived at this answer before, with allusions to the Kabbalistic idea of ein sof. (It's also possible that "Allah" translates to "the no," or distinct nothingness.)

A description of the divine which I read once in

challenging_god (offered I think by

lasa) describes the divine as "creating by withdrawing." This corresponds closely to my observation that the divine presence operates by providing the potential whereby things occur. IOW, God creates a void of potential, into which nature/the cosmos "flows." The Tao is compared to the "watercourse way," and water runs downhill because potential exists whenever water can flow. The idea of the watercourse way, notably, suggests not the presence of a being with will that directly acts, but a harmonious sort of interbeing whereby nature provides for itself, summarized in the translation: "the Tao is that which never acts, yet leaves nothing undone."

Consider for example recent inquiries into the processes whereby things in the cosmos evolve and become more complex. Cellular automata and replicators, information theory and chaos and bifurcation points and catastrophe theory. It all points to a simple and harmonious self-consistency in the cosmos -- a kind of self-reflective morphic resonance. What causes complexity to develop is the opening of a niche or the existence of a system in a state of heightened dis-equilibrium. Either way we have the creation of what can be conceptualized as a void that will soon be filled.

Another concept that can be thrown in the mix here is the "holomovement," David Bohm's depiction of the cosmos as a mostly folded-up (or implicate) unbroken whole. Consciousness is tied in with the unfolding of the implicate order -- and the enfolded aspect of reality can be thought of as the potential for unfolding. The idea of the holomovement describes a cosmos made entirely of movement and of process, and in which every relevated thing is interconnected with every other relevated thing. From the perspective of any particular object, that object can be seen to be a hologram of the entire cosmos.

While I can see parallels in the Tao Te Ching and even the Upanishads to this idea of the cosmos as holomovement, I've found a very clear depiction thereof in Neil Douglas-Klotz's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. I'll try to find a way to present that in a coherent way.

Now, I hold all this in one part of my mind while another repeats the disclaimer that any conception I hold of god is only a limited eidolon (image or shadow) thereof.

Current Music: Dead Can Dance "Sambatiki"

I was intrigued by the concept of the "rheomode" when I first encountered it in a comment by

anosognosia -- intrigued enough that on my first book-shopping excursion after landing the temp job I bought Bohm's book Wholeness and the Implicate Order.

Bohm did not disappoint, but his essay on the rheomode is one of the most difficult things I've read in a while, and so I want to examine it slowly over the course of a few entries here. Already I think my mind is taking the idea and running with it into new directions, and so I will elaborate upon and grow from Bohm's initial proposal.

The rheomode ("flow-mode") was proposed as a thought experiment by Bohm as a way of investigating the way modern language structure forces dualistic thought. Rather than inventing a new language, he wanted to propose adding set of 'intransitive' verbs to the English language which would reflect a line of thought rooted in awareness of the implicate interconnectedness of all and the wholeness of the cosmos.

Reading his essay I had a sense of deja-vu. His verb "to vidate" reminded me strongly of "grokking" as described in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. See if you agree: "vidation" refers to "every act of perception including even the act of understanding, which is the apprehension of a totality, that includes sense perception, intellect, feeling, etc.... So the verb 'to vidate' will call attention to a spontaneous and unrestricted act of perception of any sort whatsoever, including perception of whether what is seen fits or does not fit 'what is', as well as perception even of the very attention-calling function of the word itself."

It is no surprise that Bohm's description of the rheomode made me think of Heinlein's book, because Michael Valentine Smith's speech patterns exemplify thought as awareness of cosmos-as-flow rather than awareness of things-as-beings. "Waiting is," he and other characters say repeatedly; it is an awkward construction because English in common use is unsuited to capturing an ongoing movement that began before utterance began and which continues on after the utterance is made.

Other parallels came to mind -- Taoism in particular, and the sufi-flavored rendition of Jesus' teachings given by Neil Douglas-Klotz in The Hidden Gospel and Prayers of the Cosmos. In my memories there are links to entries with several quotes from Douglas-Klotz, if I get a chance later I will update this entry, or add a new one, with more explicit comparisons.

Current Mood: calm

Five books that have influenced me greatly. I'm going to cheat, though, and list more than five books. Pbbt! Too bad.

This is a meme taken from

mommybird, but delayed about a week because I've had bigger things to worry about.

I think it would be better to indicate them in the order in which I encountered them.

1. The Naked Ape (and The Human Zoo) by Desmond Morris. In many ways this book, which I read when I was 18, started my career of rational inquiry. It is not so much the ideas expressed in the book that have influenced me, as much as the approach taken by the author of looking at familiar things from a new perspective that forces a reconsideration of the most basic premises. The thesis set out by the author is that much of the behavior we see in human beings can be explained by a simple premise: humans are a species of primate living in a self-imposed domesticated environment. Common patterns of human behavior have obvious parallels to what we see in other apes. Furthermore, many of the drives and instincts called "sinful" by most religions are precisely those which derive from primate behavior but which conflict with the needs of domesticated existence.

2. A collection of books I acquired and read at the same time, when I was 19: Tao Te Ching translated by D. C. Lau; The Upanishads: Breath of the Eternal translated by Swami Prabhavananda; and Bhagavad Gita translated by Juan Mascaro. I picked up these slim little paperback volumes at a time when I was willing to search high and low to see what answers had been provided by people of other times and places. I found that there are common elements of belief that transcend time and place. I was also moved by the depiction of divine presence found herein; it seemed a worthy description of the divine. At that time I had not received any sophisticated instruction in Biblical scripture and so had only learned to read it at face value, and at face value it presented an image of the divine that I could scarcely understand or treasure.

3. Book Four by Aleister Crowley. Technically the title Book Four refers to a three-part volume, but in publication this has been divided into two books: Part One and Two, published under the title Book Four, and Part Three, published under the title Magick in Theory and Practice. I refer here specifically to the volume including Part One, which lays out a no-nonsense approach to yoga. With some guidance from the mysterious and elusive Frater Alav, I found this book to be extremely helpful.

4. Delta of Venus by Anais Nin. Is a volume of literary erotica out of place among these titles? I don't think so. Even in translation the vision of Anais Nin veers into territory that is simultaneously sacred and profane. As someone who has written a few fledgling pieces of literary erotica, I found in Anais Nin a model to work from, a high standard to aspire to.

5. The Hidden Gospel by Neil Douglas-Klotz. Actually here I am picking one to represent several volumes that have been very influential in shaping the progress of my spiritual inquiries of the past few years. I read a small fragment of this book online and ordered it immediately. I was not disappointed; I found every page of this book to be transformative and inspiring. I do not know if Douglas-Klotz has given a historically-accurate rendition of Jesus' message or not; I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. There is a timelessness in the truths given in this book that speaks directly to my heart and mind.

Current Music: Seal "Latest Craze"

The other book that came on Friday was Neil Douglas-Klotz's Prayers of the Cosmos. Those of you who have been reading my journal for a while, or have looked through the memories, know I was extremely fond of his book The Hidden Gospel, as I have quoted from it several times.

Prayers of the Cosmos is I think best approached as a companion book to The Hidden Gospel, because it doesn't flow nearly as smoothly, and seems to presume the reader's familiarity with the material and themes raised in the latter book. This book contains a treatment of the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes, seen through the lens of Sufi mysticism and the fluidness of the Aramaic language. His work won't satisfy people who are looking for academic rigor (or mainstream Christian theology) but many of his sentiments have been influential on me, perhaps even transformative.

( Read more... )

At the request of

kerri_tgrl, I have compiled a short bibliography on progressive and Gnostic Christianity.

One star (*) means that I have read the book and found it helpful, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to beginners.

Two stars (**) means that I have read the book and recommend it as a must-read for anyone with any interest in these topics.

No stars () means that the book has been recommended to me by others in the progressive Christian or Gnostic communities.

( Recommended reading for Liberal Christians )

( Recommended reading for those with an interest in Gnosticism )

A while back I listed some recommended web resources here:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/sacred_opinion/12341.html

Current Music: Bjork "Possibly Maybe"

rowanf has spread an interesting new meme: explaining the "unshared interests" on your info page. I have only two, so the exercise will be for me quick and easy.

galloi: This was a class of priest common throughout Asia Minor and Greece in late antiquity. They were self-castrated and lived and dressed to varying extents (depending on the time period) as women. Cf. Priests of the Goddess: Gender Transgression in Ancient Religion, and also the excellent Blossom of Bone by Randy Conner.

neil douglas-klotz: The author of The Hidden Gospel and Prayers of the Cosmos, the writings of Douglas-Klotz have had an immeasurable influence in the last year on my understanding of mystical experience. I have written several excerpts from The Hidden Gospel in my journal:
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=sophiaserpentia&itemid=340
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=nonduality&itemid=49316
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=sophiaserpentia&itemid=14451
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=sophiaserpentia&itemid=26967

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epiphany: making space for the sacred
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Ruach as Holomovement: David Bohm, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Thay Hanh, Bucky Fuller, and others
checking in with my concept of the divine
David Bohm's Rheomode
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The Serpent's Wisdom

Eat of this fruit; your eyes shall be opened, and you will be as Gods.

Entries tagged with douglas-klotz neil

epiphany: making space for the sacred

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Ruach as Holomovement: David Bohm, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Thay Hanh, Bucky Fuller, and others

checking in with my concept of the divine

David Bohm's Rheomode

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December 2021

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