The True Teachings of the Aramaic Jesus Christ with Neil Douglas-Klotz

Neil Douglas Klotz 0:00
Humanity is gradually develop a more developing in a more individualized sense of self. If you were caught with a Bible in your home, that's it for you. Only the priest is allowed to have Bible. Have a bible of any sort, and they'll tell you what's in it and what you should believe the body is just as spiritual as the breath. And in fact, breath means spirit. If you, if you're writing, reading in your New Testament, and you read spirit, just put breath over that word, because that's what the Aramaic word also means. So different groups remember different things that Jesus said and did he says, translating more literally, believe like me. Have the faith that I have. So whenever empires and religions come together, you know it's not going to be a good thing humanity. You know you're heading toward this place where it's you're going to feel really separate, and that people are going to generally believe that only in the material world exists, which is where we are now.

Alex Ferrari 0:56
I like to welcome to the show Neil Douglas Klotz, how you doing Neil?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:11
Good Alex, how you doing?

Alex Ferrari 1:13
I'm doing very good. My friend, doing very good. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I am a fan of your work, and I think you and I are gonna have a very interesting conversation about Jesus before Christianity, which is one of my favorite subjects, to talk about, his true teachings, who he was, what actually happened. And your focus is Aramaic Jesus, based on your book and

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:38
It didn't perfume in the book, as far as I know, but you never know.

Alex Ferrari 1:43
It's aromatic. It's a very aromatic Jesus, but also Aramaic.

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:49
Breathe deeply.

Alex Ferrari 1:50
Yes, exactly. So let me ask you, what got you started down this path, because this is not a normal path to go down when you're doing historical, historical being a historical scholar.

Neil Douglas Klotz 2:03
No, well, you know, I've got, you know, although I have this hat on, I actually have several hats. One is the scholar and the language and all of that stuff. And the other is, you could call it the spiritual practitioner. So I, I had early experiences of Jesus in my childhood, inner experiences, we should say where he would appear in light things like that. And fortunately for me, I was in sort of an alternative family in the 1950s in the in Illinois. And my parents were most interested in Edgar Cayce, the channel, you know, the American channel, and Rachel Carson, the early ecological movement. And also my father was an early chiropractor in Illinois, which in those days, was very alternative. So that was what we were raised with in my birth family. And so, you know, for them, it didn't, didn't phase them that I was having these sorts of experiences, fortunately, because otherwise, who knows what would have happened today. So but on the other hand, you know, because my father had to work in this small town in Illinois, my brothers and I were sent to quite conservative Christian elementary schools, a conservative Protestant Lutheran where we had to learn huge parts of the King James Bible and all of Luthers catechism, what he has to say about the Bible by heart, by memory, so that we could stand up in church and repeat things verbatim when we were asked some random question about this or that. So it both trained my memory, and also I was trained in a whole bunch of say because very conservative Protestant theology, which I quickly abandoned because I'd never really taken it on by the time I got to university, and that's when I became an investigative journalist researching the Food and Drug Administration, the adulteration of food, stuff like that. And that's what I that's what I went into after I graduated from university. This was still in the 1970s you understand. So there was still a real alternative press in those days, printed press, before the internet. And I suppose I just had a penchant, as we would say, a penchant for investigating things throughout my life. Cut the long story short. I mean, when I was working in an alternative journalism collective, because we had collectives in the 70s, and we were syndicating news stories by mail to about 100 No, about 500 college university underground newspapers in the US, and we were working 60,70, hours a week, something like that. I mean craziness, you know. And I'm still in my late 20s, and I discovered, hey, hello, people don't make decisions based on facts.

Alex Ferrari 4:50
Stop it! Neil stop it!

Neil Douglas Klotz 4:52
I should have known, you know, I suppose some people never latch on to that. But anyway, that. Led me into sort of a burnout, a depression, whatever you want to call it, a spiritual emergence, as they call it today. And I started to, you know, look into, well, Neil, why do you do things? Why do you make major decisions in your life if you don't have all the facts? And mostly, that's true. I mean, I don't think any of us make really major decisions having all the facts, mostly, were just proceeding on whatever, so I needed to find what that whatever was. And that led me to try meditation of different styles, things like this. Eventually, I ended up with the Sufis in California, and because I had a background in publishing, they sent me to work editing some of the letters and diaries of one of their teachers, who was no longer, was no longer in the body at that time. And in his letters, he said, I wanted to learn how to pray the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic. And he had never done that in his life. But that struck me, for some reason, as being something because, as you may know, if you've ever interviewed Sufis, many Sufis, not all, but are very much involved with, you know, the mysticism of sound, Mantra, meditation, all this stuff. So this, this fellow, in his writings, he wrote, If you're going to chant a mantra for Jesus, you know that have mysticism of sound involved. You should chant in Aramaic, because that's his native language, but he had never done this. So being the investigator that I was, I began to investigate, investigate, try to find out what is Aramaic. Who's Aram? Why wasn't Jesus speaking Hebrew? You know what's Aramaic? How do you spell it? Who knew, who still knows it, all these things like that. And I had some help from a Jewish rabbi, a rabbi Zalman chakra, shalom, me of blessed memory, who has really helped me along the path and pointed me in the right direction. And, you know, I started to chant for myself the words of Jesus's prayer, the so called Lord's prayer in Aramaic, and I started to again, have very deep spiritual experiences just chanting the first words, you know, experiences of light and voices coming to me, and my body making movements that I had never seen before, and melodies happening things like this. And you can either think you're going crazy with these sorts of things, which part of me thought, or you, you know, I said, Well, I'll chant this for people and see what happens. And I did, and people started to gather around a bit. And then again, really, to cut the long story short, I ended up working five years later for Matthew Fox, the then Francis, then Dominican priest, who was running an alternative Institute in the bay area of Northern California. And I was his sort of, how would you call it? I was his staff, Sufi. And he had, you know, a star Hawk there for Wicca and a new science, and Thomas Berry for the ecological and all this lovely stuff. And it was great. It was sort of not to overuse the term golden age, but it was actually a golden age of these sort of things in that part of Northern California. And eventually, as you probably know, Matt Fox got kicked out of the Catholic Church for being too radical, basically, and but he, he encouraged me to actually research Aramaic properly, to investigate, research it properly, and write a book about it, which is what I did, which was originally published in 1990 this small book called prayers of the cosmos, which most people have, if you have any interest in this, have probably heard of. So that set me out on this path. Really. I thought that was going to be the end of it, but, but it wasn't. And I just because people kept writing me letters and then emails later about what about this passage, and what about that passage? And so I ended up getting a PhD in ancient Semitic language interpretation, and that's with this other hat on, and trying out things in the scholarly community to see what they made of it. And here I sit before you, nearly 50 years later, finally, a lot of people started to come around to this stuff so.

Alex Ferrari 9:17
So let me ask you, you said Sufis, from my understanding, Sufis are the mystic the mystics of Islam, the Islamic

Neil Douglas Klotz 9:25
Yeah, if you look it up in the dictionary, if you look it up in any normal dictionary, that's what it'll say, however. And this is a big however, if you talk to Sufis around the world, and I have traveled quite extensively and met many Sufis, and have had some as mentors. Many of them will tell you what the Prophet Muhammad brought was a type of spirituality. Later, it became known as Sufism, and then a bunch of people went and made it into a religion called Islam. So that is.

Alex Ferrari 9:59
It's the story that I've heard 1000 times before with every major religion. It starts off one way, and then someone else grabs it for power and changes it and

Neil Douglas Klotz 10:07
And there's some actual, actually historical academic research on this now. So it's not just the mystics themselves who say this. Again, not all, not all Sufis will say this. Many are very much tied to the particular cultural you could say, appropriations, cultural rituals of Islam, things like this, but, but many both you could say, in the Persian speaking world as well as in the Arabic speaking world, will will tell you what I just told you.

Alex Ferrari 10:37
So, from what I understand, and please correct me from wrong. Obviously, Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God. He died and resurrected and so on. The Jews kind of think, or Judaism thinks that, basically that he was a prophet, just like one of the bunch. Nothing really that crazily special. But from what I understand, Islam thinks of him as a great prophet, and had a lot of and brought a lot of you know, should be revered as what he was, a great prophet. Is that kind of is that correct?

Neil Douglas Klotz 11:12
Yes, that's correct. I mean, there's, there are many passages about Jesus, who's called isa in the Quran, and there it's always mentioning him in a praiseworthy sense. There's a whole chapter that is a whole Surah devoted to his mother, Mary, and Jesus's birth. And the Sufis, speaking of the Sufis, tell many different, you could say many different stories about Jesus that are not in the Bible. They're actually not, not in the Quran either. But but for the Sufis, Jesus was sort of the archetypal wandering dervish. I mean, the person who traveled without belongings, who didn't have, you could say, didn't have, didn't have people, just didn't have an apparatus, didn't have an organization, you know, sort of like that. And so the Sufis, you know, have their have their own take on him, and many of these are very beautiful stories that you can find in Jalal Edin Rumi, for instance, if people have heard of him, sort of like that, yeah,

Alex Ferrari 12:10
For everybody listening who had only been exposed to Jesus and Jesus's teachings via Christianity, what did you discover when you started going down the Aramaic? Aramaic? Aha. I got it the Aramaic, the Aramaic roots of Jesus, because a lot of people, again, because of the marketing of the Vatican and of the church, movies, television, all these things, you know, he's a blonde hair, you know, dark brown hair, blue eyed, white guy who speaks perfect English, which really he was a Jew, who was Aramaic, he was an Arab, and spoke that so his he would have been a dark, very dark skinned.

Neil Douglas Klotz 12:54
He would have been dark skinned, yeah, yeah, I think that's correct. It's interesting. You know, in this book, I mentioned my first book, prayers to the cosmos. Originally the publisher, which was then a small, small ish, a medium sized independent publisher called Harper. Harper, Harper and Row, they commissioned a Catholic icon artist to do a dark skinned Jesus for the cover. And they did, and it was, it's beautiful. It's still beautiful. You can find it online. And then later, when Rupert Murdoch bought, bought Harper, he took it off, and they have some sort of sun, sunrise, or sunset, or something like that on it. Now, so, you know, these things go on, yeah, probably he was, he was dark skinned. I would say, that's almost certain, Aramaic. I would say, okay, that the big takeaways from Aramaic that I started out with are, first, Aramaic has a different sense of, how would we say, how we are, how are, how we're positioned with each other? Let's say, so there's only one preposition that means both within me and among us. So there's only one one word that that indicates that one letter really so for instance, when Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is among you, or the kingdom of heaven is within you, depending on the translation, he always said, both the within and the among are always linked. They're always linked. It's always that way. Also, Aramaic doesn't divide things up into mind, body, soul, spirit, like we now do in our current era. All of these are connected. The body is just as spiritual as the breath. And in fact, breath means spirit. If you if you're writing, reading in your New Testament, and you read spirit, just put breath over that word, because that's what the Aramaic word also means. So spirit is breath. Body is spiritual in our sense, and everything is supposed to resonate with this bigger reality, which is called Allah, which is all around us. It's not just up in heaven sitting like some judge on a throne or something like that. Allah. Because the word Jesus used for God as we now trans, as people translate it, but I would translate it more sort of the reality that brings together everything and nothing, everything and everythingness and nothingness, if I can torture the English language of it. So like that,

Alex Ferrari 15:15
The it seems like the the arguments that have been wars even have been fought over the translations of the original texts, or the original teachings of Jesus from the construction or the the assembly of the Bible itself, as we know it, to where it came up. I discovered the other day, and I thought this was fascinating, the whole and please correct me if I'm wrong or if I'm incorrect in this that revelations or the the rapture was never part of the original Bible, that, from what I heard, it was a bookseller who was like, I gotta spice this Bible up to get some sales, put it in the Bible, and then a bunch of preachers grabbed onto it and like, Oh, I could sell this. This is a lot of fear. Is that what you have heard as well? But just as an example,

Neil Douglas Klotz 16:07
I don't know about the bookseller bit, but revelations was definitely added later. There's no question, right? And this whole notion of the interpreting the rapture and the people that are going to be taken up and all this stuff this, this is not, this is not there, actually, either. It's not even in the revelations, if you read it properly, I would encourage people, if they're interested in a more expansive view of revelations, even that book, to read Jung's book, CG young, his book called Answer to Job, at least half of it is about revelations and a very profound vision of you could say Holy Wisdom, Sophia, coming back, and all this, this lovely stuff. So if you're interested in that, that bit, but you see, what we don't hear about when we're raised either Christian or hearing about Christians things like this, is that there was a Christianity outside of the Roman Empire. Okay, let me back up a bit. In about 300 years after the time of Jesus, maybe 303 50 Constantine comes along, and Christianity becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire. Okay, so whenever empires and religions come together, you know it's not going to be a good thing. I mean, look around you. So anyway, but there are Christians outside of the Roman Empire, because they were in the Persian Empire, and they were Aramaic speaking all through this whole time that Christianity is developed, and Christians in the Roman Empire are killing each other over the nature of Jesus or the nature of his mother and all this stuff. And so Aramaic speaking Christians say, from the Persian Empire, if you imagine where Iran is today, Persian Empire extending all these Aramaic Christians are extending all the way along the Silk Road into China. This Aramaic Christianity, and it what, for about 1000 years, they were the largest group of Christians in the world. These are just Christians. This is after Jesus, but they're still Aramaic speaking. And surprise, they have very little theology where they had very little Theology at that time. As one of them said later, we don't all these creeds that, you know, they have over there and European Christianity, we don't have these. The only thing we go by is, you know, love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. That's it. That was good enough for Jesus. That's good enough for us. So I mean, even on that level, we never hear about this stuff that Christianity only diminished once Islam started to come to the fore in that same area, but we can still find Aramaic speaking Christians today in eastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq, places like this. I'm not sure about Northern Syria right now, because the Kurds want that. So you never know. And Syria is in sort of transition, so I'm not sure if there were Aramaic speaking Christians there when I visited in 1993 but I'm not sure what happened over the Civil War and all of that stuff.

Alex Ferrari 19:01
So from your research, how much has the original teachings, the original ideas of Jesus, changed just because of the translations? Because these translations are why people fight from, like, literally a word in this or that, or if you go into the Greek version of that, or you Google that there, it's kind of like this hodgepodge throughout history that there wasn't like the one book, The One book that was written. Jesus wrote this book. Jesus wrote the book and then Alex, but not this book. Jesus did not write this book. I use it as a prop, but, um, but it's not like Jesus ever wrote down anything to my understanding? So he didn't write, he didn't write down a Bible, if you will. So this was kind of Hodge hodgepodge together, by the by by Rome, essentially the Kings James Bible version that we know well. Or am I correct? Or am I

Neil Douglas Klotz 19:55
It evolves a bit more slowly than that, because imagine, remember, you've got 300 years going here. That's a long time, right? So no one really knows how it got from Jesus's lips to being written down in different areas, but I'll give you the best reconstruction different groups. Well, first we have to realize that people in non literate cultures, people who did not read and write have a much better memory than we do today, but we're relying on written things or relying on our smartphones or this or that to remind us of this or that. So in non literate cultures, memory is much, much better. This has been shown anthropologically. You could even say so different groups remember different things that Jesus said and did, and he must have done a lot. I mean, even the Gospel of John says, If you had all the books and whatever, and all the ink in the sea and all that, you wouldn't be able to write down all the stories well. So according to most scholars, there were maybe at least 100 different gospels after the time of Jesus. Gradually, these groups write down their own accounts, their own remembrances of what he said and did, and then slowly over that 300 year period, but, you know, accelerating big time with Constantine. Constantine decides, well, you can't run a decent empire based on all these hundreds of accounts of who this guy was. So he just, he sits some scholars down, and they decide, okay, it's only going to be these four, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. That's it. Just to keep the keep things simple. And then there's interpretations also, excuse me,

Alex Ferrari 21:32
But where's But where's Paul? Paul's opposed, a lot of stuff to do with it as well. I love your face. I love your face. I love your face when I said, Paul.

Neil Douglas Klotz 21:44
okay, I have an alternative view of Paul,

Alex Ferrari 21:48
Good. I like I can't wait to hear it.

Neil Douglas Klotz 21:50
I haven't done work. I've said this, but I haven't written any books about it. Paul is also an Aramaic speaker. Speaker. Paul writes letters to different early Christian groups. I think we can accept that the problem is, and this is not unique to Christianity or later Christianity is that many Christians accept that what Paul wrote to a specific community should take equal weight as to what Jesus says in the Gospels. You know, whereas he says different things to different groups in these epistles, and they often contradicts one another. So for instance, where he says in one of the this is Paul, one of the epistles, women should keep silent in the church. Well, doesn't mean women are supposed to be quiet forever. It meant that, due to some situation that was going on in that particular town at that particular time, he's recommending this, but he's not recommending it everywhere at all time. Also, Paul says quite clearly in the epistles, in his letters, you know, I'd love to give you the inner mysteries, but I'm so busy sorting out your social problems that I don't have time to do that. That's what happens in spiritual groups, really. And actually, at the same time, Paul quotes a famous saying from the Gospel of Thomas, which is probably one of the most you could say spiritual or mystical of the early gospels, one that was not included in the big four. So, you know, Paul clearly knew stuff and got involved in forming groups and trying to manage them, and, you know, and all that so poor. He wasn't. So I wasn't. I have a more sympathetic view of Paul. Let me put it that way,

Alex Ferrari 23:28
Well but the thing is, too, Paul is not an apostle. Paul never walks with Jesus. No, no. A lot of people believe that he did, because if he's he's known. So, you know, you know, robbing Peter to pay Paul. I mean, that whole, that whole idea back in the day came from,

Neil Douglas Klotz 23:43
Well, he did, rob Peter to pay Paul, but anyway,

Alex Ferrari 23:46
Touche sir touche on that. Yeah, I understand Peter did not like Paul, and Paul did not,

Neil Douglas Klotz 23:51
No, it wasn't, wasn't, it wasn't fond

Alex Ferrari 23:54
Right! So I had, I had a guest on once who said this, this quote, and I thought it was so powerful. He said that no one ever leaves Christianity because of Jesus's teachings. They generally leave because of Paul's teachings. Is that a fair statement?

Neil Douglas Klotz 24:11
That's probably a fair statement in that a lot of theology is drawn from particular statements in Paul, or maybe some of the other later letters, the epistles, and then sort of twisted out of shape, I would say one good example. I mean, so that Christianity, you could say most you could say mainstream Christianity labors under the assumption that Jesus wanted people to believe in him. Well, that's not true, right? That's in this translation of a simple preposition he says, translating more literally, believe like me. Have the faith that I have. Not believe in me or believe thoughts or concepts or theologies about me also. He never asked people to save their souls. His word for soul, Ruha is this big breath of which we are a part. It's, it's, it's like a spiritual body, in some sense. He says, Let your, let your, Ruha, save you. Is really what he's talking about. We don't have to save our soul. Our soul doesn't need saving. It's already knows everything. So this is some of the misunderstandings that go on. I mean, Aramaic has two different words for breath. One is this big breath self, Ruha, and the other is the small breath self, the breath that's in this body for however many years I have here, and that's called nafsha. So Ruha, nafsha, this sort of the general map. And the nafsha is within the Ruha. This is, again, one of a major takeaway I discovered. And, you know, without that, without even just knowing that nothing that Jesus says, what Yeshua says, which is his Aramaic name, is going to make any sense to people.

Alex Ferrari 25:48
So let me ask you, this is another this is fun, because I'm all these ideas, all these things I've heard about Jesus. I'd love to hear your points of view on it. Alternative ideas that I've heard about him, which generally from what I from my own research, have come to be true, the concept of the concept of hell. So from my understanding, in the in the Torah, there is no hell, they didn't believe in hell. Still don't. I don't know about Islam, if there is a hell or a hellish place, I'm not sure. But the concept of hell, as we know it was a misunderstanding of what Jesus was saying in one of his sermons about the fire, the lake that was on fire, where they threw all the garbage, and then they just and then they turned that all around. And then when Rome got involved, this Dante showed up, wrote this amazing book. And they're like, Yeah, that's what we're gonna use. This is great. We're gonna put that in. Is that a fair assessment of of the concept of hell?

Neil Douglas Klotz 26:49
Well, essentially, yeah. I mean, there's been a whole book spirit written about this, Alex, but basically, hell, as Christianity later described, it would have been unknown to Jesus. Shocking. I mean, it's not just about the language. It's about sort of the ancient, what I call the ancient way of knowing in this area, you know, the old Semitic languages, they come out of a nomadic experience there was throughout the Mediterranean world and also into the so called Middle East, there was a notion of the afterlife, you know, a place where the dead go, basically, but it was not necessarily punishment one thing or the other. However, there was a general notion, general that as we leave these bodies, that which travels on has to sort of drop stuff, shall we say, drop your burdens, lay down your burdens. And some, sometimes those burdens have to be sweated out, like I sometimes talk about the, you know, the sauna after you die, things like that. So this, this notion of purification after death, after physical death, because you know that the soul lives on. Mean, that's clear the Rucha, which is the bigger part of ourself that was before birth, and that continues after our physical death, that continues on. That was clear in the ancient world. So you have it, what you what you don't get rid of, is a burden in this life, embodied life, you're going to have to, sort of like, recycle it as soon as you leave, basically and and let it go. So that was the main notion of the afterlife, but some place where people go forever, hell, damnation, none of this would have been known to Jesus at that time. That was all sort of this misunderstanding. It's a mishmash, actually, of you could say Semitic words, ancient Semitic words. By say Semitic, I mean, like Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Canaanite, Babylonian, all that good stuff. So there's a misunderstanding of that sort of mixed with this fall redemption theology that later comes into Christianity, with Augustine of Hippo, who's later called Saint Augustine. So you know that if you don't believe properly, you're going to go somewhere and suffer forever. That's nowhere in Jesus. That's, you know, as my friend Matt Fox has pointed out, that's just fall redemption theology, which is like from 400 years later, or something like this.

Alex Ferrari 29:09
What? What was the original language that these teachings Jesus's teachings, teaches his story was originally written in? Or were there multiple languages, multiple areas, just kind of like scattered all around the the territory, if you will, about this guy named Jesus, because obviously Jesus, there was something going on. You know, there was something this guy did some stuff back in the day, I think, in Roman history. And please correct me if I'm wrong. There's one mention in some letters that there was a Jesus somewhere. So there was, there's a historical there's something historically written down by Rome about this guy named Jesus, and it's literally a sentence or two from what I

Neil Douglas Klotz 29:56
Well, it's in Josephus. But, yeah, he was a sort of a Jewish collaborator with. Rome after the time of Jesus, and when they when there was this big war, civil war, between the Romans and the indigenous people at that time. Again, I I resist. People are going to get upset if I say this. But anyway, anyway, you won't mind. I don't we support sir. Is a number of my scholars, as my scholarly colleagues, have said, you can't talk about Christians or Jews in the Bible, Jews as we know them, Judah. Judaism does not really arise until after the time of Jesus. I'm not talking about the Hebrew religion, the ancient Hebrew religion, but Judaism, rabbinical Judaism, only arises after the Romans destroy the temple in Jerusalem, which is between 70 as well. Jesus is 3030, something. So about 40 years after Jesus, 50 years after Jesus, there's a big war between the indigenous people, who you can call whatever they're all Aramaic speakers of various sorts, and the Romans. The Romans, you know, snuff them out. They destroy the temple, and then it actually all happens again 50 years later. So at this point, the tradition, that late Hebrew tradition reinvents itself, so that okay, because the temple is not there, we can't worship there anymore. So where are we going to worship? Well, we're going to worship in our homes. This is the origin of the Shabbat ritual that we have on Friday night. And sort of the whole tradition is reinvented to be more localized, more decentralized. And this is the rise of so called rabbinical Judaism, which, in its more extreme form now is Orthodox Judaism, but has many also branches as well. Likewise, no Christians in the Bible. I think that should be very fairly obvious. Even after Jesus, these early people, like in Acts, the book of Acts, they're not really Christians. They're Jesus people. They don't call themselves Christians at that time. They just refer to themselves as people who are on the way. So, you know, it's all about that, really. And I now I forgot your question, sorry,

Alex Ferrari 31:59
So I forgot my question as well, because it was,

Neil Douglas Klotz 32:04
I was facts. You see, Alex anyway.

Alex Ferrari 32:08
Well, when you just said the way we are students of the way, that automatically took me to Taoism, which has been around all a lot longer than a lot of lot of what we're talking about. I'd never really considered, there was two chapters, if you will, in Judaism, meaning, there was Judaism and, but the Hebrew religion, or the Hebrew would it be considered a religion? Or would it just be considered a philosophy? You know, because Judaism is a religion, but what was heroes ancient teachings, would they have considered themselves a religion? And also, how far back does that go? I've always wanted to know that, when did that begin? At least as far as you know.

Neil Douglas Klotz 32:46
Well, you know, this is a matter of what you call religion, but most scholars would say, and I would agree with him, that ancient religion was very different from what we have today. It was more cultic, it was more based around certain shrines. It's based around stories, low, very little theology, little, a lot the conceptual framework mentally is very much less so you would have had at the time of Jesus, various groups that claim to be the inheritors of what they would call would be the tradition of Moses. And because Moses was the liberator. He liberated the people at that time from Egypt. They were looking for someone that would be the successor of Moses, and also sort of lead them out of the wilderness and help them. So there were various at at the time of Jesus, various other bandits, prophets, messiahs, who are promising, you know, all sorts of different things. There's a very good book on that called bandits, prophets and messiahs, if people are interested by a colleague of mine. So, so, yeah, it was, it was a much more mixed situation. Were the Essenes part of this? We don't know. They might have been, because we don't really know who the people up in the Dead Sea area really were, I mean, some people consider them part of the Essenes, or the group that was also in Egypt at the time. There were also what was called the Pharisees. You know, today we call the Pharisees the, how do you say, the hypocrites, the collaborators, in common English terms. But actually the Pharisees were the Liberals at that time. They were trying to accommodate themselves to what the other group that was in charge of the temple, the Sadducees, who were the real conservatives and were in league with the Romans, to sort of keep people quiet. That was their main that was their main job at that time. It wasn't really religion or teaching religion or, you know, it's like, okay, you've got the cult center, you've got the temple. People are going to come there to sacrifice, to get food, three, four times a year. Just keep people quiet. This is the Roman speaking, and we'll be happy. If you don't keep people quiet, we're not going to be happy. So if people are not quiet, the Romans get upset. That was all. That was the whole thing.

Alex Ferrari 34:55
I do remember the question now, what was the original text? The original. Text language, the original language? Yes, that you as far as you know, yes,

Neil Douglas Klotz 35:04
Aramaic speaking Christians would say that the original text was in Aramaic, some form of Aramaic, because that's what Jesus spoke in. And they say this is actually that they had scriptures written in Aramaic, a type of Aramaic called Syriac, in their homes throughout this whole period. The you know, as soon as it's written down, they have them, and they were allowed to have them, and everyone had them. And then when they when the Scriptures, the scrolls, really, or the books, became tattered and old, they would ritually be copied them, check them, and then burn the old one with a blessing and all of that. So they say, Look, we had these scriptures in our homes 1000 years before Westerners, Europeans were even permitted to own a Bible. It was a crime punishable by death to own a Bible up until the time of the Reformation, which is, you know, your listeners will know that's in the 1600s so the rise of the printing press, the rise of the Protestant Reformation, sort of after that, it was no longer a capital crime to actually have a Bible. Up to that time in Europe, if you were caught with a Bible in your home, that's it for you. Only the priest is allowed to have Bible, have a Bible of any sort, and they'll tell you what's in it and what you should believe. So this is, it's over 1000 years. You know, this is like 1300 years of this going on. Of course, people are going to get the wrong idea.

Alex Ferrari 36:36
One of my favorite quotes is Yogananda Paramahansa Yogananda does quote about Jesus where he says that he was crucified in one day, but his teachings have been crucified for the last 2000 years.

Neil Douglas Klotz 36:48
Yeah. Nice, nicely. Put a word, a word about the Greek scriptures. Since you asked about the original languages, we will you will find in the Greek version of the Jesus's words, you will find Aramaic idioms transcribed literally into Greek so they would they make no sense. In the Aramaic Scriptures, the Syriac Aramaic you don't find any Greek idioms. What do I mean by an idiom? Okay, in the one of the beatitudes in Matthew Jesus is supposedly said, Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of God. Okay? Poor in spirit is an Aramaic idiom. It means holding on to the breath. Blessed ripe are those who hold on to their breath as though it's their first and last possession. I mean, that's pretty different. And when you do that, then you are, you are opening to you're you're entering this, what he calls Dil Hone, a malkuta deshmayah, the malkuta, which is not kingdom. It's actually feminine, gendered. So it's queendom. And dashmaya is this big realm of light, of sound, above us, underneath us, it's all around us. In modern terms, it's more like the quantum realm, but that's using new science babble. It can't be useful babble, but it's, but anyway, it's more like that. It's, there's a there's a realm of light, of sound, of vibration, different levels, different worlds between us and and the source, angels, all sorts of different beings. It's all there. So when you enter the breath and you realize, hey, my breath is my only possession, really. I came into this body with it. I'm leaving with it going, you know, then you're starting to open to this bigger realm that's all around you, which would include nature, actually.

Alex Ferrari 38:37
So Neil, let me ask you, as far as your research is concerned, has there been any in the Aramaic the original versions of what you've been able to read? Is there anything that differs from the story of Jesus's birth and also his death and resurrection? Is there, is there misconceptions? Is there mistakes in the translation that people are holding on to for dear life now? And you're like, it's actually not what this actually is what that word means, and that's actually what happened at that time.

Neil Douglas Klotz 39:12
Not per se, but you do have different accounts. For instance, in the chapter of the Quran I mentioned earlier on Mary Jesus's mother. The birth supposedly happens under a palm tree, and there's no Joseph. Now that could take that for what it's worth, poor Joseph. Joseph is like, gone. He's like, not there.

Alex Ferrari 39:39
He's the step dad. He's the step dad, God. I mean, come on.

Neil Douglas Klotz 39:43
I mean, really, in terms of the in terms of the death, you know, the crucifixion, there's all sorts of different points of view about that, not within Christianity, of course, because Christianity has this whole when I say Christianity, I don't mean to offend people. I mean mainstream Christianity. I know there are other new thought branches, unity, religious, science, all that lovely stuff. That's great. I mean, a lot of those folks read my books, so I'm not going to say anything about that's more like the Aramaic Jesus, actually. But in terms of you could say mainstream Christianity, it's all about Jesus died for your sins. So believe what we're telling you and like that, and

Alex Ferrari 40:24
He's coming back, and he's coming and he's coming back. Is that was that he's coming back? Yeah, is that? Is that? Was that in the original or no original text?

Neil Douglas Klotz 40:32
No, it isn't. I mean, if because one thing I didn't mention is Aramaic and the ancient Semitic languages, which was what was surrounding Jesus at that time. They have a whole different notion of time. So the past and the future are different. The past is, you could say, ahead of us and it's moving, and the future is behind us and it's moving. So it's like we're on a big caravan, or a marathon. I'll call it caravan, you know. So the ancestors leave ahead of us, and they're still moving. We can connect with them, and our children, our children's children, are behind us, and they're also moving. We just can't see them, and they're in the unseen world. And, you know, they're going to arrive at some point. So this whole notion of, you know, there's going to be some great utopia, Jesus is going to come again, all this, these are all later, much later notions. I tend to go with the point of view of Rudolf Steiner actually on this, on the second coming, is that the second coming, you know, if it's going to happen, you're going to see Jesus in we're going to see Jesus in each other and in nature and all around us, and that's going to be it,

Alex Ferrari 41:35
That makes a lot more sense that the Second Coming is actually within us. The Second Coming is us actually achieving what Jesus said that we were able to be achieved. From what I understand, Jesus was out, out and about, telling people that I am an example of what can be, and that you basically same, and you are basic, everything I can do, you can do, and more. These are quotes from from Jesus, you know, so

Neil Douglas Klotz 42:00
He says it in the Gospel of John. Yeah. It's quite, quite clear.

Alex Ferrari 42:03
Yeah, it's extremely clear. But it's fascinating to me how, how the the Roman Catholic Church really, really kind of skewed a lot of of his teachings to benefit the politics, to benefit the control, to benefit fear mongering. Jesus was not about any of that, the concept of hell, the concept of the reds, of the rapture that later came, all this kind of stuff, is not about what this guy who walked around is like, turn the other cheek. Love your neighbor. I mean, these are concepts, by the way. And I, you know, if I ever had Jesus on the show, I would ask him, I like, what was it like walking around at a time where people could barely conceive of these ideas? Our human consciousness was not evolved as a collective to be accepting of that kind of stuff. It just was not even it would have been like me talking to me trying to explain to a dog what an apple is, like it, they just can't connect. It must have been so frustrating, and only a handful of people grabbed onto it, and they kind of grew from there. But it was, he was a troublemaker. Anywhere he went. He was a troublemaker,

Neil Douglas Klotz 43:16
Sure, yeah. And you know, to piggybacking on what you're saying. I mean people at that time in general, whether they listened to him or not, took the other world for granted. When I say the other world, I mean what we today call the psychic world, the world where you would have downloads from other beings and people you know, other beings appear to you, things like that. This, this separation between what we call material reality today, of so called real world and the other world was very was much thinner, it was much more transparent. So this is, this is something that's inconceivable to people today, where the I would say, the two main fantasies are that you know only the material world exists and only I matter. So this would even amongst you could say unenlightened people at Jesus's time, they would not have felt this. It was more like you're embedded in your family for better or worse, or your group, or things like that, and and the other world is, is all around them, and mostly was causing a lot of trouble for a lot of Jesus's people, which is why you see all these, these cases of people making bad connections in the other world, and you have the so called the so called demons and the unclean spirits and all this stuff.

Alex Ferrari 44:25
Now I have to ask you, from your research about this character in Jesus's story that I feel that she has been my god, bastardized and abused and just raked through the coals throughout history. Is Mary Magdalene, of course, yeah. I mean, God forbid this is the story I've heard. Please explain. Tell me if I'm incorrect, this is the from my research and from what I've found, that Mary was Mary Magdalene was not a whore. She was not the town whore. She was not a prostitute. She actually. Walked with Jesus and was part of the group, but back then, a woman really couldn't be walking around with 12 other dudes. Not really acceptable. But so in the church, you're like, well, she's the town whore. Yeah, that'll make sense. Okay, now we can make that work, because we can't erase her completely. She's into many of the stories, and also another story, and this is a little bit more far going off the reservation, but love to hear your thoughts is that she actually was, her family was very well off, and that she funded the ministry because Jesus wasn't working. He didn't have, you know, he didn't, he didn't have a tick tock account. So he he needed, he needed financial support, and she was there, and that they had a relationship, a real relationship, of a man and a woman. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Neil Douglas Klotz 45:49
Yeah, I would. I agree with all that, Alex, there's, there's good evidence for this. Also, I mentioned the Gospel of Thomas, which was a gospel that didn't find its way into the so called, accepted canon, the big four. There's also the gospel of Mary Magdalene, which we have in fragmentary form. It was found in Egypt in 1945-46 something like that. And in that gospel, Mary is not only a disciple, she's like the chief disciple, and it's, you know, one of the disciples, one of the other students of Yeshua, they say to her, you know, we know. You know you were his chief. You he were closer to him than anyone else. And you know, please teach us. And she gives them a vision. And then they poo poo, the whole thing and all of that. And then in the Gospel of Philip, which is another early gospel that was excised, moved out. It goes further. And it's it very clearly indicates that they did have a relationship. It mentions Jesus kissing her on the lips and all of this and and actually, a lot of the gospel Philip is about sort of a early Semitic language, tantra, really.

Alex Ferrari 47:03
So, yeah, can you explain that? Can you explain that?

Neil Douglas Klotz 47:06
Well, it talks about that, the relationship. And again, it uses man and woman as an example. This is what was at the time that the the man and the woman can come together in holy marriage and sort of enter this holy of holies together, which is a space of silence. And you know, this can be, you could say, a form of what we would today. Call it enlightenment.

Alex Ferrari 47:31
I mean, this is all black.

Neil Douglas Klotz 47:32
Look up gospel of Philip Alex. There's a good translation by the French scholar Jean Yves le loop, who's another friend and colleague of mine, that's really the best one. Gospel of Philip Jean Yves le loop. You remember because it's a French name, so, but yeah, his, his books are fine, very fine.

Alex Ferrari 47:50
So, so this is a question I've been wanting to ask you since we got on the call, and it's one of my favorite topics, because when I went to Catholic school, I had a problem with this, among many things, I had a problem with confession. I'll, you know, meet on Fridays, that whole thing. But the, one of my favorite areas of Jesus is, story is the missing years from 12. When we saw him last, I think he was 12. In the Bible, he's born yada yada yada, 12, yada yada yada. He comes in on a donkey. I'm very curious about the yada yada yada. And he's gone for essentially 818, years. He's essentially gone anytime I would ask a nun or a priest that they'd like stop asking questions, which I was like, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Yeah. So from your research, what what historical evidence is there? And then I'll tell you what I've found and I've heard from different guests and books that I've read. But what historical documentation is there about those missing years? What stories, what books, what gospels, anything?

Neil Douglas Klotz 48:58
There's a couple of ways to approach it. I mean, you, I've read most of these same things that you've read Alex, so I know about him. You know, Jesus went to India and he studied with Tibetans, or this or that, or the other thing Egypt, right? Egypt? I agree with, because it's clear that they went to Egypt. The Sufis tells stories about him being in Egypt. These are, of course, later stories. And that's that's much more likely, because if you look at, if I look at all of his teachings in all these gospels I've mentioned, through the lens of his native language, I don't find anything that comes out of this general what I would call native Middle Eastern tradition is what I called it in one of my books. You could call it southwest Asian. Maybe that's more accurate today, but, you know, this sort of between Egypt, you know, around the Mediterranean, up to this area, this whole area, it had its own, you could say cosmology, you know, it's other world, it's it's inner spiritual sciences. It had all this stuff. So I don't find that he necessarily had to go east in order to get. This, although, of course, you see there's, there's, there's a complication here which complicates that whole question. One is that the Apostle Thomas, who I mentioned earlier about the book of Thomas, the name Thomas in Greek, actually means twin. So apparently Thomas looked like a twin of Jesus, and he did go to India. There's no question. So, I mean, when I say there's no question, this is reported in some of the early gospels as well, the ones that didn't make the cut, and there is a tomb to some person in Kashmir that is supposed to be Jesus, but could be Thomas, actually,

Alex Ferrari 50:46
That would be after the but that would be after the crucifixion, not before,

Neil Douglas Klotz 50:50
Correct! That would be after.

Alex Ferrari 50:52
So we'll get, we'll get, we'll get the after in a second,

Neil Douglas Klotz 50:56
Yeah, but the after, well, yeah, the before. I, I think, I think Egypt is much more likely that whole area,

Alex Ferrari 51:02
From what I've heard, I have friends of mine who traveled to Egypt, and they actually take people to where he stayed, that there's a there's a space, there's a place, you know, where he can go and see where Jesus slept, and all of that kind of stuff. And it's a story, I mean, it's revered for centuries this place. Yeah, have you heard the same thing?

Neil Douglas Klotz 51:24
I have heard the same thing. Yeah. I haven't been there, but I have heard the same thing.

Alex Ferrari 51:27
But the question I have is, and then the Dalai Lama did say that their historical, there is some sort of historical documents stating that he did go to Tibet again. It's neither here nor there. We don't know, yeah, but what I'm curious about is why, and I think you answered it, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. Why in India is Jesus so revered as a great yogi, as a great prophet, as a great master? I mean, there's still, to this day, giant pictures of Jesus all around India, and in a time where, I mean, it wasn't a bunch of Christians knocking on doors saying, Have you heard of Have you heard of Jesus Christ? I mean, you know, it wasn't that kind of, you know, ministry that got there and did that. They look at Jesus completely different, and not from a Western lens at all.

Neil Douglas Klotz 52:21
My own personal take is that it's still from this early, you know, post this early Jesus movements that spread along the Silk Road and shared stories of him, things like this. I mean, you will find, I think it's in China somewhere, or in western China, you know, a statue that says in Aramaic underneath it, Yeshua. This is some ancient statue. It looks like Lao Tzu, actually. So it doesn't mean Lao Tzu didn't exist, but it means that, you know, different people understood this great being in different ways. And mostly what was what was told along the Silk Road were stories of Jesus. He did this, he did that. He did, you know, did the other thing, all of that. So it's, it's possible that he could have gone because the distances were not that terrible in those days. But I would say, again, judging from what he's giving in all these gospels, including the so called non canonical ones, the ones that are not accepted. I don't find anything that generally arises out of, you know, outside of this, you know, what I call native Middle Eastern traditions.

Alex Ferrari 53:30
So let me ask you about another, another part of the Jesus story. That is, it can be contested, though it's actually be being contested more and more nowadays, which is the the crucifixion, and because there are so many stories of Jesus traveling after the crucifixion, that the concept of the resurrection, the language in the translation, is actually different. Now, he could have been crucified, but he could have, might not have died on the cross, brought down, and the resurrection is it's misunderstood in the concept of the wording, what have you heard? What in your research? What do you find in that?

Neil Douglas Klotz 54:11
Yeah, I've read all that too, Alex. And there's a controversial passage in the Quran that is, you know, the book of the Muslims, where it says, basically, you know, the Judeans, the people who lived in Judah, people who lived in the area of Judah at that time, they thought they killed. They thought they crucified, or they thought they killed Jesus, but they didn't. Now that you can interpret that three different ways. One is that they they thought they killed them, right? One, they thought they killed him, you know, and others that they thought they killed him, so, but all these are possible ways. So, yeah, again, this notion of the the tomb of Jesus in Kashmir in northern India, you know, this is used sometimes to support this notion that that he. Did somehow escape. For me, I've, like, I say, I've read all the stuff about this. For me, it doesn't matter that much, actually, because this Jesus that was resurrected, that I'm supposed to believe in all these thoughts about that's not the real Jesus for me. Anyway, you know this, this Jesus is, you could say, an example of what we can be. We can be if we connect to this bigger part of our being, this bigger part of ourself.

Alex Ferrari 55:25
What I find fascinating is what you're saying is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that basically the life of Jesus, up until what we know, as far as the timeline when he was supposedly crucified and died, he basically had already done his work here. What happens afterwards, whether he died on the cross and was resurrected, whether he went off to India, had kids with Mary Magdalene, and there's still a bloodline of Jesus, very Da Vinci Code style out there. It doesn't really matter, because after that moment, the teachings really, there was no more, there was nothing else. There's no other record of what he spoke about, at least we know of, or we've discovered. So really, his life during that period, up until the crucifixion, is really what we know as far as his teachings are concerned. Is that fair?

Neil Douglas Klotz 55:28
Yeah, yeah, I would say that's true, and there are still books being discovered a few years ago. I can't remember, in the last 10 years, the Gospel of Judas was discovered, if you've heard about that. And the Gospel of Judas seems to indicate that Judas was Jesus's chief disciple, if you believe it or not, and that and that Jesus wanted Judas to betray him because he felt his work was done, and so he went willingly. Interesting. Yeah, you can, you can look it up your your viewers can look all this stuff up online.

Alex Ferrari 56:50
But is that? Is that just Judas gaslighting us from, from, for me, he's like, shoot. I didn't, I didn't look I didn't turn out real good in the story. Let me write something really quick. Let's see if I can change this.

Neil Douglas Klotz 56:50
Well, if you look at the geopolitics of the time, Jesus would have been fine if he had just stayed in Galilee, you know, at North in the northern area, because Galilee was run under a different jurisdiction than it was down in Judah, where Jerusalem was. He didn't have to go to Jerusalem. He would have been perfectly safe in Galilee. No one would have bothered him. He could have preached, you know, to his heart's content, but he chose to go down there and make, you know, make trouble. You know, he overthrew the money, letters, Temple, you know, the the tables and the trail this stuff, and called out the corruption and all this stuff that got him into trouble. He didn't have to do that. So the notion that he went willingly to wherever, to whatever he went to, whether he actually was crucified or not, seems quite clear to me, even from the four gospels,

Alex Ferrari 57:49
One one Bible that gets talked about a lot, that actually has some original books that were taken out of the of the Vatican's version, which Is the Ethiopian Bible. What is your experience with the Ethiopian Bible, its translations and what's included? Because I know the what is the Book of Enoch is in the Is that true? The Book of Enochs inside of the

Neil Douglas Klotz 58:13
I believe so, yeah, I'm not totally up on the Ethiopian Bible, but yes, the Book of Enoch was an early book. There were at least three different books of Enoch that were originally they, they're, most people agree, I think, and I agree with them that today, they're before Jesus, when they were written down. But they sort of indicate they, they point to some figure coming that would be, how would we say, someone that would bring us all together, and that would bring all the worlds together, and, you know, and change things overnight. You know, create miracles. Do all this stuff. They don't point directly to Jesus. But the books of Enoch are very powerful, visionary books in themselves, if anyone wants to look those up. So but on the rest of the Ethiopian Bible, I can't comment. But yes, easily, any of these things, these things could have been included if there were hundreds of different books about Jesus. Why? Not even today we find in Ethiopian Christianity, you know, many things that look similar to an Aramaic speaking Christianity, the focus on nature, focus on sacred trees. You know, later you have in the Rastafarian tradition, then the notion the ya, the ja, you know, this is the particle of the sacred name. All these things are, are there? So, yeah, absolutely,

Alex Ferrari 59:39
In historically, I've heard this, and love to hear your thoughts on it, that the Buddha story of how he came, there's a lot of similarities that were pulled from at least, that's what they say. They pulled these ideas from it and incorporate them into Jesus's Bucha. Birth story or his creation story. There's, there's some things that align, that were like, Huh? Well, Buddhist came, Bucha was, what, 500 years before Christ. So these three, at least three, has something along those lines, yeah. So that there was some similarities while the when they were all in that room and putting the books together. They're like, we need to come up with something here. There's this other one that we found. We found this other story that that's good. Let's bring some of that in there. What have you heard? As far as that's concerned, in regards to the the original translations,

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:00:34
Personally, having studied a lot of Buddhism, I don't find much similarity to Bucha origin story. I mean, Bucha is born to wealthy parents. They try to shelter him from all the evils of the world. All of a sudden, he's exposed. He has a, you know, he has a depression, runs off, meditates, gets enlightened, all that lovely stuff. It's altered. It's all good. But Yeshu was, you know, origin stories, and actually his, you know, the death stories are much more coming out of this middle eastern sort of mythos where you have the dying god, all this stuff, you know, Inanna and damuzi, you know, these sorts of stories, I would say, are more impacting some of that mythic aspect of of the Jesus stories, the, you could say, the bookends, the birth stories, the, you Know, the death stories, all that stuff.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:21
Do you see is, do you see Jesus's message as inherently non dualistic? And does the Aramaic help us kind of see that?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:01:30
Yeah, I was just on a podcast with another group on the weekend in Finland about this. And yes, absolutely, there's what we would call real non dualism built into not only the language, but what Jesus is teaching. Now, it may not seem like that, but if you think even of the first line of his prayer that I mentioned, his words are Arun de Bush Maya, that was translated as our Father, which art in heaven, you can't get more dualistic than that, actually. But actually he's saying, you know, and this breath, this source, is coming into us like a breath, all the way into us, and then as it rises again into the heart, Shemaya, this heaven, realm that I mentioned before, the light, the sound, the vibration, they're spreading all around us. So even there, you don't have a being sitting on a throne somewhere, you have a much more profound view of the human in relationship to the seen and unseen worlds. And you I can go through chapter and verse for this stuff for another hour, if you want to. But even where he supposedly says, you know, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, and I am this and I am that, he doesn't say I am. You can't say I am an ancient Aramaic he's an ancient Native language. He says Ina, in a the I connected to the source of that. I that is my iness, my individuality connected to the source of that. So if I connect my individuality, my separateness, so to speak, to the source of that the gift of my individuality, then I'm on the then I'm on the path, then I'm finding the way, then that's giving me, that's giving me food, that's showing me the right way, all this lovely stuff.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:12
That's one of the things I had a problem with, with when with Christianity and with the dogma, is that Jesus, apparently, according to them, said that I am the God. I am the way I am. I but that doesn't make sense to me, because Jesus was, you know, you never walk around generally speaking and saying, I am the Messiah. I am the Son of God. I mean, no, it's not something that was, he would go around saying, he doesn't seem very Jesus like it seems very ego, egocentric, but he was more about, you have the power. You have the thing. Yeah, you know

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:03:52
He's saying, make, make this, make this connection. And then you'll know what I'm talking about, because in the Gospel of John, which is where all these occur, he's trying to give his students something that they can continue after an inner transmission will use the term that they can continue with after he's gone, because he knows he's leaving. That's quite clear in the Gospel of John. So you know my previous book to this current one that you were waving around revelations of the Aramaic Jesus, at least half of the book is about all these so called I Am statements and how they're grossly mistranslated and misinterpreted.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:25
Did Jesus's teachers encouraged the direct experience of the Divine as opposed to relying on a religious institution? Because was there religious institutions at his time?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:04:36
No, no, he definitely would not be about relying on an institution or organization or something like that, the direct experience, yes, and because there are other worlds, intermediary worlds, you can he's saying toward the end of the Gospel of John, look, when I after I've gone and I've dropped my body, you can connect with me in the inner world. Is, and I will help show you the way. But you don't keep connecting to me. You you go through me, you know, you don't stop with me. You keep I will help you at a certain point, and then you're on your own. And this is translating a large part of the Gospel of John, rather casually. But as I say, people can read my books if they want to get into the, you know, the letters and the words about all this stuff.

Alex Ferrari 1:05:22
Did Jesus, in any of his teachings, ever discuss prophecy of humanity's soul, humanity's consciousness, for in the future, or anything like that? Did he ever mention anything like that?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:05:35
He seems to me, Alex, he seems to indicate, because of when he comes and who he's talking to, and all of this he seems to be saying. And I'm again, I'm taking, for what it's worth, look, humanity is gradually develop a more developing in a more individualized sense of self. It didn't have that at his time. As I said, the whole notion of an individual consciousness was just starting. It was just arising for maybe 100 or so years before that, for 100,000 years before that, or 10,000 years before that, humanity had very little sense of an individual consciousness. It was like we were embedded in nature. You can, you can look at the at the actual words in ancient languages and come up with this, the fact that breath and spirit are the same word in many languages, not just Aramaic, but in Latin. In You know, there's Xi. In the Chinese, there's prana, you know, all the whole notion that my breath and that whatever that is, are co extensive means that we we could not have had such a separate sense of self as we do now, we could not have felt so separate, so isolated. Now, not to say that your family or group that you were embedded in was necessarily a, you know, a happy family. It not, wasn't like that at all. But there was much less individual sense of self, and there was much more awareness, as I mentioned previously, that there are other worlds. There are other beings in the unseen world to whom we can connect in a healthy way, some in an unhealthy way, things like that. So Yeshua seems to be saying to me, Look, this is all happening. And here's the prescription I'm giving you, connect your small self to the source of that which comes as a gift when you're born and try to find your way back. Find your way back directly Ina. Ina, he talks about, that's what was translated as, I am this, I am that, and all the other things. So he seems to say, you know, look humanity, you know, you're heading toward this place where it's you're going to feel really separate, and that people are going to generally believe that only in the material world exists, which is where we are now. So he did say, so he did say, Well, this is, this is me saying that. Okay, you say, this is where we are now. But this, you can find, I find this in his teachings that he's pointing towards this time and saying, look, here's a prescription. Remember, you know, remember the essence of what I'm saying. So maybe now we can actually rediscover what he was really saying, rather than what the church was telling us.

Alex Ferrari 1:08:08
Do you believe that there is kind of this revolution in the sense of Jesus's true teachings people have, I mean, are leaving organized religion by the millions every day now, people are just not buying it as much as they were before, and they're looking for alternative ideas that that they're looking for their own. They don't want to be told what to do. They want to find themselves what is used for them, and they're not like because when I was growing up. When you were growing up, it was the institution that told you what to believe where now our your generation, my generation, and definitely the generations coming in behind us, the younger generation, they are not having it at all. They're just like, No That makes no sense whatsoever, because there's so much information, so much connection to the world through the internet and so on. So do you believe that there is this kind of golden age, if I may coin what you said earlier, this kind of this golden age of Jesus's teachings, and not only Jesus's, but many other Muhammad's teachings and and all these other great prophets that came before, their true teachings that have not been completely hijacked by these institutions. And looking back to the core of these ideas,

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:09:28
Yeah, there's no question. I agree completely. Alex, you know, more and more people write to me on email, or, you know, whatever, and they're having, you know, say, downloads from Jesus. You know, they're having visions of Jesus. You know, beyond any institution, anything like this. You have, you know, groups studying things like the Course in Miracles, which is a good example. So more and more of this is happening as more and more people are leaving the so could say the programmed institutions that. Very clear. So yes, perhaps we are in a position to be able to find the second coming in each other and all around us, rather than look for some, you know, some guy to come, you know, riding in on a blazing horse or whatever, and save us all.

Alex Ferrari 1:10:20
And one more thing I wanted to ask you the Gnostics. Can you talk to me a little bit about the Gnostics and what their part in this giant tapestry of Jesus's story and his teachings are?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:10:33
Well, that's a big now, that's another big subject, but I'll keep it short, what scholars call Gnostics has to be challenged, because strictly speaking, and most of the so called Gnostic Gospels don't fit this profile. Strictly speaking, Gnosticism has a really clear split between good and evil, good God, bad God, you know, at the beginning, and it was a mess, and this and the other thing, and that is a real tradition. But say, Gospel of Thomas, gospel of Philip, gospel of Mary Magdalene, they don't adhere to this, this formula at all. I just call them alternate stories of people who remembered what Jesus said and did. So it's not really about it's not really about that. But yes, all these, these different books are very valuable. So with all due respect, you know, one of my colleagues, Elaine Pagels, who wrote this book called The Gnostic Gospels, most of these gospels were not strictly speaking Gnostic in the way that it's viewed today.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:34
It what I've discovered in this conversation Neil, is that there's so many different this tapestry of Jesus's life and his teachings is so vast, and it's not as simple as the small little window that we were shown in the in the Western Christian Roman idea of it is much bigger. And I invite everyone listening to do their own research, to go in and really it does behoove you, if you are believing in in these things, to find out the truth about it and not just accept what people are telling you, including what you and I have been saying in this conversation. If it's something ring true, do your own research. See where you go down. Go down these roads, because if it's something that you believe in truly, why not do the research? That's why I'm always that's why I love doing the show. I'm so curious about things, and I want to dive deep, and I want to go in there, and based on what everyone has told me, and everyone had I've spoken to in my own personal research, I paint my own image of Jesus, oh Yeshua, and his teachings and how they affect me in my own life, as I do with you know, Baba Ji, from that tradition in in the Vedic Yogi philosophy, yogic philosophies, the Taoist philosophies, and Confucianism, all, all of those things are different avenues that I've put into My own tapestry of belief, of what we're at. So I would you agree that people should be doing this

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:13:06
Absolutely. Again, if I can quote Jesus, which is what I've been doing this saying that was usually translated, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. It's not some truth that you're supposed to believe, or some concept he uses the word for truth, which is a form of the word Shra to get, which means you could say the truth that your own heart reveals, because the heart is between these two big cell, you know, the big self, and our small self. The heart is between. If your heart will show you the right direction, that's the truth. It's our inner GPS, as I call it, and that will free you. Then you're free to walk your own path, whatever it may be. Find the Allies you need, find the you know, find the wisdom you need. That's, I think, is his clear message.

Alex Ferrari 1:13:50
Now, Neil, I'm going to ask you a few questions. Ask all my guests, what is your definition of living a fulfilled life?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:13:56
For me, living a fulfilled life is doing what I love to do, which is part this is part of it, and it took me a hell of a long time to get there. Even though I've been doing this for 40 plus years, I was doubting all the way 50 years close to now. So, you know, a life where continually I'm learning new things. I'm learning to love differently, you know, and I'm learning what I need to let go of at this stage in my life. So I'll travel on a bit, you know, a bit more lightly with less burdens.

Alex Ferrari 1:14:27
If you had a chance to go back in time and speak to little Neil, what advice would you give him?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:14:31
Follow that light that you see there exactly. I'll tell you a story. I don't know if we have time, but I'll tell you a quick story. Okay, so I had a light in my bedroom, you know, not, not an incandescent light. This was the light that appeared at night to me for somewhere. And you know, like all children, I'm afraid of the dark. But there was a light in my room, and it wasn't from any light from the outside or inside or like this. And so somehow I associated it with Jesus. And you. Because my parents were taking us to church to give us a normal cover story. At that time, I bought a, you know, a glow in the dark Jesus to put in my room, because I thought, Well, that'll help. But it wasn't bright enough, you know, it wasn't as bright as the light I was seeing. So I put it on top of incandescent light, you know, and it and it melted. Because, you know, I was trying to make him brighter, you know, that's all I was trying to make be brighter, you know, my parents, you know. And so I threw the whole thing in the waste basket. The waste basket caught on fire. And, you know, what can I tell you, my parents did? My parents actually, somehow, God loved them, or goddess loved them. They weren't that bothered. Because, you know, I told you what kind of family I came from, and yeah, it's fine, you know, don't do that again. So I don't know if that means if you meet Jesus on the road, you should melt him or not. But

Alex Ferrari 1:15:52
Fair enough. How do you define God or Source?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:15:56
I define God or source as something that is all around me and also in the unseen world, it's basically reality, such as it is, with a capital R. I can't, you know, the if I personalize God in any sense, it would just be in the form of the people that I've known that have radiated that sort of light, or that sort of, you know, bigger sense of self, who have been inspirations for me, but they're not God. I mean, they're just doorways.

Alex Ferrari 1:16:24
What is love?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:16:25
Love is is both an unconditional radiation that comes through involuntarily from me, like a birthing energy that Jesus calls racham. But then also, love is this slow patient, step by step, getting to know a person you know, sort of building up a fire from twigs and branches and little leaves and stuff and so gradually, gradually, gradually, this builds from, perhaps tolerance to respect and perhaps to friendship and then to some something, sort of deeper relationship, sort of love for me that those are the Those are the loves that I experienced in my life.

Alex Ferrari 1:17:02
And what is the ultimate purpose of this life?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:17:05
The ultimate purpose is you know, know yourself, but know your but know yourself with love. In other words, just knowledge won't do the whole thing. There has to be love there too. And if you do that, that'll teach you everything you need to know.

Alex Ferrari 1:17:23
And Neil, there's one other question I forgot to ask you, and it's a question that's been I loved, love, love to hear what you found. Does Jesus ever speak of reincarnation in any of the research you've done?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:17:36
He indicates reincarnation, and around him, people ask questions that indicate reincarnation. For instance, even in one of the four Gospels, Jesus says to his students, who do? People say, I am and they say, well, you're Moses reborn, or you're this reborn, or this. So there's clearly a notion of rebirth at that time, maybe not in the eastern sense, in the way they've uh, organized reincarnation, but in some sense that some part of a previous being can come and inhabit a being in this world. So I would say yes, there is some clear indication of a life before birth where there is some sort of sorting out process.

Alex Ferrari 1:18:18
And was that kind of X out of the Bible that we had, was there a version of the Bible that had Jesus talking about this or these indications, because it's any it's still a little bit in there, like, there's a couple of little phrases and things that kind of snuck in.

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:18:31
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's in there. Also, I think that people at that time took it so much for granted that this was the case, that he didn't need to talk about it that much. If you remember that at some point they go up on this mountain with a few people. And you know, all these beings appear, you know, this so called Transfiguration, all this lovely stuff, and and these beings are absolutely real. They're standing there as real as as Jesus is. And you know, the disciples just want to stay there because it's so great. So they've been taking in, they've already been taken into this other realm where these beings are still living. As I was saying, there's still these ancestors are still there, and they can inspire people today. So you know, if you read all of this together, it's very consistent with an ancient sort of, we'd say, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern view of reincarnation.

Alex Ferrari 1:19:22
Neil, where can people find out more about you? Pick up your your latest book, The Aramaic Jesus, yes, and and find out more about you.

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:19:30
Well, that latest book, just to have a shameless plug, this is Aramaic for people who don't want all the words, but they want sort of a thought a day and to, you know, unpack some of the most important things from Jesus. What does he have to say for our life, for our problems today? So it's my most Inside Out book. My other books start with certain sayings of Jesus, and they go through word by word, letter by letter, if you need that. Long story short, yes, my website is really the best place to get in contact with me. Also, I have a Facebook page, but that's about it. So the website, a, b, w, o, o, n.org, abwoon.org

Alex Ferrari 1:20:05
It just rolls off the tongue. Just rolls.

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:20:07
It does indeed.

Alex Ferrari 1:20:13
Do you have any parting messages for the audience?

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:20:15
Find that truth that's deep into deep in your heart. You know, go back, not just into the surface of the heart, which is where the thoughts are. This is according to Jesus, because the Aramaic doesn't have a word for mind. It only has a word for heart. Go into the out of the surface of your heart, into its depths, and you will find that truth. It'll show you the right direction that heart's GPS. You know what experience to lead to next? You know what am I supposed to listen to online? You know, notice your breath, notice your heart. That'll show you all you need to know.

Alex Ferrari 1:20:47
Neil, it has been such a pleasure talking to you today. I could talk to you for another hour or two. This is like you know, as you know, one of my favorite conversations to have, and I appreciate you and all the work that you're doing to help bring the truth of Jesus's teachings out into the world and help awaken this planet. So I appreciate you, my friend.

Neil Douglas Klotz 1:21:06
Thanks, Alex. Anytime, take care. Good luck to you also.