“When or if Jesus [of Nazareth] said anything, he said it in Aramaic.”
--Neil Douglas-Klotz,
Aramaic Scholar
“You shall know the truth and
the truth will set you free.”
--John 8:32, King James English translation from Latin
“If you find a light emanating from the heart,
it will lead you in the right direction.
You’ll know what to hold on to and
what to release.”
--John 8:32, English translation of the original Aramaic
Jesus of Nazareth, like the Yoga teachers of old, spoke in a language that was
rooted in nature and natural experience. Jesus (“Yeshua” in Aramaic, a Semitic
language) came from a time when knowledge and truth were rooted in nature.
Everything was connected to everything else. There was an awareness of the
unity of the physical and spiritual worlds. That unity was connected to breath.
Breath was the life source of the person. Therefore, the Creative Force of Nature
was also Breath, a holy Universal Breath.
So, too, the early scholars of the Sankhya Yoga tradition connected everything to
nature. The believed that the Divine spoke through and lived in Nature, called
“prakriti.” They spoke in Sanskrit, an Indo-European language. Sanskrit’s reality
was connected to breath and the unity one experiences when one breathes that
breath of life which is called “prana.” Nature was the feeding ground for truth in
their worldview. Most of the yoga postures (“asanas”) were modeled after
animals.
Going back to those original languages gives us a rootedness in Christianity and
in the Yoga that is not easily found in our Western way of life.
In the original Christian Aramaic “Lord’s Prayer,” the “Our Father who art in
Heaven” line refers to the Creator’s breathing of life into the universe and in
humans and is not referring to gender at all. It is referring to the constant
“energizing,” creating of Reality that constantly pervades all of life. In Yeshua’s
teaching, he is helping us get in touch with that “fathering-mothering” Reality in
our lives.
When the Middle Eastern people use the word “abba,” like Yeshua did in talking
of the Source of his life, he was not talking about a male being in the sky. The
Aramaic root of abba is “AB.” It “points to a movement of initiating a process,
going out, searching” (Neil Douglas-Klotz). In Sanskrit, it is similar to the active
nature of the breath that comes from our right nostril, called “pingala.”
The Aramaic word “amma,” which was used for mothers, has the root “AM” and
“points to a movement of receiving and completing something, finding,
gathering” (Neil Douglas-Klotz). It is similar to the passive aspect of our breath
that comes from our left nostril which is called “ida” in Sanskrit.
Both of these are united in our human body, giving us life and balance.
According to Yoga, they are the channels (“nadis”) which vitalize our entire
physical, mental and spiritual being. Often the ida and pingala are given gender
labels, like the “yin/yang” in the Chinese world of Taoism. However, when Jesus
talked about his “abba,” he was referring to the active agent in his life, not a male
being. In the Aramaic world, humans were a union of active and passive
movements, not maleness or femaleness. Humans are a wholeness of those
energetic movements. Western people have separated that wholeness according
to one’s biology.
What does this mean for us?
For Christians, Jesus may be telling us, through his cultural way of relating to
Reality, something that will help us connect with Our Creator. We are constantly
living in the Presence of the Divine just by breathing. Every breath is a
connection of the Universal Breath (“ruha”)with our individual breath
(“naphsha”). It is a unifying of our soul and physical self. We, especially when
we consciously breathe and acknowledge the Divinity while breathing, are
praying the “Lord’s Prayer.”
Saying the first line of Yeshua’s Aramaic prayer, “Abwun d’bashmaya”--“Oh
breathing, fathering-mothering (parenting) of the Cosmos” (Neil Douglas-Klotz),
can with a one-pointed, meditative frame of mind bring us into contact with the
Divine Source of Life. It is connecting us, through our natural, daily breathing, to
our Ultimate Parent, the Ultimate Reality, that Christians in the West call “Father.”
What a wonderful way to understand how God is with us all the time and how God
is not a patriarch, a male with a beard, in the sky! The implications are wonderful
for Christianity and Yoga.
I bow to the divinity within you!
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