Articles

 

Genesis Now!

The Story that Jews, Christians and Muslims Still Share

by Neil Douglas-Klotz October 2003

Middle Eastern Peace and the “Sound Bite” Culture:
On Tour in the USA with The Genesis Meditations

by Neil Douglas-Klotz March 2004

 

While everyone watches anxiously as tumultuous world events unfold on our television screens, we all wonder if there will ever be peace in the Middle East. In response to this collective call for cultural, political, and spiritual resolution, Neil Douglas-Klotz delivers his latest book. The Genesis Meditations is a peace anthology of hope-filled spirituality and practice from the scriptures and mystics of all three religions springing from the Middle East-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Douglas-Klotz traces Creation Mysticism in the Kabbalah, Sufism, and his new translations of the Gospel of Thomas to show how it was carried by early Jewish, Islamic, and Christian mystics alike. Centuries of misinterpretation have veiled these "meditations on creation" to the point that agnostics consider the stories irrelevant myths and religious fundamentalists consider them scientific fact. By decoding the creation stories shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, Douglas-Klotz reveals a practical spirituality that focuses on sacred beginnings, instead of apocalyptic endings and that is perfectly suited to modern everyday life. Furthermore, he expands his popular Aramaic interpretations of Jesus to answer the question, "How did Jesus probably meditate?"

Then he links all of these discoveries with the readers' own needs for renewal by guiding them, step by step, in the spiritual practice of the early mystics. In this way, he uncovers the one meditative practice that might unite Christians, Jews, and Muslims in a common understanding to the benefit of all.

Neil Douglas-Klotz, Ph.D., is a world-renowned scholar in religious studies and psychology, an established author/translator, and a leader in the International Sufi Movement. American by birth, he lives in Edinburgh, Scotland where he co-directs the Institute for Advanced Learning and Conscious Living. His previous publications include Prayers of the Cosmos, Desert Wisdom, and The Hidden Gospel.


For more information, please contact Nicole Krier by telephone at (630) 665-0130 ext. 355, via fax at (630) 665-8791, or online at questmarketing@theosmail.net.


NEIL DOUGLAS-KLOTZ, Ph.D., formed an interest in language, spirituality, the body, and ecological justice early in life. In many ways, he has been pursuing these interests ever since. After graduation from college in 1973, he pursued a career as a journalist in the fields of social justice, environmentalism, and consumer protection. He soon returned to the topics he studied in college that centered on the body and changes of attitude and behavior, mystical and expanded states of consciousness, and the early pre-religious roots of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

He pursued some of this study academically through the University of California, Berkeley, seeking out teachers from the native traditions of the Middle East, Pakistan, and India who exposed him to other modes and methods of learning, like body-oriented spiritual practices. Beginning in 1976, he studied with the early students of the American Hebrew/Sufi mystic Samuel L. Lewis, who introduced him to the body prayer meditations called the Dances of Universal Peace. One phase of this intense period of study led him on a three-month pilgrimage in 1979 to sacred sites and teachers in Turkey, Pakistan, and India.

In 1982, he founded the International Network for the Dances of Universal Peace (now based in Seattle, WA), a multi-cultural resource center for those who utilize the arts as their forum for both peace demonstration as well as spiritual practice. Over the past 15 years, he has been actively involved in leading educational exchanges and citizen diplomacy trips with the Dances to Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and to the Middle East. From 1986 until 1996, he served as a faculty member of the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality and as a member of the core faculty since 1990.

He currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he co-directs the Edinburgh Institute for Advanced Learning, an interdisciplinary research institute that explores the boundaries of psychology, religious studies, and culture. He also sits on the board of the Edinburgh International Center for World Spirituality, which was involved in the nearly successful bid to host the World Parliament of Religions in 2004. In addition, he is active in the work of the American Academy of Religion and in 2002 was elected chair of their mysticism group.

Presently, he is working on a collaborative research/ book project with Rabbi Arthur Waskow, focusing on the stories of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar as shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.


For more information, please contact Nicole Krier of Quest Books by telephone at (630) 665-0130 ext. 355, via fax at (630) 665-8791, or online at questmarketing@theosmail.net.