Aramaic Toning
Aramaic Toning
Paramahansa Yogananda
From the book “Cosmic Chants”
[Self-Realization Fellowship – Los Angeles, CA]
Guidance on the Path
Be open in the experience and
allow the sounds to birth through you.
End in silence and remain aware of the harmonic reverberations dancing throughout your
body temple!
For basic toning, allow the experience itself to be your “warm up”. However, if you feel
that you may be working toward some wide-open, full-on intonations, do remember to take
sufficient time to work your way toward the stronger toning. It does not take much to
strain the vocal cords by getting too intense too quickly.
aye as in “bay”
ee as in “sleep”
eye as in “eye”
oh as in “no”
oo as in “you”
ma as in “mama”
gah as in “god”
shhh as in “sheep”
Silent Toning
Abwoon
ܐܒܘܢ
Nwba
nwba
“Our Father”
“Our One, Absolute Eternal Being, through which we are borne forth”
“The Whole One burst open as blessing within Itself to expand through its conscious connection [within
Itself] as its own multiplicity of manifestations [within Itself]”
Suggested Toning:
ah–bwoon
ah-woon
ah-oon
Abwoon, or ah-oon as I most often tone it, is the Aramaic word that I most often begin
my toning circles with because it embodies a vibrational quality that is immediately felt as it
is being toned. There is simply no denying it. Abwoon sets a strong base of presence upon
which the remainder of an experiential gathering can be built. Abwoon feels great and is easily
the word that I tone most often throughout my day. I also often begin my talks with a group
toning of abwoon to open our hearts and set the space for what is to come.
In my gatherings, I often use abwoon to help illuminate how we can reveal layers of
meaning within a sacred word. Abwoon is the first word of the Aramaic “Lord’s Prayer” from
the gospels of Mattai and Luqa (Matthew and Luke). This prayer is also commonly referred
to as the “Our Father” because of its beginning “Our Father who art in Heaven” in common
translations. Abwoon is the Eternal Wellspring of Life Itself and the presence of true
wholeness which creates and gives birth from, into and through the expansive force of Alaha
– The One, Absolute, Only, Eternal Being. Abwoon consistently births anew from absolute to
manifest.
The common colloquial meaning of abwoon is simply “Our Father”. Not much magic
there, but it does summon up the awareness of a parental figure through which we are born.
In fact, Dr. Rocco Errico translates abwoon as “Our Parent”. The aleph bet or “ab” sound means
“father” or “parent” or “source” and the waw nun letter combination – the sound oon – means
“everyone” or “all”. An example would be the word touveyhoun, translated at the beginning of
each of Yeshua’s beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew as “blessed are” or, more accurately
“blessed are all of you”. The oon suffix is the meaning of “all of you are”. So we have the literal
“Our Father”.
The letter aleph at the beginning of abwoon means “everything”, “all” or “all exists within
the rooted strength of one single, unity or process”. Literally, only one. The second beyt letter signifies
an appearance of an “inside and outside” and a “bursting open as its own blessing”. Of course, when
viewed in harmony with the first aleph, this “bursting open as its own blessing” is happening within
itself. The third waw letter represents action, much like the ing suffix in English. Its ancient
meaning is “pins”, “spine”, “replication” and “multiplicity”. The waw sound signifies a process of
a fractal expansion, much like the outward radiation of light rays from the center point of
the sun. The final letter nun represents the “connection” or “completion of a circle” as well as the
“neck connected to the head or outermost edge of an expansion”, as in the multiplicity of all
manifestation.
Ra
ܪܐ
Ar
ar
Suggested Toning:
rah
Toning the ancient sound ra is one of the most expansive, opening experiences that I
have ever felt while toning. When toning this word, you may very likely feel a very strong,
pronounced, expansive energetic “opening” in the third eye and crown chakras. This is due,
I believe, not only to the power of the sounds themselves, but also as part of the intimate
relationship of our energy bodies to the wide-open vibrational quality of the ra sound.
Ra is a very ancient tone in a multitude of languages that signifies a “shining forth of heat
and light”. It was one of the Egyptian words for “sun” as well as a reference to the only-
begotten the sun god of Egypt. The solar messiah philosophy was ultimately merged with
the mythic sun god Horus, circa 3000 BC, who was also called the “only begotten son of God”.
Horus, who was born of the virgin Isis-Mary, was also known as Ra.
Ra was one of the most often toned sounds in the mystery schools of ancient Egypt.
We know this because implicit instructions for doing so are etched into ancient temple walls,
as well as recorded in numerous texts. This simple, yet energetically rich tone was consciously
drawn up the central pillar, or chakra system throughout the process of tantric energetic alchemy.
Yeshua spoke in Chapter Three of the Gospel of John about Moses having “raised up the
serpent in the desert”. The ancient Aramaic word translated in John 3:14 as “desert” is
pronounced mid-bar. Yeshua raised the serpent, known in Sanskrit as kundalini, up the mid-
bar. The Aramaic word for serpent is khooyah, which means “energy force” or “life energy.”
The Gnostic text of The Gospel of Mary, also known as The Gospel According to Mary
Magdalene, references the secret teaching of drawing awareness up through the “powers” or
“energies” of the life temple. Mary even details the energetic quality of each of the seven
chakras when they are shut down and not “speaking freely”. These seven unopened energy
centers were translated as daimonia, or “demons” in Koine Greek.
In chapter sixteen of the Aramaic Gospel of Mark, the words used for what was
translated into Greek as “cast out seven demons” is shabea sheadeyn apeq. Shabea is the Aramaic
word for the number seven. Apeq means “to stimulate or exercise the movement of” and sheadeyn,
translated as “devils” or “demons” means a “restricted energy, force or spirit”. This almost comical
misunderstanding of the seven unopened energy centers of the body has incited four dozen
versions of the “seven deadly sins or vices”, as many religious authorities have exercised a
tremendous amount of artistic license for nearly 2,000 years. In fact, many bibles end with
Chapter Fifteen of the Gospel of Mark, deleting Chapters 16 through 21 completely.
The ra tone is by far the most intensively profound tone for opening the energy centers
of the body temple. Words that end with the sound ra or ah are some of the most powerfully
transformational and “socket frying” of all tones. Try toning ra and see for yourself!
Rakhma
ܪܚܡܐ
Amxr
amir
“Merciful”, “Mercy”,”Friend”
“A shining forth of conscious light and heat birthing from the inner womb of being”
“From its own [head] to its leading edge [head] encompassing the great,
flowing expanse within the wholeness of Itself”
Suggested Toning:
rah–mah
rakh-mah
[also try ab-rah-kham]
Rakhma is the all-Embracing love for another. Rakhma is a realization that what we
call “love” is not a commodity or “thing” which can be given or taken, but rather what we
ARE when living and communicating from the deepest spaciousness within our being.
Rakhma is the all-encompassing, all-embracing Love which flows forth from the Center Point
of one’s True Being.
I could quite easily write on and on for pages about the incredibly deep, multi-layered
nuances of meaning in the deeply experiential term rakhma. I have been told by native
Assyrian Aramaic Christians that rakhma is the most precious jewel of wisdom, love and
consciousness that must be guarded vigilantly, though they do not know “what it is”. We
know rakhma not by its factual, academic colloquial definitions but rather by the radiance of
its expanding light within the deepest recesses of our being.
Rakhma is the dancing vibrations of life essence that I felt when I first looked into the
eyes of my three children within seconds of their births as I held those living, breathing
beings of vibrant light in my arms. Rakhma is the palpable presence of conscious life threaded
within the midst of my beautiful mother’s passing life in her final moments here on earth.
Rakhma is the quaking, spiritually seismic shift in the energy field of a mother who, having
not seen her estranged child or loved one for many years, now comes into the direct
experience of embracing that child in her arms.
Rakhma is the shining presence of light and heat that radiates forth from the center
point of our true being in the moments following a true inner forgiveness process, when we
have literally “removed the root of our suffering” and, as a result, can perceive the presence of this
moment clearly. Though needing to define the most complex book-learned definitions of
rakhma would be a gross exposure of our spiritual immaturity, there is one thing that I do
know without reservation: Rakhma is the natural, ever expanding light of our true being.
Noohra
ܢܘܗܪܐ
Arhwn
arhwn
“Light”
“The connecting consciousness of its own expansion through the window from its source [head] to its leading
edge [head] within the wholeness of Itself”
Suggested Toning:
noo–rah
noo-h-rah
Noohra is the ancient Aramaic word representing the “conscious, reflective, feminine light of
human awareness”. Noohra is also the word for the feminine, reflective light of sahara – the
moon. In the ancient Semitic, as well as Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian and Phoenician
philosophies, the light of human consciousness is a feminine reflection of the light of God’s
son, just as the light of the moon is a feminine reflection of the light of shemsha – the physical
sun, commonly called “God’s sun” or the “only sun of God.” These were very common, everyday
outlooks on human awareness and our place within the one and only Light of Life Itself.
I often laugh at the uneducated, modern declaration of “I don’t believe in astrology because
I read the Bible!” My first response is “have you ever actually read the Bible?” Astrology is
everywhere, from beginning to end and everywhere in between, especially in the words
attributed to Yeshua. However, unlike the way astrology has developed largely in our present
times as an ideology or belief system, in ancient times the cosmology of the stars and planets
and celestial bodies and our place within it was not simply a mental credence, it was the way
of life itself.
With the sound noohra, we are adding the sound noo or new to the tone ra. Of course,
in English, new means “fresh” or “unique”. The intriguing insight we are offered here is that
the reflected light of the moon is not new or fresh at all, but in truth simply the reflected
light of the sun. The same can be said of human awareness and human light. Our
consciousness is in truth the reflected light of eternity itself. Again, “What you are looking for is
what is looking.”
Maria
ܡܪܝܐ
Ayrm
ayrm
“Lord”
Suggested Toning:
mah–ree-ah
Very few people realize that the 1611 King James term lord was created in medieval
England through feudalism and did not even exist during the time of Yeshua. In ancient
Aramaic culture, the word maria was used to recognize one who “shines a feminine spiritual light
from a place of strength” and was never a description of one person’s earthly power over another.
Another much more common, colloquial Aramaic word mari was also more of a term of a
endearment than the acknowledgement of a power person or lord in the sense that we often
think of it today. Being Jewish, Yeshua would also have used the term Adonai as well.
The primary Greek word for lord is kyrios, which was also a term used when speaking
of Zeus, the greatest of the Greek pantheon of Gods. Incidentally, the ancient Koine Greek
word Iesous, the source of the word “Jesus” in truth means “hail Zeus”. I will also admit that I
do shudder a bit when I hear someone say Jeshua, as there is no “J” sound in Aramaic. The
modern sounding of the letter J has in fact only been around since the year 1524 in ANY
language. It was then that Italian Renaissance grammarian Gian Giorgio Trissino made the
clear distinction between the English letters I and J, which up to that point had both been
more of a yah sound.
The co-dependent, medieval English feudal term hlāford ultimately became the now
common lord. Lord was widely used in the original 1611 “Authorized” King James Bible and
continues to be heavily used to this day. Few think about the significance of this word on
modern sensibilities, not to mention how far removed it is from its much more ancient
tonality and meaning. The feudal lord, or landowner, was also called the “bread giver” or the
“giver of life” by the peons, or general laborers within feudalism.
The ancient root sounds of ray, reya, reeah and aura all point toward an expanding
feminine, reflective light that is sensed more than seen. Much like the human aura or etheric
energy fields, we are speaking of a light that is not easily seen by the human eye, but rather
sensed through the open space of the mystical heart. The Greek word mystikol points toward
something that is directly experiential rather than only cognitively understood. The mar sound
connotes a firm bedrock of strength which exists in a state of absolute wholeness or holiness.
The etymology of the yah sound is hotly debated in scholarly circles. While some claim
that yah at the end of maryah points to “Yah”, or YHWH, many refute that claim in light of
the fact that the ya sound in maria is derived from the Hebrew/Aramaic letters yod and alef
rather than yod and hey, as yah is spelled. In either case, maria can be one of the most powerfully
opening tones of the ancient Aramaic words of Yeshua. I particularly love to vary the pitch
and intensity while toning maria, beginning lower and more gently before ultimately building
up to my higher registers with much more of a wide open, “peeling back the layers” quality,
before basking in an extended post-toning silence.
Rookha
ܪܘܚܐ
Axwr
aiwr
“Spirit”, “Wind”
“From its source [head] to its leading edge [head] fractally expanding
to encompass the wholeness of Itself”
Suggested Toning:
roo–ah
roo-khah
Rookha is/are the active, expansive forces within Alaha – the Absolute, Only Being.
The ancient Aramaic word rookha [Hebrew rooakh] is a feminine gendered term. Rookha was
translated into Greek as the gender-neutral pneuma and into Latin as the masculine spiritus.
Though this gender modification may not seem all that important on the surface, it is quite
significant. The neutered Greek pneuma would be much closer to the original feminine
Aramaic rookha than that of the masculine Latin spiritus. Pneuma is most often translated as
“spirit” or “breath”, though its ancient Koine Greek meaning is closer to “underlying substance
or force”.
Let’s look at a few examples of how changing the gender of a word in fact changes its
meaning. First, breathe out onto your forearm. What do you feel on your skin? Your breath,
right? Are you sure? What you feel on your arms is the masculine gendered Latin spiritus.
Masculine connotes something physical or manifest. Our modern idea of breath is something
that we can feel and perceive with our five senses. Thinking of breath in such as way could
also include the Greek term pneuma, or “underlying substance”, since pneuma is so elusively
defined and gender neutral.
One of the problems we have is that when we think of the words spirit and breath, we
think of two different things without realizing that the first century near Eastern mind had
not yet clearly divided these two perceptions as being somehow separate from each other.
Spirit is breath and breath is spirit. In fact, the Latin root inspire ultimately became the Old
French term inspiration, which found its way into modern English as “filling with spirit” and
“breathing”. These two separate breath and spirit terms are still somewhat connected, though
by gendering them masculine, we begin to view them as two different things.
The ancient Aramaic rookha is significantly subtler than this. In the ancient Aramaic
mind, what you felt on your arm was not breath, but rather hot air. Rookha is not a masculine,
manifest, physical thing, or breath as we think of it today, but rather our feminine perception of its
movement. Take a deep breath and really let this shift occur in your awareness. Rookha, or
“breath” in the ancient Aramaic sense, is not the hot air that we feel on our arm, but rather
our feminine, reflective perception of its “force” or movement!
Yeshua was not speaking of breath and spirit as only physical manifestations, but
rather of our perception of its expansion, retraction and movement. If we can be completely
honest about our modern western perception of spirit, even though we say with our words
that spirit is “not a thing”, deep in our beliefs, we continue to look for it with our physical
senses. We must realize that the first century near Eastern Semitic mind, and especially within
the Jesus teachings would not have artificially separated breath and spirit from each other.
The Khabouris Codex Foundation says that rookha represents “various invisible but
material forces such as wind, magnetism, and electricity” as well as “cosmic expansion”, “gravity” and
now “nuclear forces”. Herein lies the key to the realization of breath and spirit as our perception
of these eternal forces, rather than the forces themselves. Rookha applies to any elemental
force whose source is undetectable but has effects that can be detected through our senses.
A similar Hindu word would be prana.
Yeshua made this very clear when speaking to Nicodemus, a leader of the Judeans, in
the Gospel of John. I wrote earlier in Chapter 11 about the original Aramaic meaning of what
is erroneously referred to today as being “born again”. When viewed in its original language,
the phrase metelid man d’rish means born “from the first start”, “from the beginning”, “from the head
of” or “from the leading edge [head]”.
Several lines later, it is written that Yeshua said that if one is not born of what the
King James Bible translates as “water and spirit”, then he cannot “enter into the Kingdom of God”.
The Aramaic is much more deeply nuanced. The Aramaic word for “water” is maya, which
means not simply “water” but also “vast expanse”, as also used in the word shemaya, translated
as “heaven”, “sky” or “vast expanse.” The first letter in the word maya is mem literally means
“water” or “vast expanse” and the aya sound points toward something with no boundaries, i.e.
“no beginning or ending”, meaning everywhere or everything. Of course, the word maya is also a
Hindu and Buddhist word for “the ever-flowing world of liquid illusion”.
I have wondered how Yeshua would have spoken the word rookha if he did make this
statement. How would he say it to mean “spirit” in a way that Nicodemus would
comprehend? Do you honestly think that maybe Yeshua flailed his arms wildly in the air as
he said rookha to demonstrate our modern understanding of spirit? If you read the entirety of
John Chapter 3, you will very clearly see that Nicodemus was not the most spiritually awake
guy in the world.
I do not believe that Yeshua would have intended rookha as simply some sort of elusive
thing that we can’t quite get our arms around in our mental comprehension. I believe that
Yeshua very likely would have taken an obvious, intentional breath to drive his point home
in a way that even Nicodemus could not mistake. We must be born from the first start of the
great, flowing expanse (maya) and the eternal forces of all creation (rookha).
Yeshua went on to say that the “wind (rookha) blows where it will” and that we do not
know where it is coming from or where it is going to, though we can hear its “voice”, or
perceive its effects with our senses. He continued by saying “as it is for one who is born from
rookha”. Remember, breath and spirit were not yet two different, clearly defined “things”
back then, but rather the nuances of perception in one’s direct experience.
A great exercise to try is to take an old bible and everywhere you see the word “spirit”
in Yeshua’s teachings, cross it out with a pencil and write “breath” above it. This will give you
a much more accurate, directly experiential understanding of what the word rookha would
have represented in that time. It is not that it does not mean spirit but rather its more intimate
meaning of breath can be so much more profoundly actualized through one’s own conscious
experience. Breath is spirit and spirit is breath. Neither are masculine “things” but rather
feminine perceptions.
Ahmeyn
ܐܡܝܢ
Nma
nyma
“The strength of its own wholeness flows forth from the vast expanse
of its extension as itself consciously connected to itself”
Suggested Toning:
ah–main
ah–meen
The root sound iman is the primary word for “faith” in Arabic today. Iman has long
been thought to be derived from a Coptic Egyptian root sound, though deeper studies have
been revealing that the iman sound we have long thought was brought into Aramaic from
Coptic was very likely brought from ancient Aramaic into Coptic some time prior to what
has previously been believed.
The tri-consonant root of the letters alef, mem and nun – the amn sound – pivots upon
a meaning of “absolute”, “firm, rooted earth”, “rooted center”, “pivotal importance” and “cubit”. What
would be the common thread of meaning which runs through all four of these possible
definitions? They are all “absolute” in their observation! The firm, rooted earth beneath our
feet is absolute. The rooted center of a galilee – the ancient Aramaic and Hebrew word for
spinning wheel – is absolute. And how about cubit? Cubit was an absolute perception of
measurement, as in “this brick is absolutely one cubit”. The inherent quality of the word ahemyn
is that it is an affirmation of absoluteness, of a movement emanating from an absolute, true
rooted center.
Very few Christians have any awareness that the word ultimately translated in the King
James Bible as “verily” or “assuredly” was in truth the Aramaic word ahmeyn. It is written that
Yeshua would say ahmeyn before statements that he was seeking to create a “fertile root” into
someone’s perception with the statement he was about to make. Of course, placing ahmeyn
at the end of Aramaic and Hebrew prayers goes back long before the lifetime of Yeshua.
Even more revealing to what Yeshua may have been seeking to convey is that the ancient
Aramaic texts show that Yeshua would often say ahmeyn twice before making a statement of
affirmation to drive his words even deeper into the fertile, rooted earth center of his listener’s
memory and awareness.
Why ahmeyn was so profoundly diluted in the King James Bible as simply “verily” or
“assuredly” is anyone’s guess. Verily is derived from the 14th century Middle English word
verray, meaning simply “certainly”. Assuredly, also a 14th century Middle English word, has the
same meaning. Coming into a deeper relationship with the realization that Yeshua was in
truth saying ahmeyn, ahmeyn can help open our hearts to a much more experiential, inner
experience of many of his deepest affirmations within his teachings. We would be much
closer with the words “sealed within and through the absolute, rooted ground of being”.
As an even more telling sign, in the places where we are told that he simply said “verily,
verily, I say to you”, what is written on the page is ahmeyn ahmeyn amar. Amar does not mean
simply “say”, as in flippantly and casually saying a word, but rather affirm. In those cases, he
was not flippantly saying “Assuredly I say to you” or “Verily, verily, I say to unto you”, but much
more accurately ahmeyn ahmeyn amar – “I am absolutely affirming to you”. Christians need to know
this, but unfortunately, many are so locked within the restrictive ideologies of the seemingly
safe structures of their religious belief systems that they may never hear the beauty of what
the Yeshua teachings were actually seeking to express to us through the ancient Aramaic
tongue.
Iman, meaning “from this fertile, rooted Earth–Center or ground of being”, is much like a
linguistic “ring around the rosy”. We can recall the game so many of us played as a child as we
pressed a stick straight into the ground and then danced around that earth-rooted pivot in a
joyful circle. We can awaken the ever-enriching depth of our human experience of life by
keeping the rooted, fertile earth beneath us central in our awareness as we dance around that
still point in our day to day lives.
Let’s try an experiment with toning the word amen. Begin with the sound ay-men, with
the “a” pronounced like the “a” in base and the mehn sounding just like the word men. Tone
the ay-mehn sound once, while paying close attention to not only the quality of the sound and
how it feels, but also to the shape of your face and mouth as you make the sound. How does
that feel? As I have said numerous times in this book, there are no right and wrong answers
to this experiment. What is of central importance is that we cultivate the experience of
openness to experience the sound that we are toning in its purest essence, away from any
agreed upon “definitions” of the word. Try it one more time and be aware of the quality of
the sound, how you feel as you tone it, as well as the shape and form that your face takes on
in its pronunciation: ayyyye-mehhhhhn.
Now let’s try it beginning with the ah sound as in box. Again, be aware of the quality
of the sound, how you feel as you tone it, as well as the shape or form that your face takes
on as you tone it. Ahhhhh-mehhhhhn. How does the ah sound and feel in relation with the aye
sound that we toned before? Try toning the two sounds back and forth a few times: ahhhhhh
and ayyyyyye. Again, there is no right or wrong answer to how these sounds feel to us. Just be
curious and allow yourself to be open to the experience itself. I ask you to feel out the
qualities of the sound with the sole intent of opening you to the feminine experience of being
rather than simply the masculine definitions we label the sound with.
Okay, let’s try one last experiment with the toning of the word amen. This time
pronounce it as the ah in “box” and the sound of main, as in Main Street. Again, be open to
how this sound feels within your body: ahh-main. How does this feel in relation with all of
our previous intonings of this word? Try it again: ahhhhhh-main. Though there are several
other ways we could pronounce this deeply sacred word, we are going to stop with this one,
as it is likely the closest to its ancient pronunciation, though some may debate that. Again,
the practice of toning is not about perfect pronunciation or even about the words and sounds
themselves. The practice of consciously toning sacred words and sounds is about the
experience itself! This is about how we feel as we tone these sounds and how these feelings
relate with and influence the state of our consciousness and awareness.
about Dale Allen Hoffman
Dale Allen Hoffman is an ancient Aramaic wisdom keeper and mystic sharing an intimate,
experiential understanding of long - misunderstood ancient secrets and healing modalities.
Dale is the only soul on earth sharing a living, breathing vision of the original Aramaic
Yeshua (Jesus) and Mary Magdalene energetic alchemy wisdom from the Biblical, Gnostic
and Mystery School philosophies as one pure revelation.
He has published numerous audio and video programs and is author of the book Echoes
of an Ancient Dream: Aramaic Toning on the Path of Light, available on Amazon.
Official Website:
https://www.daleallenhoffman.com/
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