Class 5: Receiving Love

The Master: Mohammed

Many people have asked me why I include Mohammed in my list of meditation masters, since he taught almost nothing about meditation per se - and Islamic law certainly limits me in terms of visual images. Furthermore with historic documentation claiming that he ordered the murder of hundreds of innocent people, how can I justify putting him on this list of spiritual masters?

First of all, historically we don't really know who this man was any more than we know who Jesus or Buddha was. And who am I therefore to judge?

Furthermore in terms of present-day terrorism in the name of Mohammed, I have always been able (at least I hope) to see both sides of an argument - and do my best to remember that the occupying forces in Israel 2000 years ago also accused Jesus of being a terrorist. So again, who am I to judge?

• What I do know is this - I have many Islamic friends who have as deep a spiritual life as I do and who are fully into love and peace and harmony.

In honor of the many many millions of Mohammed's followers who have found direct communion with Mohammed's spiritual presence, I dedicate this class and this key expansion of consciousness. May we all meet in the meditative center!

In the same way that we have major difficulties getting the historic facts straight on Patanjali, Lao Tzu, Buddha and Jesus, in many ways historians find Mohammed an elusive historic figure, especially when trying to develop a clear sense of who he was as a spiritual teacher.

Our purpose here isn't to evaluate the Islamic tradition historically or theologically, but to seek insights into our meditative process through exploring this tradition's contribution. I want to share with you here a bit about Mohammed himself, and then move into my steadily-evolving understanding of Islam's approach to opening one's heart to God, or Allah, and receiving guidance and healing from the depths of one's spiritual being.

To the best of my understanding, Mohammed was born around 560AD in Mecca, which at that time was a small Arab trading city located at a large oasis a couple camel-days south of Jerusalem and Damascus. Long before Mohammed appeared, the Old Testament prophet Abraham and his son Ishmael were said to have created a holy site called Ka'aba at the oasis of Zamzam which lies at the heart of Mecca.

• In the Old Testament we read that Abraham and Ishmael placed a special stone shrine beside the Zamzam oasis dedicated to Yahweh, and declared the place a holy site.

Historically, Ishmael's descendants become various Arab tribes, most of whom step by step lost their identity with the Hebrew tradition. But the Jewish presence and influence in Mecca dates back far into antiquity, and there were still many Jews living and practicing their faith in Mecca and nearby Medina when Mohammed was born.

The general notion of the existence of one Almighty God above and beyond all the various local deities that different tribes of the area worshipped, was present in the air during Mohammed's childhood. However, the city was at the time rampant with what the Jews considered pagan worship of a great many jinn spirits and idols.

Six hundred years after the death of Jesus gave birth to the Christian religious movement, there were several Christian sects residing in the Arab region, most notably the Nestorian sect. Although himself an illiterate, Mohammed clearly had contact with both Jewish and Christian beliefs during his childhood.

During his early adulthood, and as an Arab of the region, Mohammed naturally perceived himself as emerging from the original Adam-Abraham-Ishmael religious tradition.

Later, Mohammed would integrate a great deal of both Jewish and Christian teachings and beliefs into his new uniquely Arab-language religion. However, he also established Islam clearly as theologically distinct in certain major ways.

Mohammed's father was from the locally-dominant Quraish tribe, which was subdivided into a dozen autonomous clans. His father was a poor but solid trader who died on a caravan journey when Mohammed was still in his mother's womb. Mohammed's mother Amina also died, when her child was just six years old.

• In his later adult life, Mohammed would place special emphasis upon providing adequate care for orphans, widows, and poor people in general.

As a teenager, Mohammed was raised mostly by his uncle Abd Manaf and his extended trading family based in Mecca. There are many tales and myths about Mohammed's childhood, but almost nothing historical has been documented. He seems to have grown up as an especially-truthful and trustworthy young man, working in the caravan-trade business.

We're told that he had an unusual power of inspiring confidence and assuming responsibility. Around the age of twenty-five he took over the fortunes of a beautiful and wealthy widow named Kadijah, who was fifteen years his senior. They grew close in all ways, and soon they were married and raising a family.

Every year Mohammed went into retreat in the desert near Mount Hira for the holy month of Ramadan, to focus upon solitary spiritual meditation. One year, according to Islamic scripture, he was suddenly struck while meditating with a series of visions which would forever change not only his own life, but ultimately the lives of over a billion human beings.

The Koran says that Mohammed saw a vision of the Jewish angel Gabriel, and other angels as well:

• "I awoke from my sleep, and it was as if they had written a message in my heart. I went out of the cave and while I was on the mountain, I heard a voice saying, 'O Mohammed, you are Allah's Apostle, and I am Gabriel.'"

From this first revelation and others to follow, Mohammed received a steadily-growing body of statements from 'beyond' which he memorized and began teaching to a growing band of followers in Mecca. His wife was his first convert to the new spiritual vision coming through him, and during the next ten years he continued to receive inspired statements that would ultimately become the Koran or Q'uran, the sacred scripture of Islam.

As time went by, Mohammed became more and more certain of his identity as a prophet in the direct lineage of the ancient Hebrew prophets. He included Jesus as the most recent prophet from Allah, and was utterly respectful of Jesus' teachings - except that he refused to consider Jesus more than a prophet.

Mohammed was very clear that worshipping Jesus as Allah's only begotten son was idolatry. In the Koran he says that:

• 'The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only an envoy of God. So believe in God and the envoys of God, and do not speak of a trinity. God alone is the One worthy of worship.'

This insistence naturally distanced Mohammed from the Christian communities in the area.

As we've seen in recent violent outbursts against Western cartoonists, Mohammed was dead-set against any form of idolatry that took one's focus from Allah. Howebver, Mohammed stated a number of times in the Koran that:

• "Be they Muslims, Christians, Jews or Sabians, those who believe in God and the Last Day and who do good have their reward with their Lord."

Islam in this regard is inclusive, and indeed at first wasn't seen as a separate religion, but as a fulfillment of the teachings of the earlier prophets. The Koran specifically says:

• "We believe in God and what was revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac and Joseph and the Tribes, and what was given to Moses and Jesus, and what was given to the prophets from their Lord, and we do not make any distinction between individuals among them, for we submit to God."

However, the Jewish community in Mecca failed to accept the young man claiming to be the new Prophet of God. Instead they tended to make fun of him, and along with the ruling Arab population in Mecca, step by step forced him to flee the city. Losing most of his accumulated wealth, he fled with his family to nearby Medina, where two Jewish communities and three Arab tribes rather uncomfortably shared a fortified city.

During his first few years in Medina, Mohammed continued with his teaching, and found himself being rapidly accepted as a spiritual leader. He extended his popularity and power to where in a decade he was the dominant leader of the city.

After a number of small skirmishes with neighboring Mecca, who refused to let him and his followers make pilgrimages to the shrine of Abraham, he entered the city with an army and forcefully claimed his new religious movement's right to visit the holy shrine.

• During this historic period, many history books claim that Mohaammed ordered the execution of over 700 non-military Jewish men in Mecca because they had scoffed at the idea of him being a profet, and sold all related Jewish women and children in to slavery. (I have no idea as to the veracity of this historic foot-note.)

• Of key importance to our ability to trust and open up to a higher spiritual force in one's life, Mohammed taught that Allah was first and foremost an all-loving God whose blessing and guidance was always available to those who opened to his presence.

Allah was also ready to forgive all sins of those who were penitent and asked for forgiveness. And so there was zero fear related to the process of opening one's heart and allowing God's influence and love to come flowing into one's life.

The moral law that developed in Mecca and Medina and the rapidly-expanding Islamic Empire was strict, in reaction to the general carousing and blood-for-blood ethics of the local Arab community at the time.

The Moslem emphasis was on living a good fair life as outlined in Moses' Ten Commandments, and walking a middle path without extremes of any kind - while constantly holding God's name and guiding presence in one's mind.

• The primary religious practice that Mohammed taught was the performance of regular ritual prayer, called salat in Arabic.

This daily meditative practice originally consisted of pausing three times each day and reciting verses of the Koran, while performing certain humbling movements and prayerful bowings to Allah. Mohammed in the Koran emphasized that this type of ritual prayer had been practiced by Abraham, Ishmael, Moses and Jesus, and was to stand as the operational heart of the specifically-Arab religion he was bringing into being.

One of the primary teachings throughout the Koran which would be repeated over and over by the faithful in ritual prayer, was the fact that:

• "God wants to give you clarity and guide you, and to be present for you - for God is most knowing, most wise. God wants to lighten your burden, knowing that humanity was created weak."

In other words, God is always present to enter our hearts and guide us with his infinite wisdom and knowledge, because otherwise in our human routines and mental habits, we tend to lose touch with our deeper spiritual awareness and fall into upsetting thoughts and behavior.

This continual faith and trust in "opening to God" which stands as the primal focus of the Islamic faith leads us directly into the theme of this chapter and meditative expansion, namely the verbal elicitor statement :

• "My heart is open to receive ... God's healing love."

n the Islamic tradition, God already knows what is in our hearts, we don't have to tell Allah what help we need. All we need do is turn toward God by whatever name, surrender our ego center to our spiritual center - and shift from broadcast to receive mode.

As I understand it, this is what Moslems are doing at a spiritual level five times a day, as they pause for ritual prayer.

Mohammed said in the Koran, or rather he quotes an angel as saying:

• "God is the first and the last, the manifest and the hidden. God is with you all wherever you may be, and God sees what you do. God knows what is in all hearts."

Therefore not only in the ritual prayers each day but every moment of one's life, the true spiritual response to God's presence is to hold one's heart open to receive God's guidance.

This is the primary meditation in the Islamic tradition as I see it - to continually surrender our ego intent to God's higher spiritual intent - and thus to allow God's healing love and wisdom to inflow into our lives - continually in every waking moment.