Inspired by the theme of yesterday’s feast, we looked for some other Marian texts on the internet, and this way we came across the blog of Sadiq Alam from Bangladesh. He wrote a post with a very complicated title Esoteric Inner Meaning of Virgin Mary | Receptive Soul in Loving Surrender . To avoid a misunderstanding it should be noted that the adjective esoteric has really nothing to do with the junk that fills the bookstores nowadays. The esoteric knowledge is a knowledge derived from inner experience, whose source lies in an initiation. In the early Christian tradition such a basic initiation was baptism. Until this day the liturgy of the Eastern Churches is split into the Liturgy of the Catechumens (the ones preparing for baptism) and the Liturgy of the Faithful (the baptized, initiated ones). When the first ends and the latter is about to begin, the deacon cries out: All ye catechumens, depart! Depart, ye catechumens! All ye that are catechumens, depart! Let no catechumens remain !
The esoteric knowledge demands preparation of the whole human, and not only – even not above all – his intellect. In the Christianity of the first centuries catechumenat was a period of such a preparation, and the baptism was an initiation into the divine mysteries. Below we reproduced only a fragment of the original post, in which Sadiq Alam quotes the conversation of Hamid, the sufi master of Reshad Feild in his spiritual autobiography, The Last Barrier: A Journey into the Essence of Sufi Teachings . The whole text is to be found here .
The Islamic Virgin Mary
You must first of all understand that although I seem to be talking about an historical event, everything of which I speak is within you and is happening at this moment.
There is no other; and what happened, in our world, two thousand years ago is part of the unfoldment of this moment, not that moment but this very instant. It is neither a question of looking back two thousand years nor of trying to recapture the moment in your imagination. All you have to do is to be awake. …Your body is the Virgin Mary. The Spirit is Christ, the Word that was conveyed through Gabriel the eternal messenger. The breath is the Breath of the Mercy of God, and it is that breath that quickens the soul. Until the soul is quickened by the Spirit it is like an unfledged bird.
There are many paths to God, but the way of Mary is the sweetest and most gentle. If you can melt into Mary, the matrix, the blueprint of life, the Divine Mother, you will be formed and shaped in Christ and Christ in you, and thus through the breath of God’s Mercy you will come into being and know Him. For it is the breath of mercy that bestows being. Every moment God appears in living form, never manifesting twice in the same moment.
Mary brought Jesus into the world because she was chosen to be the one for this work, and so she was trained in the knowledge of birth. It is said that Gabriel, the messenger, appeared to Mary in the form of a man. She thought that he wanter her as a woman, so she froze for a moment, turning to her Lord. If she had not relaxed, then the child born from that moment would have been uncompromising and impossible to live with.
Mary is the Divine Mother. Mary is the blue of the flame, and Mary is the matrix of all divine possibilities in form, here in our world. It is necessary that she be recognized. Learn to love God with all of your being, every part of your self, your heart, your mind, your soul and then we may all be granted the understanding of the meaning of virgin birth. Learn to pray and your prayers will come back from the very matrix that forms the child.
A sufi is called ‘the son of the moment.’ As you melt each moment into Mary, something is being redeemed that a child may be born, and what is being born is the son of the moment. That child may become God-realized and thus be called a Sufi or he may walk the earth unaware, asleep – not yet human, not conscious of God or of the wonders of His creation, having no knowledge of himself and thus no understanding of love.
Your body is the Virgin Mary – remember this each moment of your life. This is the responsibility that we must take as we come into knowledge, into being.
Mary was chose to bear Jesus because she kept her purity intact. Simple people call this her ‘virginity’, but those who know understand that to be pure means to be completely adaptable, to flow with each moment, to be like a running stream cascading from the water of life itself. To be pure is to spread joy, and joy is the unfoldment of the knowledge of the perfection of God. …
The eternal messenger is always within, wanting to unfold the moment through the Word, and one day when Mary is recognized again, there will be a reappearance of Christ, manifested in the outer world. Remember who Mary is, and one day when you are ready, and when God so wills it, you will know what I have told you.”
– from the conversation of Hamid, the sufi master of Reshad Feild in his spiritual autobiography, The Last Barrier: A Journey into the Essence of Sufi Teachings .
