She is the holiest and most secret inwardness of Allah

[Guest guest]

>

> Nicole beautifully framed her thoughts with these words: " We have

> the unique privilege to live two lives in one, one material, one

> spiritual, let's enjoy it fully. " i would want to copy it and

> say " We have the priceless privilege to live with two Divine

> Mothers, one physically without, one spiritually within, let's

> enjoy it fully. " By that i mean no disrespect to our own mothers

> and Mother Earth. The Divine Feminine is indeed raising us humans

> in all Her forms - let's enjoy them fully!

>

 

" Today I am openly revealing this to you that until you recognize

Me, this work will not be done. I did not say this before. Just like

Shri Krishna said, 'Sarvadharmanam parityajya ma mekam sharanam

vraja'. Likewise are My sayings too. Like Christ said, 'I am the

Light, I am the path', similar are My words too. 'I am the

Destination, not only the Path'. But I never told this to you before

because the previous experiences were so bad that i did not say this

to you. You have to take My refuge (Sharanagat). You have to accept

Me as your Mother and I have to take you as My son. Without that your

work will not be done " .

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi,

Mumbai, India, 29.03.1975

 

 

" Muhammad al-Harraq (d. 1845): " Seekest thou Laila [Divine Reality],

when she is manifest within thee? Thou deemest her to be other, but

she is not other than thou. " Jalal al-Din Rumi (d.1273): " Though the

many ways [diverse religions] are various, the goal is one. Do you

not see there are many roads to the Kaaba? "

 

In some Sufi orders the goal of the mystical quest is " personified as

a woman, usually named Laila which means `night'... this is the

holiest and most secret inwardness of Allah... in this symbolism

Laila and haqiqa (Divine Reality) are one. " This, and the above

statements appear to be distinctly contrary to Muslim orthodoxy in

their blatant echoes of Eastern mystic religions. Yet, for Sufis this

is not a problem. As Ibn `Arabi stated,

 

My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for

gazelles and a convent for Christians, and a temple for idols and the

pilgrims Ka`ba and the tables of the Torah, and the book of the

Koran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love's camels

take, that is my religion and faith.

 

Another Sufi saint, Mahmud Shabistari, in his work Gulshan-i Raz (The

Mystic Rose Garden) concurs, declaring, " what is mosque, what is

synagogue, what is fire temple? ... `I' and `You' are the Hades veil

between them.. When this veil is lifted up from before you, there

remains not the bond of sects and creeds. "

 

Thus, not only has Sufism been influenced by other religions, but its

mystic quest for spirituality has led it to embrace all sorts of

religion, as abundantly shown in the writings of the great Sufi

saints. To try to deny this as a scholar is incomprehensible. Yet,

those scholars who are sympathetic towards Islam, as previously

shown, have a marked tendency to minimize or altogether ignore these

facts. "

 

William Van Doodewaard, Sufism: The Mystical Side of Islam

(The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada: 1996)

 

 

The Lady of the Resurrection (Khatun-i Qiyamat), who will on the Resurrection

Day be the helper of human beings.

 

" Sufism cherishes the esoteric secret of woman, even though Sufism is

the esoteric aspect of a seemingly patriarchal religion. Muslims pray

five times a day facing the city of Makkah. Inside every Mosque is a

niche, or recess, called the Mihrab - a vertical rectangle curved at

the top that points toward the direction of Makkah. The Sufis know

the Mihrab to be a visual symbol of an abstract concept: the

transcendent vagina of the female aspect of divinity. In Sufism,

woman is the ultimate secret, for woman is the soul. Toshihiko Izutsu

writes, " The wife of Adam was feminine, but the first soul from which

Adam was born was also feminine. "

 

The Divine Feminine has always been present in Islam. This may be

surprising to many people who see Islam as a patriarchal religion.

Maybe the reason for this misconception is the very nature of the

feminine in Islam. The Divine Feminine in Islam manifests

metaphysically and in the inner expression of the religion. The

Divine Feminine is not so much a secret within Islam as She is the

compassionate Heart of Islam that enables us to know Divinity. Her

centrality demonstrates her necessary and life-giving role in Islam.

 

Sufism, or as some would define it " mystical Islam " has always

honored the Divine Feminine. Of course, Allah has both masculine and

feminine qualities, but to the Sufi, Allah has always been the

Beloved and the Sufi has always been the Lover. The Qur'an, referring

to the final Day, perhaps divulges a portion of this teaching: " And

there is manifest to them of God what they had not expected to see. "

 

Islam is aniconic. In other words, images, effigies, or idols of

Allah are not allowed, although verbal depiction abounds. There was a

question long debated in Islam: can we see Allah? The Prophet said in

a hadith, " In Paradise the faithful will see Allah with the clarity

with which you see the moon on the fourteenth night (the full moon). "

Theologians debated what this could mean, but the Sufis have held

that you can see Allah even in this world, through the " eye of the

heart. " The famous Sufi martyr al-Hallaj said in a poem, " ra'aytu

rabbi bi-`ayni qalbi " (I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart).

Relevant to the focus of this paper is that Sufis have always

described this theophanic experience as the vision of a woman, the

female figure as the object of ru'yah (vision of Allah).

 

There was a great Sufi Saint who was born in 1165 C.E. Besides Shi'a

Muslims, numberless Sunni Ulemas called him " The Greatest Sheikh " (al-

Shaykh al-Akbar).[18] His name was Muyiddin ibn al-`Arabi. He

said, " To know woman is to know oneself, " and " Whoso knoweth his

self, knoweth his Lord. " Ibn al-'Arabi wrote a collection of poems

entitled The Tarjuman al-ashwaq. These are love poems that he

composed after meeting the learned and beautiful Persian woman Nizam

in Makkah. The poems are filled with images pointing to the Divine

Feminine. His book Fusus al-hikam, in the last chapter, relates that

man's supreme witnessing of Allah is in the form of the woman during

the act of sexual union. He writes, " The contemplation of Allah in

woman is the highest form of contemplation possible: As the Divine

Reality is inaccessible in respect of the Essence, and there is

contemplation only in a substance, the contemplation of God in women

is the most intense and the most perfect; and the union which is the

most intense (in the sensible order, which serves as support for this

contemplation) is the conjugal act. " Allah as the Beloved in Sufi

literature, the ma`shuq, is always depicted with female

iconography....

 

Among the Ghulat there is much respect paid to the Divine Feminine.

In the Ghulat group the Ahl-i-Haqq ( " the People of Truth " ), the

Divine Feminine appears as the Khatun-i Qiyamat (Lady of

Resurrection) who also is manifested as the mysterious angel Razbar

(also Ramzbar or Remzebar). The writer, Frédéric Macler, claims that

the name Razbar is of Arabic origin and means " secret of the

creator " . The term qiyama literally means, " rising " of the dead, and

allegorically, it implies an idea denoting the rising to the next

spiritual stage, and qiyamat-i qubra (great resurrection) means an

attainment of the highest degree when a man becomes free from the

ties of external laws, whom he shackles and transfigures into

spiritual substance, which rejoins its divine sources. " The King of

the World was sitting on the water with His four associate angels

(chahar malak-i muqarrab) when they suddenly saw the Pure Substance

of Hadrat-i Razbar, the Khatun-i Qiyamat (Lady of the Resurrection).

She brought out from the sea a round loaf of bread (kulucha), and

offered it to the King of the World. By His order they formed a

devotional assembly (jam), distributed the bread, offered prayers and

exclaimed `Hu!' Then the earth and the skies became fixed, the skies

being that kulucha. "

 

Another rendition of the emergence of the Lady of the Resurrection is

as follows: " After this the Holder of the World and Creator of Man

looked upon `Azra'il with the eye of benefaction, and `Azra'il became

split into two parts, one exactly like the other, and from between

these parts a drop of light emerged in the form of a loaf of kulucha

bread. The Creator then said, I appoint that person (surat) who

became separated from `Azra'il to be the Lady of the Resurrection

(Khatun-i Qiyamat), who will on the Resurrection Day be the helper of

human beings. " "

 

Laurence Galian, The Centrality of the Divine Feminine in Sufism