The Body is Like Mary

The body is like Mary, and each of us has a Jesus inside.
Who is not in labour, holy labour? Every creature is.

See the value of true art, when the earth or a soul is in
the mood to create beauty;

for the witness might then for a moment know, beyond
any doubt, God is really there within,

so innocently drawing life from us with Her umbilical
universe – infinite existence …

though also needing to be born. Yes, God also needs
to be born!

Birth from a hand’s loving touch. Birth from a song,
from a dance, breathing life into this world.

The body is like Mary, and each of us, each of us has
a Christ within.

 – Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi

The archetypal figure of the “Divine Child” has great importance in myth and psychology. The child archetype is an emanation from the collective unconscious, meaning that “divine” child figures arise from it, in miraculous births .

A child represents the “potential future”). Within us, the Divine Child represents “the preconscious, childhood aspect of the collective psyche”, meaning content of the collective unconscious that is not yet integrated with ego consciousness.

The Divine Child is a “symbol of unity” to be born from the tension of opposites , thus giving hope of change for the better. Hence he is a savior figure who promises to provoke integration and redeem us.

But the Divine Child does more than represent potential: His coming actually initiates the individuation process because of the incarnation.

The Divine Child is a numinous symbol resulting from this moment, representing the wholeness that can achieved from it. Since in this moment humans feel the divine, it is only natural that it will be mythologized, historicized, and celebrated through a sacred holiday.

When unconscious content rises up, it needs to be recognized and accepted by ego consciousness in order to be integrated and embodied as soul.

Thus, when the Divine Child appears he must be recognized, accepted, and adored.

In the Christmas story, we see this process at work in the accounts of the adorations of the magi and the shepherds, as well as the chorus of angels (Corbett 1996, p. 149). This also appears to be happening when the fetus John the Baptist leaps in his mother’s womb just as the pregnant Mary appears before John’s mother Elizabeth (Lk 1:41).

When confronted with such powerful unconscious material, ego consciousness will suffer. When the Divine Child appears, inevitably he will clash with “the establishment” of our ego consciousness – the Pharisees, scribes, priesthood, and Romans of our self – which will oppose and reject him in order to preserve the status quo (i.e., the ego’s dominant position).

This is why in the “birth of the hero” mythological motif the special child is abandoned back to nature (i.e., back to the unconscious), often to be brought up by animals or otherwise in primitive conditions.

This same process is reflected in the story of Herod and the massacre of the innocents and the flight to Egypt. Herod, the reigning King of the Jews, fears Jesus as a threat to his kingship; he and the Romans are ego consciousness running rampant. Such is the precariousness of individuation.

But the nature of culture heroes is to overcome this opposition in order to bring benefits to humankind, including higher consciousness.  Accordingly, the child-hero inevitably breaks free and evolves toward independence, and so in the “birth of the hero” motif he is often described as gaining in wisdom and accomplishing extraordinary deeds at a young age, like Jesus.

Man of Sorrows:

The various versions of the Man of Sorrows image all show a Christ with the wounds of the Crucifixion, including the spear-wound. Especially in Germany, Christ’s eyes are usually open and look out at the viewer; in Italy the closed eyes of the Byzantine epitaphios image, originally intended to show a dead Christ, remained for longer. For some the image represented the two natures of Christ – he was dead as a man, but alive as God.

The soul of the mystic, Rûmi teaches us, is similar to Mary: “If your soul is pure enough and full of love enough, it becomes like Mary: it begets the Messiah”.

And al-Halláj also evokes this idea: “Our consciences are one Virgin where only the Spirit of Truth can penetrate”

In this context, Jesus then symbolizes the cutting edge of the Spirit present in the human soul: “Our body is like Mary: each of us has a Jesus in him, but as long as the pains of childbirth do not appear in us, our Jesus is not born” ( Rumi, The Book of the Inside, V).

This essential quest is comparable to suffering of Mary who led her under the palm tree (Koran XIX, 22-26): “ I said:” 0 my heart, seek the universal Mirror, go towards the Sea, because you will not reach your goal by the only river! ”

In this quest, Your servant finally arrived at the place of Your home as the pains of childbirth led Mary towards the palm tree “(RÛMi, Mathnawî, II, 93 sq.)

Just as the Breath of the Holy Spirit, breathed into Mary, made him conceive the Holy Spirit, as so when the Word of God (kalám al-haqq) enters someone’s heart and the divine Inspiration purifies and fills his heart (see Matthew V, 8 or Jesus in the Sermon of the Mountain exclaims: “Blessed are pure hearts, for they will see God! “) and his soul, his nature becomes such that then is produced in him a spiritual child (walad ma’nawî) having the breath of Jesus who raises the dead.

“Human beings,” it says in Walad-Nama ( French translation, Master and disciple, of Sultan Valad and Kitab al-Ma’ârif  the Skills of Soul Rapture), must be born twice: once from their mother, another from their own body and their own existence. The body is like an egg: the essence of man must become in this egg a bird, thanks to the warmth of Love; then it will escape its body and fly into the eternal world of the soul, beyond space. ”

And Sultan Walad adds: “If the bird of faith (imán) is not born in Man during its existence, this earthly life is then comparable to a miscarriage.”

The soul, in the prison of the body, is ankylosed like the embryo in the maternal womb, and it awaits its deliverance. This will happen when the “germ” has matured, thanks to a descent into oneself, to a painful awareness: “The pain will arise from this look thrown inside oneself, and this suffering makes pass to beyond the veil. As long as the mothers do not take birth pains, the child does not have the possibility of being born (. Rumi, Mathnawî, II, 2516 sq.) (…) My mother, that is to say my nature [my body], by his agony pains, gives birth to the Spirit … If the pains during the coming of the child are painful for the pregnant woman, on the other hand, for the embryo, it is the opening of his prison ”(Ibid., 3555 sq)

Union with God, explains Rûmi, manifests itself when the divine Qualities come to cover the attributes of His servant:

“God’s call, whether veiled or not, grants what he gave to Maryam. 0 you who are corrupted by death inside your body, return from nonexistence to the Voice of the Friend! In truth, this Voice comes from God, although it comes from the servant of God! God said to the saint: “I am your tongue and your eyes, I am your senses, I am your contentment and your wrath. Go, for you are the one of whom God said: ‘By Me he hears and by Me he sees!’ You are the divine Consciousness, how should it be said that you have this divine Consciousness? Since you have become, by your wondering, ‘He who belongs to God’.

I am yours because ‘God will belong to him. Sometimes, I tell you: ‘It’s you!’, Sometimes, ‘It’s me!’ Whatever I say, I am the Sun illuminating all things. “(Mathnawî, I, 1934 sq).

Once the illusion of duality has been transcended, all that remains in the soul is the divine Presence: the soul then finds in the depths of its being the divine effigy.

It has become the place of theophany. This is what Rumi calls the spiritual resurrection: “The universal Soul came into contact with the partial soul and the latter received from her a pearl and put it in her womb. Thanks to this touch of her breast, the individual soul became pregnant, like Mary, with a Messiah ravishing the heart. Not the Messiah who travels on land and at sea, but the Messiah who is beyond the limitations of space! Also, when the soul has been fertilized by the Soul of the soul, then the world is fertilized by such a soul “( Ibid., II, 1184 sq.).

This birth of the spiritual Child occurs out of time, and therefore it occurs in each man who receives him with all his being through this “Be!” that Marie receives during the Annunciation: “From your body, like Maryam, give birth to an Issa without a father! You have to be born twice, once from your mother, another time from yourself. So beget yourself again! If the outpouring of the Holy Spirit dispenses again his help, others will in turn do what Christ himself did: the Father pronounces the Word in the universal Soul, and when the Son is born, each soul becomes Mary (Ibid., III, 3773.)

So Jesus can declare: “O son of Israel, I tell you the truth, no one enters the Kingdom of Heaven and earth unless he is born twice! By the Will of God, I am of those who were born twice: my first birth was according to nature, and the second according to the Spirit in the Sky of Knowledge!  » (Sha’ranî, Tabaqat, II, 26; Sohrawardî, ‘Awarif, I, 1)

The second birth corresponds to what we also gain in Sufism as the “opening (fath) of the eye of the heart“: “When Your Eye became an eye for my heart, my blind heart drowned in vision ; I saw that You were the universal Mirror for all eternity and I saw in Your Eyes my own image. I said, “Finally, I found myself in His Eyes, I found the Way of Light!” (Rumi, Mathnawî, II, 93 sq.)

This opening is the promise made by God to all those who conclude a pact with the spiritual master, pole of his time, like the apostles with Jesus or the Companions when they pledged allegiance to Muhammad: “God was satisfied with believers when they swore an oath to you under the Tree, He knew perfectly the content of their hearts, He brought down on them deep peace (sakina), He rewarded them with a prompt opening ( fath) and by an abundant booty  which they seized ”(Coran XLVIII, 18-19).(The abundant loot indicates Divine Knowledge (mari’fa).

Read more: Jesus and the Sufi Traditon

We can find the same Symbol of  Divine Child, Peace and Mercy in Islam and Sufism:

Bism ‘Lláh al-Rahmán al-Rahim

Bism ‘Lláh al-Rahmán al-Rahim

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Bismillah

Now the letter ب  ba’ of the bismillah (meaning in)   implies connection, and it is itself connected (directly) to God (‘Llah); the word ‘Name” (Ism) does not separate them, since it is identical with the Named according to the Sufis as well as most of the Ash’aris.

Note: When the bismillah اسم الله‎, is written in Arabic, the letter ba’ ‘in’, is directly connected to the word ism, ‘Name’. ب س م ل    What the Shaykh al-Alawi is saying is that since the Name (Ism) is identical with the Named, i.e. God Himself Ism does not really separate the letter bá’ from the Divine Name Allah. الله‎

Thus the beginning is in God (bi’llah): from Him all begins and to Him all returns.

Traditions affirm that everything in the Book is encapsulated in the words ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful’ ; this symbolises how all things are contained in the Being of their Being-Giver; that is, that everything in them branches from what is in Him: Nor is there anything but with Us are the treasuries thereof [Q.15.21]. That the Divine Name (Allah] comes before the other Beautiful Names  symbolises the precedence of the Essence, and how the Names and   Qualities are contained in Its treasury.see Commentary on the Bismillah.

Mary, figure of spiritual achievement in Rumi’s teachings
Mary appears in several parts of the Mathnawî of Jalâl al-dîn Rûmî (ob. 1273) the great
Persian speaking mystical poet of Konya in Seldjukide Empire. She is mentioned in every of the
six volumes of Mathnawî, his huge didactic poem. However, it is in the third volume that her
figure is more developed, and additionnaly in the second. The story of Mary appears as a major
narrative of spiritual realisation, and moreover the last stages. Read here more