perennial diary: Islam and the Christian West

The divide between the Christian and Islamic world has always been complex to navigate. Islam is a religion that appears so austere and so severe to many, especially in the Christian West; it is not immediately obvious what purpose this serves.

From an esoteric and historical lens, there are threads linking the two religions. The work of Master Jesus has been present across many world religions, notably Christianity, but also Islam.

Please also see: The White Lodge, an organization for the spiritual guidance of mankind.

The Mahommedan faith will be found to be linked to the Christian faith because it embodies the work of the Master Jesus as He overshadowed one of His senior disciples, a very advanced initiate, Mahomet. [1]

Master Jesus

There has always been an intrinsic relationship of checks and balances that exists between Islam and Christianity. The centuries of conflict between them can be described in summary as the Father aspect of the Trinity is more pronounced in Islam, whereas the Son aspect is more pronounced in Christianity.

What we see in a holy war, is the accentuation of these two counterpoles. I have described the Islamic impulse further here.

We hear and we obey. Qur’an 2:285

The Father aspect became less pronounced in Christianity after the 15th century, when movements such as the Reformation, and later, the Enlightenment, led to the decline of the Catholic Church. Theocratic rule no longer represented the principle of freedom beginning to cement itself as an integral part of the Western ethos.

Freedom underlies so much of Western thinking today because it is essential for self-actualization, yet free-will is precisely the point of attack for Ahriman. One can easily speak of freedom, but in fact, be in servitude of their lower nature. This results in egotism, pleasure-seeking, etc.

Man would experience such satisfaction in obeying certain aberrations of the sexual impulses that he would regard them as evidence of a particularly high development of superhumanity.

When these types of values are promoted by the wider culture, a person's willpower can easily be co-opted by negative beings and redirected for another purpose than what it was originally intended for by God.

The gift of free-will has ultimately fulfilled its purpose when it leads one to act independently, out of a conscious understanding of right and wrong. This is when the third aspect of the Trinity is realized — the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the soul.

I explore this concept in Free-will in light of the Fall of Man.

Since the Masters of the West are familiar with Ahriman’s tactics and had foreknowledge of his future activities on earth, it should not be surprising to know they helped found Islam in advance to counteract this. And as materialism rose sharply in the West in the 18th and 19th centuries, so did some of the most fundamentalist forms of Islam.

It would appear that the emphasis laid by the followers of Mohammed upon the fact of God, the Supreme, the One and Only, was in the nature of a balancing pronouncement, coming forth as it did in the fifteenth century, in order to safeguard man from forgetfulness of God, as he drew nearer to his own latent and essential divinity as a son of the Father. [3]

Islamic theocracies like that of Iran, may seem oppressive and outdated, but have served as corrective measures against the destructive effects of Ahriman on the human will.

While this system is not karmically suitable for the West anymore, this is not necessarily the case for countries outside the West.

Even without the corrective action of the state, one's karma would still be administered by Higher Beings. It is inevitable at some point in the soul's journey that it feels an "imposition" from some source, whether visible or invisible.

Humanity is collectively entering into such a cycle of constraint, evidenced by the fact that the next age will be ruled by Oriphiel, the Angel of Wrath, "who purifies humanity with a strong hand." It is more imperative than ever to assess one's life and strive to make the needed changes, out of one's own free-will.

I also discussed in a previous post why secularism will no longer be viable based on the future spiritual evolution of humanity, particularly in the East — and why religious societies may adapt better than non-religious ones.

For this reason, the role of religion in public life — as opposed to individual belief — should be revisited in light of the esoteric tradition.

It is also of significance how the Christian and Muslim world have been linked through migratory waves of reincarnating souls.

When Arabism died down by the 13th century, it found continuation as a spiritual current into the cultural life of the West, where many prominent figures in Islamic history later incarnated, such as:

Muawiyah I > Woodrow Wilson [4]

Tariq ibn Ziyad > Charles Darwin [5] Haroun al Raschid > Francis Bacon [6]

We can assume the reverse also occurs; that many souls developing under Christianity later incarnated under Islam, and the very different influences upon a soul when taking a Christian or Muslim incarnation contribute to its overall evolution.

The strange thing is that while, on the one hand, the warlike methods adopted by Arabism created disturbance and alarm among the peoples, on the other hand it is also remarkable that for well-nigh a thousand years after the founding of Mohammedanism, Arabism did very much to promote and further civilisation. [5]

It is noteworthy that Aristotle, one of Steiner’s previous incarnations, was very influential to early Islamic philosophy.