The Fourth Seal (Islam)

Maitreya: Let us have a moment of silence, close our eyes and bring our energy up, all together as One. Just relax your body, listen to your body and see if there is any tension anywhere, and just relax it. We are all a family and we are together to learn more about God’s Plan. We are all here to learn together, and that is all that counts. Sal-Om.

Today we are going to talk about Islam, and how it was revealed and established. We are going to talk about the Fourth Seal, which is Islam. The Fourth Seal is a part of the Eternal Divine Path.

So the first question might be, when did the Fourth Seal start? Or when did the Eternal Divine Path started? Both started in eternity. It is not really the Prophet who brings the teaching; it is not his teaching. It is God’s teaching. All these Seals are from Eternity and are in the Akashic Records. Prophets just bring them back to earth (humanity).

So the Spirit of God comes to earth again and again, through His Prophets. In the moments that the Prophet is Revealing God’s Revelations, they are One. So in a sense the Prophet, the person who opened the seals, is the Spirit of God, they are One.

That is why when we believe in God, we go beyond the narrowness of the mind which may feel, "Why should I follow a person from Arabia, who brought us this teaching?" But if we realize the Spirit behind that person was God and it was God who came to earth to bring a new teaching, then we will go beyond these narrow concepts. Then we realize that it is the same Spirit which came as Christ, Moses, Bab, Abram (Abraham), etc. We would not ask, does anything good come out of Nazareth?

As we said before, Prophets are usually born like regular people. They are born from a mother. The sky doesn’t open and they suddenly come and say, "Here I am, come up here in the clouds and join me, etc." and they are going to get caught up in the clouds together, and all will be well. That has never happened in history. And it will not happen in the future. Tell the people who are waiting for that to happen, good luck, it will never happen. I wish they were right, though. It would be much easier that way, wouldn’t it? One day someone says, "Everything is going to be OK," and then everything is OK? That is really what it is, "wishful thinking!"

The Prophet is born from a mother. Buddha was born from a mother. Abraham and Moses were born from mothers. Christ was born from a mother. Muhammad was born from a mother. All of them came the same way. That is the most logical way to look at it.

Prophet Muhammad came and brought the Fourth Seal, which is a part of the Eternal Divine Path. The whole thing started from eternity. The person who brought the Eternal Divine Path to humanity was the first Prophet. Who was that first Prophet? [many answers] It was Adam who was the first Prophet.

Actually the word "Adam" in Arabic and Persian means "perfect man." This means that when you progress in your life, the more perfect you become, the more Adam you become, because they say, "He is becoming an Adam," which means he is becoming mature, he is no longer childish. That is what it means, I suppose even in Hebrew it means, "perfect," or something similar!

Why was he called perfect? He was called perfect because he was both male and female. Adam had both parts in him. He also was mature as the Father Is.

So he was perfect. Actually that is also what you become when you progress spiritually, you are going to create male and female energies. At least you will understand what is the difference between them, what is the male energy and what is the female energy. Female energy has a lot of Grace and beauty, and that is what The Holy Mother is. The Holy Mother is the graceful mother. Whenever you look at pictures of Mary, they have her in long white clothes and she is very graceful and beautiful, and she has her hands in a praying position, etc. That is what female energy is, Grace.

When the female energy falls, it becomes what? "Woe-man," or "woe unto man!" It becomes Maya, or Kali.

So the woman, if she brings her energy up to higher consciousness and become graceful, the "woe-man," becomes Shakti, Grace, the Holy Mother. That is the goal, instead of being a "woe-man," to become Grace. That is when the woman is no longer woman, but becomes The Holy Mother. That is the goal of every woman, that each has to become The Holy Mother.

Even the men have female energy in them. They have to recognize that female energy and transform it to The Grace. So even men should become graceful. It is not just women who should become graceful, but men also have to become graceful, understand their female parts, and become more in tune with them and accept them. It is not that they should become women, but recognize The Grace.

Of course, male is the consciousness and the logic in the universe. And female is The Grace. So male is logic and female is Grace. They go hand in hand. Just imagine how boring is a logical mind without Grace. It would be dry logic. There would be no Grace in it, no beauty.

Just imagine Grace without logic. You would be very Graceful, but you couldn’t logically express that Grace. You see, Grace without logic is a very dangerous energy. Actually the Holy Mother becomes Durga. Radah becomes Durga. These were the two consorts of Krishna. There was Rahdah and Durga. Radah was the Graceful one, the beautiful one, the one that had Grace. Durga was the destructive one (fallen grace). See, it is the same thing. The Grace of God can bring Grace to you, or it can bring destruction. It is the same energy. Creation and destruction are two sides of the same energy!

It is just like the atomic energy, you can use it for the peace and good, or you can use it for the destruction. It is the same energy, it is no different. It can be used for good, or it can become Kali. Kali is the destructive woman with the black body and all the skulls around her neck. She is pictured drinking blood and she is terrible looking, but it is the same thing. The same energy can become Grace.

So, Grace without logic can become very destructive, especially if it is not Grace any more but fallen.

Adam was a perfect man. Adam means perfect. He was male and female. He brought the Eternal Divine Path to humanity and he taught them the Path in the beginning.

As you remember God created man, male and female. God created man, and He made them male and female. There was more than one of them. He created many humans. That is why He created man, and He made "them" male and female. It means He made a lot of them, and they were each male and female.

But most of the people don’t meditate. They don’t understand this teaching. That is another thing we hope eventually will be understood, that there is no war between males and females. Each of them has to recognize that they are both male and female. If there is a female with a good logical mind, she should be accepted as such. If there is a man who has a lot of Grace, he can be Graceful.

Adam brought the Eternal Divine Path to humanity at that time. Humanity, of course, fell after awhile. You remember the story of Adam and Eve, the fall of man, etc.

When Eve (Fallen Grace, Woe-man) fell, "The woman ate of the tree of good and evil," it means that the lower nature of man made him do what he was not supposed to do. That is what it really means in the Bible that the lower nature of man made the higher nature of man fall.

God said, "I have created you, I know better than you how you are created and what will make you happy. So follow these commandments, My Laws, and you are going to be happy." They were living in the Garden of Eden (Heaven). They were eating and they didn’t have to till the ground. They didn’t have any problems.

But they said, "No, we want to become God ourselves. We know better than God does what is good and what is evil." They became self-centered. The moment they became self-centered, they fell from The Grace. They started thinking about "Me," instead of "He." The moment they did that, that self-centeredness made them fall. They fell from the Garden of Eden (Grace). They went from the higher level of consciousness to the lower level.

When the humans fell, they fell more and more, and eventually they became flesh (received the coats of skin). Later on God spread them all over the world. They created tribes, different languages, etc. They also became more and more selfish. Eventually at the time of Noah the situation became so bad that God decided to destroy them all. He decided to close their third eyes and give them two human eyes! Man became more intellectual than Spiritual!

Actually at that time, before we received our two eyes, the spiritual world was more real than the external world. The external world was just like the spiritual world to a lot of people now. It was something that really didn’t completely exist for them. Some people didn’t have that awareness of it, but the spiritual world was very real to them. That was because their third eyes was more open than their physical eyes.

So God closed the third eye, and gave us two external eyes. That is exactly like the story Mark was telling at the Feast of Tabernacles. The gods came together and said, "Where can we hide the spiritual truth and power so humans cannot find it?" Someone said, "Put it in the ground." But then they realized, "The human will dig the ground and will find it." Someone said, "Put it in the sky." But they realized, "They will create airplanes, space ships, etc. and find it too." Eventually God said, "The best place is within them, they will not find it there. They will look everywhere else but within"

You have the third eye. The third eye is there, and it is yours. It is not going to go anywhere. It is in your brain, and if you meditate and follow the Eternal Divine Path, it is going to open up. And eventually you will say, "Yes, these things really make sense."

Then you can no longer look at humans as separate beings. It destroys your concept of separation, and you become One with everything. Of course, the more people progress spiritually, and become beautiful and graceful, the more you love them and you become one with them and you feel comfortable with them.

Eventually, as we said, hopefully we are going to have 144,000 Maitreyas on earth. So we are going to have 144,000 Feasts going on at the same time. Wouldn’t it be nice? 144,000 Communities of Light all over the earth.

Now, historically, who was the first spiritual teacher? Historically when did the Scriptures start? It started with Noah. That is where the Vedas came from. He brought the teachings of the Mystical Path to humanity. The essence of that teaching became Vedas and Hindu scriptures. They also are the essence of all Mystical Paths all over the world.

It was after the flood of Noah. It was close to 12,000 years ago, that the Mystical Teaching came to this new man. They needed these teachings since they no longer were connected to Spirit directly. The flood came and everything was destroyed. Probably it took some time before the new human evolved. Then the human needed a religion and a Scripture, because this new human cannot live without a religion and a Scripture. He will be lost!

Even these people who say, "I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in Spirit," usually pick up some beliefs or habits. They believe in football, or political systems, or they believe in evolution. You see, they have some beliefs. That is the nature of humans. They have to have some sets of beliefs and moral codes. If they don’t have any moral codes, they destroy themselves. They have no sense at all, so they are no longer civilized. Therefore, in general those people who say they don't have any beliefs, usually do have some beliefs.

So Noah brought the truth to them in a very symbolic manner. It was shrouded in mystery and in such a way that they had to find their way to the goal. That is why the concept of teacher, or Guru, and the disciple was created. The people who would be attracted to teachers and wanted to understand this teaching, would go and seek a teacher. If they were accepted, they would be guided, and those symbols would be revealed to them according to their capacities, and their teacher’s abilities.

Actually the whole story about King Arthur and Excalibur is a very mystical story. It has a lot of symbolic meaning behind it. It is really not about a king. It is about how to reach Pure Consciousness, the Holy Grail. It is about the conquest for the Holy Grail and how you may lose your way to the Holy Grail and are destroyed. And who may find it again? The True Knights would find it.

But the knights had to fight for it. They had to go through the scary places, like the forests that were very dark and had those creatures that would try to destroy them. It is the same as going on the spiritual path. In every corner there is some attraction that is trying to take you away from your path, all the time.

Now we come to the new dispensation, or the wonderful, incredible story that started about 6,000 years ago. Does anyone remember what it was? God did something. God chose a person to start a Plan. Then God was trying to start a wonderful story for humanity.

That is why He closed our eyes and gave us these two eyes. He didn’t do that because He hated us and didn’t want our third eyes opened. He wants our third eyes to be open. That is why He created us in the first place. He wants friends. He wants people to love Him, to be with Him, to dance with Him, to chant with Him, to understand Him. He doesn’t want us to just be with the two physical eyes and that’s it, and the only thing we know is the physical world and He is by Himself in the whole universe and still has no friends or beloved ones, and we have two eyes, and that is the external world, and we fall to our lower natures, and we never meet.

He created us, not only to progress, but also to be His friends, be beloved ones, lovers, dance partners, and all that. He wants us to open our third eyes. That is our birthright, to have our third eyes open.

That is why He started a wonderful story and history for humanity to read, to understand, to meditate on and realize that God can make us completely helpless. But He doesn’t want that. He has enough other helpless creatures, all the animals, who just follow their Daharmas. They don’t sit there and say, "Let’s talk about THOTH today. Let’s read THOTH and meditate on it, etc." The only thing they know is that they are born, they have to eat, sleep, procreate, they are beautiful, and they are part of God’s creatures. But they can’t become spiritual teachers. They cannot meditate and become in the image of God. They are not created in the image of God. They are created with the programs in them, and they just follow those programs.

It is just like angels. What is the difference between angels and us? Angels are anything that God uses to direct His universe. Angels or those forces have no choice. They have to accept and follow God. But the human has choice.

Which one would you prefer, someone who has no choice but to love you, or someone who has the choice? He is free. He has a choice. He can love you or not. If that person says, "No, I still love you," which love is better? The second one, the one with free will, the one who could walk away and did not and said, "I love you."

We can see that that is how God wants us to be. He wants us to choose Him. That is the wonder, the highest Love, we can give to God. God says, "You are free." And we say, "But I want to be your slave."

It is just like you had a choice to come here to the Mission and to the Feast, or you could simply not come. And you chose to come. Isn’t that wonderful? Then I say, "That is beautiful. They chose to be here and to listen to this teaching. That makes my heart sing." That brings The Grace of God into you.

Of course, the more wonderful people come, the more wonderful the Mission will be. So that is also how God wants us to be. He wants us to recognize that His Way is the best way, because He created this universe, and He knows what is good for us and what is not good for us.

There was a purpose for the 12,000 years of destruction and creation of the new man. Six thousand years ago, He started a wonderful story. He chose Abram and said, "Abram!" And Abram said, "Yes, here I am." And God said, "Take your family, take your belongings and leave Ur" (Abram was living in Ur, in the south of Iraq, almost on the border of Iraq and Kuwait/Iran. So the whole story and most of the present religions of the world started from there.)

God said, "Take your family and go to the city which I will show you." Probably Abram resisted God for awhile. Then when Abram told that story about the big idol that destroyed the other small idols, the people in Ur chased him out of the city, so he had no choice [laughter]. God was telling him, "Go where I will show you," and he was resisting Him and he was saying, "No, No, I’m very comfortable here. These are my people, and I know them." Suddenly He put this idea in his mind to make up the story about the big idol destroying the small ones. When he did that, the people chased him out of the city. He had no choice but to go and follow God’s work.

It was the same way with Noah. He also resisted God’s Call. God forced him to accept the call and do it. That is why I always say, if you have been called for this Mission, you have no choice. If you think you have a choice, you are either not called for this Mission or are mistaken!

Anyway he took his family, his wife, his cousin (Lot) and whatever they could carry, and they started going toward Syria and then eventually to Israel, Egypt, etc. But because he listened to God, God blessed him.

You see, that was all that God put in as a condition in His Blessing. He said, "If you do this (leave your family, city, etc.) for Me, I will do that for you." In the beginning, when God called Abram, there was always a condition for him to receive God’s Blessing, "If you do this, this, this, then I am going to Bless you."

God told Abram, "If you listen to Me, and you take your children and go to that city which I will show you, I am going to bless you and you are going to be a blessing, and whoever blesses you is going to be blessed," and on and on. So there was a condition of how He would bless him.

His name was Abram when he was called to go to another city. Abram means, "The father of one nation." Actually he was "A-Bram." "A" means "no" in Sanskrit. It is the negative. For example, vidya means knowledge; avidya means ignorance, the opposite of knowledge.

Brahmin means, "God-realized"; Abraham (Abram) means, "not God-realized." That is where the word Brahmin comes from, they are the priests of the Brahman religion. So he was Abram, not a priest, but God still chose him, and He showed that God is not the respecter of man-made titles, such as priests, mullahs, rabbis, Brahmins, etc. The most important thing for God is your heart. Those titles are not important.

God gave a lot of promises to Abram. He promised him that he would be blessed, that he would be the father of one nation, and that his children would have a territory that would stretch to the east and west and north and south. And the number of his children would be the number of the stars. That means that you cannot count them, that there is no way that you can exactly know their numbers.

Then God changed the name of Abram to Abraham. He told him, "Now, your name is no longer Abram, it is Abraham (father of many nations). Your wife’s name is no longer Sarai, but Sarah." Abraham means, "father of many nations." Sarai means, "my princess," and Sarah means "our princess." So at this point God wanted to start many nations so that is why Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah.

At that time Sarah was 90 years old and Abram (Abraham) was 99, and God told them that, "You are going to have a child." Abraham thought, "How can it be? I’m 99 and my wife is 90." He did not believe he could have a child by Sarah. He asked God, "Let Your Blessing that You want to bestow on me, be on Ishmael."

God said, "I have already blessed Ishmael. This promise is for your new son, Isaac." Abraham said, "Who is Isaac?" God said, "That is going to be the name of your son." And of course Sarah laughed, in fact, she giggled and said, "How can it be? I am not going to have any child." But God said, "No, you are going to have a son in one year."

After a year they had Isaac, and they were very surprised. From Isaac, of course, came Israel and the Children of Israel, the story that we covered last year about the Third Seal, how all those things happened, until eventually the Messiah came as Christ and brought Christianity to humanity, etc.

Now in this lecture we will try to explain what happened to the promises God gave to Abram and his son Ishmael, the Fourth Seal. If you remember God gave two promises to both Abram (for Ishmael) and Abraham (for Isaac). The promises were the scepter (Kingly Spiritual Domination, Messiah, Prophet), and the birthright (The Material Possession). Now we see how these promises are also fulfilled through Ishmael and his children (for more information read "Children Of Abram (Abraham), All Prophecies Are Fulfilled.")

The child of Abram was Ishmael. Ishmael had 12 sons, whom God called the 12 princes. From those 12 princes came the Ishmaelite, the children of Ishmael, who eventually became the Arabs. They covered most of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, North Africa to Spain, and from the Spanish population South America is populated.

As mentioned above, through Abram, the Children of Ishmael also received the same blessings, the blessings of the Birthright and Scepter. And they are one nation, or the Children of Abram (father of one nation).

The Children of Israel became many nations. The Children of Ishmael became one nation. We still know them as the Arabs. They are all the way from Saudi Arabia, to Iraq, Jordan, and some even in Israel. They go all the way to Egypt, North Africa, and even to Spain and south of France. So it is a large territory. Of course, Spanish people who have a lot of Arab blood in them, populated South America.

The Children of Israel, as we know, go from Israel and north to Turkey. There are some in Russia, in Europe, in England, and some came to America. So we can see, from two sons, God almost created most of the population on earth.

We can see again that God promises, and He fulfills. Most of the people don’t know where these people came from and how they populated most of the earth. Now in our teaching we are explaining where they came from and that it was the Will of God that things happened the way they did.

Add to this reincarnation, then you may explain why even some races suffered in the process. Those who apparently suffered in any race may have been people who have inflicted suffering on others in their previous lives. They then were reincarnated as some of the people who suffered in the Children of Abram or the Children of Abraham, or any other races.

Also we may not understand how God’s Words are going to be fulfilled, but eventually they will be fulfilled, even if it take a long time. How many years did it take for these promises to be fulfilled? For some of these to come true, it took six thousand years. So although it may take way more than we expect, His Words will come true at the end!

Again, What were those promises that God gave to Ishmael and Isaac?

There were two promises: the scepter, the spiritual kingly personality, and the birthright, or material possession. So the spiritual kingly person was the Messiah, the spiritual teacher who would come from them (read "Children Of Abram (Abraham), All Prophecies Are Fulfilled." The territorial possession was, as we said, for the Children of Israel who went from Israel to the north to Russia, Europe, and the United States. They mostly became Christians (Christ gathered the people as Christians -- Genesis 49:10), etc. Our teachings show how the ten Lost Tribes of Israel left Israel, continued north to Lebanon, and eventually brought the Children of Israel to North America.

God also gave promises to Abram for his children, the Ishmaelite (read "Children Of Abram (Abraham), All Prophecies Are Fulfilled"). The Arabs or Ishmaelite knew about those promises. That is why when Prophet Muhammad was chosen as a Prophet, he thought he was possessed with "jinn." They had some belief in beings that were called "jinn" (like unclean spirits) who were supposed to be of fire. He didn’t want to be possessed, and he didn’t want to be a poet. The Koran sounded very poetic to the Arabs at that time. He didn’t like poets at all. That is why some called him a poet, and he resented that.

The reason they say the Koran is a miracle is because no one could create the same kind of verses that are in the Koran. For 1,000 years they have not been able to do that, until Bab came. A western scholar whose book I read said, "If you know Arabic, you can make a person cry or laugh, it depends on how you read the Koran to them." Arabic is a very powerful language. Indeed, Arabic has influenced Spanish, Spanish has influenced French, and French in return enriched the English language.

When Prophet Muhammad received the first revelation, he went to his wife Khadija shivering all over and told her that, "Khadija, I think I am possessed." She said, "What happened?" And he explained what happened. She covered him to warm him up and ran to one of her family members.

This family member, who I think was a cousin, knew about Jewish Prophecies. He was a Christian Arab. And he said, "Yes, there has been a prophecy that there will be a Prophet coming from the Arabs." So the Jewish people knew that God also had promised to Abram that a Prophet would come from Ishmael!

So Khadija came back and told him about that, and he felt better. However, for the next three years, after the first revelation, no revelation came. He became discouraged and thought the whole thing was just in His imagination

Indeed according to the revelations in the Koran, the prophecy about a Prophet who would come from the Children of Ishmael, and the territorial possessions for them which were revealed to Abram while he was in Mecca, is reconfirmed. According to the Koran, Abram left his people and went to Mecca. That was the first place where he erected an altar for God. This place is where Mecca is now. He prayed to God. That was the first contact God made with Abram after he left Ur. That is why Mecca became a holy place, and eventually the Arabs took it as their holiest place.

There God promised Abram a nation, birthright, and a Prophet (Messiah) from them, the sceptre. So the Koran also confirms what the Bible revealed to us.

After I received most of THOTH and the part about the promise of the sceptre, while I was in Denver, suddenly I came across this revelation in the Koran.

"…and of our off-spring a nation submissive unto thee God..,"

"And from them raise a messenger for their guidance…"

(Surah The Cow, 128-129)

This is exactly the same thing, a nation, which is the birthright (material possession), and a Prophet, who would come from them. So the nation was the Arabs, and the Messiah, or Spiritual Kingship (Messiah), was Prophet Muhammad.

From now on we are going to explain about Islam, and talk about what happened and how Islam came into being. Of course, God gives promises and it may take a long time before He fulfills them. Sometimes humans become impatient, because they forget, and their culture and history cover a lot of things and some of the original beliefs are forgotten. These beliefs might have been forgotten by many Jews also, but the truth eventually will show itself.

As I said, when Prophet Muhammad received the revelation, he thought he was possessed. He couldn’t believe that God had chosen him. Well, I can understand that [laughter]. When God comes and asks you to do something, or gives you a Revelation, or calls you for a mission, the first question is, "Why me? There are four billion people on earth, why me?"

It is just like in my case, being in another country with a different language, and having to learn that language. You feel that someone from that culture at least knows the language better than you! So why me? Why chose me? I was just here to finish my education. I had exams coming up soon when I was called.

Prophet Muhammad was saying, "I am just a caravan master from nowhere." The status of a person in the Arab culture at that time depended on what tribe they were from. If you belonged to a dominating tribe, you had better opportunities.

He was from a prominent tribe, but his tribe wasn’t as well known and as powerful as other tribes. He belonged to a Qureysh tribe, but the Qureysh was a group of different tribes together. The dominating tribe was another tribe. The tribe he was from was not very wealthy and powerful. So probably he was saying, "Why me? Why not someone from a more prominent tribe?"

But remember, where was Christ from? He was from Nazareth, and supposedly, "nothing good could come out of Nazareth." They thought he was going to come and make a big "splash," just like in that movie "Superstar." They thought everyone would follow him, dance with him, etc. He would make everything right, with no effort on their part. That is what a lot of people still believe.

But God’s Way is different. He comes like a thief of the night. He comes very quietly and all covered. He sneaks in, teaches his teaching, and eventually succeeds, because what he says is the truth.

Muhammad was an orphan. His father died before he was born, and his mother died when he was six years old. His uncle raised him. But from the very childhood he was a different kind of child.

One of the interesting things about the Prophets is that if you study their lives, they are a different kind of child. They are usually more observant. They are more meditative. They probably ask a lot of questions. They usually are not very satisfied with the answers. It is just like when Christ went to the temple. The lawyers talked to him, and he kept saying things that they didn’t know. The minds of the Prophets are usually very active, and they want to know the truth. They are looking for what is the truth. The people give them their dogmas as truth and they say, "It just doesn’t make sense."

It is just like, I was born in an Islamic country, and it was OK, but I wanted to know the real Truth, not their dogmas. I kept saying, "If God exists, show Him to me. Can you show me God?" They threw a bunch of dogmas at me, and I said, "It just doesn’t make sense." I said, "If you show me God, I will believe. I cannot believe in something that I cannot see. Can you show me God?" They couldn’t do that.

Eventually I had to say, "Just forget it!" Then I accepted dialectic materialism, because it made sense that everything is matter. I can see the matter. I can believe in this table, it is matter. So you kind of reject the teaching, the dogmas, that they offer you.

Probably Prophet Muhammad was the same way. That is why he was looking for something. That is why he started going to the mountains to the cave, to meditate and reach inside his own Soul for answers.

So Prophets come as regular people but they are very different from childhood. They express a kind of deep desire to know the truth. If you don’t have that desire, then you just accept whatever preachers tell you. But, as Christ teaches, we should knock, ask, and search.

It amazes me how many people accept whatever dogma is put on them in their cultures and from their childhood. They just accept them and live the rest of their lives with those beliefs. They accept whatever the preacher tells them. They never question, "Why is it the way they say? Is it really possible, what they say? Does it make sense? Is it logical?" They don’t question like that. They just accept it. So maybe that is why we are here, and they are not, because they just accepted whatever they were told from their childhood.

When Prophet Muhammad grew, he became a caravan master. He started taking caravans for different rich people to various places for trade, etc. With this traveling around, of course, he came in touch with ideas different than those of his own culture. He would take the caravan, probably, to Syria, to Egypt, to Persia, and/or to many other places.

Traveling expands your mind. For example, Christ himself had to travel. He didn’t stay in the Jewish community alone. He traveled, he went to Egypt, he went to Persia, he went to India, and he went to Tibet. Abram (Abraham) traveled. Most Great Prophets traveled before they received their revelations. Traveling expands your mind, and you start understanding, "Oh, there is more than one point of view. It is not only Islam, but there is also Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc."

Interestingly, there were some Christians and Jews in Tehran, Iran. One of my best friends was a Jewish person who is in Israel now, and I had a couple of friends with a Christian background who were Armenian. But we never talked about religion with one another. We were friends. We had fun going out, doing things together, discussing politics, etc. But we hardly ever discussed religion.

Also, there was a Sufi Order, around 4-5 blocks from where I lived for awhile. I knew this Sufi place, but I was never attracted to go in there and talk to them. Probably if I had done that, I would have been a Sufi by now, and would have never received this Revelation.

But it is interesting how God prevented me to know about Christianity and Judaism until I came to the US. He kept me from even knowing about Sufism or Mystical Paths until I came to the United States, and suddenly I was guided to the people who were into Hinduism and meditation. Suddenly the Mystical Paths were opened to me.

The thing that got me was when I heard Baba say, "God is everything." It just made so much sense. God is everything. See, it is not a God or something somewhere up there in heaven, that you cannot reach Him, you cannot talk to Him, and He is something up there completely away from you. No, God is everything, and that makes sense.

We can see that there is a pattern that, if you study the Prophets’ lives, usually as children they are very curious, they want to know about the truth. They ask questions, but they are not satisfied with the answers. Usually they are also guided to go to different cultures. They would be in touch with different energies. This way their minds are expanded, and they realize that, "Yes, there is more than just one point of view."

There also is a period in their lives of isolation. God isolates them from the people. For example, Christ was in the desert for forty days, or Moses was banished from Egypt, and he had to go to through the desert to go to Media. So they have to go through that period.

Six months after I became a part of Ananda Marga (AM) and started meditating, I had to go to Mississippi. After having a lot of fun with the new friends I found in AM, I had to leave. We used to meditate and go to the top of Scranton in the lake, which was their reservoir. It was a big lake. It was a one-hour walk around it. We used to walk for half an hour, meditate for half an hour, and walk for another half an hour back, everyday, for six months. After this six month period, suddenly I was taken away from all those wonderful friends, and sent to Mississippi, where I knew no one.

I went to Mississippi and entered school. I was involved with meditation, yoga, etc. There was no one else who wanted to do these things (as my friends in Scranton did). So I was by myself. Actually I had a roommate for a while. He quit school after three weeks. I had that room all to myself for the rest of the semester. There even was no roommate. That was interesting, and it just hit me right now.

After awhile I felt that I needed some people to meditate with me. So I started a meditation class, etc. We had talked about that before (read "How He Became Maitreya").

This is usually what happens. There is a period of isolation for the Prophets. In that period the stream of consciousness or revelation starts coming to them.

When Prophet Muhammad was 25 years old, he married this rich lady called Khadija. She had caravans, and she hired Muhammad to be master of one of her caravans before they married.

He was so honest that he became known as the trustworthy one. Therefore, even before realizing who he was, he became known to everyone as a trustworthy person. His work impressed Khadija so much that she proposed to him herself, "Will you marry me?" Of course, she was 15 years older than he was, and he said, "Do I have any choice?" She said, "No." [laughter]

They got married. She was a rich lady, so after they married he didn’t need to be too worried about financial problems. Then he became more attracted to realizing, "Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going?" Some believe he joined an order similar to the Sufis!

In that period the Arabs were under a lot of pressure from three groups: Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. Actually a lot of Hindu and Buddhist ideas also were coming to Arabia. It sounds like it was a period of a lot of searching, and people were asking questions, etc.

It was just like the period we are in now. It is a period of upheaval. Religions are falling apart. The political systems are falling apart. Everyone is asking questions. People are looking for answers.

So these people of the Sufi order also had their own ideas. It sounds like they considered Abram and Abraham as the most prominent figures in the Old Testament, and they were studying who Abram and Abraham were, etc. Actually Prophet Muhammad modeled his teaching very much on Abraham, because Abraham was a surrendered person to God. God told him to take his son and sacrifice him, and he did comply (although God stopped him before he used the knife).

Muhammad joined those people. He used to go to the cave and meditate there for one month every year in Ramadan. The month of Ramadan was the month during which all the tribes would come to Mecca. The Arabs would not fight in that month.

There were many tribesmen, and there were a lot of fights among them. Each tribe would try to possess the other people’s wells, areas, oases, etc. It was all desert there, so the water was very important. The oases were very important. And when their children grew up, each tribe wanted more oases for themselves. Therefore a lot of fighting was going on between them.

But in Ramadan they had a truce. They wouldn’t fight then. If they did, the other tribes would join the tribe that was attacked and fight the tribe that broke the truce. They had to honor the tribal law; otherwise there would have been chaos.

Ramadan was the month during which everyone would put down their swords, and most of them would come to Mecca. There were three hundred and sixty idols in Mecca, because there were all kinds of gods. They had Krishna. They had Buddha. They had all the tribes worshipping different idles, etc. They had different trees that some people felt had some magic in them, and they would go and worship them, etc.

In that month usually Prophet Muhammad would go into seclusion and meditate in the mountains. For fifteen years he did that. In one of these periods of seclusion, in Ramadan, when he was forty years old, he had a vision. It was while he was in a kind of trance it seems (some people say he was in a sleep, some people say he was awake). It sounds like he fell into a trance while he was meditating.

In that state, He heard a voice that said, "Read!" He was an illiterate person; he never knew how to read. He said, "What should I read? I can’t read." The voice again said, "Read!" Muhammad answered, "But I can’t read, what should I read?" The voice said for the third time, "Read!" And Muhammad asked again, "What should I read?" The voice said, "Read in the name of your Lord that created all things, etc."

So really he never read anything, but the "reading (Koran)" was from the Akashic Records. It came through him as the revelation, as what they called "Vaheh." Vaheh is probably closest in meaning to intuition, to hearing something that you know, but you cannot explain how you know, the quiet voice of God.

From that point on he started preaching his teachings, and any time the revelation came to him, he fell into that kind of trance. That is why he felt that he was possessed, because he almost lost control of his faculties when this revelation would start coming through him.

It sounds like Edgar Cayce, almost the same thing happened to him too. He would fall into a kind of sleep or trance and he would start revealing these Truths. It is interesting that Edgar Cayce’s work is also called "Readings." And Koran also means "Readings." It has the same name. God indeed works in the most Mysterious ways!

After this first revelation came to Prophet Muhammad he thought that, "I’m possessed and I’m a poet, and I don’t want to be either, so I’d rather just kill myself." He left the cave and tried to drop himself from the top of the mountain and kill himself, but suddenly another vision came and he saw Gabriel on the horizon. He saw someone like a very large person on the horizon. He was so afraid he looked somewhere else, and he again saw Gabriel there. Then he became so afraid and mesmerized, that he almost became like a stone. He just sat there and didn’t move for a long time.

Khadija became very worried so she sent some people to find him. They went to the cave where he usually went to meditate. But they couldn't find him. They came back, and they thought something bad had happened to him. Then eventually he returned and told Khadija what had happened.

So eventually he accepted his situation. It is just like when this Revelation came to me. Of course, I don’t have to go into a trance or things like that, just like Christ didn’t go into a trance, etc. It doesn’t always happen the same way. Probably Prophet Muhammad wouldn’t have started anything if God hadn’t given it to him this way, only God knows. God is a very flexible Being. He does things according to the time, place and people.

God recognized that, probably Prophet Muhammad wouldn’t have accepted that situation if He would not have had that vision, etc. It is very hard to accept that situation anyway. You feel you have to really claim something that a lot of people are going to tell you that you are crazy. A lot of people don’t want to put themselves in that situation.

I resisted accepting it for more than a year myself. But in the end you have no choice. If you accept it, then of course the revelation and the connection are complete.

That is another thing, God calls us, and we accept. If we don’t accept, there is no connection between God and us. God says, "OK, you didn’t accept, you are not connected."

Of course, God knows us very well. He knows our Spirit. If we wouldn’t accept, He wouldn’t call us. That is why He calls us. He knows that we are going to accept it eventually, because that is the only thing really worth living for.

Eating, sleeping, and procreation, everyone can do that. But being in God and in His Grace, that is really what counts. The only way to receive that is, of course, to do His Will. That is another thing which usually is in those who are called by God, they can see that they are not satisfied with many things in this world of Maya.

It doesn’t make sense: coming home, having a drink, watching television, waking up the next morning, going to work, coming home, drinking, watching television, waking up next morning, etc. You are not satisfied. Or going to get an education, getting married, having children, and that’s it? That is all this life is about? There should be more than this.

That is a question that you have to ask yourself, and eventually come to the conclusion, "I don’t want to do anything else but to do what I am doing, to do His Will." Sometimes I imagine myself, "Oh, I could have become a professor in a university, or an accountant, or have done something else." I go through it in my meditation and I say, "Nah. I don’t want to be that. I want to do His Mission even if it is much harder than a regular life."

Maybe that is why I had to go to the university and see that it was all games. It wasn’t really the truth. Even the professors, they thought they were big shots, and what did they do? They stole from each other’s books, made a new book, and published it, so they became "published professors." Then they would join all these different organizations and become "active professors." They would repeat like birds, the same thing over and over, and that became just like an ego trip. The Spirit wasn’t there.

You have to cope with that situation if you accept to be one of them and join them. You can’t be different. If you are different, you are usually pushed away. So that is another thing, that is another sign of being called. Nothing else makes sense but God, His Revelation and His Understanding. If anything else makes sense, then you are not called. You are more interested in the world rather than God and His Words.

That is another thing that you come to a conscious decision about, "That is it. That is what I want to do. That is what my life is all about." Then you have no choice but to accept it.

After you do that, you don’t have to go into a trance to reveal the revelation of God. You can just be like a regular person, walk, talk, do things that everyone else does, but at the same time be connected to God and tell them all about Him and His Plan, our Message and this Revelation.

The Fourth Seal

Lecture by

MAITREYA
 

At The Feast of Tabernacles 10/15/92

Part II

Lecture: Remember we discussed yesterday about how Prophet Muhammad was called to his mission. The most important point for us to realize is that God had already promised to Abram and Abraham that there were going to be two nations from his two children, and that there was going to be a territorial possession and a Messiah (spiritual king) who would come from each of them.

If we understand that, then we have unified the Jews, Christians and Moslems together. Because if God promised to both his children that there would be a Messiah or a Prophet coming from them, then it is all in the Bible, and all these three religions accept the Bible as the Word of God. They are the people who are supposed to follow the Bible, the three of them, the Jews, Christians and Moslems.

If we recognize that, really my lecture is finished here. The only thing we are going to talk about is why Islam came and what was the purpose for it to come, what was the prophecy about it, and what it was going to bring to humanity. The rest is mostly history, that this was how it happened.

So for us, the most important thing is to realize that God said that this is how things will be. That is our strength, our faith. God had already promised Abram and Abraham both, that these would come to pass. So because He said that both Christ and Prophet Muhammad would come, we believe in both. Of course, we also believe in other Prophets from God such as Moses and all those Prophets before them.

Also it is not only in that promise, as we explained, it is also in The Revelation, the Seven Seals are the seven religions. So Islam is a part of the Seven Seals. That is also revealed in The Greatest Sign. That is another confirmation that Islam should have come.

Now, of course, we are going to explain why it came. So let us just explain what happened historically, and how it evolved into Islam and covered almost one-third of the population on earth. This also had been prophesied, that Islam would cover one-third of the earth.

After Prophet Muhammad accepted and received the revelation, the first person who accepted Islam was Khadija his wife. So did my wife. She was the first who accepted the Mission and the new revelation from God.

Who was the second one? It was his cousin, Ali. As we said, Muhammad was raised by his uncle. His uncle had a child whom he left in Muhammad’s care when he was 10 years old, and he was called Ali. Muhammad was an orphan by the time he was six years old. That is interesting. He was an orphan when he was six years of age, and Muhammad’s son died when he was six years old!

His uncle never was converted, but he protected Muhammad. He never became a Moslem. Actually that is a very well known story, that although he raised him, he never became a Moslem. My father raised me and he never became a Divine. Probably Joseph, Christ’s father, also did not accept Esa. Maybe that is why we hear so little about him in the New Testament.

There were a lot of families and uncles who were converted to Prophet Muhammad’s beliefs, but not the uncle who raised him. He was the head of his tribe. He raised him, but he never accepted Islam.

The third person to convert to Islam was Abu Bakr. He was a prominent businessman and well known in the Qureysh. Then a few other prominent people started converting to Islam in that area, and that is actually why the leaders of the Qureysh became very alarmed.

Of course, Prophet Muhammad chose the name "Allah" for the name of God. Allah comes from the root Elohim, El, Elah, and even Alohah, the Hawaiian greeting. So the name of God is not something that Prophet Muhammad made up himself. The Jewish people, Christians and many other people knew it.

Actually "yah" at the end of most of the names in the Bible refers to God, such as "Hallelujah," "Jeremiah," and all those "yah" sounds at the end of the names. "Al" also was the name of God, and Ali, and Aloha, and Eli, and all those sounds were related to the name of God.

With all these, Muhammad started his mission, but the problem was, there were a lot of preachers (there always are), and although everyone accepted him as a spiritual teacher, they could not accept what other things he was saying. He said, "There is no God but God. He is invisible. He doesn’t have any partner, and He is the only God you have to worship. He is Formless, Nameless and Invisible." So if there is only one God, "There is no God but God," then the idols in the Kabbah were no longer gods.

That is what made the leaders of Mecca very upset, because that was their base of power. There were 360 idols in the Kabbah, and everyone would come for pilgrimage, bringing their money and business there. That is when they started opposing him.

Before they openly opposed him, they went and talked to his uncle who raised him. Muhammad was under his uncle’s protection (in the same tribe). They said, "You’d better go and talk to your nephew and tell him to stop this. What he is saying is going to hurt us all. If he just says that that is his God, and the other gods are OK, we will leave him alone. We will give him a good position, a lot of money and everything he wants, but he has to stop saying that there is only One God and there is no god beside Him." His uncle went to him and said, "That is what the leaders in the city want you to do."

Prophet Muhammad answered, "If you put the moon in one of my hands and the sun in the other, I will not stop my mission." He was very uncompromising about the truth, and that is why Islam has become very uncompromising about putting any partner with God. It is one of the points that cause friction between Christians and Moslems. The Moslems say, "There is no God but Allah, and He has no partner, no son, or anything like that." Then when Christians say, "Christ is the son of God," that creates some friction between them.

There is a poet in Persia who explains in a poem how Christ and Allah and all those things are from the same source. He is a Sufi, of course, who can see the meaning behind what Christ meant.

That is one point that is a very uncompromising principle in Islam, that "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Prophet." However, as we have explained, both the Moslems and Christians are right. There is no God but God, and there is no partner for Him. But when the Spirit of God comes to earth as Christ, he is His Son (In His Image), the Messiah. There is no separation between them.

So the opposition started rising against Prophet Muhammad, but because of the social structure of Arabia, at that time, the tribes would protect their people. If you belonged to a tribe, the whole tribe was behind you. It was very important that you belonged to some tribe. Actually the worse thing that could happen to an Arab was if he was excommunicated from a tribe. Then he would be a fair game to other tribes. He wouldn’t have any protection.

As long as Muhammad’s uncle was alive, no one would even try to touch him, because his uncle said that he would protect him. But some of his followers didn’t have that kind of protection. Some of them didn’t belong to very powerful tribes. Some of them were even slaves, etc. So the leaders of Mecca started persecuting them.

Then Muhammad told those people who didn’t have that kind of protection to go to Abyssinia. There was a Christian kingdom in North Africa and the south of Saudi Arabia. Prophet Muhammad told his followers who were in danger, to go to that country because that king was just and Muhammad told them, "He is going to give you protection."

Indeed the Qureysh sent a delegate to bring them back, as you saw in the movie. Anyway they stayed there until later on when Muhammad went to Medina.

It was fine for Muhammad until his uncle died. When his uncle died, the new head of the tribe, who was his other uncle, was very opposed to Prophet Muhammad. So this uncle said, "No, I am not going to protect him any longer."

Of course, they were persecuted, and Prophet Muhammad realized that his mission was not getting anywhere in Mecca. It was all opposition and they were just not listening to his message. So he was probably looking for somewhere else to expand his message.

It happened that some of the people from Medina came to him asking if he would come and stay with them and become their leader. The first year they came, and he said, "I will accept, but why don’t you all go and talk to the others in Medina and see what they say?" The next year, four times the number of people who came the first year came to him and said, "We want you in Medina as our leader." Eventually he decided he would go to Medina.

The night that the people of the Qureysh (in Mecca) decided to go and kill him because he no longer had protection, he fled. That is when the Hijrah, or Flight, started in Islam. That is what Muslims use as the beginning of their dating, the Hijrah.

Muhammad had a place where he used to sit in front of a window. He could be seen sitting there all day. On the day of Flight, Ali put on Muhammad’s robe and his hat (turban), and sat in his place all day. Prophet Muhammad had left early in the morning. At night his opposition came to kill him. Their device was that one person of each tribe opposing him would go and they would do it all together, so everyone would be guilty. There would be no finger pointing to one person or tribe.

Ali also slept in his bed so all thought he was still in his house. His enemies came in, ready to kill him. Just before they struck the first blow, they realized that it was Ali in his bed, it was not Prophet Muhammad. Then they realized that the Prophet was gone. So they started searching for him, and sent many people in many directions to find him.

Actually the story goes that Muhammad and Abu Bakr went together. Then they saw that the horsemen were coming, so they went inside a cave. The moment they went inside the cave, a spider came and made a web over the opening of the cave.

The people of the Qureysh came to the cave, and they saw the spider and the web there. They said, "The Prophet can’t be here. If they had gone inside, the web would be broken up." So they didn’t go in and Muhammad was saved. Muslims accepted this as a Miracle to protect His Messenger.

When they (the Prophet and Abu-Baker) arrived in Medina, the people all came out to greet him. There was a lot of strife in Medina between the people. They just couldn’t bring peace to themselves. They were looking for someone to come to be their arbitrator and bring peace to them. So when he went there, all the people said, "We all accept whatever you say, because we know you are trustworthy. We will accept whatever you judge among us."

They created a kind of constitution, where they wrote down the rights and the wrongs, and how they would treat each other, etc. So Prophet Muhammad sat with them, drafted something like that, and everyone said, "That is fine. We accept that."

In a very short period of time he brought peace to Medina. Everyone started living peacefully and, of course, most of them became Moslems. He said, "The Moslems from Mecca are the brothers of the Moslems from Medina." This itself was a revolutionary step, since tribal affiliation was broken with this. The Moslems from Mecca started moving to Medina little by little. Because they didn’t want to attract too much attention, they didn’t take any belongings. They would just walk away from Mecca and come to Medina.

So Prophet Muhammad said to the people of Medina, "The people of Mecca are your brothers. Give them sustenance, a place to live, and food, etc." They became like brothers. As their leader there, he started making laws and regulations of how the relationships should be between people, and eventually he proclaimed that "All that are in Islam are one and are brothers." That was a revolutionary idea among Arabs who believed in tribal bonds. They used to say, that is where you came from, so I can judge you according to your tribe, etc.

This new idea destroyed the kind of gridlock that they were in, such as, "Which tribe are you from?" It is just like, "What family are you from?" Then because you are from that family, you are better than others, or worse, depending on your family or tribe.

Prophet Muhammad said, "No. Whoever is in Islam, does good and does his duty to God, is a better person." That also made people who were opposing him even more opposed to him, because according to them that was destroying the whole fabric of their society. But again, he didn’t compromise. He said, "That is the way it is. That is the way God wants me to do it."

He also was facing Jerusalem in the beginning when they prayed. Later on the revelation came to him to face Mecca. So he faced Mecca. There was another strife about this, and the people (even his followers) were murmuring. Some of them wanted to face Jerusalem. It was kind of a purification, to cut off those people who were not strong enough to stay with him. He just did whatever came to him from God and He was right.

With all these things, the Qureysh started feeling very pressured from Medina. Medina was also on the way of the caravans to Mecca. The caravans had to pass close to Medina on their way to Mecca. They thought if Muhammad gained more power, he would close the route and they would be in a bad situation. The geo-political situation of Medina was in such a way that the Meccans needed to have that route open.

So they started opposing Muhammad in even a greater degree. They started raiding the Moslems and doing things that his followers didn’t like, and the Moslems wanted to fight back. But Muhammad said, "No, be peaceful, don’t fight back," but little by little His followers started putting a lot of pressure on him, "We want to fight. We can’t stand their aggression."

He eventually received the revelation to fight back (jihad). It was also prophesied. If you remember in The Revelation in the Fourth Seal, it says that they were going to conquer a third of the world with the sword. That is exactly what occurred with Islam.

They picked up the sword and they started a battle with the Meccans. The Meccans, of course, came and attacked the Muslims. That first battle the Moslems won. That was a very big blow to the egos of the Meccans, whose army was four times the number of the Muslims.

The Meccans had no doubt that they were going to win the battle. The Muslims had only two horses and the Meccans had around one hundred horses. The Muslims did not have a lot of experienced fighters; most of the people with Muhammad were the slaves and the lower people in the society who were never in a battle before. The Meccans said, "We are just going to destroy these people." And they went and lost it. That really hurt them.

The next year the Meccans came in an even larger number, and that battle they won. Actually the Muslims were winning in the beginning. What happened was that the people who were supposed to hold their positions, around a very strategically located hill, suddenly saw that the rest of the Muslims were going to get the booty. They left their positions to join the others. Their leader forbade them, but they did not listen.

When they left their positions, there was another group from Mecca with horses who came from the back (around the hill that those people who left their positions were supposed to defend) behind the Muslims. So the Meccans won the battle. Muhammad almost got killed, but he fled to the mountains and they left him alone.

Then the revelation came that from then on the booty would be distributed equally, after the battle was over and that it didn’t matter who obtained it first, it would be put together and would be distributed equally. So there wouldn’t be another situation that some fighters would leave their positions to share the booty. They would get it anyway.

So that battle was lost. The next battle occurred, and this time the Muslims won the battle, and I guess that was it. They had only three battles between them.

Then after awhile Prophet Muhammad decided to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He gathered his followers, and they started going toward Mecca. The Meccans became very upset about this move and they said, "We had fights with him and now he is coming for a pilgrimage? And this is the month (Ramadan) that we can’t fight with him!" It was forbidden to fight during Ramadan.

He started going toward Mecca, and everyone became more and more uptight, because they couldn’t take up the sword, and they were afraid the Muslims were going to take over Mecca. The Meccans sent a delegate to tell the Muslims, "Don’t come. We are not going to let you in. But if you want to come, come next year."

So Prophet Muhammad said, "OK." He returned to Medina. Actually they made a pact that they would not fight for ten years, but that he could come the next year. He said, "We accept the pact."

That caused another big upheaval among Prophet Muhammad’s followers. They didn’t want to have a pact. They said, "We won two wars, almost three wars, why do you want to make a pact with them? Let’s conquer Mecca. Don’t make a pact."

Prophet Muhammad had to really work hard and give a lot of Satsangs and say, "Please, please!" [laughter] Eventually his followers said, "OK, we accept it," and they had a pact for ten years of peace.

The next year he went on his pilgrimage to Mecca. Actually those ten years of peace didn’t stay ten years. Those years of the peace pact became the period when most of the people were converted to Islam, because there were no wars and there were a lot of preachers going around and talking about the new message. Many people heard the message, converted and realized what he was saying. He was actually able to create more peace among the people in Medina.

I guess it was the fifth or sixth year of that peace that there was another strife between the Muslims and the Qureysh people. The people from Mecca attacked the Muslims so Prophet Muhammad said, "You broke the pact. You weren’t supposed to attack the Muslims. So you broke the pact. We don’t have a pact anymore."

After the pact was broken, Prophet Muhammad started marching toward Mecca. He started with a small number of people. But as he marched, the people started coming and joining him. By the time they reached Mecca there were so many people that the Meccans realized that they had no chance of winning.

The leader of the Meccans went to Muhammad’s camp and converted to Islam. Muhammad promised, "We are not going to even touch one tree in Mecca. You just go in your houses and stay in."

He went into Mecca with no opposition, and that was it. He became the leader, the king and the ruler of all of Mecca and Medina. The other tribes, one after another, started coming and joining him. So for the first time the whole fragmented Arabia became one unified nation, under one leader and one religion. For the first time ever, the Arabs were unified. Before that, they were scattered into different oases, and each oasis had their own leader, their own tribe, and their own religion, regulations and laws, and also a very loose law that governed them all. But they never were unified. They were always separated and had fights and skirmishes between themselves.

One of the things that happened was that he forgave all those people who were against him and were his enemies. That was one of the things that a lot of his followers didn’t appreciate very much. They felt revenge and wanted to get even. But he said, "No," and he actually gave a lot of good positions to his previous enemies.

The Qureysh also joined his forces and became his people. Then he had a large army and was making the laws, etc. All the laws and regulations he brought through Islam became the laws for the Muslims.

Muhammad never stayed in Mecca. He went back to Medina, and that became the center from where he started his rule. After one or two years he came for the pilgrimage, and he gave his last speech that said that he had perfected the religion that God had given him (not that he was the last Prophet, but that he had perfected what was his share to bring to humanity!) He said that all Muslims are brothers and sisters together. The next year he didn’t come to the pilgrimage. Sometime later, after having a headache for three days, he died.

After he died, suddenly again, Arabia started to be fragmented. They proposed, "Let’s have each tribe come together and have their own leader." The bad habits of the past resurfaced. They wanted to have their own leaders, and they didn’t want to have anything to do with the others.

Omar, one of Muhammad’s followers said, "No, Muhammad is not dead. He is still with us." But Abu Bakr said, "No, Muhammad always said that he was just a Messenger of God and a man. The Prophet had said that he would die just like any other man." So this stopped the creation of a personal cult. Eventually they came together, and Abu Bakr and Omar (both were generals of Muhammad) suggested that they should not have many leaders. Omar said, "There should be only one leader for all Moslems," and he nominated Abu Bakr.

Abu Bakr was an older man, and he was very well liked by everyone. Everyone accepted him, and the next day everyone came and made a covenant with him. He became the new leader of the Muslims.

They called him "Caliph." Caliph means "leader of the believers." So he was the first Caliph after Prophet Muhammad. Of course, a lot of tribes still did not accept this arrangement. They said, "We are not going to follow you." The Moslems had to fight again for some time to bring them all back under the control of one leader of Islam again.

In the time of Abu Bakr, mostly that was what they did; they tried to solidify Moslems as one unit again. After Abu Bakr, of course, the people chose Omar. Omar was the one who made Abu Bakr the first Caliph.

Omar became the Caliph then. He was a general, and he was the person who started the conquest for the Arabs. He attacked Persia, Byzantine, and the Roman Empire.

Both the Persian Empire and the Roman Empire had been at each other’s throats for hundreds of years. By this time they were both exhausted from the many wars they had with one another. So the Arabs didn’t have any opposition. They just ran over Persia and Byzantine, and went to Egypt and North Africa. In one hundred years they had conquered almost three fourths of the then known world.

That is another miracle, but as we said, it was prophesied that Islam would conquer the earth with the sword. That is exactly what Islam did. And, it would convert one third of the earth.

When Omar was the Caliph, he created a body, a council of the tribes. The council of the tribes was supposed to choose the new successor, the new Caliph.

That was what they did. After Omar they chose Osman and then Ali. Those were the first four successors of Prophet Muhammad.

Ali was a very charismatic person. He had a lot of his own followers. From the very beginning, after the death of Muhammad, a lot of people said, "The next person has to come from Muhammad’s family." And of course, they meant Ali.

A lot of other people said, "No, he doesn’t have to be from the family of Muhammad." But the others said, "No, the spirit of the family is what is important." Actually most of those who said that were Persians, Iranians. They always had kings, and the king’s son became the king, and on and on. They had a feeling that, "the next leader has to come from Muhammad’s family."

It is very hard to break old habits, isn’t it? The Arabs wanted to have it that everyone had their own leaders, and the Persians wanted to make it a dynasty.

They also had political reasons, because Persians never accepted Arabs as superior to themselves. They always felt, "Oh, we are so civilized, we had such a great civilization and kingdom for so long, and we have had empires, etc." They had empires for hundreds of years. They were running everyone else around that empire. They compared themselves equally with the Roman Empire. They never accepted the Arabs as equals, who were considered tribal and fragmented.

Politically somehow they wanted to break this up, and also, of course, they were used to a dynasty and kingdom. They had a king for two thousand years, and later on again it became a kingdom. So it was very hard for them to resist that temptation. That is one thing these old cultures have to learn, to learn democracy.

After Ali became Caliph, there was a lot of opposition. They said that he was vacillating in making decisions and wasn’t very strong in implementing them. Then a lot of people started opposing him and there was an upheaval. Even Prophet Muhammad’s wife Iyesha started to oppose him. That was because Ali said Muhammad’s wives didn’t have to have that much allowance. He started cutting their allowances somewhat, so Iyesha became upset with him, and she started opposing him. There was a small war between them (Ali and Iyesha). Eventually Ali won, but it created a bad feeling between the Moslems.

By this time Islam was in upheaval. Islam started splitting. Suddenly there was a great strife between two people, Ali, the new Caliph, and Muawiya from Syria. Muhammad had given Muawiya, one of His archenemies before He conquered Mecca, a new position and made him the governor of Syria. Muawiya claimed that he was the new Caliph.

A lot of Muslims accepted him because he was a powerful leader. Ali was eventually assassinated. Muawiya became the new Caliph, not by being chosen, but by political maneuvering and use of the power. So he became the Caliph, and then he created a dynasty.

The whole idea of choosing a Caliph through consensus of the tribes fell apart. Islam became a dynasty. Actually you can say that almost the whole idea of Islam was destroyed right there. It was the Kingdom of God for awhile, but it stopped right there.

That had to happen. Islam wasn’t supposed to bring the kingdom of God on earth for a thousand years. It was supposed to bring the law, the Divine Law, to humanity. Remember the prophecy by Israel to his children? He gave the lawgiving to the tribe of Judah until the Shiloh (Messiah) came, and after that it would be taken away from them and given to another nation.

That was exactly what Christ said at his last departure from the temple in Jerusalem, before they crucified him. He said, "The Kingdom and lawgiving will be taken away from you and given to another nation (Matt 21:42-45)." And did Christ bring any Laws? He didn’t bring any Laws. He brought The Grace.

The next Prophet after Christ brought the Law. Indeed, the people who studied Islam for the next two or three hundred years, worked mostly on Islamic laws. They tried to analyze the laws that Prophet Muhammad brought, and discussed and argued about them. They created different schools of thought about what these laws meant. Eventually they came up with the concept of Shariah.

Shariah really means, "The Path, the Way." The whole idea was to find out what were the Divine Laws and implement them in the society. So the whole thing fell in place as the prophecies foretold by Jacob, that the lawgiving would be taken away from Judah and given to another nation. Christ came and said the same thing, that it would be taken away from the Children of Israel and given to another nation.

Christ didn’t bring any Law himself. Then Prophet Muhammad came, and the whole religion became a kind of concentration of Law for a Divine society, and how justice can be brought to humanity. The Laws that were brought by Prophet Muhammad are the Laws that have to be accepted as the Laws for the society (COLs) to follow.

But by the time that Muawiya became the new Caliph, the movement that the Caliphs have to come from the family of Muhammad, became even stronger, because they saw that this person had nothing to do with Muhammad, his family or his teachings. He wasn’t even a close follower of Muhammad. He became the new Caliph and created a dynasty.

So there was a lot of dissatisfaction over this new king and new Caliph. There was a movement that started which is called Shia. The others were called the Sunnis. "Sunni" means those who follow your (Prophet’s) example. Sunni means the people who follow the example of Prophet Muhammad. They don’t believe anyone else is going to come after Prophet Muhammad.

Shias are those who say that the people who came after Prophet Muhammad have to be from the family of Muhammad. That is why they believe that the real Caliph after Prophet Muhammad was supposed to be from his family. They believe that Ali should have been the first Caliph.

When Prophet Muhammad died, Ali was a very young man. The Arabs never choose a young man as their leader. They usually choose an older person, an older leader, who is respected, tried out, trusted, etc. So it is impossible for the Arabs to have accepted Ali as their first Caliph. That was why they chose Abu Bakr, an older man. Then Omar, who was again old, and Osman, who was old too.

By this time, after Osman, Ali was an older man, and then they could accept him as Caliph. But the whole idea was that because this new Caliph came over and he didn’t really know the Islamic Laws, these movements became a kind of split in Islam, who mostly are Sunnis and Shias. Of course in Shia itself there are many different branches, seven Imam Shia, twelve Imam Shia, nine Imam Shia, and many other branches.

But that is really the difference between these branches, the successors, who should succeed Prophet Muhammad and after. And that made the difference between Sunnis and Shias.

Any questions?

Question: After Muhammad died, his successor, the first Caliph, they kept the whole Koran, didn’t they? They gave that to the people?

Maitreya: The Koran never was written down. That is why they call the Koran a miracle. It was so easy to memorize. Later on, those who were chosen to memorize it, whoever was left of them, gathered together and they recited what they could remember, and they put it together in written words as the Koran.

Question: When they chose Abu Bakr to be the first Caliph, was he spiritual like Muhammad? Did he have those energies to go out to the people?

Maitreya: Well, he wasn’t a Prophet for sure. That is the whole idea, Muhammad was not only a Prophet but was also a leader. He was both Spirit and the Law at the same time. That was his very unique position. That is why when he died, everything, it seemed, was falling apart. That is why the roles Abu Bakr and Omar played were so crucial in this time after Prophet Muhammad. They kept Islam together. Of course, it was the work of God.

So in a sense, Caliph, as we said, became "the leader of the believers." He no longer was a Prophet. He no longer was a lawmaker. That is why they started trying to implement those laws that Prophet Muhammad brought, to every situation, and then later on it was realized that they do not apply to every situation.

There are a lot of situations that Prophet Muhammad did not bring any law about, because there was no such situation that arose while he was alive. As the kingdom became larger and new decisions had to be made, they couldn’t use those laws in every instance.

So they had to sit down, discuss it and try to bring the Spirit of God to the law, and that is why those law schools in Islam started. Eventually it became four branches of thought about those laws. They called that body of laws together as Shariah, "The Way."

We can see that really that Kingdom was established for a very short period of time and for a very small part of the world. But as we said, the most important thing is that the lawgiving would come from the next Prophet. Of course, Grace came with Esa and the Law came with Prophet Muhammad.

Also, if we believe in reincarnation, then Prophet Muhammad could have been reincarnated as some of those lawyers and helped in perfecting them. The greatest of these laws are communities based on married couples. In our case also, a community based on the Eternal Divine Path.

Now, has humanity understood this message and the teaching of Prophet Muhammad? What is the message of Prophet Muhammad? It is surrendering and submission. What is that? That is the highest spiritual realization. If you submit to God and surrender the result to God, then you are not attached to the results of your actions. So you become submissive and again you become a channel for God. You are free of attachments. Actually that is the way not to be attached to your actions, because God is doing them through you.

Prophet Muhammad brought the Divine Laws, as we said, Shariah. Shariah means to inquire and find what is the Will of God in every situation. The Will of God is to bring justice. In every situation, we have to bring justice to those situations. Are we just in this situation, or not? If there is a law in the land, is that law just? If it is not just, then it is not God’s Law. His Spirit is lacking. Whenever His Spirit is lacking, the spirit of evil is present.

Of course, as the four schools of thought evolved, after two or three hundred years, they eventually reached a point that they concluded, "That’s it. We did all the work to be done. We discussed it, we came to these conclusions, and it is perfect as it is. No one can add anything to it or subtract from it." They decided that they had reached the end of the Divine Law. That is when the Spirit left them. Whenever you say, "There is nothing more to learn about God," that is when the Spirit leaves you.

If you say, "I have the truth, and there is nothing else besides what I know," then your Spirit is dead. If you accept a dogma, and you say, "This dogma is the truth, and I don’t need anything else," your Spirit is dead. Then you close yourself to Spirit, to that flexibility of the Spirit, and to be able to adapt yourself to different situations.

That is when the legalism came to the Muslim communities, a legalistic approach to life, "If you do this and this, you have to do this and this, etc." "If it happens this way, this is the cure for it." It is very legalistic and rigid.

So the Spirit died. The spirit was no longer in their laws. That is when we saw a movement start in the Moslem communities called Sufism. It was kind of like the law was split from the Spirit. The Spirit went to the Sufis, and laws and legalism went to the fundamentalists.

Of course, the Sufis came and they meditated and they chanted and they sang and they had different philosophies. Some of them even came out and said, "I am God," and started dancing in ecstasy. To the fundamentalists, there is God and Prophet Muhammad, and the rest, is not God. "You are the rest of humanity, and you come and you say you are God?" It became the type of environment that did not allow for that kind of realization. It became a very rigid environment. That is why after this happening most of the new converts to Islam were not by Muslims, but by Sufis.

It was just like that in India. Most of India was conquered by Sufis, as were other parts of the world. The fundamentalists, of course, started opposing the Sufis. Still there is a lot of tension between the Sufis and the fundamentalists in the Islamic world. But eventually the Sufis realized that they could not live in that environment if they continued doing this, so they said, "The people who go to that state of ecstasy and say that they are God, really don’t mean it. They really mean something else…." The Sufis changed some of their beliefs, at least on the surface, to appease the fundamentalists and get them off their backs. They were somehow trying to fit into the society. Of course not all of them did this!

There were a lot of ideas that evolved from Sufism into Islam, later on. They tried to fit into the society and at the same time preach their teaching. Of course that way of thinking eventually evolved into a branch of Islam which is called the Ishmaelis.

That is where Bab came from. Bab and Baha’u’llah and the Baha’i religion came from that branch of Islam, because they believed someone was going to come from them. This subject we are going to cover next year. See, everything is connected together in our teaching.

Also Prophet Muhammad said the truth. Whenever you say the truth, what happens? It hurts a lot of people’s egos and concepts, etc. They try to shun you, destroy you, oppose you, and all that, but the words of God always prevail.

That is what we have to hang onto, the words of God, not our own tradition, not our own thinking, not our own beliefs, but what God tells us through His Prophets. If we don’t see the truth in this, then we, of course, have our own concepts and doubts. The doubts and concepts come in, such as, "Why accept Muhammad? Christ is the only way! That is it! There is no one going to come after that!" Or, "We are the chosen people, we shouldn’t accept Christ. We are the Jews, and we are the chosen people, and the rest are no good." Or, "This world is an illusion. The goal of the life is to merge into God. So shun the world."

Another misconception in Islam is about a word in the Koran that says, "Muhammad is the Khatem or Khatam of the Prophets." They take it to mean the last Prophet. That is one of the beliefs of the Ishmaelis, the branch that Bab came from, that that really doesn’t mean Khatem (last). It really means Khatam, the seal.

If we take the word as Khatem, the verse means the He was last of the Prophets. If you look at The Greatest Sign, as we explained it many times, Prophet Muhammad brought the highest spiritual realization, surrendering and submission to God. So in a way he is the end of the Prophets because he brought the highest spiritual realization. Khatam, on the other hand, means the seal in a ring. And Islam is at the top of The Greatest Sign, just like a seal in a ring.

So both words are explained in The Greatest Sign, and both of those words are true. There is no spiritual realization greater than being submissive to God. If you are submissive to God, then you’ve made it. Spiritually you’ve made it. What is more than that, than being submissive to the Will of God?

Also it is the seal of the Prophets, and as in a ring, it is at the top of the ring (The Greatest Sign). Therefore, both meanings make sense in our teachings and Revelation.

Of course, Prophet Muhammad suffered. He was starved, he was stoned, and he was almost killed by the Qureysh and all that, as we said here. We don’t have these things in this Mission because God somehow provided this environment for us so that physically, at least, they can’t do that to us. Probably some of them would like to do that, but they can’t do it because of the environment that God provided for us in this time.

But of course we have a lot of intellectual and mental stress and persecution. It hurts, but it is fine. We should get stronger and stronger, and even that shouldn’t bother us at all. We should just say the words and the truth, and leave it at that. As we create the Communities of Light and other people see the beauty of the Communities of Light, and we implement the Laws, and people become stronger and more in tune with God and follow God’s Will, they will eventually see that, that is the only way.

This time it is not only for the Jews (Children of Israel) or the Christians (the lost tribes) or the Moslems (Arabs) or the Persians (Bab/Baha’i faith). This time it is for everyone. Even a lot of people say that Islam was only for the Arabs. "It was only an Arabic revelation." That is true, at the same time God promised Abram that a Prophet would come from his child, Ishmael. Ishmael’s children were the Arabs. So Islam kind of came for the Arabs, in their language, etc. This revelation even did not come in my mother tongue.

But, of course, the Persians were not the followers of one God. Although they had "Ahora Mazda," many pagan beliefs had crept into their religion. They weren’t a one God religion anymore. They even believed in the sun god (Mithra). So they also were included with the previous pagan Arabs. But they couldn’t change all the Christians to Moslems, all the Jews to Moslems, all the Hindus to Moslems, and all the other people to Moslems, because they were all necessary to be here when The Greatest Sign came.

As we know in The Greatest Sign, there are Seven Seals. We need Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, etc. They are a part of the Seven Seals, the mystical part of the religions. Even Sufism is a Mystical Path. When Sufism came to Islam, they didn’t accept it. They still have a problem with it. Sufism says that you can become God. The fundamentalists say, "No, you can’t. There is God and Muhammad, and the rest are no good. You can’t make it among Muslims without this dogma." That is why Sufis had to add God and Muhammad as the pinnacle to their philosophy. Of course there is some truth in that. God and the First Begotten Son are at the top of the Hierarchy!

But the Mystical Paths say that you can become god by being one with Him, submissive to Him and following His Will. Everyone has the potential to become god (son of God). There are a lot of people who say, "I am god. But I have still have all my ego and I have all these problems in my life, and I don’t know how to solve them, but still I am god." If you are god, you shouldn’t have all those problems. You should be one with God. You should have the energy of God. You should Manifest God’s qualities, such as compassion, gentleness, forgiveness, etc. And you have to be able to solve your problems, not only yours, but other people’s problems as well. So being God is not just a word. It is a Spirit that comes through.

What was the symbolic meaning of the life of Prophet Muhammad? He brought the Fourth Seal, so he meditated (remember He used to go to the cave, etc.) and was a kind of mystic when he received the revelation. He created a community, he scarified for it, and he was surrendered and submissive to God. So he was in the Fourth Seal. But he wasn’t a universalist. Although in a sense he was, but his teaching did not concentrate on that aspect. That was left to the next Prophet.

The symbolic meaning of Prophet Muhammad acting as a king: Didn’t God say that there would be a sceptre and a material possession for the Arabs? So he came as a king. He had a sceptre and the Arabs gained the material possession they were promised they would have. As Christians call Christ "the King of the Jews," He was as a king, and of course, the Christians received their share of the earth.

Prophet Muhammad brought the message of submission to the Will of God. Islam comes from th