Science of the (second) Birth
In Islam, through the Sufi path, the greatest of the masters, Sheikh al-akbar Ibn Arabi states, "We are in a conditioned truth, let us go to a total, unconditional Truth!" "min al Haqq muqayada ila l Haqq al Moutlaq". In India, the spiritual orientation proposes a path of total liberation from human conditionings, this is called Mukti or Moksha. What conditions us are the veils of the ego (samskara shuddi or "poisonous memories") made up not only of our own life mistakes but also of those of our ancestors and even more so of a 5000 year cycle which is the time of a civilizational print on our psychic envelope. The reality of samskaras refers to "dysfunctional patterns" originating not only in childhood and birth traumas but also in the previous journey of the soul. The law of karma is linked to these samskaras. Each unconsciously lived moment creates samskaras or "karmic imprints" where the light of the soul dims. Some are like a line drawn in the water that immediately fades away. Others are like a line drawn in the sand. They remain for a while until the tide comes in and cleans them (by dhikr for example). Still others are like a line carved in stone. These are the ones that repeat themselves life after life always attracting similar patterns and bringing misery. These samskaras are the dark soot in a bright lamp that prevents the light of our soul from shining.
The different types of karma can be like marks on the water, which fade immediately, or like marks on the sand, which fade with the grace of the Ocean, or like carved in stone and which a long process of purification can soften with time.
The four phases of our birth carry the "poisonous memories" (samskara shuddi) that condition our lives! To become aware of them is to free ourselves! The great spiritual methods such as those of the Sufi path agree on the importance of cleaning up the traces of the past such as fears, abandonments, rejections, humiliations, fixations and family traumas. The most important of these is precisely that of gestation in the mother's womb, which, like a karmic seed planted in the mother's womb, carries in its embryonic state all the conditioning to be released during life. Without this cleansing, even the openings of consciousness already achieved are unstable.
the karmic memories of our ancestors, of our civilization and of our previous soul journey are re-actualized at the time of our birth in order to be able to free ourselves from them and reach bliss.
This is why there are methods such as "samskara shuddi", the purification of "poisonous memories", found in the birth process which frees us from our karma reactualized during the 9 months of gestation, broken down into four key perinatal matrices:
· Phase 1 : the primal, the baby living the Unity, the ONE without duality in the mother's womb.
· Phase 2 : the contractions, the most difficult moment because the trauma of abandonment, of separation which is reactualized here in seed.
· Phase 3 : the turnaround in the mother's womb, an immense effort that produces the hero's trauma (because of this, we read stories of heroes very early on).
· Phase 4 : the welcoming of the mother which is the great return to joy.
This also represents the path of spiritual awakening which is a second birth.
But how can we become consciousness of the gestation phases experienced in the mother's womb that are buried in our unconscious? In particular, certain traumas linked to the father can block any financial success and certain traumas linked to the mother produce a lot of obstacles on the path of life. How can we finally perceive the harmonic correspondences of these 4 phases of birth with those of the maturation that leads to the Awakening? Our conscious brain is capable of 2000 connections second but our unconscious mind runs at 4 billion second connections, how to achieve this alignment?
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This is thanks to the holotropic conscious breathing (which literally means "oriented towards Plenitude, the Whole" which is the One) during the birth process in the course of which an energy of grace is invoked: the deeksha transmitted by the Masters of India, in connection with the science of the descent of graces, 'ilm an-Nuzûl of Imam al Mahdi (see article n°2).
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Conscious breathing (holotropic) is a pipeline between the unconscious and the conscious. Finally, certain selected music will resonate in correspondence with the harmonic phases of gestation leading us to the heart of our cells to cleanse the "poisonous memories" and to lift the blockages linked to our birth. Carefully selected music fulfills several important functions in holotropic states of consciousness. It stirs up the scabs associated with repressed memories, bringing them to the surface and facilitating their expression. It helps open the door to the unconscious, intensifies and deepens the healing process and provides a meaningful context for the experience.
Holotropic conscious breathing, "oriented towards the Whole (al-Kull), the Universe (towards al-Wâhid)", connects to the Origin
In India, the term prana means energy but also the sacred essence of life that is supported by the air. Similarly, in traditional Chinese medicine, the word chi refers to the energy of life, as well as the natural air we breathe in our lungs, which is the natural support of chi. In Arabic, the word Rûh, Spirit, also means the vital breath or respiration, and "liberating rest in Peace" can also be translated as Rawh from the same root as Rûh: Inner rest is attained through breathing harmonized by the spirit. The word nafas, breath or expiratory, also means soul or self, depending on the case; this other word of the sacred Arabic language still highlights the link between breathing and the harmonization of the subtle elements of the being, because originally, Nafas ar-Rahman (the Breath of the Merciful) produces the Manifestation according to a harmonically hierarchical chain of Existence.
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This teaching as an experience received not only from those close to Sanislas Grof but also "first hand" from those traditions of India and the Sufi path. This experience awakens us to the consciousness of all these hidden conditionings in order to free ourselves from them. The process of birth that we have begun by being born physically is indeed called to continue in the maturation of the soul and spirit, in this presence of Grace, as in the womb of the Universal Mother, this Rahma of the Sufis, which leads us to the second birth that is called Awakening, the Fath Rabbani.
In Islam and in the Bible, this is the wisdom of Jonah-Younas who learns to come out of the whale's belly for a second birth. This practice is not a theory but a profound experience guided by grace. The one that ultimately leads to the Awakening as a second birth.
The science of birth according to the wisdom of Jonah in the fusus al-hikam
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Let us recall that the Fusus al-hikam, the book of the bezels of Wisdom, was given by the Prophet Mohammad (Peace and unifying graces upon him) to Ibn 'arabi so that the people of the end of the Cycle could benefit from it in a universal reconciliation of the different wisdoms of the world in the saving arch of Islam. The wisdom of Jonah in the Fusus al-hikam is called nafassiya according to a specific pronunciation, i.e. the "wisdom of Respiration or Breath", thus related to the circulation of the internal breath.
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Ibn 'arabi tells us about it in chapter 33 of the futuhât al-makkiyya of which the following is an extract :
"Anger is the obscuration of the heart which, because of Jonah's high dignity, became visible on the outside. Therefore, he was placed in the dark belly of the fish for as long as Allah wanted. Allah drew his attention to the condition he was in as a fetus in his mother's womb: who was leading him at will when he was there? Could we imagine him getting angry? Or that anyone would be angry with him? On the contrary, he was in the protective bosom of Allah and knew only his Lord. He implored in the darkness: "La ilâha illa anta subhanak inny kuntu min az-zâlimîn. No God but You... Glory to Your Transcendence! Verily, I have been, I of the unjust (zâlîmîn), a word of the same root as "darkness" (zulumât); that is to say, my own obscuration (i.e. the poisonous memories samskaras shuddi) has fallen upon me! It was not You who placed me in darkness. Rather, it was what was inside of me that became outwardly transparent (my karma reactualized in the womb), while the light was transported inside of me... Its interior was then illuminated; the darkness of anger disappeared: the light of Tawhîd spread in him; mercy unfolded in such a way that this light became transparent externally as the darkness due to anger had done before...Jonah came out (from the belly of the fish) as weak as a small child" (this is the second birth).
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Jonah-Younas coming out, from the Whale, to the primordial state
It is also in this same perspective that René Guénon, Sheikh Abdel Wahid Yahya, assimilates the belly of the Whale to the initiatory cave, place of the second birth for Jonas (also known under the name of Dhun-nûn, the holder of the nûn-Ù†) :
"If we now compare the story of Jonah... Jonah remains enclosed in the body of the whale... during a period which is also for him... a period of "obscuration", corresponding to the interval between two states or two modes of existence... It is known, moreover, that Jonah's exit from the whale's womb has always been regarded as a symbol of resurrection, thus of passage to a new state; and this must be brought closer, on the other hand, to the meaning of "birth" which, in the Hebrew Kabbalah above all, is attached to the letter nûn, and which must be understood spiritually as a "new birth", that is to say, a regeneration of the individual or cosmic being.
This is clearly indicated by the shape of the Arabic letter nûn: this letter is constituted by the lower half of a circumference, and by a point which is the center of this same circumference... The development of the spiritual germ implies that the being comes out of its individual state, and of the cosmic environment which is its own domain, in the same way that it is by coming out of the body of the whale that Jonah is "resuscitated"; ... one will easily understand that this exit is still the same thing as that of the initiatory cave, whose very concavity is also represented by that of the half-circumference of the nûn. The "new birth" necessarily presupposes the death of the old state, whether of an individual or of a world; death and birth or resurrection are two inseparable aspects of each other, for they are in reality only the two opposite sides of the same change of state... It should be said that the symbolism of the whale has not only a "beneficial" aspect, but also an "evil" aspect, which, in addition to the general considerations on the double meaning of symbols, is justified even more especially by its connection with the two forms of death and resurrection under which any change of state appears according to whether one considers it from one side or the other, i.e. in relation to the antecedent state or the consequent state. The cave is both a place of burial and a place of "rebirth", and in the story of Jonah, the whale plays precisely this double role..., in the Arab tradition, by the "daughters of the whale" (benât el-Hût), which from the astrological point of view, are equivalent to Râhu and Kêtu in the Hindu tradition... ". (The mysteries of the letter nûn, R. Guénon). Ketu, or the southern lunar node, is precisely related to Karma, whose effects the initiatory cave must transmute.
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These few points show how in the arch of Islam, practical methods of spiritual progress are inscribed thanks to the providential recourse to the inspired works of René Guénon, Sheikh Abdel Wahid Yahya and Sheikh al-akbar Muhyuddîn Ibn 'arabi.