Mohammad’s Epiphany

 

The story of Mohammad’s epiphany interests me.  He would go off to a cave and meditate on a regular basis.  One day he felt the breath being squeezed out of him and was told to “recite”.  He resisted; he was not a scholar but a simple man and perhaps even illiterate.  He called the squeezing out of his breath wrestling with an angel and I think he was feeling his own difficulty breathing, a deep physical kind of awareness.  His release was also his liberation and his inspiration.  Most of that inspiration went into the Koran and the religion he established.  There is no denying the message he delivered must have been very powerful for its time and place and useful for his people.  For me his epiphany (or my interpretation of it) is the real message.