rize those who
have been blessed with the great Illumination.

His broad outlook upon humanity, which refused to see evil or to condemn
where formerly he had been noted for his zeal in bringing to condemnation
all whom he believed to be heretics; his conviction of immortality; his
humility, as far as personal aggrandizement was concerned; the great light
in which was revealed to him the truth; the annihilation of the idea of sin
and death; the realization that systems and laws and methods of worship and
giving of alms and all the by-paths which formerly he had deemed necessary,
were as naught compared to the great illuminating, all-embracing power of
Love--the Savior whose kingdom should sometime be established upon
earth--the time being when cosmic consciousness should be general.

CHAPTER XI

MOHAMMED

Despite the fact that the followers of Mohammed, the prophet, are among the
most fanatical and prejudiced of all religious sects, Mohammed himself was
unquestionably among the Illumined Ones of earth, and had attained and
retained a high degree of cosmic consciousness.

The wars; the persecutions; the horrors that have been committed in the
name of Islam, are perhaps a little more atrocious than any in history
although the unspeakable cruelties of the Inquisition would seem to have no
parallel.

The religion of Persia, wrongly alluded to as "fire-worship," marks
Zoroaster as among the Illuminati, but as the present volume is concerned,
in the religious aspect of it, only with those cases of Illumination which
we are classifying among the present great religious systems, we cite the
case of Mohammed, the Arab, as one clearly establishing the characteristic
points of Illumination.

When Mohammed was born, in the early part of the fifth century, the
condition of his countrymen was primitive in the extreme.

The most powerful force among them was tribal or clan loyalty, and a
corresponding hatred of, and readiness to make war with, opposing clans.

Although at the time of Mohammed's birth, Christianity had made great
headway in different parts of the old world, it had made very little
impress upon the Arabs. They worshipped their tribal gods, and there are
traces of a belief in a supreme God (Allah ta-ala), but they were not as a
race inclined to a deeply religious sentiment.

One and all, whether given to superstitions or denying a belief in Allah,
they dreaded the dark after-life and although the differ