Immaculate Conception

In Catholicism, immaculate conception refers not to the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary, but to the idea that Mary herself was without original sin, preserved from it by God at her conception. Because she was free of original sin, she lived a life free of sin, and was instead filled with the grace of God, making her a perfect vessel to carry the son of God.

While Mary in Christianity is given this special status, Muhammad in Islam is given the same one. He remains sinless before God during and after his ministry. These immaculate births parallel other gods in other mythologies. Nahid or Anahita was the mother of Mithra, and her name means “immaculate.” Isis was also described as immaculate.

But the fact that Mary is believed to have been blessed with immaculate conception does not mean, in Catholic doctrine, that she does not need a savior. She was instead preserved from contracting original sin, but not blessed with a perfect life. She, too, needed to be saved, but was given a more sublime relationship with God.

What you might notice at this point is that the Virgin Mary, of all these, is the one endowed with the least direct power. It seems that through history, the power of a woman born in immaculate conception dwindles, until at the time of Muhammad her power is taken by a man. It shows the severe imbalance in the harmony of nature; from the beginning of this cycle to the end, the world has suffered from increasing amounts of violence.

What the Immaculate Conception may mean to you in your own seekings for transcendence is largely up to you. Do you reject the doctrine of original sin in your own soul’s background, and claim an unstained karma for everyone at the beginning? Or do you believe in karmic stains being carried from life to life?

In the first case, immaculate conception will mean little or nothing to you. But in the second, when you believe that you may indeed carry a stained soul, the ability to cleanse yourself through communion with God can be critically important indeed.

While your own conception may not be immaculate, you can be reborn clean and whole through good acts and tantric practice. You must first seek to identify who and what you are, and accept all that is good and that is bad about you. When you’ve grown to accept the responsibility for the negative, you are free to seek the cleansing by God. Each seeker on the path seeks in a different manner, but the goal is the same.

According to the Toltec mystic Almine there are about 300 documented cases on immaculate conception in the USA alone.