Long before the age of satellites and smartphones, before the printing press or even written language, there existed a rare breed of soul-seekers—saints, prophets, emanations, and shamans—who navigated unseen realms with hearts ablaze and eyes fixed on horizons invisible to most. Though they emerged from wildly different cultures, timelines, and traditions—from the deserts of Sinai to the Andean altiplanos, from the forests of Siberia to the monasteries of Tibet—they shared an uncanny constellation of experiences when encountering divine figures. Like threads woven through time, their stories shimmer with eerie resonance, revealing a pattern of sacred encounter that defies geography and doctrine.
The Call in the Wilderness
It often began with isolation. Moses stood on Mount Horeb, tending sheep, when a bush burned with fire but was not consumed—a voice called his name, trembling the ground beneath his feet. The Prophet Muhammad retreated to the cave of Hira, seeking solitude during the holy month of Ramadan, when the Archangel Gabriel descended upon him with a command: “Recite!” Similarly, the Siberian shaman would often fall gravely ill or withdraw for days in the snow-laden woods before entering trance, where ancestral spirits or sky-beings would choose them as vessels.
This “call” was rarely sought. It arrived uninvited, often during crisis or solitude. It felt less like revelation and more like a rupture—an intrusion of the eternal into the mundane.
The Descent of Light and Sound
In these moments of divine contact, light and sound were not merely symbolic; they were experienced as physical phenomena. Visions burst upon the inner eye: radiant beings with eyes like lightning, wings spanning the horizon, or forms made of pure luminosity. The Hindu gopis saw Krishna’s virat rupa, his Infinite Form, blazing with a thousand suns. The Christian mystic Hildegard of Bingen beheld “the Living Light”—a scintillating, coloured radiance that conveyed knowledge beyond words.
Sound, too, played a crucial role. Not just voices, but a primal sound—a thunderous hum, a celestial chord, or a single syllable reverberating in the cosmos. For shamans of the Amazon, it was the icaro, the sacred song taught by plant spirits. For Sufi saints, it was the nagham, the divine melody heard in deep ecstasy. In the Taoist tradition, Laozi spoke of the “soundless sound,” an eternal vibration preceding all form. These were not hallucinations; they were sonic gateways to altered states of consciousness and divine communion.
The Ordeal of Transformation
Encountering the divine was rarely gentle. It was an ordeal—sometimes agonizing. The prophet Ezekiel fell to the ground like a dead man. The Buddha, under the Bodhi tree, faced Mara’s armies of fear, desire, and doubt before attaining enlightenment. Many shamans describe “spirit death”—a psychological dismantling where old identity dissolves in fever, pain, or terrifying visions.
This dark night of the soul was a threshold. As the Persian poet Rumi wrote: “You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?” To meet the divine was to be unmade, then reborn. The self had to die for the soul to awaken.
The Mandate to Serve
No divine encounter was purely personal. After the vision came the vocation—the mandate to return and serve. Moses was sent back to Egypt to liberate his people. The Navajo Hataałii (shaman) returns from spirit journeys to heal through song and sand painting. The Tibetan tulku, recognised as an emanation of a bodhisattva, is raised to teach compassion and guide others through samsara.
These figures carried knowledge not for themselves, but for their communities. They became bridges—between heaven and earth, seen and unseen, silence and speech.
Unity in Multiplicity
Despite vast differences in symbols and language, the core experience remains hauntingly similar: a blinding presence, a voice from beyond, an inner transformation, and a mission to heal, guide, or awaken. Whether named Allah, Brahman, Great Spirit, Tao, or simply “The Unseen,” the divine figure appears as both overwhelming and intimate—as a storm and a whisper.
Perhaps the most sacred thread weaving through all these traditions is this: the divine does not merely speak to humanity; it enters into relationship with it. The saint, prophet, or shaman becomes a living altar—a human instrument where the infinite sings through the finite.
Even now, in an age of reason and data, the echoes of these encounters linger—in the depths of meditation, in dreams that feel like visitations, in moments of sudden awe beneath a starlit sky. The old paths may be overgrown, but the call remains. Not in fire or thunder alone, but in the quiet hum beneath all things—waiting, as it always has, for those willing to listen.
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See also:
Worldwide Temple of Aurora 