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Shihabudin Yahya Suhrawardi – Book of Conversations [translated by Henry Corbin and Nancy Pearson

The encounter with suprasensory reality can come about …. from hearing a voice, without the speaker being visible.  Sometimes the voice is soft, sometimes it makes one tremble, at other times it is like a gentle murmur.  It may be that the speaker makes himself visible in some form.  …………

Sometimes the visitation consists of the manifestation of certain of these celestial princes in epiphanic forms or places appropriate to the moment when they show themselves to the perfected recluse.

Sometimes it is the souls of the past which induce an awakening or an inner call.  Sometimes the apparition takes on human form, other times the form of a constellation or again that of a work of art, a statue uttering words, or else a figure resembling the icons seen in churches, likewise endowed with speech. 

Sometimes the manifestation takes form immediately after the shock of the enrapturing light; at other times it comes only after the form of light.  When the blazing light lasts long, it obliterates the form; the figures are taken away and the individual visitation is effaced.  At that point one understands that what is effaced is giving way to something of a higher order…..