10.1: Visions, Voices, and the Prophetic Call

A commissioning experience is also known as the prophetic call. This occurs when the Ultimate or an agent, such as an angel, appears to the selected person. Examples of commissioning experiences occur in all of the monotheistic faiths. There are many such events in Judaism, with the calling of Moses, perhaps, being the most well-known. As recounted in Exodus 3, in the Hebrew Bible, Moses was tending the flocks of his father-in-law and came to Mount Horeb when, "the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up...God called to him from within the bush, 'Moses! Moses!' And Moses said, 'Here I am" (2, 4).

In Christianity, the Annunciation, or the announcement to the Virgin Mary by the angel Gabriel, is another example of a commissioning experience. As found in the beginning of Luke's gospel, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to Mary, a virgin living in Nazareth, and "The angel went to her and said, 'Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.' Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.'...'I am the Lord’s servant,' Mary answered. 'May your word to me be fulfilled.' Then the angel left her" (3: 28-31, 38).

The Annunciation by Luca Giordano

A third example can be found in Islam when the angel Jibril (the Arabic variant of Gabriel) appeared to the Prophet Muhammad, calling him to spread the word of God while sharing with him the first of many of God's revelations that would soon become the Koran.

"Muhammad's Call to Prophecy and the First Revelation" by Hafiz-i Abu

It is important to note that in these three examples -- as well as in all commissioning experiences -- God calls upon the prophet. As such, prophetic calls are estatic events because the knowledge the person gains comes from outside him or herself. In other words, how these various figures know what they knows about the Holy did not come from within their persons but from the outside, from God.

Very different from such estatic events as the prophetic call are enstatic events.

Enlightenment

The Buddha Awakens to the Four Noble Truths

The enlightenment of the Buddha is an example of an enstatic event. Siddhartha Gautama was born into a royal family, but after witnessing an old man, a man suffering from an illness, a corpse, and a monk, Gautama became convinced life was full of suffering. He renounced his title and wealth and became a monk, depriving himself of worldly possessions in order to understand and overcome suffering. After years of struggling, while meditating beneath a tree, Gautama finally understood how to be free from suffering, and ultimately, to achieve salvation. Following this epiphany, Gautama was known as the Buddha, meaning the "Enlightened One."

The above is an enstatic event because how the Buddha knows what he knows did not come from an exterior source, such as with God and the prophetic calls discussed earlier. It arose within himself.

The mystical experience is a subset of religious experience that is usually characterized as involving direct, unmediated experience of God or other divine things. Mystical experiences are ineffable, supra-rational experiences that cannot be put into words, and they are considered to be cross-culturally identical. Mystical experiences have therefore been claimed by some to be the common core of all religious traditions. For such mystics, how they know what they know cannot be explained or put into words. This is different from enstatic experiences, such as Enlightenment, because the Buddha was able to take his interior experience and teach it to others, helping them to overcome suffering.