When Sacred Figures Appear

The image and the identity

Sacred figures have appeared often enough in my inner work that leaving them out of this book would be dishonest. Treating every appearance as a literal visitation would be equally dishonest.

Jesus is the clearest recurring example. On 25 July 2025 I entered a very still meditation while the higher-heart area was already vibrating. A figure I experienced as Jesus appeared smiling and raised his right hand, palm forward, with two fingers together. I had seen the same gesture before. Alongside him was a loving feminine quality that felt Mary-like. I came out of the sitting refreshed and uplifted.

That is the experience. The moment I say what it proves, I have moved into interpretation.

The distinction became even more important in March 2026. A vivid Christ-like figure climbed a mountain carrying a large old book. To the left was a praying woman I experienced as Mary-like. What struck me was the extraordinary clarity of her skin, eyes and hands. I greeted or blessed her. There was no reply. The sequence moved through dark caves containing rock, skulls and disfigured faces, yet I felt no fear. It then opened into an immense formless golden light, with smiling robed beings reaching toward it. Afterwards music itself seemed altered: a harp line separated from the rest and seemed to play at the forehead. Love and acceptance arose spontaneously, together with repeated unplanned ‘I AM’ phrases.

It would be easy to turn that into a ready-made theology. Christ. Mary. Descent. Caves. Death imagery. Golden light. I AM. Almost every mystical tradition could supply a shelf of books before breakfast.

But the sequence deserves to breathe before I tell it what it means.

Different traditions, living encounters

There are several useful levels of reading. The Christian and devotional level is obvious because those were the identities through which the figures presented themselves to me. An archetypal reading can treat Christ and Mary as forms carrying sacrifice, compassion, wisdom, receptivity or union. A psychological reading can ask how familiar sacred imagery organises deep states of consciousness. A spiritual reading can remain open to the possibility that consciousness encounters forms or intelligences not reducible to ordinary imagination. I do not need to force one answer in order to describe the event faithfully.

The same caution applies to a much more dramatic image from October 2025: Jesus alive on the cross and surrounded by fire. The figure moved his head calmly. The flames did not feel dangerous. I was not distressed. If I write only ‘crucifixion’ and ‘fire’, I lose one of the most important pieces of data: the emotional atmosphere was calm.

That is why sacred imagery should not be interpreted from a dictionary. Fire can mean destruction, purification, presence, transformation, memory, fear, passion or nothing that fits neatly into any of those words. The felt quality of the experience belongs beside the image.

The golden procession of August 2025 added another layer. A brilliant light appeared strongly enough that I checked whether physical light had entered the room. There was pressure at the throat. Golden figures entered from the left, the first resembling Jesus, the second a king, with a third less clearly seen. The name that became Bhaktavāṇī was beginning to form. A whole-body energetic flood followed, along with the phrase ‘A king has been born again’. Later a golden temple or dome transformed into Pegasus. Whatever one makes of the symbolism, that experience became historically important because the name survived and eventually became the language I used for the devotional direction of the work.

The temptation with material like this is inflation. If a king appears, the ego can make itself royal by lunchtime. If Christ appears, the personality can decide it has been personally appointed to save the planet before tea. I have no interest in that route.

A symbol of kingship may be about responsibility rather than status. A sacred figure may be a presence, an archetype, a form produced by the mind, a spiritual intelligence, or some combination we do not yet have adequate language for. The experience can matter without turning me into the centre of the universe.

Devotion without certainty

There is another reason for restraint. Identity sometimes arrives only partially. In the July experience the feminine quality was Mary-like; in March the praying figure was much clearer. I should preserve that difference. ‘Mary-like’ is not the same statement as ‘Mary was objectively present’. The first reports my experience. The second claims knowledge I do not possess.

This is not scepticism disguised as spirituality. It is devotion with its feet on the ground.

If these figures are nothing more than forms through which my own deeper consciousness speaks, then careful attention honours that process. If they are more than that, careful attention honours them too. Either way, exaggeration adds nothing.

The sacred does not need me to improve the story.