Muktabai's "First Vision" Account

Though he has no form my eyes saw him, his glory is fire in my mind that knows

muktabai
Muktabai

This account comes from Muktabai, one of India’s greatest Hindu poets from the 13th century, and is considered a saint:

Though he has no form
my eyes saw him,
his glory is fire in my mind
that knows
his secret inner form
invented by the soul.
What is
beyond the mind
has no boundary.
In it our senses end.
Mukta says: Words cannot hold him
yet in him all words are.

Source: The Shambhala Anthology of Women’s Spiritual Poetry, ed. Aliki Barnstone (Boston: Shambhala, 1999), 72.
Some similarities to Joseph Smith’s First Vision might include:

  • Seeing a Divine “him”
  • The glory was as a “fire”
  • The mind being caught away in this glory to a different place
  • Knowledge is imparted
  • Ordinary senses of reality subside, no natural objects
  • The experience defies all description, is beyond words

If you would like to submit a “First Vision” account, either personal or found, for inclusion on this website, please click here.


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