The reality is that these Messengers are not "every day" human beings..at least from what we know historically....
Why do you claim they are not? Everyday humans all have unique gifts and talents. But are all poets? Are all musicians? Are all mathematicians? Are all gifted visionaries? Yet they are all, without exception, human beings. What seems to set certain individuals apart from the rest is simply the degree to which those gifts manifest within them, or rather their responses and pursuits to the spark within them. But even in the most acclaimed geniuses all they are doing is taking a more highly-tuned lens shining on what is available to all of us.
If we focus on the prophet specifically here, I'll make my case.
Let's start first with mystical experiences, and then we'll talk about personality types secondly as well as social and cultural circumstances. Firstly, each and everyone of us has that selfsame Spirit within us. There is no more nor less of God within each us. We each have the same Spirit in the same "measure", so to speak. God, or Spirit is Infinite, it is equal in all. It's not bunched up more over here and less over there, let alone absent anywhere. What the prophet is is first and foremost is a human being who has one or more mystical experiences of God. By mystical experience I am meaning where one accesses this Source of themselves and all that is in a transcendent manner. And by transcendent, I mean a stepping beyond our normal modes of awareness and knowing. They are temporary state-experiences where we become immersed within the divine, beyond our "normal" waking minds. It is a first hand, direct experience.
Humans the world over, everyday, have mystical experiences of God. It is hardly as "rare" as you imagine. These can happen purely spontaneously, or through various practices be cultivated in ourselves to more readily access this which is every-present in ourselves and in the world. Padre Pio said this very well, "
Through the study of books one seeks God; by meditation one finds God." Jiddu Krishnamurti said even better, "
Enlightenment happens by accident, but meditation makes us more accident-prone." One does not produce or manufacture an experience of God, but rather one simple opens to what is already fully there. That can happen by making ourselves "accident-prone", by learning to be opened, or by some spontaneous opening in ourselves, typically through some sort of crisis point in life where we "let go" sufficiently enough, even for a nanosecond, to let the Light shine in and out of us.
These experiences of God are very common human experiences, not rare at all to the degree you might imagine of only one every several thousand years or so! There is more than ample historical evidence showing this at far more frequency than you imagine. You are talking with someone right now who has these experiences, regularly, daily within meditation practice. There are many others on this site who do as well. The only differences is how people respond and what they do with it. This is where personality comes into play in no small part.
But before the personality part of it with these 'historical" prophets, let's talk about
interpretative filters. When someone, such as myself, or or a Jesus, or a Baha'u'llah, or even yourself if and when you have a mystical experience of that order (again, everyone can have these), though they transcend or go beyond our 'normal" experiences and states of consciousness, we do have to after the fact translate them down into what we do currently know and understand of the world, within the available contexts of ways of talking about reality, our "language" about truth and reality, in other words. There's a lot there in that one sentence. What happens is we try to fit it within the language we have available to us, available to our own minds to relate it to in order for us to firstly understand it for ourselves, and then secondly to talk about it with others.
Without getting too technically in depth here as this could easily fill out half a chapter in the book I'm trying to write on these topics, someone living in a world where the ways of understanding and thinking about God is the mythic-world of and external God who sends messengers to speak to people, can easily and most likely will translate and interpret this as the deity of his people choosing him for a special purpose. The "prophet-model" is in effect a "symbol", and what we do in our access and experience of the transcendent Divine, is to talk about it through our available cultural symbols. Now another person having the same type of experience whose time and culture is, say Modernity with its symbols of science and reason, might translate that experience in terms of say, neuroscience. That they had a "prefrontal lobe seizure", or something like that. Someone operating at a Postmodern framework might understand it beyond the "scientific" translation, and so on and so forth. In short, how we talk about it, how we present and speak of God, is going to be reflective of us and our ways of talking about experiences of everything in our lives, including God. God is still God, but
how we speak of God does not, nor can, nor should be understood or taken to define God, or to the "the truth" of God. It is our truth of God, relative to ourselves and the culture in which we live.
Now to the "historical prophet" specifically. First, anyone who has mystical experience and an opening of the divine in themselves who are able to articulate that in whatever way they can, especially in inspired and inspiring ways to others, is a prophet. To prophecy simply means to speak from that place of Divine inspiration. There are many, many prophets like this, who speak in many ways, uniquely, but all from the same Source of inspiration. What sets apart the "historical prophet", as I'll call them here, is simply.... a matter of history!
What I mean by this is that that particular person, doing what they all do to one degree or another, had a message that seemed to "catch on" better. How they translated and spoke about their experiences, coming from their own relative context within their culture, seemed to meet the current need of that culture. In other words, the way they applied it through their own immersion with the culture seemed to "stick better" for the culture and society at that time. They then became "the prophet" of the age, only because the people who popularized him made him that! They mythologized him, for themselves. They turned him into a symbol!
Now he becomes singled out and revered, and thus goes down in history standing out from all the others who fell into obscurity because culture largely forgot or didn't include them in their collective memories, which only serves to mythologize that one prophet all the more. He becomes then a cultural
symbol. He represents a people. He represents an ideal. He represents God. And when people within that culture have a mystical experience themselves, they may in fact see their prophet in a vision, because as I said, we "translate mystical experience" utilizing the symbols available to us. The Christian may see Jesus, or Mary. The Jew, Moses or Elijah (Jesus's disciples as Jews saw them), the Hindu may see Krishna or some other Avatar, the Buddhist may see Chenrezig, and so forth. They are "historical prophets", as I'm choosing to distinguish them because they are the ones culture elevated above the rest. They are the ones who pinned the medal on them, not God.
And lastly, the personalities of the prophets come into play when it comes to the degree of impact they have on their culture. Some are very much like CEOs, ambitious and driven, with a force of personality that stands out head and shoulders above the pack. So when they have their vision, they may interpret that as themselves specifically being called by God to go save the world. And they take the force of the personality and drive, convinced by their mystical experience they are the ones to save the world. Say hello to a John the Baptist type. There are plenty of these types strewn throughout history as well. I could name several from the last century alone. Other prophet's are humble and meek, but their message of love resonates with others to the need they have, and so they become revered as the ideal prophet. Say hello to Jesus now. And so on and so forth.
But again, with all of them, with all of the rest of us, when we dip into the Water of the Divine, it is the same Water. And we all drink of it everyday. Everyone does. How clearly, or how deeply one sees into that Water is a matter of where that individual is at that time in their lives along with their own desire to drink of that freely and readily. How history remembers them is a matter of what mattered most to them at the time of that Divine Light that shone through that one individual that met something to them. That same Light shines out in everyone, at all times, to all people, to all living things, to all reality. It is never hidden. But people only see what they do because of what they are willing or capable of seeing, ready to see at that time.
Prophecy, Divine Revelation is in every single second of every single day. It is not the individual who is called out from the rest. We are all called. The "shame" of it is that we deny God shining and speaking through everyone and everything in singling out individuals as "above" the rest. That is our idea of God, not God's idea of Himself.
Yes your view of having humans receive divine revelations daily might be quite fascinating but history tells us a different story.
Only because that's how you choose to see it.
