Volume 4, Book 54, Number 438:
Narrated Aisha:
Al Harith bin Hisham asked the Prophet, “How does the divine inspiration come to you?” He
replied, “In all these ways: The Angel sometimes comes to me with a voice which resembles the sound
of a ringing bell, and when this state abandons me, I remember what the Angel has said, and this
type of Divine Inspiration is the hardest on me; and sometimes the Angel comes to me in the shape of
a man and talks to me, and I understand and remember what he says.”