Vision (spirituality)
In spirituality including religion, visions comprise inspirational renderings, generally of a future state and/or of a mythical being, and are believed (by followers of certain religions) to come from a deity, sometimes directly or indirectly via prophets, and serve to inspire or prod believers as part of a revelation or an epiphany. Many mystics take the word vision to be synonymous with apparition.
For religious visions as a literary form, see apocalyptic literature.
Religious visions are generally categorized as miracles. Like speaking in tongues and unlike raising the dead, visions can be readily forged.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, in addition to the religious visions mentioned above, the term vision (theoria) can refer to the experience of the "Energies" of God, as the result of the purified nous.
Artistic inspiration may provide a special category of the ecstatic vision: traditionally in such cases the semi-divine Muses may transmit the visioning to their loyal followers.
Visions generally have more clarity than dreams, but traditionally fewer psychological connotations. The psychological mechanism to engender visionary perception and trance phenomena is focussed intention and attention.
Entheogens (such as peyote) have traditionally assisted in the generation of visions among diverse cultures, as well as in modern western culture.
Some could consider visions to be a manifestation of the 'aha' (lightbulb going off) type of learning associated with Picture thinking or Visual Spatial thinking.
Examples of visions
Visions are listed in approximately chronological order whenever possible, although some dates may be in dispute
- Vision of God in the Book of Ezekiel (6th century B.C.)
- Lehi's vision of the Tree of Life (6th century B.C.)
- Vision of a heavenly figure "like a son of man" in Daniel (6th century / 2nd century B.C.)
- Jesus' vision of the dove when baptized in the Book of Mark (1st century A.D.)
- Paul's vision of Christ (a part of Acts of the Apostles) (1st century A.D.)
- The Apocalypse in Revelation (1st-2nd century A.D.)
- Marian apparitions (1st century A.D. - present)
- Visions of the afterlife in the martyr accounts of Perpetua and Felicity (2nd century A.D.)
- The theoria (Vision of God) by which a Christian mystic may discern a deep aspect of God (in the Eastern Orthodox tradition) (3rd-6th cent. A.D.)
- Constantine's vision of Christ's sign (312 A.D.)
- Jakob Böhme's vision of 1600, revealed when he observed the beauty of a beam of sunlight in a pewter dish
- Rene Descartes' series of dreams on the night of 11 November 1619, which set the course of his life in science
- Blaise Pascal's vision of 23 November 1654, which reinvigorated his spiritual commitment
- Emanuel Swedenborg's visions, which formed the basis of a newly revealed doctrine (beginning in 1740s)
- Joseph Smith's First Vision (1820)
- Nat Turner's vision of 12 February 1831, in which he saw an actual eclipse of the sun that day as a black man's hand covering the solar orb, interpreting it as a sign to launch his slave rebellion
- Ramakrishna Paramahamsa describes of several visions including Kali, Sita, Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed. (mid/late 19th cent.)
- Angels of Mons (1914)
- The Hopping Stone Vision a modernly derived Native American Folktale