Visions

Visions in mysticism, spirituality, and religion are perceptions, often received in dreams, trances, or religious ecstasies, which are indications or revelations about aspects of Reality, sometimes involving future states or appearances of angels, deities or other beings often considered "supernatural." Accounts of such transmitted directly or indirectly is meant to inspire or prod others to greater awareness or even to epiphanies or such experiences of their own. Some use the word vision as synonymous with apparitional experience. Visions are generally categorized as miracles or enigmatic happenings, sometimes delivered to those perceived to be prophets, shamans, priests or other religious leaders. Visions may also be the inspiration of innovators both in the sciences and the arts.

This page is about religious or imaginative experiences. For the ability to see things, see Vision.

Quotes

A man who has had a vision is a fully functioning adult, possessing an identity that is of both ritual and practical significance to himself and his peers. [...] Until he has a vision the youth is not an adult, that is, a ritually acknowledged member of his community. He has no adult name, a circumstance that marks him as a “child” who cannot take on his adult responsibilities in the community.
- Paula Gunn Allen, about visions among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Beacon Press. 1 September 1992. ISBN 978-0-8070-4617-3. Chapter Two

The Indian way includes ample room for vision translated into meaningful action and custom and thought, and it is because of the centrality of the vision to the life of the peoples of America that the religious life of the tribe endures, even under the most adverse circumstances. Vision is a way of becoming whole, of affirming one’s special place in the universe, and myth, song, and ceremony are ways of affirming vision’s place in the life of all the people. Thus it renews all: the visionary and his relatives and friends, even the generations long dead and those yet unborn.
- Paula Gunn Allen, about visions among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Beacon Press. 1 September 1992. ISBN 978-0-8070-4617-3. Chapter Two

Myth is a story of a vision; it is a presentation of that vision told in terms of the vision’s symbols, characters, chronology, and import. It is a vehicle of transmission, of sharing, of renewal, and as such plays an integral part in the ongoing psychic life of a people.
- Paula Gunn Allen, about visions among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Beacon Press. 1 September 1992. ISBN 978-0-8070-4617-3. Chapter Two

The vision you saw was real, but what you saw in the vision wasn’t.
- Ajaan Dune, Gifts He Left Behind, The Dhamma Legacy of Phra Ajaan Dune Atulo (Phra Rājavuḍḍhācariya), as compiled by Phra Rājavaraguṇa, as translated from the Thai by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

Some of these visions can be lots of fun and really absorbing, you know, but if you stay stuck right there it’s a waste of time. A really simple method for letting go of them is not to look at what you see in the vision, but to look at what’s doing the seeing. Then the things you don’t want to see will disappear on their own.
- Ajaan Dune, Gifts He Left Behind, The Dhamma Legacy of Phra Ajaan Dune Atulo (Phra Rājavuḍḍhācariya), as compiled by Phra Rājavaraguṇa, as translated from the Thai by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme!
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!
- John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Part I, line 238.

Such are the common people of the soul,
Of whom the stars write not in their bright scroll.
These, when the sunshine at the noontide makes
Golden confusion in the forest brakes,
See no sweet shadows gliding o’er the grass,
Which seems to fill with wild flowers as they pass ;
These, from the twilight music of the fount
Ask not its secret and its sweet account ;
These never seek to read the chronicle
Which hides within the hyacinth’s dim-lit bell:
They know not of the poetry which lies
Upon the summer rose’s languid eyes;
They have no spiritual visitings elysian,
They dream no dreamings, and they see no vision.
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835 (1834), 'Raphael Sanzio'

It is a dream, sweet child! a waking dream,
A blissful certainty, a vision bright,
Of that rare happiness, which even on earth
Heaven gives to those it loves.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act III, scene 5.

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimæras dire.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 628.

O visions ill foreseen! Better had I
Liv'd ignorant of future, so had borne
My part of evil only.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book XI, line 763.

Hence the fool's paradise, the statesman's scheme,
The air-built castle, and the golden dream,
The maid's romantic wish, the chemist's flame,
And poet's vision of eternal fame.
- Alexander Pope, Dunciad (1813), Book III, line 9.

Our revels now are ended. These, our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-1612), Act IV, scene 1, line 148.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 839-40.

Circa beatitudinem perfectam, quæ in Dei visione consistit.
- Concerning perfect blessedness which consists in a vision of God.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologie. Probably the origin of the phrase "beatific vision".

And like a passing thought, she fled
In light away.
- Robert Burns, The Vision, last lines.

So little distant dangers seem:
So we mistake the future's face,
Ey'd thro' Hope's deluding glass;
As yon summits soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,
Which to those who journey near,
Barren, brown, and rough appear.
- John Dyer, Gronger Hill, line 884.

Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul.
- Thomas Gray, The Bard, III. 1, line 11.

I wonder if ever a song was sung but the singer's heart sang sweeter!
I wonder if ever a rhyme was rung but the thought surpassed the meter!
I wonder if ever a sculptor wrought till the cold stone echoed his ardent thought!
Or, if ever a painter with light and shade the dream of his inmost heart portrayed!
- James C. Harvey, Incompleteness.

I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes.
- Hosea, XII. 10.

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel, writing in a book of gold;
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said—
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And, with a look made all of sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
- Leigh Hunt, Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel.

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
- Joel, II. 28. Acts, II. 17.

An angel stood and met my gaze,
Through the low doorway of my tent;
The tent is struck, the vision stays;
I only know she came and went.
- James Russell Lowell, She Came and Went.

My thoughts by night are often filled
With visions false as fair:
For in the past alone, I build
My castles in the air.
- Thomas Love Peacock, Castles in the Air, Stanza 1.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.
- Proverbs, XXIX. 18.

Hence, dear delusion, sweet enchantment hence!
- Horace and James Smith, Rejected Addresses, An Address without a Phœnix. By "S.T.P." (Not an imitation. Initials used to puzzle critics).

But shapes that come not at an earthly call,
Will not depart when mortal voices bid.
- William Wordsworth, Dion, V.

Fond man! the vision of a moment made!
Dream of a dream! and shadow of a shade!
- Edward Young, Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job, line 187. Shadow of a shade is found in the prologue of Nobody and Somebody, a play acted by the servants of Queen Elizabeth. Not the shadow of the shade of history said by Paul Bourget—On Cœur de Femme, p. 186. (Ed. 1890).