Vision

“ I have always been curious about the psychology of my own vision as desirous of imparting it, and I wish in this book to relate the efforts of an artist and poet to discover what truth lay in his own imaginations. I have brooded longer over the nature of imagination than I have lingered over the canvas where I tried to rebuild my vision. ”

“ A light in the sky and a vision. What intensity of light, what brilliancy of vision, would be sufficient to change the belief and the character of a modern man of the world or a professional politician? ”

“ I know that I have not been alone in such imaginations for there are few whose intent will has tried to scale the Heavens who have not been met by messages from the gods who are the fountains of this shadowy beauty, and who are, I think, ourselves beyond this mirage of time and space by which we are enchanted. I have spoken to others, seekers like myself upon this quest, and recognise identity of vision and experience. ”

“ All the forms of Authentic Existence spring from vision and are a vision. Everything that springs from these Authentic Existences in their vision is an object of vision-manifest to sensation or to true knowledge or to surface-awareness. ”

“ For all that vast ambition I have not even a complete alphabet to show, much less one single illustration of how to read the letters of nature in their myriad intricacies of form, colour and sound in the world we live in. But I believe that vision has been attained by the seers, and we shall all at some time attain it, and, as is said in the Divine Shepherd of Hermes, it shall meet us everywhere, plain and easy, walking or resting, waking or sleeping, "for there is nothing which is not the image of God." ”

“ Where other eyes see only darkness, we behold 'the King in His beauty, and the land that is very far off.' Where other men see only cloudland and mists, our vision will pierce into the unseen, and there behold 'the things which are,' the only real things, of which all that the eye of sense sees are only the fleeting shadows, seen as in a dream, while these are the true, and the sight of them is sight indeed. ”

“ This exercise of the eye I desire to promote, and, next to moral and religious doctrine, I know no more important practical lessons in this earthly life of ours—which, to the wise man, is a school from the cradle to the grave—than those relating to the employment of the sense of vision in the study of nature. ”

“ In the mount of vision, ere they have yet risen from their knees, they say, “We discover that this our homage and beatitude is partial and deformed; we must fly for relief to the suspected and reviled Intellect, to the Understanding, the Mephistopheles, to the gymnastics of latent.” ”

“ In exploring the ancestry of the symbolic vision we draw nigh to that clouded majesty we divine in the depths of our being, and which is heard normally in intuition and conscience, but which now reveals character in its manifestation as the artist in his work. ”

“ Light comes into those open windows, the moving panorama of external nature passes before them, but distinct vision, which recognizes and individualizes objects, is something more than a mere passive, bodily sensation. ”

“ In these apparent testimonies of sight and hearing, the entire spiritual nature of the man or woman might set the vision, dramatize it with his or her desires and aversions, and complete it from the store of knowledge at command. ”

“ The universe, as we apprehend it, presents itself as a congeries of living souls united by some indefinable medium. These living souls are each possessed of that multiform activity which I have named the complex vision. ”

“ The mountains, let us say, which the eye beholds are the objects of its vision. In the same way the passions, sensations, "states of mind," &c., which the man is, or may be, conscious of, are the objects of his consciousness, of his conscious self. But no one ever supposes that the fact of vision is the same as the objects of vision. ”

“ The mental vision is outward rather than inward, and sees things near or remote tinted by glowing, joyous colors, as through a prism. This mental outlook never implies profound insight, or deep thought, or conscious indwelling. ”

“ Idea or Vision, in its sensuous meaning, would be something that could be perceived only by the bodily eye and not by any other sense such as taste, hearing, etc.; it would be such a thing as a rainbow, or the forms which pass before us in dreams. Idea or Vision, in its supersensuous meaning, would denote, first of all, in conformity with the sphere in which the word is to be valid, something that cannot be perceived by the body at all, but only by the mind; ”

“ For the organ of vision, it is plain, is merely material; and consequently, like every other material substance, is utterly incapable either of seeing or feeling. You must look then to some other source within yourself, before you can discover the wonderful faculty of vision, or that astonishing power which enables you to admit into yourself all the glories and beauties of external nature for your comfort and edification.—And what can this other source be but mind? Yet what is mind, but a substance and form capable of receiving life from its GREAT CREATOR ”

“ For, when I think of a man I know, in his absence, the vision of my thought forms such an image as I have acquired in memory through my ocular vision and this image is the word corresponding to the man I express by thinking of him. ”

“ What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are. ”

“ For my own part, I declare that I can no more avoid perceiving, with my mental vision, the evidential marks of purpose in the structure of the body, than I can help seeing with my open eyes, in broad daylight, the objects that stand before my face. ”

“ What could be more marvelous than the first revealment155 of the sense of sight, what more inconceivable to those who had not experienced it, and what more certain than that the first use of this faculty must have been fraught with delusion and error? Yet there may be an inner vision which again transcends sight, even as far as sight transcends touch. ”

“ In the second-sight, the vision makes such a lively impression on the seers, that they neither see nor think of anything else but the vision as long as it continues, and then they appear pensive or jovial, according to the object which was presented to them. ”

“ The soul being the man or real body, the natural body represents the appliances and arts of life, whether economic or aesthetic. The eye is its window, telescope, microscope, and answers to the series of means that transparent substance lends to vision, and which are as curious and exquisite for their appearance as they are excellent for use: for the eye receives the finest impressions from things, and gives the finest expressions from the soul. ”

“ The truth is that in this ultimate revelation of the complex vision we are confronted with an inevitable triad, or trinity, of primordial aspects. We are compelled to think of a plurality of living souls of which our own is one; of certain ideal companions of all souls whose vision gives to our vision its objective value; and of an external universe which is the creation of this vision. ”

“ To make you understand in what manner they take and invest themselves with these bodies, in order to render themselves visible to men, and to make themselves heard by them, we must first of all explain what is vision, which is only the bringing of the species within the compass of the organ of sight. ”

“ Reason is to the mental vision exactly what the eye is to optical vision, and just as the eye borrows its visual action from external light, so reason borrows its power of clear and correct vision from traditional experience. ”

“ Vision is an extraordinary blessing-one that should be cherished and protected. Complex and remarkable organs, the eyes work in concert with the brain to produce vision, allowing us to experience the beauty and variety of the physical world around us. ”

“ From that maxim of Life as the end of life, followed, as a practical consequence, the desirableness of refining all the instruments of inward and outward intuition, of developing all their capacities, of testing and exercising one’s self in them, till one’s whole nature became one complex medium of reception, towards the vision—the “beatific vision,” if we really cared to make it such—of our actual experience in the world. ”

“ They are, for instance, the visible forms, colours, and shades of the parts, understood according to the maxims of perspective; (for of perspective every one has a practical knowledge, as every one has of grammar;) the effort by which we fix both our eyes on the same object, and adjust each eye to distinct vision ”

“ That There are Three Things in Sight, Which Differ in Their Own Nature. In What Manner from a Visible Thing Vision is Produced, or the Image of that Thing Which is Seen. The Matter is Shown More Clearly by an Example. ”

“ So that if at this time the will desires to understand and consider particular things, however spiritual they be, this would obstruct the pure and simple general light of the spirit, by setting those clouds in the way; even as a man might set something before his eyes which impeded his vision and kept from him both the light and the sight of things in front of him. ”

“ Far beyond the keenest of human vision is its range of sight. If the light is good, this sensitive plate of glass will have recorded and discerned a thousand uplifted faces as perfectly as the human eye perceives the features of a single countenance. Every expression of joy or sorrow, every peculiarity of dress or attitude, the leaves of a forest or the grass by the wayside, will have been seen and delineated and retained perfectly in far less than the briefest possible twinkling of a human eye. ”

“ Has He occasion to employ visible means to effect His purpose in this, whose ways are hidden in all His ordinary works?
Why should we doubt the evidence of dreams? for what is our life, occupied as it is with vain and fleeting imaginations, other than a prolonged vision of the night? ”

“ Instead of searching for light which will illuminate the meaning of things in the external physical world, as the vision of young people usually does, it begins to search for light which will illuminate the meaning of what is going on in the internal world, the spiritual world of our soul. ”

“ I perhaps to build on had some little gift of imagination I brought with me into the world, but I know others who had no natural vision who acquired this, and by sustained meditation and by focussing the will to a burning-point, were raised above the narrow life of the body. ”

“ and as the eye naturally seeks the light and vision, and our body naturally desires food and drink, so our mind is possessed with a becoming and natural desire to become acquainted with the truth of God and the causes of things. ”

“ The vision which is given to the eye of faith is more real in the true sense of that word, more substantial in the true sense of that word, more reliable and more near than that sight by which the bodily eye beholds external things. ”

“ The variety of scenery seems to arise from the superior activity and excellence of our sense of vision; which in an instant unfolds to the mind extensive fields of pleasurable ideas; while the other senses collect their objects slowly, and with little combination; add to this, that the ideas, which this organ presents us with, are more frequently connected with our sensation than those of any other. ”

“ For the achievement of most imaginative work relative vision will suffice. If we consider the matter thoroughly, in many forms—which at first sight might seem to require absolute vision—we shall find nothing but relative vision at work. ”

“ What a curious workmanship is that of the eye, which is in the body, as the sun in the world; set in the head as in a watchtower, having the softest nerves for the receiving the greater multitude of spirits necessary for the act of vision! ”

“ The discoverer and the poet are inventors; and they are so because their mental vision detects the unapparent, unsuspected facts, almost as vividly as ocular vision rests on the apparent and familiar. ”

“ Thousands and thousands know, by their inward and invisible sensation, things that have been, things that are, and things that are in the future, as well as they know the color of a piece of cloth by means of their outward or physical vision. ”

“ Vision, a word expressive of the phenomena of 24 sight, is ambiguous in the same manner. It is sometimes used to denote the sense of seeing; that is, the antecedent and consequent, as explained in the preceding paragraph. Thus we say, the phenomena of vision, with the same propriety as we say the phenomena of sight. It is sometimes employed to denote the sensation. If we ask what feeling a blind man is deprived of, it would be perfectly proper to say, vision is the feeling of which he is deprived. ”

“ It must be known, then, that, speaking broadly and in general terms, all these four apprehensions may be called visions of the soul; for we term the understanding of the soul also its sight. And since all these apprehensions are intelligible to the understanding, they are described, in a spiritual sense, as ‘visible.’ And thus the kinds of intelligence that are formed in the understanding may be called intellectual visions. ”