visions

111:7.2May I ad­mon­ish you to heed the dis­tant echo of the Ad­juster’s faith­ful call to your soul? The in­dwelling Ad­juster can­not stop or even ma­te­ri­ally al­ter your ca­reer strug­gle of time; the Ad­juster can­not lessen the hard­ships of life as you jour­ney on through this world of toil. The di­vine in­dweller can only pa­tiently for­bear while you fight the bat­tle of life as it is lived on your planet; but you could, if you only would—as you work and worry, as you fight and toil—per­mit the valiant Ad­juster to fight with you and for you. You could be so com­forted and in­spired, so en­thralled and in­trigued, if you would only al­low the Ad­juster con­stantly to bring forth the pic­tures of the real mo­tive, the fi­nal aim, and the eter­nal pur­pose of all this dif­fi­cult, up­hill strug­gle with the com­mon­place prob­lems of your pres­ent ma­te­rial world.

111:7.3Why do you not aid the Ad­juster in the task of show­ing you the spir­i­tual coun­ter­part of all these stren­u­ous ma­te­rial ef­forts? Why do you not al­low the Ad­juster to strengthen you with the spir­i­tual truths of cos­mic power while you wres­tle with the tem­po­ral dif­fi­cul­ties of crea­ture ex­is­tence? Why do you not en­cour­age the heav­enly helper to cheer you with the clear vi­sion of the eter­nal out­look of uni­ver­sal life as you gaze in per­plex­ity at the prob­lems of the pass­ing hour? Why do you refuse to be en­light­ened and in­spired by the uni­verse view­point while you toil amidst the hand­i­caps of time and floun­der in the maze of un­cer­tain­ties which be­set your mor­tal life jour­ney? Why not al­low the Ad­juster to spir­i­tu­al­ize your think­ing, even though your feet must tread the ma­te­rial paths of earthly en­deavor?

• shamanesses threw themselves into trances

90:1.3While they may have prac­ticed de­cep­tion in mi­nor mat­ters, the great ma­jor­ity of the shamans be­lieved in the fact of their spirit pos­ses­sion. Women who were able to throw them­selves into a trance or a catalep­tic fit be­came pow­er­ful shamanesses; later, such women be­came proph­ets and spirit medi­ums. Their catalep­tic trances usu­ally in­volved al­leged com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the ghosts of the dead. Many fe­male shamans were also pro­fes­sional dancers.

• regarding v. as divine communications

100:5.6If one is dis­posed to rec­og­nize a the­o­ret­i­cal sub­con­scious mind as a prac­ti­cal work­ing hy­poth­e­sis in the oth­er­wise uni­fied in­tel­lec­tual life, then, to be con­sis­tent, one should pos­tu­late a sim­i­lar and cor­re­spond­ing realm of as­cend­ing in­tel­lec­tual ac­tiv­ity as the super­con­scious level, the zone of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the in­dwelling spirit en­tity, the Thought Ad­juster. The great dan­ger in all these psy­chic spec­u­la­tions is that vi­sions and other so-called mys­tic ex­pe­ri­ences, along with ex­traor­di­nary dreams, may be re­garded as di­vine com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the hu­man mind. In times past, di­vine be­ings have re­vealed them­selves to cer­tain God-know­ing per­sons, not be­cause of their mys­tic trances or mor­bid vi­sions, but in spite of all these phe­nom­ena.

• under no circumstances cultivate state of visionary consciousness

100:5.8There is great dan­ger as­so­ci­ated with the ha­bit­ual prac­tice of re­li­gious day­dream­ing; mys­ti­cism may be­come a tech­nique of re­al­ity avoid­ance, al­beit it has some­times been a means of gen­uine spir­i­tual com­mu­nion. Short sea­sons of re­treat from the busy scenes of life may not be se­ri­ously dan­ger­ous, but pro­longed iso­la­tion of per­son­al­ity is most un­de­sir­able. Un­der no cir­cum­stances should the trance­like state of vi­sion­ary con­scious­ness be cul­ti­vated as a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

39:5.12The er­ro­neous idea that an­gels pos­sess wings is not wholly due to olden no­tions that they must have wings to fly through the air. Hu­man be­ings have some­times been per­mit­ted to ob­serve ser­a­phim that were be­ing pre­pared for trans­port ser­vice, and the tra­di­tions of these ex­pe­ri­ences have largely de­ter­mined the Uran­tian con­cept of an­gels. In ob­serv­ing a trans­port ser­a­phim be­ing made ready to re­ceive a pas­sen­ger for in­ter­plan­e­tary tran­sit, there may be seen what are ap­par­ently dou­ble sets of wings ex­tend­ing from the head to the foot of the an­gel. In re­al­ity these wings are en­ergy in­su­la­tors—fric­tion shields.

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.

148:8.3About this time there ar­rived at the Beth­saida en­camp­ment a trance prophet from Bag­dad, one Kirmeth. This sup­posed prophet had pe­cu­liar vi­sions when in trance and dreamed fan­tas­tic dreams when his sleep was dis­turbed. He cre­ated a con­sid­er­able dis­tur­bance at the camp, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes was in fa­vor of deal­ing rather roughly with the self-de­ceived pre­tender, but Je­sus in­ter­vened and al­lowed him en­tire free­dom of ac­tion for a few days. All who heard his preach­ing soon rec­og­nized that his teach­ing was not sound as judged by the gospel of the king­dom. He shortly re­turned to Bag­dad, tak­ing with him only a half dozen un­sta­ble and er­ratic souls. But be­fore Je­sus in­ter­ceded for the Bag­dad prophet, David Zeb­e­dee, with the as­sis­tance of a self-ap­pointed com­mit­tee, had taken Kirmeth out into the lake and, af­ter re­peat­edly plung­ing him into the wa­ter, had ad­vised him to de­part hence—to or­ga­nize and build a camp of his own.

• John the Revelator saw › Jerusem
• John the Revelator saw › Salvington

34:4.11These are the “seven spir­its of God,” “like lamps burn­ing be­fore the throne,” which the prophet saw in the sym­bols of vi­sion. But he did not see the seats of the four and twenty sen­tinels about these seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its. This rec­ord rep­re­sents the con­fu­sion of two pre­sen­ta­tions, one per­tain­ing to the uni­verse head­quar­ters and the other to the sys­tem cap­i­tal. The seats of the four and twenty el­ders are on Je­ru­sem, the head­quar­ters of your lo­cal sys­tem of in­hab­ited worlds.

34:4.12But it was of Sal­ving­ton that John wrote: “And out of the throne pro­ceeded light­nings and thun­der­ings and voices”—the uni­verse broad­casts to the lo­cal sys­tems. He also en­vis­aged the di­rec­tional con­trol crea­tures of the lo­cal uni­verse, the liv­ing com­passes of the head­quar­ters world. This di­rec­tional con­trol in Neb­a­don is main­tained by the four con­trol crea­tures of Sal­ving­ton, who op­er­ate over the uni­verse cur­rents and are ably as­sisted by the first func­tion­ing mind-spirit, the ad­ju­tant of in­tu­ition, the spirit of “quick un­der­stand­ing.” But the de­scrip­tion of these four crea­tures—called beasts—has been sadly marred; they are of un­par­al­leled beauty and ex­qui­site form.

• John the Revelator saw › 24 counselors

45:4.1At the cen­ter of the seven an­gelic res­i­den­tial cir­cles on Je­ru­sem is lo­cated the head­quar­ters of the Uran­tia ad­vi­sory coun­cil, the four and twenty coun­selors. John the Rev­e­la­tor called them the four and twenty el­ders: “And round about the throne were four and twenty seats, and upon the seats I saw four and twenty el­ders sit­ting, clothed in white rai­ment.” The throne in the cen­ter of this group is the judg­ment seat of the pre­sid­ing arch­an­gel, the throne of the res­ur­rec­tion roll call of mercy and jus­tice for all Sa­ta­nia. This judg­ment seat has al­ways been on Je­ru­sem, but the twenty-four sur­round­ing seats were placed in po­si­tion no more than nine­teen hun­dred years ago, soon af­ter Christ Mi­chael was el­e­vated to the full sov­er­eignty of Neb­a­don. These four and twenty coun­selors are his per­sonal agents on Je­ru­sem, and they have au­thor­ity to rep­re­sent the Mas­ter Son in all mat­ters con­cern­ing the roll calls of Sa­ta­nia and in many other phases of the scheme of mor­tal as­cen­sion on the iso­lated worlds of the sys­tem. They are the des­ig­nated agents for ex­e­cut­ing the spe­cial re­quests of Ga­briel and the un­usual man­dates of Mi­chael.

• John the Revelator saw › Jerusem
• Paul saw › Jerusem

47:10.2John the Rev­e­la­tor saw a vi­sion of the ar­rival of a class of ad­vanc­ing mor­tals from the sev­enth man­sion world to their first heaven, the glo­ries of Je­ru­sem. He re­corded: “And I saw as it were a sea of glass min­gled with fire; and those who had gained the vic­tory over the beast that was orig­i­nally in them and over the im­age that per­sisted through the man­sion worlds and fi­nally over the last mark and trace, stand­ing on the sea of glass, hav­ing the harps of God, and singing the song of de­liv­er­ance from mor­tal fear and death.” (Per­fected space com­mu­ni­ca­tion is to be had on all these worlds; and your any­where re­cep­tion of such com­mu­ni­ca­tions is made pos­si­ble by car­ry­ing the “harp of God,” a mor­ontia con­trivance com­pen­sat­ing for the in­abil­ity to di­rectly ad­just the im­ma­ture mor­ontia sen­sory mech­a­nism to the re­cep­tion of space com­mu­ni­ca­tions.)

47:10.3Paul also had a view of the as­cen­dant-cit­i­zen corps of per­fect­ing mor­tals on Je­ru­sem, for he wrote: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the liv­ing God, the heav­enly Je­ru­sa­lem, and to an in­nu­mer­able com­pany of an­gels, to the grand as­sem­bly of Mi­chael, and to the spir­its of just men be­ing made per­fect.”

• Paul saw › 3rd mansion world
• wise men have seen v. of greater heaven

48:6.23You should con­sider the state­ment about “heaven” and the “heaven of heav­ens.” The heaven con­ceived by most of your proph­ets was the first of the man­sion worlds of the lo­cal sys­tem. When the apos­tle spoke of be­ing “caught up to the third heaven,” he re­ferred to that ex­pe­ri­ence in which his Ad­juster was de­tached dur­ing sleep and in this un­usual state made a pro­jec­tion to the third of the seven man­sion worlds. Some of your wise men saw the vi­sion of the greater heaven, “the heaven of heav­ens,” of which the sev­en­fold man­sion world ex­pe­ri­ence was but the first; the sec­ond be­ing Je­ru­sem; the third, Eden­tia and its satel­lites; the fourth, Sal­ving­ton and the sur­round­ing ed­u­ca­tional spheres; the fifth, Uversa; the sixth, Ha­vona; and the sev­enth, Par­a­dise.

• John the Revelator saw › post-Teacher Son era

52:7.11It was of the con­clu­sion of the ter­mi­nal mis­sion of the Teacher Sons (at least that would be the chronol­ogy on a nor­mal world) that John wrote: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth and the new Je­ru­sa­lem com­ing down from God out of heaven, pre­pared as a princess adorned for the prince.”

• John the Revelator saw › Lucifer rebellion

53:7.7Of the plan­e­tary an­gelic helpers, those as­signed to the Ma­te­rial Sons, about one third were de­ceived, and al­most ten per cent of the tran­si­tion min­is­ters were en­snared. In sym­bol John saw this when he wrote of the great red dragon, say­ing: “And his tail drew a third part of the stars of heaven and cast them down in dark­ness.”

• 3 celestial beings appeared to Abraham at Mamre

93:6.7It was fol­low­ing this real and pub­lic sur­ren­der of his per­sonal am­bi­tions in be­half of the larger plans of Mel­chiz­e­dek that the three ce­les­tial be­ings ap­peared to him on the plains of Mamre. This was an ap­pear­ance of fact, not­with­stand­ing its as­so­ci­a­tion with the sub­se­quently fab­ri­cated nar­ra­tives re­lat­ing to the nat­u­ral de­struc­tion of Sodom and Go­mor­rah. And these leg­ends of the hap­pen­ings of those days in­di­cate how re­tarded were the morals and ethics of even so re­cent a time.

• Elizabeth saw Gabriel

122:2.2It was late in the month of June, 8 B.C., about three months af­ter the mar­riage of Joseph and Mary, that Ga­briel ap­peared to Eliz­a­beth at noon­tide one day, just as he later made his pres­ence known to Mary. Said Ga­briel:

122:2.3“While your hus­band, Zach­a­rias, stands be­fore the al­tar in Je­ru­sa­lem, and while the as­sem­bled peo­ple pray for the com­ing of a de­liv­erer, I, Ga­briel, have come to an­nounce that you will shortly bear a son who shall be the fore­run­ner of this di­vine teacher, and you shall call your son John. He will grow up ded­i­cated to the Lord your God, and when he has come to full years, he will glad­den your heart be­cause he will turn many souls to God, and he will also pro­claim the com­ing of the soul-healer of your peo­ple and the spirit-lib­er­a­tor of all man­kind. Your kinswoman Mary shall be the mother of this child of prom­ise, and I will also ap­pear to her.”

122:2.4This vi­sion greatly fright­ened Eliz­a­beth. Af­ter Ga­briel’s de­par­ture she turned this ex­pe­ri­ence over in her mind, long pon­der­ing the say­ings of the ma­jes­tic vis­i­tor, but did not speak of the rev­e­la­tion to any­one save her hus­band un­til her sub­se­quent visit with Mary in early Febru­ary of the fol­low­ing year.

• Mary saw Gabriel

122:3.1One evening about sun­down, be­fore Joseph had re­turned home, Ga­briel ap­peared to Mary by the side of a low stone ta­ble and, af­ter she had re­cov­ered her com­po­sure, said: “I come at the bid­ding of one who is my Mas­ter and whom you shall love and nur­ture. To you, Mary, I bring glad tid­ings when I an­nounce that the con­cep­tion within you is or­dained by heaven, and that in due time you will be­come the mother of a son; you shall call him Joshua, and he shall in­au­gu­rate the king­dom of heaven on earth and among men. Speak not of this mat­ter save to Joseph and to Eliz­a­beth, your kinswoman, to whom I have also ap­peared, and who shall pres­ently also bear a son, whose name shall be John, and who will pre­pare the way for the mes­sage of de­liv­er­ance which your son shall pro­claim to men with great power and deep con­vic­tion. And doubt not my word, Mary, for this home has been cho­sen as the mor­tal habi­tat of the child of des­tiny. My bene­dic­tion rests upon you, the power of the Most Highs will strengthen you, and the Lord of all the earth shall over­shadow you.”

• Jesus’ vision at his baptism

136:2.3Or­di­nar­ily, when a mor­tal of the realm at­tains such high lev­els of per­son­al­ity per­fec­tion, there oc­cur those pre­lim­i­nary phe­nom­ena of spir­i­tual el­e­va­tion which ter­mi­nate in even­tual fu­sion of the ma­tured soul of the mor­tal with its as­so­ci­ated di­vine Ad­juster. And such a change was ap­par­ently due to take place in the per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth on that very day when he went down into the Jor­dan with his two broth­ers to be bap­tized by John. This cer­e­mony was the fi­nal act of his purely hu­man life on Uran­tia, and many super­hu­man ob­servers ex­pected to wit­ness the fu­sion of the Ad­juster with its in­dwelt mind, but they were all des­tined to suf­fer dis­ap­point­ment. Some­thing new and even greater oc­curred. As John laid his hands upon Je­sus to bap­tize him, the in­dwelling Ad­juster took fi­nal leave of the per­fected hu­man soul of Joshua ben Joseph. And in a few mo­ments this di­vine en­tity re­turned from Di­vin­ing­ton as a Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster and chief of his kind through­out the en­tire lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don. Thus did Je­sus ob­serve his own for­mer di­vine spirit de­scend­ing on its re­turn to him in per­son­al­ized form. And he heard this same spirit of Par­a­dise ori­gin now speak, say­ing, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” And John, with Je­sus’ two broth­ers, also heard these words. John’s dis­ci­ples, stand­ing by the wa­ter’s edge, did not hear these words, nei­ther did they see the ap­pari­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster. Only the eyes of Je­sus be­held the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster.

136:2.4When the re­turned and now ex­alted Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster had thus spo­ken, all was si­lence. And while the four of them tar­ried in the wa­ter, Je­sus, look­ing up to the near-by Ad­juster, prayed: “My Fa­ther who reigns in heaven, hal­lowed be your name. Your king­dom come! Your will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven.” When he had prayed, the “heav­ens were opened,” and the Son of Man saw the vi­sion, pre­sented by the now Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, of him­self as a Son of God as he was be­fore he came to earth in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, and as he would be when the in­car­nated life should be fin­ished. This heav­enly vi­sion was seen only by Je­sus.

136:2.5It was the voice of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster that John and Je­sus heard, speak­ing in be­half of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, for the Ad­juster is of, and as, the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Through­out the re­main­der of Je­sus’ earth life this Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster was as­so­ci­ated with him in all his labors; Je­sus was in con­stant com­mu­nion with this ex­alted Ad­juster.

• Jesus saw celestial hosts

136:5.1On the third day af­ter be­gin­ning this con­fer­ence with him­self and his Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, Je­sus was pre­sented with the vi­sion of the as­sem­bled ce­les­tial hosts of Neb­a­don sent by their com­man­ders to wait upon the will of their beloved Sov­er­eign. This mighty host em­braced twelve le­gions of ser­a­phim and pro­por­tion­ate num­bers of ev­ery or­der of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence. And the first great de­ci­sion of Je­sus’ iso­la­tion had to do with whether or not he would make use of these mighty per­son­al­i­ties in con­nec­tion with the en­su­ing pro­gram of his pub­lic work on Uran­tia.

91:7.3Re­li­gious ec­stasy is per­mis­si­ble when re­sult­ing from sane an­tecedents, but such ex­pe­ri­ences are more of­ten the out­growth of purely emo­tional in­flu­ences than a man­i­fes­ta­tion of deep spir­i­tual char­ac­ter. Re­li­gious per­sons must not re­gard ev­ery vivid psy­cho­logic pre­sen­ti­ment and ev­ery in­tense emo­tional ex­pe­ri­ence as a di­vine rev­e­la­tion or a spir­i­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Gen­uine spir­i­tual ec­stasy is usu­ally as­so­ci­ated with great out­ward calm­ness and al­most per­fect emo­tional con­trol. But true pro­phetic vi­sion is a super­psy­cho­logic pre­sen­ti­ment. Such vis­i­ta­tions are not pseudo hal­lu­ci­na­tions, nei­ther are they trance­like ec­stasies.