It basically means to make blessed or to make happy. The beatific vision, therefore, is a happy-making vision. If God is our happiness, then the vision of God transforms us so as to make us like God, to make us happy the way God is happy. Early Christians believed that everything we do on earth, in the here and now, is geared toward eternal fellowship with God—eternal seeing of God.
Anything that stands in the way of that seeing, that beatific vision, is something we should remove or get out of the way. In other words, even though we cannot fully experience the beatific vision until the end of time, we should already be training ourselves for that vision of God here on earth. Everything we do has to include that supernatural end of seeing God. That language comes up several times in the psalms. This language is also reflected in the New Testament.
All of this language suggests a promise that the vision of God will go beyond anything we have experienced or will experience in the here and now. This biblical testimony points to the contemplation of God as the sacramental reality of all our activities in this life. Anything we do in this life is, as Augustine would have said, penultimate. In other words, human beings long for the eschaton, or the hereafter.
We can say that in our vision today there is a point of contact with who we are meant to be in God in the hereafter. If we could explain it, we would be there. So any language we use is just a metaphor. But vision is perhaps the most adequate metaphor for talking about our final end and our final union with God. Another way of putting this is to say that the language of vision is more suitable than any other metaphor at acknowledging the centrality of God in our ultimate end.
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, there is a basic biblical reason. Scripture often uses the language of sight or vision to talk about experiencing God. We long for this same intimacy today but cannot fully describe it without metaphor. Second, the language of vision suggests we will be united with the object of our sight. Think of the way in which you recall someone or something from your past. That vision is entrenched in your memory. You remember it because of a seen experience.
In much of the Christian tradition, vision unites the seer with the seen. There are other metaphors used for experiencing God in scripture. The Bible talks about hearing God, tasting God, touching God, etc. But none of these other senses are given the same kind of ultimacy as is vision. Likewise, theologians from Origen to Augustine also describe vision as the greatest of the senses, precisely because of its ability to unify the subject and object of sight.
Thomas Aquinas, for example, insists that we will see God, the divine essence. Then he makes a caveat and says that we will not comprehend the divine essence. But we will see God as God is. In the team did a small trial with smokers. After two or three doses of psilocybin, along with cognitive behavioral therapy, 80 percent of the subjects quit for at least six months, the investigators found.
Varenicline, the best smoking-cessation drug on the market at the time, had just around a 35 percent success rate, while cognitive behavioral therapy on its own typically led fewer than 30 percent of smokers to stop. Something else also stood out: If someone had a mystical experience while tripping, they were even more likely to succeed. Here their work, including the study in which Clark Martin participated, found the same spiritual uptick.
The substances appeared to perhaps kick-start new patterns in the brain: less sad and scared ones, with shifted perspective and priorities. As his own trip progressed, Martin—at last flying comfortably high—was ready to find out what the drugs might be able to do for him. The silence did not disturb Martin, though. And soon another vision appeared. There he was: living on a bubble.
Its surface was thick, yet fragile like a balloon, but it was the size of a planet. Other people were here too, living within different parts of its membrane. He just experienced them. That was new for Martin, who had navigated his life only with logic and rationality. This trip, though, was just about being alive and alert to every interaction, feeling whatever feelings he had, sensing whatever sensations arose.
To use the hip lingo of mindfulness, he was Present. Scientists want to understand how their perceptions compare to godly encounters sober people have, in terms of quality, authenticity, and lasting effect. More than 4, responded. They published the results in The sober group was more likely than the other one to label the being God. The psychedelic users instead tended to call it Ultimate Reality. After their hangout with an omniscient entity, more than two-thirds became believers.
The shift means, essentially, that they thought the experience revealed something true about the world. One participant, a data architect in his 40s who wished to remain anonymous because his substance use occurred outside a clinical setting, has had plenty of mystical encounters, but he views these chemical creations as internal.
Whether the mystical experiences are real or imagined, or both, the positive changes they produce in people stick around, and scientists are closing in on some potential chemical reasons why psychedelics so often leave folks feeling misty-eyed and spiritual. When you pop or sip or chomp on a hallucinogen, this grid calms down, and its connections and oscillations change. That could also explain the feeling of connectedness to everything outside who you are.
Changes in this network also remove your sense of space and time. One day my companion and I were teaching a couple, and we told them that the Father and the Son had appeared to Joseph Smith in answer to his prayer. The man said that no one could see God. Immediately the alarm on my watch went off, letting us know that we needed to head home. We left their home that day without answering that statement. I knew this scripture would help this brother believe.
The time of the next visit arrived, and we spoke about prophets. I showed him this scripture, and his countenance changed. There are people prepared to see God. He wants you to get to know Him by reading the scriptures and having faith in Him.
Prophets, like Moses and Joseph Smith, who have actually seen God have had to be transformed to see Him. A friend of mine once asked me this question, and I asked her where she had gotten this idea.
She told me that a man had shown it to her in the Bible. I then remembered John , where he says that no man can see the Lord. With the help of seminary, I remembered other scriptures in the Bible that say men like Moses and Jacob, being full of the Holy Ghost, saw God.
And so I was able to answer my friend confidently and bear my testimony.
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