Discourse 20

Again, on the known distinctions of the spiritual powers of the air, in the operations of revelations and visions of the spirit. Divine vision: it is the insensible revelation of the air. Divine revelation: it is the movement of the air in spiritual concepts concerning the divinity. This, however, not even the rank of angels is set in motion from themselves, except by a revelation from grace. Another is the movement in revelations concerning the activity of God, and another is the movement in revelations concerning the nature of his essence. The first: from a cause from sensible things, it is possible to receive its acceptance. The second, however: and not from any cause from the intellect and not. Purity is the third of the states and the first, as they say. And one from among thousands of the righteous is not able to attain to this great sensation. For even the theory of the incarnation of our Lord and his revelation in the flesh: from it, from the divine theory, it is said that it is. The firm vision of angels: it is the movement in spiritual concepts of those that are their own. The rank, however, of the spiritual powers outside of the air of what is seen: a place does not exist.

When the air is pure and the place is calm, a person sees them as they are, according to the nature of their spirit. In the revelation of spiritual concepts, they are moved in their being by grace. But when the soul is purified to see the stars, in these eyes it receives their vision. They are not bodies, apart from the spiritual vision which is true theoria. Again, they are seen otherwise as they are, when they are not disturbed. For they are not separated from their nature by their visions. But for this vision, apart from the spiritual purity of the air, a person cannot receive it. That which is seen by people in forms, however, is not true vision, but rather an order of governance that deceives through their sending. Or it is a confusion and disturbance of the simple, shown through a sensory vision. That which even the envious become like these visions. The first order, however, is of luminous and knowledgeable people who have been elevated by the glorious practices of stillness to the order of purity.