# Visions ## [[visions|Visions]] Seeing is proper to the vision as hearing is proper to the locution. Visions are supernatural perceptions of objects naturally invisible, or not visible by human beings through any natural means. Teresa divides mystical visions into three general kinds: bodily, imaginative, and intellectual. These are according to the different levels of the human faculties: external sense faculties, internal sense faculties, and spiritual faculties. These three classes of mystical visions can be pure or mixed. ## Bodily [[visions|Visions]] Bodily visions are visions seen with the bodily eyes. Teresa says she never experienced any. But she did at times wish that she would have them so that she could tell her confessors that what she saw was with her bodily eyes. ## Imaginative [[visions|Visions]] They are seen with the eyes of the soul; that is, with the internal sense of imagination. In them there are present very concrete images. ## Intellectual [[visions|Visions]] In these we have the absence of any image, without seeing anything with the eyes of the body or with those of the soul. Thus they cannot be described, and Teresa tries hard to share with us something of the admirable reality of what she contemplates. ## Mixed [[visions|Visions]] Both the imaginative and the intellectual elements are present. ## [[visions|Visions]] Of the Seventh Dwelling Place His Majesty communicates himself in other ways that are more sublime. In this seventh dwelling place, the soul sees and understands, although in a strange way. It sees through an admirable knowledge the Holy Trinity, all three Persons, in an intellectual vision, and these Persons never seem to leave it. It clearly perceives that they are within it, in the extreme interior, in some place very deep within itself. Why does God give these visions and other mystical favors? Teresa answers that God couldn’t give us a greater favor than a life that would be an imitation of the life his beloved Son lived. “Thus I hold for certain that these favors are meant to fortify our weakness... that we may be able to imitate Him in His great sufferings” (IC 7.4.4). - The Interior Castle Glossary