Saint Teresa of Ávila’s “First Vision” Accounts

Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was a Spanish mystic, Carmelite nun, and was canonized a Roman Catholic saint by Pope Gregory XV. In her autobiography, The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, she describes many of her ecstatic visions of the Divine which should ring a few bells for Latter-day Saints.

Martin Buber's "First Vision" Account

There is an experience which grows in the soul out of the soul itself, without contact and without restraint, in naked oneness. It comes into being and completes itself beyond the commotion, free of the other, inaccessible to the other. It needs no nourishment, and no poison can touch it. The soul which stands in it stands in itself, has itself, experiences itself - boundlessly.

Eternal Fire "First Vision" Account

But it is only when all outward appearances are gone that there is left that one principle of life which exists independently of all external phenomena. It is the fire that burns in the eternal light, when the fuel is expended and the flame is extinguished; for that fire is neither in the flame nor in the fuel, nor yet inside either of the two, but above, beneath, and everywhere.

Norris Stearns "First Vision" Account

This is an account written by Norris Stearns of Greenfield, Massachusetts, published in 1815, five years before Joseph Smith's First Vision experience, in a pamphlet titled The Religious Experience Of Norris Stearns Written by Divine Command. The 35 page pamphlet can be read in its entirety online at this link. Here is an excerpt of part of his vision.

Blazing Light “First Vision” Account

My experience of stillness, or transcendental consciousness, has become vast and universal, often blazing with intensely brilliant, even blinding, light. Words cannot even begin to describe the intensity of bliss and the tenderness of emotions that not only swell in my heart, but penetrate into every pore of my being. Is this an experience of God?