Vision

Beatific vision is the imparting by God to the pure in heart of the direct contemplation of himself, in as perfect a manner as the creature is capable. As distinguished from intellectual knowledge, this is experience of the nearness of God and absorption in his glory. Such transparency to the absolute God is the highest fulfilment of man's nature. In that empirical knowledge is based on the knower knowing that knower and known are entitatively one, the reality of the mind as knower is the being of God himself. This taking up into the source is a supernatural mystery when God's utter incomprehensibility is contemplated in itself. It arises in the [lumen gloriae]

, the growing of the grace created by grace from the seed already present in man.

To the Sufi, beatific vision is the culmination of religious love. Fixing his gaze on the beloved is the first step to salvation.