Through the lens – D&C 76

I believe that the Vision of the Kingdoms of Glory (Doctrine and Covenants 76) is due to an entheogenic substance. Or, at minimum, derived from an expanded state of consciousness through another modality (say, meditation, holotropic breathing, or something).

My goal is to make that case, to the best of my ability. To the best of my knowledge, we don’t have a journal entry for February of 1832. Sadly, I am unable to verify whether or not my recollection is accurate because the Joseph Smith Papers website is down. Moving on! Without the journal entry, I do not know what Joseph’s day looked like on that Thursday, the 16th of February. Nothing else of note appears to have happened on that day aside from the fact that it was a full moon that night.

While I am nearly 100% certain that we do not have a journal entry for that period, nor a first-person account from Smith or Rigdon on how the vision was received, I am aware of a late account from a Philo Dibble. “JS and Rigdon sat in the upstairs room, where they had conducted much of their work on the Bible revision, with twelve other men. By turns, either JS or Rigdon would ask, ‘What do I see?’ and then relate the scene, after which the other would reply, ‘I see the same.’ There is no indication in Dibble’s account that anyone was recording the vision as it occurred; instead, Dibble said there was ‘not a sound nor motion made by anyone’ in the room. Dibble recalled that neither JS nor Rigdon ‘moved a joint or limb during the time I was there.’”

If Dibble is correct, the vision is less a shared vision and more likely to be an influenced vision. While in expanded states of consciousness, it is easy to influence what someone may see. While a group may be seeing similar things, all it takes is one person to say, “Wow! Do you see the beautiful triangles?” for the entire group to start seeing triangles.

So! Perhaps, when the written account says that Smith and Rigdon were in the Spirit, they meant that they were in an altered state of consciousness? That is how I read it.

More to come.