It is often difficult to decide whether the vision is corporeal or imaginative. It is imaginative if, for example, the image persists after one has closed one's eyes, or if there are no traces of the external effects which ought to have been produced, such as when a ball of fire appears above a person's head without injuring it. The time most conducive to these visions is a state of ecstasy , when the exercise of the external senses is suspended. However, although the question has been discussed among mystics, it seems that they may also be produced outside of this state. Imaginative vision may be either representative or symbolic.
Intellectual visions perceive the object without a sensible image.
Intellectual visions in the natural order may apparently be admitted. Even when we hold with the Scholastics that every idea is derived form some image, it does not follow that the image cannot at a given time abandon the idea to itself. The intervention of God will be recognized especially by its effects, persistent light, Divine love, peace of soul, inclination towards the things of God , the constant fruits of sanctity. The intellectual vision takes place in the pure understanding, and not in the reasoning faculty. If the object perceived lies within the sphere of reason, intellectual vision of the supernatural order takes place, according to the Scholastics by means of species acquired by the intellect but applied by God himself or illuminated especially by God .