Out of the Body — Visions and Being Caught Up Into Heaven
The spirit is the eternal self; at God’s word it can be quickened to see, or caught up to heaven, and behold what natural eyes cannot.
Throughout the scriptures, prophets and Saints are shown things no mortal eye perceives in its ordinary state. They are caught up, carried by the Spirit, transfigured, or quickened — and they behold the heavens opened. To some this is unsettling, even strange. But the scriptures speak of it plainly and soberly, and they teach us what is happening and why. The pattern is consistent, the source is God, and the doctrine is reassuring: man is more than his body, and the spirit within him was made to perceive eternal things.
What follows is drawn entirely from scripture, that we may understand these experiences as the prophets understood them — reverently, and without fear.
In the Body or Out, They Could Not Tell
The keynote of this whole subject is sounded by the Apostle Paul, who was himself caught up into the presence of God and yet could not say by what manner it was done. Speaking of visions and revelations of the Lord, he writes of being taken up to the third heaven and into paradise — and he confesses openly that he does not know whether he went in the body or out of it.
“I knew a man in Christ… (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven… How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”
Notice what Paul does and does not claim. He is certain the experience was real and that it came from God — he heard unspeakable words in paradise. But the mechanics of it, whether spirit and body together or spirit alone, he leaves entirely to God: “God knoweth.” This is the right posture toward all such things. We need not resolve every question of how. It is enough that the experience is real and that the Lord is its author.
The Prophet Joseph Smith, generations later, was caught up to behold the celestial kingdom and reached for Paul’s very words to describe it — he too could not say whether he stood in the body or out of it.
“The heavens were opened upon us, and I beheld the celestial kingdom of God, and the glory thereof, whether in the body or out I cannot tell.”
And the Book of Mormon adds a third witness in almost the same words — and adds the one word that explains them all. When the Lord granted three of His Nephite disciples that they should not taste death, a change was wrought upon them, and they were caught up into heaven to see and hear unspeakable things; and they, too, could not tell whether it was in the body or out.
“…they were caught up into heaven, and saw and heard unspeakable things. And it was forbidden them that they should utter… And whether they were in the body or out of the body, they could not tell; for it did seem unto them like a transfiguration of them, that they were changed from this body of flesh into an immortal state, that they could behold the things of God.”
Three witnesses, on two continents and across a thousand years — Paul, Joseph Smith, and the Three Nephites — each caught up to behold the glory of God, and each, in nearly identical words, leaving the manner of it to the Lord: whether in the body or out, they could not tell. And the Nephite record supplies the key that unlocks all three: it “did seem unto them like a transfiguration… that they were changed from this body of flesh into an immortal state, that they could behold the things of God.” The experience is certain; the mechanism is His to know — and the means, when it is named, is a change wrought upon the man so that he can bear what flesh in its natural state cannot. That confession, repeated across the dispensations, frames everything that follows.
To Behold God, Mortal Flesh Must Be Changed
Why should such an experience transcend the ordinary body at all? The scriptures answer plainly: no man beholds the glory of God in his natural, unaided state. The mortal frame, left to itself, cannot endure that presence. When Moses stood face to face with God, he understood afterward exactly what had made it possible.
“But now mine own eyes have beheld God; but not my natural eyes, but my spiritual eyes, for my natural eyes could not have beheld; for I should have withered and died in his presence.”
Moses tells us that he was changed in order to see — “the glory of God was upon Moses; therefore Moses could endure his presence” (Moses 1:31). He saw with spiritual eyes, his frame transfigured to bear what flesh in its natural condition cannot. The latter-day revelation states the principle as a law.
Doctrine and Covenants 67:11–12
“For no man has seen God at any time in the flesh, except quickened by the Spirit of God. Neither can any natural man abide the presence of God, neither after the carnal mind.”
This is the doctrinal foundation for everything that follows. A vision of heaven is not the natural eye doing something extraordinary; it necessarily means the man was changed, caught up, or quickened — enabled by the Spirit of God to perceive what the natural man simply cannot. So when we read of prophets seeing the unseen, we are not reading of ordinary sight strained to its limit. We are reading of a man briefly lifted above the natural state.
The Spirit Caught Up and Carried
Once this is understood, the experiences of the prophets fall into a single, consistent pattern: the Spirit of God catches a man away to see, and to be shown. It is never the prophet ascending of his own power. He is taken. Nephi gives the pattern in a single sentence.
“I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high mountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before set my foot.”
Ezekiel describes the same lifting away — carried in the visions of God from one place to another while his body remained among the elders of Judah.
“And the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem.”
John the Revelator records the same: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10), and then a door was opened in heaven and a voice called him up: “Come up hither… And immediately I was in the spirit” (Revelation 4:1–2). The Spirit also acted upon men bodily: after Philip baptized the eunuch, “the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip” (Acts 8:39), and Obadiah feared that “the Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee whither I know not” concerning Elijah (1 Kings 18:12). And Stephen, in his final moments, was lifted to see beyond the veil.
“But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God… Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.”
The pattern did not end with the ancients. In the latter days Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were caught up in the same manner, and were shown the glory of the Son.
Doctrine and Covenants 76:11–14
“We, Joseph Smith, Jun., and Sidney Rigdon, being in the Spirit… the eyes of our understandings were opened, and the Lord touched the eyes of our understandings and they were opened, and the glory of the Lord shone round about. And we beheld the glory of the Son, on the right hand of the Father.”
From Nephi to Ezekiel, from John to Stephen, from Philip to Joseph Smith, it is the same doctrine: “by the power of the Spirit our eyes were opened… we beheld” (D&C 76:19). The servant of God is caught up by the Spirit and shown what flesh could not reach.
The Spirit Acts Beyond the Body — Even the Lord’s
If we doubt that the spirit is the living self and the body its tabernacle rather than its cage, we need only consider the Savior. Before His mortal body was ever born of Mary, His spirit lived, spoke, and ministered. When the brother of Jared saw the finger of the Lord and then His whole form, the Lord explained that what was shown was His spirit body.
“Behold, I am Jesus Christ… Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image. Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit… and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh.”
And on the very night before His birth, His voice came to Nephi the son of Nephi — the Lord speaking from the unseen while His mortal body was about to enter the world through Mary.
“And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying: Lift up your head and be of good cheer… on the morrow come I into the world… Behold, I come unto my own, to fulfil all things which I have made known unto the children of men from the foundation of the world.”
The Lord of all the earth spoke and ministered as a spirit before He took a body, and His voice could reach His servants from beyond the veil even as His mortal frame lay about to be born. The lesson is unmistakable: the spirit is the eternal, living self. The body is its sacred tabernacle, but the self does not begin or end with the flesh.
The Body Overcome — and the Coming Back
There is a further and very human witness that these things exceed the natural frame: again and again the prophets are physically overcome by the vision, and must afterward “come to themselves” and recover their natural strength. The body, lifted for a moment above its ordinary condition, is left spent when the glory withdraws. Moses describes it precisely.
“And the presence of God withdrew from Moses… and Moses was left unto himself. And as he was left unto himself, he fell unto the earth. And it came to pass that it was for the space of many hours before Moses did again receive his natural strength like unto man.”
Daniel describes the same collapse of the mortal frame before a heavenly messenger: “there remained no strength in me… neither is there breath left in me” (Daniel 10:8, 17), until he was strengthened by a touch. John, beholding the glorified Christ, “fell at his feet as dead” until the Lord’s right hand revived him with “Fear not” (Revelation 1:17). Lehi, after his vision, “cast himself upon his bed, being overcome with the Spirit and the things which he had seen” (1 Nephi 1:7). King Lamoni and his entire household were so overpowered by the Spirit that they sank to the earth as if dead, and afterward arose (Alma 19:6, 13). And when the boy Joseph Smith’s first vision closed, he records the very same return to himself.
“When I came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back, looking up into heaven. When the light had departed, I had no strength…”
This “coming to oneself” is not a sign that the experience was unreal — it is the very proof that it was real, and that it surpassed the natural body. The frame must be quickened to bear the glory; when the glory lifts, the frame is left in its mortal weakness, and the man returns to himself. The toll upon the body confirms the doctrine rather than undermining it: such things lie beyond the reach of flesh in its ordinary state.
In Dreams and Visions of the Night
Not every revelation comes by being caught up to a mountain or into heaven. Very often the Lord speaks in the quiet of sleep — in dreams and visions of the night — and scripture treats these not as lesser things but as a genuine, appointed channel of His word. The Lord named it Himself as one of His ordinary means of speaking to a prophet.
“…If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.”
Job teaches that sleep is often the very condition in which God opens the ear of man, when the noise of the day is stilled.
“In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.”
Lehi makes plain that a God-given dream and a vision are of one kind: “I have dreamed a dream; or in other words, I have seen a vision” (1 Nephi 8:2) — and that dream became the great revelation of the Tree of Life. So too Jacob beheld the ladder reaching to heaven as he slept (Genesis 28:12); Joseph, the husband of Mary, was warned in a dream to flee with the child into Egypt (Matthew 2:13); and the Lord promised that in the last days this gift would be poured out broadly: “your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions” (Joel 2:28). A dream from God is not “only a dream.” It is the word of the Lord, given in the hour when the spirit, less encumbered by the body, is most ready to receive it. (As always, discernment is required, for not every dream is revelation — but God genuinely speaks this way, and always has.)
Is This Concerning? — Asking the Right Question
It is fair to ask whether this doctrine should trouble us. As to the experiences of the prophets recounted above, the scriptural answer is plainly no: they are given by the power of God to His servants, in His own time and according to His own will, exactly as He grants every other revelation. There is nothing to fear in a gift of God.
But what of a person who finds himself in such a state unbidden, or who seeks it? Here we must reason with care, and refuse to condemn what scripture does not. Two things must be said plainly, against a great deal of loose talk. First, to be out of the body is not, in itself, a sin. The spirit’s perceiving and acting beyond the body is native to it; we loose the body’s full hold in some measure every night in sleep, and a man does not transgress by dreaming. Indeed, every soul will be parted from the body at death — and no one enters into sin merely by dying. Second, to seek is not a sin. God does not forbid us to seek Him; He commands it — “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7; cf. D&C 88:63). And the modern label for the self-induced experience, “astral projection,” is a coinage of nineteenth-century Theosophy that no verse names; to classify it at all is a bridge we build, not a prohibition scripture writes.
So neither the bare state, nor the bare act of seeking, is where sin or safety is decided. The whole moral weight falls on two different questions: what a soul does once it is there, and whose power it seeks. Get those two right, and the rest follows; get them wrong, and the danger is very real.
The Real Question — What Is Done, and Whose Power Is Sought
The danger was never the spirit’s freedom; it is what a soul may pursue, and whom it may entertain, once it is loosed and aware. This is where sin actually lies, and where deception and evil truly begin. Scripture’s prohibition is aimed precisely here — not at sleeping, or dreaming, or the spirit’s native sight, but at the deliberate seeking after spirits and hidden knowledge.
“There shall not be found among you any one that… useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch… or a consulter with familiar spirits… For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.”
So whether such a state is sought or comes unbidden, the rule is one and the same: do not go looking for spirits, do not consort with the dead, do not demand secret knowledge of the unseen world. To turn the experience to that use is divination, and it opens the soul to deception and to evil.
And the commonest peril is subtler still — self-deception. Much of what is reported under such labels proves, on examination, to be hypnagogic imagery, sleep paralysis, vivid lucid dreaming, or the imagination, in which nothing has left the body at all. For most people the real risk is not the spirit world but mistaking a state of mind for a revelation, and being deceived; for the adversary counterfeits.
“And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.”
Even Moses, fresh from beholding God, had to discern and rebuke the adversary, who came tempting him and claiming worship (Moses 1:12–22); and the Lord has given keys by which true messengers are known from false (D&C 129). Every impression, then, must be tried by the Spirit and the scriptures. But beneath the question of what is done lies the deeper one, and the more dangerous: whose power is sought. For two powers move in the unseen, and they are not the same.
The Devil’s Counterfeit — Sorcery, and the Slippery Curse
Here is the sobering truth the world forgets and the scriptures never do: the adversary also works in the unseen, and he really does empower his servants there. It is not imagination, and it is not nothing. Where God opens the unseen by revelation and guards His own, the devil opens it by sorcery, and grants a real but ruinous power to those who will reach for it by his arts. The Book of Mormon watched an entire nation make that trade. As the Nephites turned from God to the works of darkness, the powers of the unseen did not fall silent — they turned dark.
“…the inhabitants thereof began to hide up their treasures in the earth; and they became slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land, that they could not hold them, nor retain them again. And it came to pass that there were sorceries, and witchcrafts, and magics; and the power of the evil one was wrought upon all the face of the land…”
Mark the two things bound together there. There was real dark power — sorceries, witchcrafts, and magics, the power of the evil one wrought upon the whole land. And there was the curse that always shadows it: their very treasures and riches became slippery, so that they could not hold them. Samuel the Lamanite had foretold precisely this — that when the people turned to such works the Lord would curse their riches, “that they become slippery, that ye cannot hold them” (Helaman 13:31) — until at last the people cried that whatsoever they hid away, “behold, it is gone” (Helaman 13:35–36).
That is the very signature of the devil’s power in the unseen: it is real, it grants something, and it curses what it grants. What he gives slips through the fingers and turns to bondage in the hand. This — to reach for knowledge, advantage, or power in the unseen by his arts, to be empowered by him — is the one thing above all that the Saint must never do. The sorcerer and the medium do obtain a power; but they obtain it from the wrong master, and his wages are a curse. This, and not the bare loosing of the spirit, is the evil that scripture forbids and the Book of Mormon mourns.
The Worthier Pursuit — Master the Body, Seek God, and Do Not Fear
One last balance keeps the whole subject in its place. Because neither the state nor the seeking is itself the sin, the Saint is not forbidden it — yet neither is he taught to cultivate it as a skill or a capability to be developed and refined. The worthier labor by far, and the one God actually asks, is to master the greater and more powerful gift we already hold: the body. Paul made the conquest of his own flesh the discipline of his life — “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection” (1 Corinthians 9:27). The body is not the lesser thing to escape; it is the greater thing to govern, and to rule it is a higher attainment than to slip its bonds.
For the unembodied state is, in truth, a weaker state, not a higher one — the reverse of what the world supposes. The righteous dead do not count the loosing of the spirit a liberation but a bondage (D&C 138:50), for spirit and body together, and only together, receive a fulness of joy (D&C 93:33–34). Whatever reach the spirit gains when loosed, it loses in power and in fulness. There is nothing in that bare condition to covet.
And yet, at death, every soul enters it: the spirit returns to the God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7), received home into the world of spirits to await the resurrection (Alma 40:11). So it is no strange or forbidden country, but the appointed passage every one of us will make — and the Lord revealed its nature through His prophets precisely that we might understand it. To study and understand the unembodied state before death is therefore no sin and nothing evil. We may look upon it with eyes wide open, clear about its limitations and sober about its dangers, and meet our own passage into it without surprise and without fear.
So the whole counsel comes to this. To be out of the body is not a sin, and to seek is not a sin; the question is always whose power you seek, and what you do there. So seek God and never the adversary; reach for no power, knowledge, or spirit in the unseen by any art of his; master the body you were given; and trust the Lord with the passage that waits for all. If a soul ever has cause to consider that state at all, let it be with a good and reverent purpose, in full understanding that it is the weaker condition, and with great caution against experimenting where the guard is down. Seek the Giver, never the dark gift; and remain where He can keep you.
Conclusion
The body is a sacred gift, a tabernacle for the spirit and an essential part of God’s plan for His children. It is not a prison. But the spirit within it is the eternal self — the true man — and at God’s word that spirit can be quickened to see, or caught up to heaven, and behold what natural eyes could never bear. This is the consistent witness of the prophets, ancient and modern, and it is grounded in the nature of the Savior Himself, who ministered as a spirit before He took flesh.
Whether such things happen in the body or out of it, we may rest in the confession that Paul, the Three Nephites, and Joseph Smith all made in the selfsame words: “whether in the body or out… I cannot tell — God knoweth.” We need not understand every means — whether caught up to a mountain, transfigured for a moment, overcome until we come again to ourselves, or taught in a dream of the night. It is enough to know that the heavens are real, that the Lord opens them to His servants in His own way and time, and that what He shows them is true. The spirit was made to perceive eternal things — and at His word, it does.