Visions "open" and "close"; mental images and real experiences don't

Continuing from my last post, "Visions as irruptions of dreaming consciousness into waking life":

In Joseph Smith's account of the visit of Moroni, I think we can see a distinction between the visitation of the angel, which was an actual experience, and a vision which occurred during that visitation. Here is how the arrival of Moroni is described:

While I was thus in the act of calling upon God, I discovered a light appearing in my room, which continued to increase until the room was lighter than at noonday, when immediately a personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor (JS—H v. 30).

There is pretty clearly described as something taking place in Smith's actual room; and the initial change, from a dark room to one "lighter than at noonday," is a progressive one with no discontinuities indicating a transition to a dreaming or visionary state. The sudden appearance of the personage is a discontinuity, I suppose, but on the whole I would say the text suggests that the angel (or perhaps a projection or recording of the angel) was actually present in the bedroom, and that this was not a vision.

As the angel tells Smith about the Golden Plates, though, he does experience a vision, beginning with the characteristic "opening" sensation:

While he was conversing with me about the plates, the vision was opened to my mind that I could see the place where the plates were deposited, and that so clearly and distinctly that I knew the place again when I visited it (v. 42).

This is clearly a vision; Smith is still physically in his bedroom, not at the hill where the plates are deposited.

After this vision, the angelic visitation ends. It does not "close" or dissolve like a vision; rather, the scene changes by continuous steps back to an ordinary condition:

After this communication, I saw the light in the room begin to gather immediately around the person of him who had been speaking to me, and it continued to do so until the room was again left dark, except just around him; when, instantly I saw, as it were, a conduit open right up into heaven, and he ascended till he entirely disappeared, and the room was left as it had been before this heavenly light had made its appearance (p. 43).

From now on, I'm going to be paying close attention to such distinctions in the reported experiences of Joseph Smith.