The Spiritual Mormon Experience: The Numinous and Mystical

Kevin Christensen (draft version Feb 2002, footnoting and formatting incomplete )

(A NOTE: Kevin is a very good acquaintance of mine for the last year or so. I have enjoyed reading his ideas and insights and find him unusually bright. When he mentioned he had been studying the Mystical side of Mormonism I asked him if it would be fine if I shared his insights. I am grateful to him for his willingness to share his research and views. KAS)

A Model of Mormon Spiritual Experience

When I considered all these things and that that being seeketh such to worship him as worship him in spirit and in truth therefore I cried unto the Lord for mercy for there was none else to whom I could go. [Joseph Smith, 1832]

Why make a model of religious experience? Ian Barbour writes that models are "organizing images used to order and interpret patterns of experience." Take one aspect of Mormon religious experience. How do you answer the question, "How are prayers answered?" Mormonism contains a far more comprehensive answer to that question than we generally realize. The stock answer, based on the D&C 9 revelation to Oliver Cowdery, is a good beginning, but unfortunately, we too often stop there.1 In this paper, I list scriptures that describe at least thirty different ways that prayers are answered. The Bible contains just a few descriptions; the modern scriptures contain many. Thirty different kinds of answers may sound like a lot, but if you ponder them for a while, they do suggest patterns. The first pattern I noticed was the division between Feeling kinds of passages, such as D&C 9, and Thinking kinds of passages, such Alma 32. This natural complementary relationship between Thinking and Feeling aspects is a very useful beginning in ordering the kinds of experience described in these scriptures.

But that beginning leads me to take the question a step further--How do the kinds of spiritual experiences described in our scriptures compare to the kinds of spiritual experiences that underlie the spiritual experiences of mankind in general? How do we orient ourselves in relation to everyone else? We can start by looking at doctrinal differences, but that immediately defines boundaries and erects barriers. What do we have in common? Is there a common wine of core religious experience that remains fairly constant despite the differing doctrinal wineskins that we use to carry them in? Scholars of religion like Rudolf Otto, Ninian Smart, and Micea Eliade have made significant studies of compararive religion. Where do we fit in their pictures?

Often our first attempts to orient ourselves place us squarely in the shoes of Joseph Smith when he began his religious quest. We have youthful minds disquieted by a confusing array of religous claims. The confusion still remains, and is something that we all have to order and interpret at some point. it is difficult, if not impossible to communicate with those of differing views, or ever to take bearings on our own position without some place of fairly solid footing, a common ground upon which most people can at least comprehend. Ideally, we seek a vantage point that can both explain and order commonalities, and that can also account for differences.

Here is my suggestion for a model.

Consider three intersecting axes, with each axis describing a relation between complementary contraries.

Thinking

| Symbolic

Numinous--------------------+-----------------------------Mystic

Literal |

Feeling

Joseph Smith remarked that "by proving contraries, truth is made manifest."By looking at the relations between these intersecting sets of contraries, I hope that certain truths can be made manifest. William Blake astutely observed that for any complementary relation of this sort, if one side of a contrary relation attempts to destroy its complement, it ends up negating itself. For instance, thinking that neglects feeling demonstrates ignorance; feeling that takes no thought has no heart. After we look at thinking and feeling, we shall consider like relationships between the other contraries in this model.

Thinking and Feeling

Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart. (D&C 8:2)

"Study it out in your mind," Oliver Cowdery was advised (D&C 9). Alma speaks of moments when your "understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your mind doth begin to expand" (Alma 32:34). These, and many other scriptures, relate thinking, knowledge, and understanding to spirituality. But, of course, spirituality involves deep feeling as well. Nephi writes, "He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh" (2 Nephi 4:21). The scriptures speak of feelings of joy and sorrow, sinfulness and forgiveness, consolation and pain, humility and strength. The mind and the heart participate together in spirituality. A feeling may provide the motivation to seek knowledge; knowledge gained may provoke other feelings. As you read through the scriptures in appendix A, notice the range of and the respect given to both thinking and feeling experiences that come through the spirit, and the typical movement and relation between them.

Different people may prefer or respect either thinking or feeling more. A preference one way or the other is natural. Even so, both thinking and feeling should play a role in spiritual experience. Because both contribute, an undue emphasis on one, without considering a balancing contribution from the other, can only serve to impede spiritual growth. But thinking and feeling alone do not completely define the experience of the sacred.

Numinous and Mystic

In a classic study, The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto studied the characteristics of a type of religious encounter that he named the numinous. Ninian Smart sums up numinous experience as "a mystery which is fearful, awe-inspiring, . . . and fascinating."

But above all, the sense of presence which confronts a person in the numinous experience is majestic: marvelous in power and glory. In their rather different ways, the experiences of Arjuna, Isaiah, Job, Paul, and Muhammad are all numinous in character.

Ian Barbour emphasizes the "sense of otherness, confrontation and encounter" when "man is aware of his own dependence, finitude, limitation, and contingency." This experience usually occurs in institutionalized worship situations involving personal models of God. The worshipper often bows to show humility, acknowledging inferiority and distance, and feels contingency and a moral demand. Worship involves sacrifice and petition.

Upon reading descriptions of numinous experience, those familiar with Mormon scripture should immediately think of Joseph Smith’s first vision, of the vision of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, of Lehi’s vision of the throne of God, of the climactic moments of Benjamin’s sermon, and of the manifestations at the Kirtland Temple. To a degree, at least, the Mormon experience partakes of the numinous.

However, there is another kind of religious experience that has characteristics quite different from the numinous. This is mystic experience, as reported by such persons as the Buddha or Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Mystical union is characterized by "joy, harmony, serenity, and peace," and a sense of the unity of all things and loss of identity. Separation seems illusory, differences and dichotomies of opposites are transcended. Most often, the mystic stresses the ineffability of the experience and uses impersonal models of God. This experience usually occurs in response to contemplation, mediation, discipline, and possibly asceticism.

Some kinds of mystical experience are without question foreign to Mormonism, as discussed by Hugh Nibley in The World and the Prophets. Nibley cites such differences as the impersonal models of God, the emphasis on meditation as strict discipline requiring a teacher-guide, and the ineffable, incommunicable, and solitary aspects of the experience of mystic illumination.

However, differences between mystic experience and Mormonism are not the whole story. Numinous encounter has predominated in the West and mystical union in the East, but all the major religions have included both types of experience, and this is true of Mormonism as well. If we think of the numinous and mystical as poles on a continuum of experience, we can begin to appreciate the distinctiveness of Mormonism in relation to these experiences without feeling threatened by the comparison. Mark Koltko’s insightful essay, "Mysticism and Mormonism," explores parallels between various Mormon scriptures and certain characteristics of mystical experience. In a separate study, I observed some rather remarkable parallels in the "light" passages in D&C 88 and the language Emerson uses in his 1836 Nature to describe some of his experiences. But even while it parallels aspects of Emerson’s experience, much of D&C 88 reflects numinous experience and eschatological intent that is totally alien to Emerson’s thought. So we arrive at the point of needing to understand the relation between numinous and mystic experiences.

Commenting on the numinous and the mystical, Ian Barbour writes: "The polarity of withdrawal and approach, or distance and identity, seems to be present within the experience of the sacred, though for different individuals, one aspect or the other may be more prominent."

I see the experience of the sacred in Mormonism as bridging the numinous and the mystic. After a numinous theophany, Moses announces, "for this cause I know that man is nothing" (Moses 1:10). Yet a few verses later, changing perspectives, he makes a declaration amounting to intimate identity. "For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten." The tension of distance most evidenced in Joseph Smith’s first vision, D&C 76, Moses 1, Benjamin’s coronation speech, and Alma’s conversion, resolves towards a profound intimacy. "And then shall ye know that I have seen Jesus Christ, and that he hath talked with me face to face and that he told me in plain humility, even as a man telleth another in mine own language concerning these things" (Ether 12:39). But such intimacy in Mormon thought, even when described as Oneness (cf. John 15: 3; Nephi 19:23; D&C 88:41), is typically associated with a personal deity. The implications of this bridging of kinds of experience go beyond a license to make historic and scriptural parallels. According to Ninian Smart, the numinous and mystic poles of experience influence patterns of doctrine.

If you stress the numinous, you stress that our salvation or liberation (our becoming holy) must flow from God the Other. It is he who brings it to us through his grace. You also stress the supreme power and dynamism of God as creator of the cosmos. If, on the other hand, you stress the mystical and non-dual, you tend to stress how we attain salvation and liberation through our own effort at mediation, not by the intervention of the Other… If we combine the two, but accent the numinous, we see mystical union as a kind of close embrace with the other—like human love, where the two are one and yet the two-ness remains. If the accent is on the mystical rather than the numinous, then God tends to be seen as a being whom we worship, but in such a way that we get beyond duality.

Here, I believe, is an essential distinguishing characteristic of Mormonism—the blend of the numinous and the mystic. This explains the Orthodox discomfort with the Mormon idea of deification (something quite unthinkable to one caught up in a purely numinous tradition), as well as the Eastern discomfort with our literalism and personal God (again, something quite unthinkable to one caught up by the emptiness of pure mysticism). For the same reason, the blend in Mormonism explains Nephi’s insistence on combining grace and works— "By grace we are saved after all we can do." Our need for grace offends the self-reliant mystic, and our effort towards perfection offends those dependent on pure grace. By pointing out the experiential roots behind such doctrinal disagreements, I feel that we have much to gain. Against the background of comparative world religion, Mormonism appears as the more comprehensive and inclusive faith.

For one thing, it becomes apparent that by treating numinous and mystic experience as contraries, we can solve various problems that come up in other traditions because one or the other aspect of the sacred has been excluded. Mosiah deliberately strives to awaken in his people a sense of their nothingness (Mosiah 2:25, 4:5) in contrast to the numinous majesty of the Almighty. But when that necessary awareness has done its work, he describes his people as "the children of Christ" (Mosiah 5:7). The danger in a strictly numinous tradition is that humankind tends to be seen as depraved and contingent. For example, "Luther’s outlook, with its undue respect for power and authority, and its sense of the complete sinfulness and evil in the human being when left alone"16 can be seen as unhealthy to the human psyche. On the other hand, a mystic like Emerson can preach an admirable "Self Reliance." But even the memory of an experience of unity with an impersonal Oversoul turns out to be altogether inadequate when he had to confront the death of his son, Waldo.17 Self-reliance was not enough. And even his Oversoul could not bring Waldo back. Mormonism provides the strength gained from the union of complementary experiences.18

Additionally, an awareness of mystic kinds of experience within our own tradition should provide grounds for better communication with peoples raised in those traditions. For example, David Peck suggests that 2 Peter 1:5–11 "stands out as an example of the Christian correlative to the mystics conceptualizations, . . . whether we adopt the terms employed by Peter [faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, and charity] or those of the mystic (knowledge, discipline, devotion, and pure love), the path is generally the same."19

The last thing one might expect Joseph Smith to have in common with some Eastern mystics might be an interest in seer stones and treasure seeking as a transitional stage in their spiritual development, but here it is. Craig Miller provided the following quote in an intriguing letter in Sunstone.

In yogic practices, the crystal plays a very important part. In South India there is a particular science called anajan, meaning not known. It consists of different methods of projecting the illuminating superphysical facility through a crystal. . . . When the illuminating facility is directed towards a person or an object which is missing, it can be immediately known where that person or thing is. Thus, treasures which are buried underground, or objects which are very distant can be directly observed.20

This kind of comparison provides a positive context for Joseph Smith’s involvement with seer stones and money digging (cf. Joseph Smith–History 1:56), making the experience a vital preparation, rather than somehow tainting his mission. Even so, while this comparison provides parallels, still others provide enough contrast that we cannot explain Joseph as "just" another mystic. Of the translation process, Blake Ostler made the following observations:

Joseph’s state of consciousness differs from shamanistic possession, classical mysticism, and most reports of automatic writing in that he did not lose consciousness of his surroundings or become dispossessed of his personal identity. Further, there is no evidence that he claimed to hear a voice or take dictation from another personality, unlike cases of spirit writing or channeled texts.21

While studying near-death experiences, I noticed that researchers have made comparisons between the aftereffects of the NDE and the aftereffects of various mystic experiences. In my turn, I noticed several points that should be of interest to Mormons. Along with distinctive attitude and behavior changes, some NDErs report "new-found psychic powers; according to the researchers, telepathy, precognitive insights, out of the body sensations, deja vu episodes occur with unusual frequency."22 Kenneth Ring uses this increase in psychic development as a point of comparison between NDE aftereffects and the kundalini experiences with higher consciousness. Ring quotes Gopi Krishna:

One who has attained to a higher state of consciousness . . . should be characterized by four exceptional attributes, namely genius, psychic talents, lofty traits of character, and an expanded state of consciousness. . . . He finds himself in possession of channels of communication which, acting independently of the senses, can bring him knowledge of events, occurring at a distance, and also visions of the past and future. His utterances may become prophetic and he may acquire a healing touch.23

Joseph Smith, of course, displayed all of these traits. Recall the striking reports of precognition and clairvoyance (such as those involving Oliver Cowdery’s arrival), and the later visions, especially in relation to the Book of Mormon translation. Joseph’s description of the revelatory process compares with NDE reports of access to pure knowledge.24

This first comforter, or Holy Ghost has no other effect than pure intelligence . . . expanding the mind, enlightening the understanding, and storing the intellect with present knowledge. . . . It is calm and serene. . . . A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas.25

Compare this from Reverend Carol Parrish-Harra’s NDE account, quoted in Ring’s Heading toward Omega.

It seemed whole Truths revealed themselves to me. Waves of thought—ideas greater and purer than I ever tried to figure out—came to me. Thoughts, clear, and without effort revealed themselves in total wholeness.26

Also, from NDE experiencer Tom Sawyer in Ring:

You realize that you are suddenly in communication with total knowledge. It’s hard to describe. . . . You can think of a question . . . and immediately know the answer to it. As simple as that.27

Where does all this knowledge go when an NDEr returns to life? Carol Zaleski comments that along with access to knowledge, "Forgetfulness, which has as important a place as remembering in the mystical literature of the world, is a recurring element in near-death reports."28 During the Book of Mormon translation, Oliver Cowdery attempted to translate and failed, and through Joseph Smith received the revelation that became D&C 9, which combines themes of knowledge and forgetfulness.

All of this goes to suggest that looking at Latter-day Saint religious experience in comparison to other accounts, whether numinous, mystic, or something with bridging and in-between characteristics like the NDE literature, can only enhance our appreciation of the strength of our tradition. For example, in light of these sorts of comparisons, attempts to explain Joseph Smith as a deceiver appear as pitifully inadequate. And considering the abundance of light that Joseph Smith provided when compared to that returned by other visionaries, attempts to explain Joseph as "just another" visionary appear woefully weak.

As you read the scripture references that describe spiritual manifestations that can come in answer to prayer,29 notice that some dramatic experiences might emphasize the numinous side of things, and some the mystic. Others seem best described as something in between, more like a loving "close embrace," an at-onement with Christ.

The next question is, how are we to understand such accounts and experiences? Are they literal encounters with the divine, or something wholly psychological? Do they concern the inner life only (no trivial thing), or do they also define a connection to an external reality?

Literal and Symbolic

For by the Spirit are all things made known unto the prophets, which shall come upon the children of men according to the flesh. Wherefore, the things of which I have read are things pertaining to things both temporal and spiritual. (1 Nephi 22:2–3)

The Book of Mormon sets the pattern for Mormonism by combining the physical and the spiritual, the literal and the symbolic, the unique historic event and the mythic recurrence.30 Nephi tells us that he is writing a history, but that history is organized around the vision of the tree of life. We can neither separate the history from the symbols of the vision, nor the symbolic vision from the narrative history. The vision is a historic event, and the symbols of the vision come from the physical landscape.31 Yet the vision enacts current tensions and future events in the history of Lehi’s family, just as it depicts eternal realities.32 Even when Nephi refers to history, he does so, not to merely recite facts, but to "liken" the history to his people, that is, to relive the patterns of creation and Exodus, and make them actual in the lives of his people and his readers (cf. 1 Nephi 19:23; 2 Nephi 11:2).33 The literal and the symbolic illuminate and give meaning to each other; attempts to separate them make no sense at all.

Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return explores the tension between the archaic view, that nothing was truly real unless it repeated a pattern or archetype, and the modern view that embraces unique events and linear history.34 Eliade argues that the archaic view sought to abolish time and history through "eternal return." While this view had several strengths, especially in giving meaning to suffering, it can also lead to a kind of fatalism. He suggests that Judeo-Christianity possessed a unique historic consciousness, a respect for irreversible events as theophanies, and an appreciation of personal freedom. But the Book of Mormon has the risen Christ conducting the central Temple rite of eternal return for the Lehite peoples, taking them back to the beginning for a new creation in which "Old things are done away, all things are become new."35 Yet during that rite, Jesus’s teaching to the people involves extensive prophesy regarding the future of Israel, showing an intense concern with human freedom and linear history (3 Nephi 20–26). A paradox? Once again Mormonism provides a marriage of complementary contraries, embracing both temporal existence and eternal archetypes.

His paths are straight, and his course is one eternal round. (Alma 37:12)

The literal and symbolic aspects of religion encompass types of experience common to nearly all religions. If approached without reference to any particular doctrinal interpretation, Ian Barbour suggests that these kinds of experience can serve as a common ground for discussion, a place of solid footing, a point of little disputed reference from which to examine the varied interpretations and traditions. Those I shall discuss in this paper (following Barbour) can be seen as generally framing a movement:

• from responses to external impressions regarding:

Order and creativity in the world

The common mythic symbols and patterns underlying most religious traditions

Key historical events that define separate traditions and bind individuals

• through the innermost experiences of the individual:

Numinous awe and reverence1

Mystical union

Moral obligation

Reorientation and Reconciliation with respect to personal sin, guilt, and weakness, the existence of evil, suffering, and death, and tensions between science and faith. (Notice that Reorientation is a Thinking process, and Reconciliation is a Feeling process.)

• then returning to the external world as human action:

Personal dialogue where you begin interpret external events as God speaking to you, and you answer through your own actions.

Social and Ritual behavior

These matters cannot objectively prove the existence of a God (whether personal or impersonal), but, as I hope to demonstrate, they do constitute the core of religious experience for believers. They provide the ground of experience on which reasoned and feeling assessments of the validity and worth of faith are based. They encompass the ways in which spirituality is manifest in history and symbol. They are the wine—and doctrine the wine-bottles. To argue and contend about doctrine is to emphasize the wine skin over the wine. In Alma’s terms, it is to emphasize what you think you "know" over what ultimately gives "cause to believe" (Alma 32:18).

Encountering Order and Creativity in the Physical World

Joseph Smith’s 1832 journal contains a reminiscence of his awakening wonder at the order and creativity in the physical world. While specific Mormon interpretations of the creation can and should vary, this is enough to place a sacred appreciation of nature and the cosmos firmly in the Mormon tradition. This earliest version of the youthful Joseph’s first vision suggests that his awakened wonder was at least partially responsible for carrying him towards the Sacred Grove. Despite the awkwardness of the phrasing, the intensity of his experience comes through. (Spellings follow the original.)

For I looked upon the sun the glorious luminary of the earth and also the moon rolling in their magesty through the heavens and also the stars shining in their courses and the earth also upon which I stood and the beast of the field and the fowls of heaven and the fish of the waters and also man walking forth upon the face of the earth in magesty and in the strength and beauty whose power and intiligence in governing the things which are so exeding great and marvilous even in the likeness of him who created them and when I considered upon these things my heart exclaimed well hath the wise man said it is a fool that saith in his heart there is no God my heart exclaimed all all these bear testimony and bespeak an omnipotent and omnipresent power a being that makith Laws and decreeeth and bindeth all things in their bounds who filleth Eternity who was and is and will be from All Eternity to Eternity.37

Common Symbols and Rituals In Religion

In trying to orient ourselves when confronted by the bewildering variety of religions, we can take some comfort in the surprising discovery that all religion gathers around common symbols and rituals. Emphasizing the mythic side of things, Joseph Campbell has been very effective in popularizing the notion that humankind shares "one mythology." The same themes, "creation, death and resurrection, ascension to heaven, virgin births," are retold everywhere with "inflection to culture."38

On the ritual side, the Myth and Ritual school at Cambridge pointed to the Year Rite as the center and climax of ancient religious activity everywhere:

The dramatic representation of the death and resurrection of the god [and the mourning and seeking of the god by his female consort];39 The recitation or symbolic representation of the myth of creation; The ritual combat, in which the triumph of the god over his enemies was depicted; The sacred marriage; The triumphal procession, in which the King played the part of the god followed by a train of lesser gods of visiting deities.40

But besides ritual and psychological aspects of myth, there may also be historical associations. The performance of a rite is a historical event and the archaic insistence on imitating archetypes leads to a ritually conditioned history, as is especially evidenced in kingship.41 Hugh Nibley argues for the primacy of the temple since that is where the historical, the mythic, the ritual, the social, and the symbolic meet and fuse.42 In Mormonism, "all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the world, unto man, are the typifying of [Christ]" (2 Nephi 11:4).

And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth; both things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me. (Moses 6:63)

The phenomenon of a single underlying mythology in human history is arresting, whatever the ultimate explanation. Natural curiosity makes it reasonable to ask, how well does any particular religious tradition integrate and interpret these common patterns and symbols? Hugh Nibley suggests the extent to which Mormonism integrates the essential symbols and patterns.

A century of bound periodicals in the stacks will tell the enquiring student when scholars first became aware of the various elements that make up the super-pattern, but Joseph Smith knew about them all, and before the search ever began he showed how they are interrelated. In the documents he has left us, you will find the central position of the Coronation, the tension between Matriarchy and Patriarchy, the arcane discipline for transmitting holy books through the ages, the pattern of cycles and dispensations, the nature of the Mysteries, the great tradition of the Rekhabites or sectaries of the desert, the fertility rites and sacrifices of the New Year with the humiliation of the kind and the role of the substitute, etc.43

Key Historical Events

Every community celebrates and re-enacts particular historical events which are crucial to its corporate identity and its vision of reality.44

Think of the communities defined by celebrations of the Jewish Passover and Exodus, the Buddha’s enlightenment, Mohammad’s call, and the Passion of Christ. For Mormons, historical events such as the first vision, the translation and publication of the Book of Mormon, the Martyrdom of the Prophet, and the Mormon Exodus, all contribute to a sacred history that defines and binds the community. This kind of "key event" also may include direct experience which becomes crucial to personal identity and a personal vision of reality.

Some people may see particular historical events as having mythic or symbolic significance, and subsequently record them in mythologized terms. This means that some events may be both historical and mythically significant.45

Nevertheless, "What distinguished Mormonism," writes Richard Bushman, "was not so much the Gospel Mormons taught, which in many respects resembled other Christians’ teachings, but what they believed had happened—to Joseph Smith, to Book of Mormon characters, and to Moses and Enoch [and later to the pioneers, during their archetypal Exodus to the west]. . . . The core of Mormon belief was a conviction about actual events. . . . Mormonism was history, not philosophy."46

Moral Obligation

When does a sense of moral obligation become a truly religious experience? The essential "Do unto others as you would have them do to you" makes good sense in any society that expects to thrive. Certainly one could feel far more secure in such an environment than in pecking orders that adopt Korihor’s "Every man prospers according to his strength" and "whatsoever a man did was no crime."

And thus . . . they did not send away any who were naked, or that were hungry, or that were athirst, or that were sick, or that had not been nourished; and they did not set their hearts upon riches; therefore they were liberal to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, whether out of the church or in the church, having no respect to persons as to those who stood in need. (Alma 1:30)

Social conditioning does influence the experience of conscience and moral obligation. However social influence cannot completely explain such feelings since people at times feel obligated to speak out against their own society, even at the risk of their lives. Many students of religion have been powerfully impressed on encountering a depth sense**depth-sense below; but this really isn’t a concept to me* of moral obligation that seems to transcend social conditioning and survival instincts. Consider the following from the Book of Mormon:

Now when the Lamanites saw that their brethren would not flee from the sword, neither would they turn aside to the right hand or to the left, but that they would lie down and perish, and praised God even in the very act of perishing under the sword—Now when the Lamanites saw this they did forbear from slaying them; and there were many whose hearts had swollen in them for those of their brethren who had fallen under the sword, for they repented of the things which they had done. And it came to pass that they threw down their weapons of war, and would not take them up again. (Alma 24:23–25)

Responses like this show moral obligation springing from depth-feelings which are experienced as sacred illumination. Any moral act that springs from this same depth-sense transforms morality from secular courtesy to sacred encounter with the holy.47

One final example of a depth moral obligation deserves mention here because of its unusual complexity and intensity, as well as its vivid presence in the Book of Mormon. Sociologist Terrence Des Pres made a study of the experiences of individuals who have survived extreme horrors created by fellow humans.48 A striking type of survival behavior that emerged from Nazi and Soviet death camps came as certain persons developed a will to "survive as witness" and to create a specific genre of survival literature. These Survivor-Witnesses can be described as follows:49

• The will to remember and record anchors the survivor in the moral purpose of bearing witness, thus maintaining his own integrity in conscious contradiction of the savagery around him (Mormon 3:11–16; Moroni 9:6–25).

• Witnessing of his experience is viewed as a duty, even a sacred task (Mormon 4:16; 8:14; 9:31).

• It is instinctively felt, an involuntary outburst of feeling, born out of the horror that no one will be left (Mormon 6:17–22; 8:1–3).

• The task is often carried out despite great risks; often in secret or by depositing the record in a secret archive (Mormon 6:6; 8:14).

• Survivors do not witness to inflict guilt or to rationalize their own survival. Their mission transcends guilt and their irrepressible urge to witness arises before any thought of guilt surfaces and at the initial stages of adjustment to extremity (Mormon 9:30–31; Moroni 9:3–6).

• They speak simply to tell, to describe out of a common care for life and for the future, realizing that we all live in a realm of mutual sacrifice (Mormon 4:17–22; 8:37–40; Moroni 7:45–48).

• Survival in this sense is a collective act; the survivor has pledged to see that the story is told (Mormon 4:16).

• The survivors speak to the whole world, as a firsthand eyewitness, one whose words cannot be ignored (Mormon 4:16–22; 9:30).

• The view themselves as a necessary connection between the past and the future (Mormon 4:17–22; 5:12; 7:1–10; 9:30).

• They perceive that "out of horror . . . the truth will emerge and be made secure," That "good and evil are only clear in retrospect," for wisdom only comes at a terrible price. Thus their mission is to display the "objective conditions of evil" (Mormon 5:8–9; 9:31; Moroni 9–10).

Reorientation and Reconciliation

Discussing reconciliation, Barbour writes, "The redemptive power of love is known in human life. Grace and redemption are not theological abstractions but experienced realities in which divisions within man and between man and his neighbor are healed."50

I’ve chosen two examples to illustrate the Mormon experience. One shows the reorientation and reconciliation51 as neat and sudden, and the other as the more typical experience, which includes periodic stumbles. The first comes from the Book of Mormon, from the center of Alma 36.52

And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment,

While I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins,

behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world.

Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought,

I cried within my heart:

O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy upon me,

who am in the gall of bitterness,

and am encircled about

by the everlasting chains of death.

And now, behold, when I thought this,

I could remember my pains no more;

yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more.

And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain! (Alma 36:17–20

The next example comes from a writing often called Nephi’s Psalm. I’m fond of this one because it shows reorientation and reconciliation as an ongoing process. Again, I’ve arranged the text to highlight poetic characteristics.53

Notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord,

in showing me his great and marvelous works,

my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am!

Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh;

my soul grieveth

because of mine iniquities.

I am encompassed about,

because of the temptations and the sins which so easily beset me.

And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth

because of my sins;

nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted. . . .

Oh then, if I have seen so great things,

if the Lord in his condescension54 unto the children of men

hath visited men in so much mercy,

why should my heart weep

and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow,

and my flesh waste away,

and my strength slacken, because of my afflictions?

And why should I yield to sin, because of my flesh?

Yea, why should I give way to temptations,

that the evil one have place in my heart

to destroy my peace and afflict my soul?

Why am I angry because of my enemy?

Awake, my soul!

No longer droop in sin.

Rejoice, O my heart,

and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.

(2 Nephi 4:17–19, 26–28)

In a more recent treatment of these "core" religious experiences, Barbour adds remarks on the burden that religion carries towards providing believers with the courage and understanding to face "suffering, death, transciency,"55as well as the existence of natural and human evil. It strikes me that humankind also hungers for "reconciliation and reorientation" on these matters as well. Like Enos, after finding ourselves reconciled and reoriented before God, we may find our souls enlarging with concern for our neighbors, and then our adversaries. How do we orient ourselves towards the human condition? In the course of this essay, I have mentioned the well-known strengths of Mormonism in dealing with the problem of evil. Elsewhere I have written on the strengths of the Latter-day Saint teachings regarding the afterlife.56 Here, let me recognize the significance of the letters from Liberty Jail, D&C 121 and 122, and 2 Nephi 2 in defining the Mormon paradigm for reorienting believers towards, and reconciling them to, tragedy and death.

My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment. . . . If the heavens gather blackness, . . . if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he? (D&C 121:7; 122:7–8)

Adam fell, that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. (2 Nephi 2:25)

Personal Dialogue

Here Ian Barbour suggests that an interpersonal relationship with Deity can be seen as "One understands oneself to be addressed through events. . . . A person replies through the speech of his life; he answers with his actions. Events in daily life can be interpreted as a dialogue with God."57 I immediately think of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. I was tempted to defer to the beauty of that example, but I found a suitable Mormon counterpart from historian Richard Bushman.

I had been a branch president and Bishop, and was then president of the Boston Stake. Those offices required me to give blessings in the name of God and to seek solutions to difficult problems nearly every day. I usually felt entirely inadequate to the demands placed upon me and could not function at all without some measure of inspiration. What I did, the way I acted, my inner thoughts, were all intermingled with this effort to speak and act righteously for God. I could no longer entertain the possibility that God did not exist because I felt His power working through me. . . . Only when I thought of God as a person interested in me and asked for help as a member of Christ’s kingdom did idea and reality fit properly. Only that language properly honored the experiences I had day after day in my callings.58

May I add, that in my own life, I’ve adopted the metaphor of "stones lighting up" based on the account of the brother of Jared in the book of Ether, to describe occasions when external events seem to speak to me with all the clarity of the finger of the Lord touching stones, bringing light into darkness.

Summing Mormon Religious Experience

Like it or not, people within the Mormon tradition can and do enjoy the full range of all the experiential and historic aspects of religion, along with access to rich symbolism. Some people may despise the symbolic and inner aspects of religion, but they are really no less significant than the literal and historic aspects. As the writer of the Gospel of Phillip says, "We enter into truth through despised symbols."59 The symbols guide us through the transitions and passages in our own lives and provide a means to point beyond literal meanings to truths that cannot be expressed or apprehended in any other way. The myths of faith are not lies, but are metaphors—models that point beyond themselves, paradigms that define a community. The archetypal unity of world mythology invites humankind into a single community. I believe that ultimately, all myth points to Christ.

Like it or not, when you look at the Mormon community and the Mormon faith at this level of core experience, all that defines religion anywhere exists here. Therefore, like it or not, at the outset, any assessment of the religious value of Mormonism should admit that here the fountain of living waters flows briskly. In assessing Mormonism, the validity of Mormon spiritual life must be accepted as a given.

Appendix A: Answers to Prayer in LDS Scripture

Here are scriptures describing answer to prayer through the Spirit. Contexts usually refer to study, pondering, inquiry, musing, fasting, and reflecting on the subject of the prayer before and during the experience described or promised. You should study the scriptures in context. These verses should spur introspection in assessing personal experience, and in considering the claims of others. (Even skeptics should define what they do not believe in.) They are also a strong test for the claims of Joseph Smith. Consider them in light of my model and note how well they all hang together. The Spirit is a promised witness to the obedient (Acts 5:32; John 7:17, 8:31–32.

(*I should sort these for whether they emphasize thinking or feeling experience, etc.*)

Thinking

1. Guides to truth (that is, to what is real; Jacob 4:13; John 16:13; Ephesians 5:9–10).

2. Brings Christ’s words to remembrance (John 14:26).

3. Eyes of understanding opened, that ye may know (Ephesians 1:16–19).

We began to have the scriptures laid open to our understandings, and the true meaning and intention . . . revealed to us in a manner we never could attain to previously, nor ever before thought of. (Joseph Smith–History 1:74)

It is calm and serene; . . . a person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation: for instance when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas.1

4. Expands your mind (Alma 32:34).

5. Is this not real? What is true is discernible. "Whatsoever makes manifest is light"—truth is things as they really are (Alma 32:35; Jacob 4:13; Ephesians 5:13; D&C 52:14–19) "A pattern in all things" (D&C 52:14).

6. Persuades to believe in Christ (Moroni 7:17).

7. Judge righteously (D&C 11:12; Matthew 7; Luke 11:35).

8. Enlightens your mind (D&C 11:13–14; Alma 32:34).

9. You will know and bear record (Ether 4:11–15).

10. "Still small voice," "which whispereth through and pierceth all things often making my bones to quake," "voice in mind," "as of one crying in the wilderness . . . because you cannot see him" (Enos 1:10; 1 Kings 16:13; Isaiah 30:21; D&C 85:6; 88:66; see also 3 Nephi 11:37).

11. I know that ye believe them . . . by the manifestation of the spirit, great is my joy. He that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together (Alma 7:17; D&C 50:10–25). It can be a shared experience that is witnessed and not self-induced.

12. Experience a change of perception. "God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer a man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desire for sin; and . . . arrives at that point of faith where he is wrapped in the power and glory of his Maker and is caught up to dwell with Him. . . . This is a station to which no man ever arrived in a moment: he must have been instructed . . . by proper degrees, until his mind is capable in some measure of comprehending the propriety, justice, equality, and consistency of the same."2

Feeling

1. Heart burns within (Luke 24:32; Jeremiah 20:9;Psalms 39:2–3, 12; D&C 9).

2. Enlarges soul (Alma 32:27: Moroni 10:3–6); cf. Enos for enlargement of soul, first praying for self, then his people, then his enemies (Enos 1–17).

3. Word begins to be delicious to you (Alma 32:27); also tree of life (1 Nephi 8:10–16).

4. Word grows in you (Alma 32:28–43) "As that subject seems to occupy my mind, and press itself upon my feelings the strongest" (D&C 128:1). "Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected upon it again and again" (Joseph Smith–History 1:12).

5. Invites to do good (Moroni 7:13); fruit of spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (Galatians 5:22–25).

6. Invites to love God and to serve him (Moroni 7:13–19).

7. Peace to mind concerning the matter (D&C 6:14–15, 22–23).

8. Feel that it is right; stupor of thought if wrong (D&C 9:7–9).

9. Leads you to walk humbly (D&C 11:12).

10. Peace and power of spirit flow into you (D&C 111:8).

11. Spirit teaches you that ye must pray (2 Nephi 32:8–9).

13. Spirit fills with joy (D&C 11:13–14; Mosiah 4:3)

14. Peace of conscience (Mosiah 4:3).

15. Consolation, comfort, peace (Helaman 3:5; John 14:26–27)

16. Guilty take truth hard, for it cuts to the center (Acts 2:37; 1 Nephi 16:2; 2 Nephi 32:2). Some harden hearts against it; others repent (see Alma 14, 15, and 36).

17. Experience a change of heart (Alma 5:26). "The spirit of the Lord . . . will whisper peace and joy to their souls; it will take malice, hatred, strife and all evil from their hearts, . . . and their whole desire will be to do good, bring forth righteousness, and build up the kingdom of God."3 "Law . . . written in hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33). "New heart, new spirit within you" (Ezekiel 11:19).