Mormonism's NDE Cult

[Physics Guy]

One of the problems with the whole Christian story these days is that it lacks a strong afterlife narrative. There are complicated historical and theological reasons for this, so I am not dissing Christians here. But it is a marketing problem of a kind. People seem to want a "Homer's Odyssey of the soul," or something like that. And the really juicy NDEs, the ones that are almost certainly made-up nonsense, do the best they can. They are still pretty thin gruel, if you ask me. That is why, if you really want a good Christian "other=world" narrative, you can't beat Dante. Everything else is just a cheap knock-off.

For a lovely but shorter Classical/pagan precursor, see Vergil, Aeneid Book 6. In my view, nobody in the Western cultures really tops the Greco-Roman pagans on this stuff. Dante had to borrow from Vergil in order to give us a decent afterlife/otherworld narrative.

I guess I have to agree.

That includes agreeing with your "not dissing Christians" part, though for me the reason is not so historically informed. I just think that any detailed vision of an afterlife is inherently implausible.

If there is an afterlife, then the question is why do we need to have this life? Why can't we just go straight to there? The only kind of reason that I can think might make sense is that there's no good way to get from nothing to eternal reality in one step. To me this implies, though, that the step from this life to the next should be comparable in size to the step from non-existence to consciousness.

If there is an afterlife, it seems absurd to me for it to be anything we could comprehend, because if it were anything we could comprehend then there would be no reason not to just make it part of this life, or this life part of it. So it's a verisimilitude, I think, to have no serious details about what the afterlife is supposed to be like.

You're still right that it's a marketing weakness.

I do find a couple of fictional works inspiring, not because they say anything about afterlives but because they offer glimpses of superhuman existence that I find somewhat believable. I don't find them convincing, of course—the thing is by definition inconceivable and these are just sci fi stories. But they do give me at least a brief sense of wonder. One is Stanislaw Lem's Lectures of Golem XIV, and the other is Jack Vance's short story "Green Magic".

The protagonist of "Green Magic" is already well versed in black and white magic, and also in the more recently developed discipline of purple magic, when he stumbles on clues to the existence of an even more advanced magic. I will give no spoilers, but no-one should fear that the story will turn out to be some insipid Christian allegory. It's a sobering tragedy of a much more serious kind than that.

[Physics Guy]

Forgot to say: I also find NDEs interesting, but they are still all still-alive experiences. They don't tell us anything about what death is, or whether anything lies beyond it.

At least, they don't tell us anything reliably. It's conceivable that what they seem to show is in some way representative of something real, if whoever runs the universe made a point of writing a hint about the sequel into the first story. This idea, that NDEs are some kind of spoiler by God, is about as plausible to me as the idea that sleep exists in part to reassure us about death.

It could be, but I can't count it as evidence.

[Res Ipsa]

One of the problems with the whole Christian story these days is that it lacks a strong afterlife narrative. There are complicated historical and theological reasons for this, so I am not dissing Christians here. But it is a marketing problem of a kind. People seem to want a "Homer's Odyssey of the soul," or something like that. And the really juicy NDEs, the ones that are almost certainly made-up nonsense, do the best they can. They are still pretty thin gruel, if you ask me. That is why, if you really want a good Christian "other=world" narrative, you can't beat Dante. Everything else is just a cheap knock-off.

For a lovely but shorter Classical/pagan precursor, see Vergil, Aeneid Book 6. In my view, nobody in the Western cultures really tops the Greco-Roman pagans on this stuff. Dante had to borrow from Vergil in order to give us a decent afterlife/otherworld narrative.

I guess I have to agree.

That includes agreeing with your "not dissing Christians" part, though for me the reason is not so historically informed. I just think that any detailed vision of an afterlife is inherently implausible.

If there is an afterlife, then the question is why do we need to have this life? Why can't we just go straight to there? The only kind of reason that I can think might make sense is that there's no good way to get from nothing to eternal reality in one step. To me this implies, though, that the step from this life to the next should be comparable in size to the step from non-existence to consciousness.

If there is an afterlife, it seems absurd to me for it to be anything we could comprehend, because if it were anything we could comprehend then there would be no reason not to just make it part of this life, or this life part of it. So it's a verisimilitude, I think, to have no serious details about what the afterlife is supposed to be like.

You're still right that it's a marketing weakness.

I do find a couple of fictional works inspiring, not because they say anything about afterlives but because they offer glimpses of superhuman existence that I find somewhat believable. I don't find them convincing, of course—the thing is by definition inconceivable and these are just sci fi stories. But they do give me at least a brief sense of wonder. One is Stanislaw Lem's Lectures of Golem XIV, and the other is Jack Vance's short story "Green Magic".

The protagonist of "Green Magic" is already well versed in black and white magic, and also in the more recently developed discipline of purple magic, when he stumbles on clues to the existence of an even more advanced magic. I will give no spoilers, but no-one should fear that the story will turn out to be some insipid Christian allegory. It's a sobering tragedy of a much more serious kind than that.

Thanks for the book recommendations. I've read some Lem, but not that one.

[Kishkumen]

I guess I have to agree.

That includes agreeing with your "not dissing Christians" part, though for me the reason is not so historically informed. I just think that any detailed vision of an afterlife is inherently implausible.

If there is an afterlife, then the question is why do we need to have this life? Why can't we just go straight to there? The only kind of reason that I can think might make sense is that there's no good way to get from nothing to eternal reality in one step. To me this implies, though, that the step from this life to the next should be comparable in size to the step from non-existence to consciousness.

If there is an afterlife, it seems absurd to me for it to be anything we could comprehend, because if it were anything we could comprehend then there would be no reason not to just make it part of this life, or this life part of it. So it's a verisimilitude, I think, to have no serious details about what the afterlife is supposed to be like.

You're still right that it's a marketing weakness.

I do find a couple of fictional works inspiring, not because they say anything about afterlives but because they offer glimpses of superhuman existence that I find somewhat believable. I don't find them convincing, of course—the thing is by definition inconceivable and these are just sci fi stories. But they do give me at least a brief sense of wonder. One is Stanislaw Lem's Lectures of Golem XIV, and the other is Jack Vance's short story "Green Magic".

The protagonist of "Green Magic" is already well versed in black and white magic, and also in the more recently developed discipline of purple magic, when he stumbles on clues to the existence of an even more advanced magic. I will give no spoilers, but no-one should fear that the story will turn out to be some insipid Christian allegory. It's a sobering tragedy of a much more serious kind than that.

Thank you for the great recommendations and thoughts. I will look for these titles. Of Lem's work, I have only read Solaris. Vance I know by reputation and by listening to the "Elder Sign" podcast, which is devoted to "weird fiction." Still, "Green Magic" is one I do not know.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Green Magic, by Jack Vance:

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/green.htm



If you haven't read Ted Chiang's brilliant short story, Tower of Babylon, you are in for a major treat. Here it is in its entirety:

https://jenniecreatesclasses.files.word ... chiang.pdf

[Rivendale]

When I was younger, I purchased a collection of Near Death Experiences by members of the LDS Church at a local Mormon bookstore. It was the kind of thing I thought was really fascinating and faith promoting at the time. Later, I came to be highly skeptical of some of these reported experiences. What happened was that I encountered the published NDE stories of two people I actually knew.

One was by my aunt, who suffered from mental illness and yet claimed to have experienced an NDE that she conveniently did not report at the time it happened. My mother was present with my aunt in the hospital when aunt nearly died, and she did not reveal anything about the NDE. My aunt was not a well person, and I have reason to doubt that her account was not a fabrication. Then a fellow in my home ward shared his NDE in one of these books. He was a philanderer and a liar, and I had a lot of doubt that his story was anything but a fabrication.

Now I am listening to MoSto's recent episodes on Thom Harrison, the SLC psychologist who was in the same ward as Elder Maxwell. Harrison told his NDE story to John Pontius, an LDS author, and Pontius saw to it that it was published as Visions of Glory, a novel-memoir that has taken the fringe LDS world by storm. According to the research divulged on MoSto, this wacko book inspired the recent list of infamous culty Mormon crazies responsible for destroying the lives of innocent people: Chad Daybell, Laurie Vallow, Tom Ballard, Jodi Hildebrandt--all of these nuts who have harmed so many people are devoted to this book.

I am afraid this problem is very widespread. Harrison, the guy behind the main character Spencer, is a big wig in Utah Mormon psychology circles. He is a member in good standing, is or was a bishop, consults the LDS Church on the mental health of applicants for missions, and he is a man who was allegedly personally counseling the list of accused persons listed above. I have always looked upon NDEs as a curiosity, but it seems that the phenomenon has taken on the rather frightening dimensions of an entrenched cult that comes very close to the halls of power in the LDS Church. The line separating the Daybells from the leaders of the LDS Church may not be as sharply defined as one would hope.

I am a little unclear how Neal Maxwell fit into this. I just listened to part of it today . Did he give Thom a blessing to continue this work? And that was over 10 years ago?

[Res Ipsa]

When I was younger, I purchased a collection of Near Death Experiences by members of the LDS Church at a local Mormon bookstore. It was the kind of thing I thought was really fascinating and faith promoting at the time. Later, I came to be highly skeptical of some of these reported experiences. What happened was that I encountered the published NDE stories of two people I actually knew.

One was by my aunt, who suffered from mental illness and yet claimed to have experienced an NDE that she conveniently did not report at the time it happened. My mother was present with my aunt in the hospital when aunt nearly died, and she did not reveal anything about the NDE. My aunt was not a well person, and I have reason to doubt that her account was not a fabrication. Then a fellow in my home ward shared his NDE in one of these books. He was a philanderer and a liar, and I had a lot of doubt that his story was anything but a fabrication.

Now I am listening to MoSto's recent episodes on Thom Harrison, the SLC psychologist who was in the same ward as Elder Maxwell. Harrison told his NDE story to John Pontius, an LDS author, and Pontius saw to it that it was published as Visions of Glory, a novel-memoir that has taken the fringe LDS world by storm. According to the research divulged on MoSto, this wacko book inspired the recent list of infamous culty Mormon crazies responsible for destroying the lives of innocent people: Chad Daybell, Laurie Vallow, Tom Ballard, Jodi Hildebrandt--all of these nuts who have harmed so many people are devoted to this book.

I am afraid this problem is very widespread. Harrison, the guy behind the main character Spencer, is a big wig in Utah Mormon psychology circles. He is a member in good standing, is or was a bishop, consults the LDS Church on the mental health of applicants for missions, and he is a man who was allegedly personally counseling the list of accused persons listed above. I have always looked upon NDEs as a curiosity, but it seems that the phenomenon has taken on the rather frightening dimensions of an entrenched cult that comes very close to the halls of power in the LDS Church. The line separating the Daybells from the leaders of the LDS Church may not be as sharply defined as one would hope.

I am a little unclear how Neal Maxwell fit into this. I just listened to part of it today . Did he give Thom a blessing to continue this work? And that was over 10 years ago?

Neal Maxwell and Thom were in the same ward. At some point, Thom told him about his visions. According to Thom, Neal said the visions were from God, but that they were private, for Thom alone. He should keep them private.

[Res Ipsa]

So far, the earliest LDS book I’ve found that discusses an NDE doing something permanent to the veil was written by Doug Mendenhall in 2001. His 10 year old daughter Denise had a stroke that destroyed the left hemisphere of her brain. She became comatose and was not expected to recover.

But recover she did. And, as Mendenhall puts it, she returned without a veil. She saw and had frequent conversations with Jesus. She saw spirits, both good and evil. During her coma, Jesus took her on a tour of the spirit world.

The first book is all about how Christ, through Denise, teaches her father important lessons, including how to open his heart to Jesus. Later, he moves on to spiritual warfare, using information from Denise. He taught “Jedi Seminars” On spiritual warfare from 2011 to 2020, when he died from COVID.

His books are available on his former website for free. His first spiritual warfare book includes his searching for others who have the same spiritual gifts as Denise, so he may have found earlier publications.

ETA: I’m pretty convinced that Doug and Denise Mendenhall, together with another woman identified only as “Kitten” were a primary force in spreading both the NDE-veiless and energy healing throughout LDS culture. They were big figures on AVOW and appeared at Preparing a People conferences.

Doug was a good friend of Denver Snuffer and recorded Snuffer’s first 10 lectures. There are scattered reports of odd prophecies around the internet. Denise also wrote her own book. At one point, Doug was trying to sell a pricey energy drink, the formula for which was received from behind the veil by Denise and Kitten.

I haven’t been able to figure out what happened to Denise and Kitten after Doug died in 2020. Maybe absorbed into the revenant?

[Kishkumen]

I thought there was a little series of accounts from the 1980s called Beyond the Veil, or some such.

ETA: There were. It was a series put out by a LDS guy named Lee Nelson.

[Gadianton]

Mormonism seems to have inherited a lot of ideas from spiritualism, which is the at the root of NDE mythology. Mormonism has made its adaptions. Significantly, Mormonism differs from the occult section in the bookstore in that, yes, there are powers beyond the veil, but no, you aren't to initiate contact. If grandma comes to you in the Celestial room of the temple to deliver a message, fine, but to initiate contact in the other direction will end in a talk with the Bishop. At least I think -- I know nothing about the Rowe stuff and how far off the wall they're allowed to get before the Brethren smack it down. My mother's best childhood friend was married to a man who apparently found a seer stone and excommunication came shortly. This was In the 70s I believe.

Unlike many Christians who believe you die and bam, you're standing before the Lord and consigned to heaven or hell and that's the end of the story; Mormons have the spirit world, which roughly translates to the Ethereal plane in spiritualism. They do not have an astral plane equivalent. Like earth life and like the Ethereal plane (and other planes also), the spirit world is amoral, and so it's an adventure. And strangely, Mormon leadership keeps it adventurous -- I witnessed this first hand with Henry Eyring ~2018. Prepare yourselves as this is some weird logic.

The spirit world in Mormonism is the wild west -- there's all kinds of possibilities and the Brethren don't dare lock it down. It comes down to this. If the truth is revealed in the spirit world, then that gives people on earth an excuse to say they'll repent later. An excuse to not go on the senior's mission because what the hell, those people will just hear the gospel in the spirit world anyway. That's a risk to tithing revenues. And so the spirit world must be just as chaotic as earth life if not more so. The answers can't be any more clear there than here, in fact, there should be a penalty in ascertaining difficulty to encourage people to work it out here (and pay tithing). Like in Ritchie's NDE, he went to this big library with all the important records of the (universe?) -- clay tablets, scrolls (I don't think he said gold plates). But, that appeared to be its own kind of a dead end, not heaven and not a clear path to heaven.