Stepping into the Spirit World

As you may know, I've thought a great deal about the spirit world over the last while. I'm now strong enough to read accounts from people who claim to have visited there. I've just finished a book by Dannion Brinkley and Paul Perry,Saved By The Light. It's very interesting to me, but I can't say with certainty that it's true. I believe Mr. Brinkley is telling the truth, but there's a chance he's been deceived. There is also the possibility that he himself is attempting to misled his readers. So while I read it with interest, I can't accept it as doctrine. However, here's a passage from the book that is fascinating, and I'd like to think is true.

On Sept. 18, 1975,Dannion Brinkley's spirit left his body after a lightning strike. For awhile, he was aware of his sobbing wife and worried friend, and watched as medical personnel worked to revive him. But then he saw a tunnel forming, "opening like the eye of a hurricane and coming toward" him. "That looks like an interesting place to be, I thought. And Away I went. I actually didn't move at all;; the tunnel came to me. There was the sound of chimes as the tunnel spiraled toward and then around me."

After describing his surroundings, something happened to him that was a wonderfully effective teaching tool. Wow, it'd be great to be able to cause this to happen here in mortality! I think we'd all be a lot kinder to one another if it did. Just listen to this!

"I began to experience my whole life, feeling and seeing everything that had ever happened to me. ... This life review was not pleasant. From the moment it began until it ended, I was faced with the sickening reality that I had been an unpleasant person, someone who was self-centered and mean.

"The first thing I saw was my angry childhood. I saw myself torturing other children, stealind their bicycles or making them miserable at school. One of the most vivid scenes was of the time I picked on a child at grade school because he had a goiter that protruded from his neck. The other kids in the class picked on him too, but I was the worst. At the time I thought I was funny. But now, as I relived this incident, I found myself in his body, living with the pain that I was causing.

""This perspective continued through every negative incident in my childhood, a substantial number to be sure. From fifth to twelfth grade, I estimate that I had at least six thousand fistfights. Now, as I reviewed my life in the bosom of the Being, I relived each one of those altercations, but with one major difference: I was the receiver.

"I also felt the grief I had caused my parents. I had been uncontrollable and proud of it. Although they had grounded me and yelled at me, I had let them know by my actions that none of their discipline really mattered. Many times they had pleaded with me and many times they had met frustration. ... Now, in my life review, I felt their psychological pain at having such a bad child.

"As my body lay dead on that stretcher, I was reliving every moment of my life, including my emotions, attitudes, and motivations. The depth of emotion I experienced during this life review was astonishing. Not only could I feel the way both I and the other person had felt when an incident took place, I could also feel the feelings of the next person they reacted to. I was in a chain reaction of emotion, one that showed how deeply we affect one another."

After high school, he joined the military, eventually becoming a sniper in Vietnam. Imagine the intensity of emotions he experiences in that horrible setting. He does make enough of a recovery from his injuries to transform his life to one of caring about and serving others. As I said, it's a remarkable story, but for me it's not entirely believable because not all of it squares with the gospel.

The next account, however, does. And Mr. Brinkley included a briefer part of it in his book than I've posted here:

President Jedediah M. Grant was quite sick, and could hardly speak. [Heber C. Kimball] laid hands on his head and blessed him, that his lungs might breathe easier. In two or three minutes he raised himself up and talked for about an hour as busily as he could, telling me what he had seen and what he understood, until I was afraid he would weary himself, when I arose and left him.
He said to me, "Brother Heber, I have been into the spirit world two nights in succession, and, of all the dreads that ever came across me, the worst was to have to again return to my body, though I had to do it." "But O," says he, "the order and government that were there! When in the spirit world, I saw the order of righteous men and women; beheld them organized in their several grades, and there appeared to be no obstruction to my vision; I could see every man and woman in their grade and order. I looked to see whether there was any disorder there, but there was none; neither could I see any death nor any darkness, disorder or confusion." He said that the people he there saw were organized in family capacities; and when he looked at them he saw grade after grade, and all were organized and in perfect harmony. He would mention one item after another and say, "Why, it is just as Brother Brigham says it is; it is just as he has told us many a time."
That is a testimony as to the truth of what Brother Brigham teaches us, and I know it is true, from what little light I have. He saw the righteous gathered together in the spirit world, and there were no wicked spirits among them. He saw his wife; she was the first person that came to him. He saw many that he knew, but did not have conversation with any except his wife Caroline.
She came to him, and he said that she looked beautiful and had their little child, that died on the Plains, in her arms, and said, "Mr. Grant, here is little Margaret; you know that the wolves ate her up, but it did not hurt her; here she is all right."
"To my astonishment," he said, "when I looked at families there was a deficiency in some, there was a lack, for I saw families that would not be permitted to come and dwell together, because they had not honored their calling here." He asked his wife Caroline where Joseph and Hyrum and Father Smith and others were; she replied, "they have gone away ahead, to perform and transact business for us. The same as when Brother Brigham and his brethren left Winter Quarters and came here."
Journal of Discourses, 4:135-36 (December 4, 1856).

Read more about the spirit world here:
http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Spirit_World