Characteristics of the Spirit Body:

I feel it is important to address the characteristics of the spirit that are present at the time of death. People wonder what they will be like, or if they will be themselves or an altered state.

I would like to start with a section taken from the Gospel Principles book from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, chapter 41 “The Postmortal Spirit World”

Here is a link to that manual:

What is the Nature of Our Spirits? 

Spirit beings have the same bodily form as mortals except that the spirit body is in perfect form (see Ether 3:16). Spirits carry with them from earth their attitudes of devotion or antagonism toward things of righteousness (see Alma 34:34). They have the same appetites and desires that they had when they lived on earth. All spirits are in adult form. They were adults before their mortal existence, and they are in adult form after death, even if they die as infants or children.

I think there is a beautiful description that is given in a book called;

“The Life Beyond” by: Robert L. Millet & Joseph Fielding McConkie.  They tell us of the nature that we encounter at death.

“Death does not change the nature of man. The Book of Mormon affirms the principle that man takes into the next sphere of existence that personality and those attitudes which he has cultivated on earth. Just as we come to earth with tendencies and predispositions developed in the pre-mortal world, so also do we go into the afterworld with the character we have shaped and molded in mortality. Were it not so, there would be little purpose in earth life. If we die with desires for goodness and a yearning for righteousness and are questing for the things of the Spirit, we will continue to do so hereafter among those with like propensities. On the other hand, we need not suppose that a lifetime of evil thinking and malevolent motives will be removed or peeled away by the veil of death.

Brothers Millet and McConkie use the following supporting scriptures in the Book of Alma from The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ:

Alma 34: 32-35

 For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of  this life is the day for men to perform their labors.

  And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.

  Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess  your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.

  For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked.

Brother McConkie and Millet use a declaration from Elder Melvin J. Ballard that is both a caution for us today and a description of what we will be like after we die.

“He must overcome either in this life or in the life to come. But this life is the time in which men are to repent. Do not let any of us imagine that we can go down to the grave not having overcome the corruptions of the flesh and then lose in the grave all our sins and evil tendencies. They will be with us. They will be with the spirit when separated from the body. Then every man and woman who is putting off until the next life the task of correcting and overcoming the weakness of the flesh are sentencing themselves to years of bondage, for no man or woman will come forth in the resurrection until he has completed his work, until he has overcome, until he has done as much as he can do.”

After looking at the previous examples we can see that when we die we are exactly the same person in thoughts and actions. We have just “lost are hardness” as I love George Ritchie’s description of himself in his book, (“Return from Tomorrow” click here for a link to order this book.)

Mr. Ritchie states in chapter four:

Staring down at it, I realized I had stopped moving altogether. Finding myself somehow suspended fifty feet in the air was an even stranger feeling than the whirlwind flight had been. But I had no time to puzzle over it, for down the sidewalk toward the all-night café a man came briskly walking. At least, I thought, I could find out from him what town this was and in what direction I was heading. Even as the idea occurred to me- as though thought and motion had become the same thing- I found myself down on the sidewalk, hurrying along at the stranger’s side. He was a civilian, maybe forty or forty-five, wearing a topcoat but no hat. He was obviously thinking hard about something because he never glanced my way as I fell into step beside him.

“Can you tell me, please,: I said, “what city this is?”

He kept right on walking.

“Please sir!” I said, speaking louder, “I’m a stranger here and I’d appreciate it if-“

We reached the café and he turned, reaching for the door handle. Was the fellow deaf? I put out my left hand to tap his shoulder.

There was nothing there.

I stood there in front of the door, gaping after him as he opened it and disappeared inside. It had been like touching…thin air. Like no one had been there at all. And yet I had distinctly seen him, even to the beginnings of a black stubble on his chin where he needed a shave.

I backed away from the mystery of the substance-less man and leaned up against the guy wire of a telephone pole to think things through. My body went through that guy wire as though it too had not been there.

There on the sidewalk of that unknown city, I did some incredulous thinking. The strangest, most difficult thinking I had ever done. The man in the café, this telephone pole…who was-changed, somehow. What if in some impossible, unimaginable way, I lost my …my hardness. My ability to grasp things, to make contact with the world. Even to be seen! The fellow just now. It was obvious he never saw or heard me.

Also I love Betty J. Eadie’s similar description in her book “Embraced By The Light” in the chapter title “My Death.”

…” Then I felt a surge of energy. It was almost as if I felt a pop or release inside me, and my spirit was suddenly drawn out through my chest and pulled upward, as if by a giant magnet. My first impression was that I was free. There was nothing unnatural about the experience. I was above the bed, hovering near the ceiling. My sense of freedom was limitless and it seemed as if I had done this forever. I turned and saw a body lying on the bed. I was curious about who it was, and immediately I began descending toward it. Having worked as an LPN, I knew well the appearance of a dead body, and as I got closer to the face I knew at once that it was lifeless. And then I recognized that it was my own. That was my body on the bed. I wasn’t taken aback, and I wasn’t frightened; I simply felt a kind of sympathy for it. It appeared younger and prettier than I remembered, and now it was dead. It was as if I had taken off a used garment and had put it aside forever, which was sad because it was still good-there was still a lot of use left in it.

Click on link to get a copy of Betty J. Eadie’s book.

It was such a wonderful experience reading. I actually heard about her experience before she published her book.  My visiting teacher in the early 1990’s had a friend who attended a fireside she spoke at. She had a copy of the fireside and gave me a copy. I had it for several years and then it was lost. I was thrilled when the book was published. It is a book I highly recommend!

Through these accounts we can see that we are really just the same individual after we die as we were in life. We have just laid our mortal body aside for awhile. It is important to understand that we need to accomplish as much as we can in the body for we will take all of those things with us. Those things that we need to overcome to be better people are easier with the body and spirit together.

In my book “Kory” that is coming out soon I address the fact that we need to work through our physical challenges here in mortality. It is in a chapter called, “Spirits in Mortality”: click here to go to this sneek peek chapter.   I hope you enjoy it!

Next week we will continue the discussion.