There has been a wealth of scholarship that explores Alma 36, a personal account of Alma the Younger’s conversion story. I think it may be one of the more oft-referenced scriptures in the church and it’s one that I have used many times as an example or as a teaching framework. It is a wonderful account, it is arranged in the form of a chiasmus, and it is one of the only events in the Book of Mormon that is actually shared more than once- first in Mosiah when the experience occurs, and then again in Alma 36 when the now-grown Alma the Younger shares this account with Helaman. I hope to examine this latter account as a possible mystical experience, and that that mystical portion of the experience is partly to credit for Alma the Younger and his companions' influence on the fate of the Nephites and Lamanites.
Mysticism is something that can escape rigid definitions, but broadly speaking it is a spiritual belief or experience which focuses on the unity of things. That might be expressed as seeing everything as one, or it might be expressed as seeing the one in all things. William James wrote “In mystic states, we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which bring it about that the mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land.”
James also identified certain qualities of mystical experiences that seem to be common or defining. These are ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, and passivity. Others have developed other frameworks, with similar definitions, some give more characteristics, others fewer. Part of the problem with mystical experiences is that they are at once universal- occurring across time and space- and yet they are deeply personal, as the ineffable quality implies. So while mystical experiences do occur, and they are related, one always seems to only see “through a glass, darkly” to borrow from Paul.
Ineffability according to James means that the experience is one that cannot be fully communicated in regular language. There is a quality of the experience that seems to take place in a new domain. One struggles to find words, and at best, we are left with half-formed metaphors and similes. Every Latter-day Saint is familiar with the account of the first vision, where Joseph describes the quality of light as “above the brightness of the sun.” There is no way to describe the brightness in and of itself, we only have some reference, but even then we’re not told what degree above the brightness of the sun- what would it matter, could we imagine if it was ten times brighter or 50 times brighter? Such an account seems lacking, yet it does communicate something by its inability to communicate- it means we are in a realm of mystical experience.
Alma the Younger prefaces his experience in his account to Helaman by saying “I would not that ye think that I know of myself—not of the temporal but of the spiritual, not of the carnal mind but of God.” He is priming Helaman to understand that the experience is one that takes place in a domain that is by its nature ineffable. The language that Alma uses to retell this story is poetic, but it is ultimately an account that is filtered through language and therefore limited. Alma recalls how he was racked with “eternal torment”- yet we know that his experience was limited in time; He says that his soul was “harrowed up to the greatest degree” which again feels to fall short of what the reality must have been. Perhaps it is because the whole experience was a mystical unity that Alma recounted it in poetry. Verse 22 is especially instructive as Alma says “methough I saw…” meaning his experience here was so beyond language that he was seeking something that he thought might even be a bridge between the experience and language.
The noetic quality of a mystical experience indicates that the person who has the experience views it as a communication of knowledge. This is perhaps the most striking characteristic of the account in Alma 36, where Alma uses the word that is translated as “know” 12 times. He is bearing his testimony- sharing things that he has learned by the experience of being. To quote the most prominent scholar of Christian mysticism, Bernard McGinn, the mystic experience can be defined as “...new ways of knowing and loving based on states of awareness in which God becomes present in our inner acts.” Alma certainly has achieved this knowledge, as he shares that he knows “that whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day.” And certainly there can be no more extreme demonstration of God being present in our inner acts than Alma experiences when, after calling upon Jesus to have mercy on him he says “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!”
This change from darkness to light is the central key in this account, the hingepoint of the conversion, and the experience that most defines Alma the Younger. It also leads us to the next quality of the mystical experience which is transiency. The mystical experience is short in duration, but it affects a long-lasting change. This is plainly obvious in Alma’s account. He says as a consequence of his experience of divine union that “[he has] labored without ceasing, that I might bring souls unto repentance; that I might bring them to taste of the exceeding joy of which I did taste; that they might also be born of God, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.” That knowledge he received was so real that it compelled him to try and share with others. He knew something of the spirit and became overwhelmingly filled with love such that he now wants others to join him and share that same experience. So that seed of a mystical experience- 3 days of being racked with pain and suffering of the pains of a damned soul- became a lifetime of missionary labor, and one that influenced not just Alma but the sons of Mosiah as well, and they became the great missionaries of the Book of Mormon. Alma’s descendants would go on to keep the records of the Book of Mormon and lead the people of Nephi.
The final quality that James describes for the mystic experience is that of passivity. He describes this thus: “the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.” Alma certainly checks this box in his conversion. He says that he was “encircled by the everlasting chains of death”, and then after calling upon the name of Christ, he is filled with light. He says that when he sees (or thought he saw) “God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God… my soul did long to be there.” His soul desired it, but he was unable to go. Aside from calling upon Christ, Alma is entirely passive in this experience. He even recounts at the beginning how when the angel stops and speaks to him, he is knocked to the ground. He does stand back up at the angel’s command but then falls to the earth again. The account in Mosiah 27 tells us that “the astonishment of Alma was so great that he became dumb, that he could not open his mouth; yea, and he became weak, even that he could not move his hands; therefore he was taken by those that were with him, and carried helpless, even until he was laid before his father.”
Alma the Younger was not seeking a mystical experience. At the time of his conversion, he was an unbeliever, with the intent to destroy the church of God. Others who have experienced the mystic have been seekers of truth- Joseph Smith’s first vision may fit the same general framework of a mystical experience as described here. Alma does seem to indicate that his experience, or at least the knowledge from his experience, was something that all could attain through the witness of the spirit. Other accounts in the Book of Mormon might also fit the definition of the mystical experience, and it may be worth examining the transmission of testimony and the conversion process itself as mystical, or occurring in the mystic domain.
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