Embraced by the Light, reprint ed.
by Betty J. Eadie, Curtis Taylor
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Bantam: 1992. Paperback: 147 pages. ISBN-10: 0-55356-591-5 ISBN-13: 978-0553565911 Suggested retail price: $6.50 (US) Tags: afterlie; heaven; Inspiration; life-after-death; religion Tactical strength: [5/10] |
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Publicity for Embraced by the Light touts this book as the most complete life-after-death experience ever written, but as a Latter-day Saint, I found Eadie offered nothing new or surprising -- except for a few items that seemed in direct conflict with accepted doctrine.
Eadie experienced a typical, near-death experience: she was clinically dead, traveled through a tunnel of light to the spirit world, was told that it was not time for her to die, and was sent back to the earth. Her experience is different only in the amount of detail she remembers about her experience. Most of the messages and lessons she relates are typical: love each other; Christ exhibits the ultimate love, so great you don't want to go back to earth; each person is so precious that the spirits on the other side are working constantly to help them succeed.
But there are the topics that seemed to be thrown in just to be modern or conform to new-age ideas: all of our memories are stored in each cell of our body and these memories are passed on from us to our children (thus we can remember the "past lives" of our ancestors) and she was offended by being brought in front of a council of men (until she realized the unique roles of men and women). While these are not new ideas, they really stand out against the rest of her narrative as artificial. While I read these sections, I found that they just didn't sit right in my mind. The only way to explain this is by the spirit. For example, when I read anti-Mormon literature, it just doesn't have the same feeling as literature written my general authorities of the church. While most of Eadie's book didn't make me feel uncomfortable, the sections I mentioned above did.
Since Embraced by the Light deals with spiritual matters, it only seems fair that part of the criticism should be based on the spiritual feelings one gets while reading the work. I found nothing profound or new, and as I said, I sometimes felt the book was in conflict with the doctrines of the LDS Church. In spite of this, Eadie left me feeling good and wanting to spend more effort to improve myself.
There is one very noticeable disparity. Eadie mentions God and Christ quite frequently in her narrative but never mentions the third member of the Godhead, the Hold Ghost. She explains in great detail how other spirits, our spirit brothers and sisters, work incessantly to promote those who are on the earth. When she sees a symbolic representation of prayers leaving the earth, these spirits rush to answer the prayers in order of their fervency. Never once does she mention the Holy Ghost or described him as part of the process.
For the most part, I believe that Eadie has accurately reported what she remembers. We should not criticize her for reporting this event to us, but we should be careful about how seriously we take this information. We should not base our testimony on her story, and we certainly should not form a religion around it. It is only a reporting of one person's perceptions of the spirit world. If you can learn a few new ideas, great, but don't let this book be the basis of your testimony or even a threat to your testimony.
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