Interesting Experiences
JJ: I remember when I first discovered for sure that there was reincarnation and I proved it to myself. And when I did find it I thought well if there is reincarnation then the final test is that it should be in the scriptures. I decided to read the scriptures from beginning to end and see if it is in there because I did not remember it being in there before. I started reading the Doctrine and Covenants and in the first chapter just a few verses into it, there it was, reincarnation! How come I never saw it before. It said that the people that were persecutors in the days of Joseph Smith would be upon the earth when Christ comes again to receive their just due. Now how could they be here unless there was reincarnation? Because we do not teach that they are going to be resurrected to be here with the just. I thought how are they going to be here? It had to be reincarnation and it only took me five minutes to find it in the Mormon scriptures and in the Bible, in the Old Testament, the New Testament – I found references all over the place. I found all kinds of things in earlier church history and I was just blown away and then shortly after that I wrote my book called Eternal Lives, which I wrote for the Mormons to convince them that there was reincarnation.
Eventually I reduced it all to a pamphlet called Mormonism and Reincarnation. I must tell you a story that revolves around it. Curtis and I printed up a bunch of these back in the late seventies and every time we went by a Mormon institution we stopped and put half a dozen on different cars that were parked there and we kept wondering what those guys were thinking who received the.? Laughing!
We did this about half a dozen times and one time we were just innocently walking by the institute and we got about a block away and we heard some footsteps behind us and we turned around and there was a couple guys in suits running toward us and they were huffing and puffing and they said, are you guys putting those pamphlets on cars around our institute? We answered well yes we are! They said we want you to stop it. We said why should we stop it, we think it is important to enlighten Mormons. And one of them said if you do this again then we are going to have you arrested, you are trespassing on our property and if you put one more pamphlet on our car there, we are going to be watching and we are going to arrest you.
I thought, oh, you are you. So I did a little checking and we went back to the institute and walked around it and I said hey look Curtis, the main parking lot is across the street and the sidewalk here is public property not owned by the church and what this means is we can stand on the road or the sidewalk and we can hand then the pamphlets as they come out of church next Sunday! And there is nothing they can do about it because we are not on their property!
Audience: Laughing!
JJ: So Curtis thought that was a great idea – he just loved to tweak them!
Audience: Laughing!
JJ: So the next Sunday after church we stood right in the road handing out pamphlets as they crossed the street to the parking lot! We were not on their property and this was kind of funny. Only one or two people came out at first and we handed this guy a pamphlet and he grabbed it and he went and got in his car and we counted one, two, three and the guy pops out of his car and runs into the institute. I said to Curtis, well it is not going to be long before we are visited and then all of a sudden a whole bunch of people started coming out we started giving lots of pamphlets.
Audience: Laughing!
JJ: Then these two guys came out and said, we want you to get off our property! I said we are not on your property. He said we want you to go away! I said well we are not going away and by the way here is a pamphlet! Laughing!
Audience: Laughing!
JJ: He said, we want you to go away. I said we are not going away and didn’t you go on a mission? He said yes and I said didn’t you give out Which Church Is Right and Joseph Smith pamphlets? He said well yes. I said aren’t you being a hypocrite by telling me not to give out stuff? He said well this is different. I said no it is not. We are doing the same thing you guys do. What is the matter with you guys? Will you move out of the way now so we can continue to give out pamphlets. There was just steam coming out of their ears because there was nothing that they could do because we were legal!
Audience: Laughing!
JJ: Curtis and I were always looking for an opportunity to tweak these guys and we almost got arrested a couple of times. One time they did detain us and we had to escape!
Audience: The church detained you?
JJ: Yes they put us in a room down in the basement and we managed to escape. Laughing!
Audience: How did you escape?
JJ: They left us for about two seconds and we immediately high tailed it out of there.
Audience: Did they strong-arm you?
JJ: They lured us in and tried to hold us there until the cops arrived and we thought well we are not going to stay here if we can get out of it. Laughing!
Audience: How old were you JJ?
JJ: I think I was excommunicated when I was 33 if I remember right so I was about 34-35.
It was fun to tweak the Mormons. One interesting thing that we did with them – that I didn’t do but one of the guys we worked with – Curtis and him were sitting down with kind of a stuffed shirt type guy and talking to him. The guy explained some of the teachings and asked him well do you think this is true, yes or no. He demanded a yes or no answer from him. And he just really irritated the guy because he would not say yes or no. And we started using that regularly after that because it was such a good idea and eventually we used it when we visited Bruce McConkie and Mark E. Peterson. Curtis hit Bruce with a yes or no, he said do you really believe in the writings and teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith, yes or no please.
He refused to say yes or no. He just kept saying that all you need to know is that there is a living prophet. We were quoting Joseph Smith and he did not like the quotes were giving to him so Curtis asked him, “well do you accept the writings of Joseph Smith yes or no please. I want to be able to tell my Mom what you believe about this and she is a good member of the church so, yes or no, do you believe in the writings and teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith?” He said all you need to know is that there is a living prophet. Laughing! And he kept saying it louder and louder and louder.
Okay, so we have the divine, we have the monads as little tiny specs like stars appearing in the divine world and then coming down and achieving self consciousness working in the world of ideas creating ideas passing them down to the intuitive level which is then passed down to the mental worlds and then passed down to the astral worlds which is then passed down to you and me and sometimes when you are sleeping at night something that originated way up in the divine gets filtered down to our feeble brains where we make an attempt to understand what is going on, the purpose of life, where we are going and all of these things.
Now it is about time to wind it up. Do we have any questions before we close?
Audience: What effect can we have to help people that have died and to pass on?
JJ: We can help by what we do with our thoughts. What we do with our thought in the physical body has more potency here than in the other worlds if we focus correctly. We have tremendous power of thought because we have within us the physical world combined with the astral and the mental we have the whole ball of wax here. So it takes more energy of the power of thought to work in this world. It is like working with heavy weights and as you work with them you get stronger and stronger. This is a world where you really increase your power of will and your power of thought where as when you go to the lighter astral world everything is really easy and you just kind of glide along and you do not have to exercise yourself quite so much. Now the astral world is a good place to learn and everything but the heavens are more of a place for relaxation and rest. As a matter of fact the scriptures talk about this and say “the rest shall be glorious.” The prophets often call the next world a rest. They shall rest from all their labors. Here we are not resting and it takes a strenuous act of will just to get out of bed here compared to the other worlds where you can just bounce right out of your bed.
So if a person focuses in this world then he can create a tremendous influence in the next world and sometimes when loved ones die, you can still have a feeling about them. I will relate a couple of experiences that I had, I had an uncle that had multiple sclerosis that I really loved a lot. Back when I was a Mormon you gave healing blessings and I always wanted to give him such a blessing. Finally when I got old enough and I was a priesthood holder I asked my grandmother if I could give him a blessing and when I did I did not receive anything for him. I felt like that it was not the time so I waited a couple years and I tried to give him another blessing and it was like my lips were almost sealed and I could not hardly sputter out anything positive so I told him that he would have peace of mind.
I felt really bad about that and then he got worse and worse. Then one day I was visiting him with my friend Wayne and he looked really bad and he could not talk and he was just laying on the couch and I could tell he was very uncomfortable and I felt really sorry for him and as I was looking at him the inner voice spoke and said, “this man has suffered enough.” I ten asked my grandmother if we could give him one more blessing.
The inner voice did not tell me what to say but just said that he has suffered enough. Looking back upon it I did not understand karma at that time but now I can understand that he probably paid the debt that he was supposed to pay. So I took Wayne and we both laid our hands on him and I blessed him that he would be completely healed or else he would be taken. I figured that if he had suffered enough then on of those two things was going to happen.
I was in college at the time and Wayne and I went back to college and three days later my mom called me up. Just before my mom’s phone call all of a sudden I felt Uncle Bob’s presence and it was very powerful and he had come to me to thank me. His thoughts went something like this, “Oh it is just so great to be released from that decrepit body I was in.” I did not get the words but I sensed the feeling that he was just so overjoyed and thankful to me for giving him that blessing that released him from the body and he was just thrilled to be there in the astral world.
So my mom called me up and she sounded really sad and she said I have some really bad news, Bob died. I said that is not bad news that is good news! He is just thrilled to be where he is! And she said really? I said he has been hovering around me and he is just as happy as a lark!
But when my mom died I had quite bit different experience, I felt that when she died that she was somewhat confused because I think she was expecting the spirit world to be different. She had a certain idea of heaven would be like and she was quite old and right after she died her spirit body probably looked old and she probably was expecting to look young and vibrant but that takes a period of time for the changes to occur and for three days I had the impression that she was confused and then I felt that she was okay. I was talking to my daughter Elizabeth that I told you about and I told her that and she said you know the same thing happened to me and for three days I felt the same thing you did. So that was interesting that we both had that same feeling about my mom. It was encouraging that my uncle Bob was so thrilled to be free from the terrible disease that he had for over 20 years – he was just thrilled to be on the other side.
What we do here is we create the heaven in the next world with our minds while we are on the earth. Through our mental efforts and calculations we create the heavens and hells that materialize. The heavens and hells in the next world change as the times change and as circumstance changes and technology changes so it is important that you visualize the type of world you might want to live in. You want to make yourself into the type of person that loving people in the spirit world will want to associate with. If I am around people like you in the next world then I would have nothing to complain about. You have been a really good group and you have made a slice of heaven for me and everybody else here so I am really happy to have been with you and I appreciate all your support.
Audience: Thank for having us. Applause.
Copyright 2011 by J J Dewey