The same sociality, but with much better music

Some notes taken from Brent L. Top, What’s On the Other Side: What the Gospel Teaches Us about the Spirit World (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012).  These come from accounts that he has gathered from various sources:

My ears were filled with a music so beautiful no composer could ever duplicate it. . . .  It was soothing, gentle, and warm and seemed to come from a source deep within me.”  (22)

There was a tremendous sound, too.  It was as if all the great orchestras in the world were playing at once; no special melody, and very loud, powerful but somehow soothing.  It was a rushing, moving sound, unlike anything I could remember, but familiar, just on the edge of my memory.  (22-23)

I saw many thousand spirits clothed in white, and singing heavenly music — the sweetest song I have ever heard.  (23)

Professor Top is reminded of Alma 36:22, according to which Alma the Younger, after escaping his awful pains, reported that he had seen “numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God; yea, and my soul did long to be there.”  He is also reminded of a declaration of President Brigham Young:  “There is no music in hell, for all good music belongs to heaven.”

Almost a century prior to the Restoration, the Swedish scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg described what he himself had seen during a claimed visit to the other side:  “Since [spirits] are people, living together as people on earth do, they have clothes, houses, and many similar things.  But there is this difference, that since [spirits] are in a more perfect state, everything they have is more perfect.”  (23-24)

Their dwellings are just like the dwellings on earth which we call homes, except that they are more beautiful.  They have rooms, suites, and bedrooms, all in abundance.  They have courtyards, and [are] surrounded by gardens, flowerbeds, and lawns. . . .

I have seen palaces in heaven so noble as to defy description. . . .  Inside, . . . the rooms were decorated with accessories such that words and arts fail to describe them.

Outside, . . . there were parks where everything likewise glowed, with here and there leaves gleaming like silver and fruit like gold.  The flowers in their plots formed virtual rainbows.  (24)

Again, Dr. Top is reminded of Doctrine and Covenants 130:2, which says that “that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.”