Redaction: This verse also provides evidence that Alma gave this speech in the presence of Mosiah’s sons. While Alma might possibly have experienced such great joy just by remembering their success, it is more likely that he is describing the powerful effect of the Spirit when the old friends met—all of them tested and sensitive men of God. The intensity of the spiritual atmosphere must have been unique.
Culture: Alma makes an interesting statement that his “soul is carried away, even to the separation of it from the body.” This description brings to mind his own conversion experience (Mosiah 27:19) and also the conversions of Lamoni and his father (Alma 18:42, 22:18). In the Mesoamerican cultural context, however, this statement may have an even wider implication.
An important part of Mesoamerican religion is shamanism. Indeed, the volume Maya Cosmos is subtitled Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path. In shamanic religions, the shaman communicates with the world of spirits through some type of ecstatic experience, frequently described as the soul leaving the body, leaving the body quiescent as the spirit travels. Shamanism may understand the separation of spirit and body as a supreme act of spiritual communion. Maya kings were expected to perform rituals that would result in such ecstatic trances. In the case of the Classic Maya kings, the trance evoked a vision of a serpent that allowed communication with the world of the dead ancestor spirits.
While Alma is certainly not a shaman, I see in this phrase a possible allusion to a concept from the larger culture with which he may have been familiar prior to his conversion. Thus, describing a spiritual experience as separation from his body may possibly echo the Mesoamerican understanding of the ecstatic shamanic journey.