c. 2008 Salt Lake TribuneSALT LAKE CITY _ Inside a bronze-colored pyramid off Interstate 15, Corky Ra, the founder of the homegrown spiritual group Summum, is reportedly submerged in a vat of mummification fluids. The man who was born Claude “Corky” Rex Nowell and raised in the Mormon faith died at the end of January, according to a Summum official. He was 63. One of his followers, Su Menu, 57, choked up as she spoke about the “infectious” and “always playful” Ra and the religious community he created in 1975. His death, she said, was the result of “complications” from late-onset post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in Vietnam and chronic back pain. Summum, a Latin term meaning “the sum total of all creation,” is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear a case involving Summum’s request to display its own monument beside the Ten Commandments in a park in Pleasant Grove, Utah. That monument, if erected, would include Summum’s seven guiding principles. But Menu, a piano teacher whose legal name is Summum Bonum Neffer Menu, didn’t want to talk about the legal case; she’d rather leave that to lawyers. She was willing to offer a glimpse into the often misunderstood belief system she’s subscribed to for more than 30 years.It’s a faith that’s steeped in meditations, uses sacramental wine and practices its own brand of mummification. “We’re not weirdos. We’re just normal people trying to follow a spiritual path,” she said. “We aren’t necessarily mainstream, that’s for sure, but so what? There are so many people who are fed up with (the mainstream) anyway.” Even so, Summum has plenty in common with other religions, Menu said.“All religions, in some way or other, had a founder” who experienced visitations from someone or some power, she said. Why should Ra’s encounters in the 1970s with “advanced beings” be any more suspect than those of, say, Mormonism’s Joseph Smith? Plus, it’s not like the adherents are hurting anybody, she added. “Summum’s philosophy is all religions are correct for the individuals who are following that path because that’s where they feel comfortable,” she said. “Ultimately, we all are going the same direction.” The bookshelves in the Summum offices are lined with publications offering diverse teachings. There’s one of Ra’s books, “Sexual Ecstasy for Ancient Wisdom,” mixed in with “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” and “The Egyptian Book of the Dead.”Too often, people try to “label” Summum, put it in a spiritual box, Menu said. Unless you’ve experienced what the meditations can bring to your life, the power that vibrates in the group’s pyramid sanctuary (currently off limits to outsiders because Ra is inside), it’s impossible to understand or fully explain, she said.And she gets the skeptics; she was once one of them. (BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)Menu grew up in the Midwest, in a “traditional Christian background,” but said by the time she went off to school she realized it “didn’t satisfy my soul.” For a while, she was turned on to Transcendental Meditation. After moving to Utah with her then-husband, the couple met Ra, whom she first thought was nuts. But the more she opened up and allowed herself to hear him, the more sense his lessons made to her.(END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)Summum followers “believe in one source,” she said, but they “don’t necessarily give it a name. We don’t call it God.” The community is “organized as a church,” but isn’t a formal one, Menu continued. It doesn’t require attendance, which makes determining membership numbers difficult. Menu estimated that there are “hundreds of thousands” of people globally who have tapped into Summum’s teachings, “but once they learn the meditations, they’re free to go live their own lives.” The Salt Lake City pyramid draws about 10 to 15 adherents for Saturday meetings, which these days amount to readings from Ra’s old lectures, Menu explained. The meetings are broadcast online, however, so others _ from as far away as Georgia and Ireland _ can tune in. Key to the Summum practice are the meditations, of which there are many. Some are in an ancient language Menu cannot name or translate, which she said is unimportant because “it’s not about what’s being said anyway. It’s about the feeling.” (BEGIN SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM)Others are in English. And still another variety, like the Meditation of Sexual Ecstasy, are about actions. “It’s a practice of sexuality that two intimate partners can do with each other … to establish an orgasm that will last a long time,” Menu explained. “The mind is silent, and it becomes a meditation.” (END SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM)Another practice that grabs attention is the group’s modern mummification process. Behind Menu, on a metal counter and next to an unopened bag of chips, was Amber. The feral cat, adopted by the community, was hit by a car and died about eight years ago. She was wrapped in gauze and encased in resin, “a cocoon to keep her from drying out,” Menu explained. The cat was positioned in half of the bronze mummiform that will become her final resting place. The spirit is “constantly evolving,” she said, and preserving the body keeps it calm, helping it to “move toward that progression.” (BEGIN THIRD OPTIONAL TRIM)Summum has mummified up to 50 animals, including Menu’s standard poodle, Maggie, who she said (at a mummification cost of about $12,000) now stands in the pyramid with other beloved pets. Menu said she plans to be mummified herself, and will someday be joined by Maggie in the mausoleum that’s being constructed beneath the Summum property. (END THIRD OPTIONAL TRIM)Ra, however, is the first human to be mummified. Outside the pyramid are gravemarkers for Summum practitioners who passed on before the process was developed.Each day, for 77 days after his death, Ra is being visited in the pyramid by at least one of his officers who sit with him to read his “spiritual will.” The group practices “mummification and transference,” and reciting the spiritual will serves as a guide for the spirit, a road map or reminder of where it wants to go. In his spiritual will, Ra asked to remain in the mummification solution for six months, Menu said. After that he will be wrapped and placed in a sealed mummiform. Menu isn’t sure what will happen to the community now that Ra is gone, but she’s comfortable sitting in the “right here, right now,” knowing that the essence of who she is has already been developed through the meditations. “Nobody’s ever going to be Corky,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean what Summum is won’t go on.”(Jessica Ravitz writes for The Salt Lake Tribune in Salt Lake City.)KRE/PH END RAVITZ1,150 words, with optional trims to 950A version of this story first appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune and is available for RNS subscribers.Photos of Ra, Menu and the Summum pyramid are available via https://religionnews.com.