What Happens After We Die?

By Shlomo Yaffe and Yanki Tauber

One of the fundamental beliefs of Judaism is that life does not begin with birth, nor does it end with death. This is articulated in the verse in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to G‑d, who gave it.”1

The Lubavitcher Rebbe would often point out that a basic law of physics (known as the First Law of Thermodynamics) is that no energy is ever “lost” or destroyed; it only assumes another form. If such is the case with physical energy, how much more so a spiritual entity such as the soul, whose existence is not limited by time, space, or any of the other delineators of the physical state. Certainly, the spiritual energy that in the human being is the source of sight and hearing, emotion and intellect, will and consciousness does not cease to exist merely because the physical body has ceased to function; rather, it passes from one form of existence (physical life as expressed and acted via the body) to a higher, exclusively spiritual form of existence.

While there are numerous stations in a soul’s journey, these can generally be grouped into four general phases:

the wholly spiritual existence of the soul before it enters the body;
physical life;
post-physical life in Gan Eden (the “Garden of Eden,” also called “Heaven” and “Paradise”);
the “world to come” (olam haba) that follows the resurrection of the dead.
What are these four phases, and why are all four necessary?

To See or Not to See: The Free Choice Paradox

As discussed at length in chassidic teaching,2 the ultimate purpose of the soul is fulfilled during the time it spends in this physical world making this world “a dwelling-place for G‑d” by finding and expressing G‑dliness in everyday life through its fulfillment of the mitzvot.

But for our actions in this world to have true significance, they must be the product of our free choice. If we were to experience the power and beauty of the divine presence we bring into the world with our mitzvot, we would always choose what is right, and thereby lose our autonomy. The obvious becomes robotic. Our accomplishments would not be ours, any more than it is an “accomplishment” that we eat three meals a day and avoid jumping into fire.

Hence, this crucial stage of our lives is enacted under the conditions of almost total spiritual blackout: in a world in which the divine reality is hidden, in which our purpose in life is not obvious; a world in which “all its affairs are severe and evil, and wicked men prevail.”3 In such a world, our positive and G‑dly actions are truly our own choice and achievement.

On the other hand, however, how would it be possible at all to discover, and act upon, goodness and truth under such conditions? If the soul is plunged into such a G‑dless world, and cut off from all knowledge of the divine, by what means could it ever discover the path of truth?

This is why the soul exists in a purely spiritual state before it descends in to this world. In its pre-physical existence, the soul is fortified with the divine wisdom, knowledge and vision that will empower it in its struggles to transcend and transform the physical reality.

In the words of the Talmud: “The fetus in its mother’s womb is taught the entire Torah . . . When its time comes to emerge into the atmosphere of the world, an angel comes and slaps it on its mouth, making it forget everything.”4

An obvious question: If we’re made to forget it all, why teach it to us in the first place? But herein lies the entire paradox of knowledge and choice: we can’t see the truth, we can’t even manifestly know it, but at the same time we do know it, deep inside us. Deep enough that we can choose to ignore it, but also deep enough that wherever we are and whatever we become, we can always choose to unearth it. This, in the final analysis, is choice: our choice to pursue the knowledge implanted in our soul, or to suppress it.

The Mutual Exclusivity of Achievement and Reward

Thus the stage is set for phase 2: the tests, trials and tribulations of physical life. The characteristics of the physical—its finiteness, its opaqueness, its self-centeredness, its tendency to conceal what lies behind it—form a heavy veil that obscures virtually all knowledge and memory of our divine source. And yet, deep down we know right from wrong. Somehow we know that life is meaningful, that we are here to fulfill a divine purpose; somehow, when confronted with a choice between a G‑dly action and an unG‑dly one, we know the difference. The knowledge is faint—a dim, subconscious memory from a prior, spiritual state. We can silence it, or amplify it—the choice is ours.

Everything physical is, by definition, finite; indeed, that is what makes it a concealment of the infinitude of the divine. Intrinsic to physical life is that it is finite in time: it ends. Once it ends—once our soul is freed from its physical embodiment—we can no longer achieve and accomplish. But now, finally, we can behold and derive satisfaction from what we have accomplished.

The two are mutually exclusive: achievement precludes satisfaction; satisfaction precludes achievement. Achievement can take place only in the spiritual blindness of the physical world; satisfaction can take place only in the choice-less environment of the spiritual reality.

The Talmud quotes the verse: “You shall keep the mitzvah, the decrees and the laws which I command you today to do them.”5 “Today to do them,” explains the Talmud, “but not to do them tomorrow. Today to do them, and tomorrow to receive their reward.”6 The Ethics expresses it thus: “A single moment of repentance and good deeds in this world is greater than all of the world to come. And a single moment of bliss in the world to come is greater than all of this world.”7

It’s as if we spent a hundred years watching an orchestra performing a symphony on television—with the sound turned off. We watched the hand movements of the conductor and the musicians. Sometimes we asked: why are the people on the screen making all these strange motions to no purpose? Sometimes we understood that a great piece of music was being played, but didn’t hear a single note. After a hundred years of watching in silence, we watch it again—this time with the sound turned on.

The orchestra is ourselves, and the music—played well or poorly—is the deeds of our lives.

What is Heaven and Hell?

Heaven and hell are where the soul receives its reward and punishment after death. Yes, Judaism believes in, and Jewish traditional sources extensively discuss, punishment and reward in the afterlife (indeed, it is one of the “Thirteen Principles” of Judaism enumerated by Maimonides). But these are a very different “heaven” and “hell” than what one finds described in medieval Christian texts or New Yorker cartoons. Heaven is not a place of halos and harps, nor is hell populated by those red creatures with pitchforks depicted on the label of non-kosher canned meat.

After death, the soul returns to its divine Source, together with all the G‑dliness it has “extracted” from the physical world by using it for meaningful purposes. The soul now relives its experiences on another plane, and experiences the good it accomplished during its physical lifetime as incredible happiness and pleasure, and the negative as incredibly painful.

This pleasure and pain are not reward and punishment in the conventional sense—in the sense that we might punish a criminal by sending him to jail, or reward a dedicated employee with a raise. It is rather that we experience our own life in its reality—a reality from which we were sheltered during our physical lifetimes. We experience the true import and effect of our actions. Turning up the volume on that TV set with that symphony orchestra can be intensely pleasurable, or intensely painful8—depending on how we played the music of our lives.

When the soul departs from the body, it stands before the heavenly court to give a “judgment and accounting” of its earthly life.9 But the heavenly court does only the “accounting” part; the “judgment” part—that, only the soul itself can do.10 Only the soul can pass judgment on itself; only it can know and sense the true extent of what it accomplished, or neglected to accomplish, in the course of its physical life. Freed from the limitations and concealments of the physical state, it can now see G‑dliness; it can now look back at its own life and experience what it truly was. The soul’s experience of the G‑dliness it brought into the world with its mitzvot and positive actions is the exquisite pleasure of Gan Eden (the “Garden of Eden”—Paradise); its experience of the destructiveness it wrought through its lapses and transgressions is the excruciating pain of Gehinnom (“Gehenna” or “Purgatory”).

The truth hurts. The truth also cleanses and heals. The spiritual pain of Gehinnom—the soul’s pain in facing the truth of its life—cleanses and heals the soul of the spiritual stains and blemishes that its failings and misdeeds have attached to it. Freed of this husk of negativity, the soul is now able to fully enjoy the immeasurable good that its life engendered, and “bask in the divine radiance” emitted by the G‑dliness it brought into the world.

For a G‑dly soul spawns far more good in its lifetime than evil. The core of the soul is unadulterated goodness; the good we accomplish is infinite, the evil but shallow and superficial. So even the most wicked of souls, say our sages, experiences at most twelve months of Gehinnom, followed by an eternity of heaven. Furthermore, a soul’s experience of Gehinnom can be mitigated by the action of his or her children and loved ones, here on earth. Reciting kaddish and engaging in other good deeds “in merit of” and “for the elevation of” the departed soul means that the soul, in effect, is continuing to act positively upon the physical world, thereby adding to the goodness of its physical lifetime.11

The soul, for its part, remains involved in the lives of those it leaves behind when it departs physical life. The soul of a parent continues to watch over the lives of his or her children and grandchildren, to derive pride (or pain) from their deeds and accomplishments, and to intercede on their behalf before the heavenly throne; the same applies to those to whom a soul was connected with bonds of love, friendship and community. In fact, because the soul is no longer constricted by the limitations of the physical state, its relationship with its loved ones is, in many ways, even deeper and more meaningful than before.

However, while the departed soul is aware and cognizant of all that transpires in the lives of its loved ones, the souls remaining in the physical world are limited to what they can perceive via the five senses as facilitated by their physical bodies. We can impact the soul of a departed loved one through our positive actions, but we cannot communicate with it through the conventional means (speech, sight, physical contact, etc.) that, prior to its passing, defined the way that we related to each other. (Indeed, the Torah expressly forbids the idolatrous practices of necromancy, mediumism and similar attempts to “make contact” with the world of the dead.) Hence, the occurrence of death, while signifying an elevation for the soul of the departed, is experienced as a tragic loss for those it leaves behind.

Reincarnation: A Second Go

Each individual soul is dispatched to the physical world with its own individualized mission to accomplish. As Jews, we all have the same Torah with the same 613 mitzvot; but each of us has his or her own set of challenges, distinct talents and capabilities, and particular mitzvot which form the crux of his or her mission in life.

At times, a soul may not conclude its mission in a single lifetime. In such cases, it returns to earth for a “second go” to complete the job. This is the concept of gilgul neshamot—commonly referred to as “reincarnation”—extensively discussed in the teachings of Kabbalah.12 This is why we often find ourselves powerfully drawn to a particular mitzvah or cause and make it the focus of our lives, dedicating to it a seemingly disproportionate part of our time and energy: it is our soul gravitating to the “missing pieces” of its divinely ordained purpose.13

The World to Come

Just as the individual soul passes through three stages—preparation for its mission, the mission itself, and the subsequent phase of satisfaction and reward—so, too, does creation as a whole. A chain of spiritual “worlds” precedes the physical reality, to serve it as a source of divine vitality and empowerment. Then comes the era of olam hazeh (“this world”), in which the divine purpose of creation is played out. Finally, once humanity as a whole has completed its mission of making the physical world a “dwelling-place for G‑d,” comes the era of universal reward—the “world to come” (olam haba).

There is a major difference between a soul’s individual “world of reward” in Gan Eden, and the universal reward of the world to come. Gan Eden is a spiritual world, inhabited by souls without physical bodies; the world to come is a physical world, inhabited by souls with physical bodies14 (though the very nature of the physical will undergo a fundamental transformation).

In the world to come, the physical reality will so perfectly “house” and reflect the divine reality that it will transcend the finitude and temporality which define it today. Thus, while in today’s imperfect world the soul can experience “reward” only after it departs from the body and physical life, in the world to come the soul and body will be reunited and will together enjoy the fruits of their labor. Thus, the prophets of Israel spoke of a time when all who died will be restored to life: their bodies will be regenerated15 and their souls restored to their bodies. “Death will be eradicated forever,”16 and “the world will be filled with the knowledge of G‑d as the water covers the seabed.”17

This, of course, will spell the end of the “Era of Achievement.”18 The veil of physicality, rarefied to complete transparency, will no longer conceal the truth of G‑d, but will rather express it and reveal it in an even more profound way than the most lofty spiritual reality. Goodness and G‑dliness will cease to be something we do and achieve, for it will be what we are. Our experience of goodness will be absolute. Body and soul both, reunited as they were before they were separated by death, will inhabit all the good that we accomplished with our freely chosen actions in the challenges and concealments of physical life.

FOOTNOTES
1. Ecclesiastes 12:7.
2. See Body: The Physical World According to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, and our articles on The Purpose of Creation and A Dwelling for G‑d in the Physical World.
3. Tanya, chapter 6.
4. Talmud, Niddah 30b.
5. Deuteronomy 7:11.
6. Talmud, Eruvin 22a.
7. Ethics of the Fathers 4:17.
8. Thus the sages speak about a “Gehenna of fire,” in which we experience the full destructive “heat” of our illicit desires, anger and hatreds; and a “Gehenna of snow,” in which we are exposed to the “coldness” of our moments of indifference to G‑d and to our fellows.
9. Ethics of the Fathers 3:1, et al.
10. Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov.
11. This is why there is a greater emphasis on the recitation of kaddish and other actions for the elevation of a departed soul during the first year after death.
12. Indeed, the Kabbalists say that these days—after nearly six thousand years of human history—a “new” soul is a rarity; the overwhelming majority of us are reincarnated souls, returned to earth to fill the gaps of a previous lifetime.
13. For more on the subject, see our articles on reincarnation.
14. This is actually a matter of contention between two great Jewish thinkers and Torah authorities, Maimonides and Nachmanides; the teachings of Kabbalah and Chassidism follow the approach of Nachmanides, who sees the ultimate reward as occurring in a world of embodied souls. For more on this, see The Resurrection of the Dead.
15. Interestingly, long before the discovery of genetics and DNA, the Talmud talks about a tiny, indestructible bone in the body called luz, from which the entire body will be “rebuilt” after it returned to dust.
16. Isaiah 25:8.
17. Ibid. 11:9.
18. The Talmud goes so far as to quote the verse (Ecclesiastes 12:1), “There will come years of which you will say: I have no desire in them,” and declare: “This refers to the days of the messianic era, in which there is neither merit nor obligation” (Talmud, Shabbat 151b).

source: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/282508/jewish/What-Happens-After-We-Die.htm

Ego-free spirituality

Ego-free spirituality...

THE EGO AND THE SOUL

 by Rabbi Aaron Parry and Dr. Tamar Frankiel.

“You cannot teach a man anything, you can
only help him to find it within himself.” 
Galileo

Jewish tradition teaches that we were created as sparks of God, “in the image of God,” body and soul. God put his image on earth, in the form of human beings. One way to identify with the concept of the “image of God” is through a simple metaphor. Visualize a movie projector and a screen. When turned on, the light projects brightly onto the screen. Consider that God is the projector, or the “source” of the light, the soul is the light illuminating the screen, and the screen itself is the face of man. Thus we have a glimpse at the way the a godly soul is bestowed in man. With that soul came a mission.

“Be creators, like me!” He said. “I’m putting you in charge of the lower world. Your mission is to help finish the creation and bring it to perfection.”
Note that human beings were supposed to help finish the creation. We are supposed to be creators, but not by ourselves. God wants us to be partners with Him in creation. That’s why He made sure we would always have a connection to Him, through the soul.

We said, “Great! Sounds like a wonderful project!” But then we walked away, very excited. “Hey, we’re creators! We’re on our own!” Before you knew it, we forgot whose mission we were on. We forgot the whole point of the project: to create a world filled with divine light.

To use a term from modern psychology, we would say that the “ego” took charge.

God created us with an ego, because we had to be able to think independently. “Ego” as we’re using the term means our basic human personality, including all the physical and psychological parts and functions that make it work. For each one of us to be able to fulfill the purpose in creation, we had to be able to use our own hearts and minds to understand the world and perfect it. Otherwise, we would have simply been robots doing what God thought of already. Ego is the structure of human personality wherein we can identify the exercise of free will.

But that very structure of the psyche that enables us to be independent also enables us to block infusions from God. God may send us messages about how best to handle this business of perfecting the world. He is probably sending us angels, and dreams, and intuitions all the time, but we have the capacity to shut them out. It’s as if there is a “soul channel” that’s broadcasting continuously, but we can flick a switch and turn onto a different one whenever we want. As Rabbi Nachman of Breslov said, “We are surrounded by stars, planets, worlds of light, but we can shut it all out with one small hand.”

The ability to turn off the soul channel is called free will. There’s also a tendency to want to turn off the soul, to shut out God. This tendency or inclination is called by many names in Judaism. The most common is the yetzer hara (“evil inclination”). This is also part of human nature.

A famous story that helps us understand the struggle between what the world’s religious traditions have called “good” and “evil”:

Once a rabbi pleaded with God to show him heaven and hell. God agreed, and transported the rabbi to a door that bore no name. He trembled as he saw it open before him, into a room where all was prepared for a feast. There was a table, and at its center a great dish of steaming food. The smell and the aroma inflamed the appetite.

Diners sat around the table with great spoons in their hands, yet they were shrieking with hunger in that terrible place. They tried to feed themselves, and gave up, cursing God. For the spoons God had provided were so long that they could not reach their faces and get the food to their tongues. So they starved because of these spoons, while the dish of plenty lay amongst them. The rabbi knew their shriekings were the cries of hell, and as knowledge came, the door closed before him.

He shut his eyes in prayer, and begged God to take him away from that terrible place. When he opened them again, he despaired, for the same door stood before him, the door that bore no name. Again it opened, and it gave onto the same room. Nothing had changed, and he was about to cry in horror. There was the table, and at its center the steaming bowl, and around it the same people, and in their hands the same spoons.

Yet the shrieking had gone, and the cries and the curses had changed to blessings. And nothing had changed, yet everything. For with the same long spoons they reached to each other’s faces, and fed each other’s mouths. And they gave thanks to God.

And, as the rabbi heard the blessings, the door closed. He bent down, and he too blessed God, who had shown him the nature of heaven and hell, and the chasm-a hairsbreadth wide-that divides them.

The ego has free choice. The ego doesn’t have to shut out the soul, but it has a strong tendency to want to. There’s a built-in conflict. The soul is within and around us, God’s ambassador in our very being. The soul wants to enlighten and enliven our every act, but we want to turn off the switch. Because we can be independent, we think we should be independent. It’s like what we often say today about the experts who split the atom and made the first nuclear bomb: they found out they could do it, so they decided they should do it. But was it a careful moral decision? Was it the arrogance of knowledge? Was it simply, perhaps, the ordinary confusion of the mind that just goes ahead under its own steam?

We have great ideas. We want to decide how the world should come out. We think we know how things should go. We are convinced that we know.

This is what Adam and Eve got when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. They got “knowledge.” They could have had life–that is, the kind of Life that is soul-full and filled with divine delight, but they chose knowledge because they were deceived into thinking that complete knowledge would make them Godlike. As a result, knowledge and intellect became our primary means of connecting to the world and, because intellect tends to separate and classify, division was emphasized. Multiple manifestations emerged where there was only unity before, and from then on people had individual ego-consciousness.

It is good that we can solve problems and enjoy life through our own creations. We can create amazing technologies. We can create great art, to make people cry, laugh, think deeply.

We can cure disease and remove pain. But when we find that our creations have gone awry like a Frankenstein, when they cause anguish to ourselves or others, we are in big trouble. As you continue to examine the material on this website, consider ways in which you can balance your quest for knowledge with a concomitant pursuit of “ego-free” spirituality.

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