LIFE IN THE HEREAFTER: A TOUR OF
WHAT'S TO
COME
by Zalman M. Schachter
Death did not frighten the pious Jew of
old.
He had faith in the talmudic contention that death is simply a
transition
from one life into another, likened to the
ease of taking a hair out of milk. What the Jew wanted above all was to
die fully conscious, to be in full possession
of his mental faculties at the time that his soul left his body. For
the
hasid (righteous) it was a matter of absolute
faith and conviction that the same One God who was worshipped in
this world could be served in the worlds to
come, as well.
For the not-so-pure, however, the process
of
extricating from bodily life was a bit more problematic. The soul
that had become too fully identified with
the body through sensual indulgence would find it difficult to separate
from it. To accompany the body to its final
resting place and to behold the putrefaction and the decay was
understandably painful for such souls. This
state of being is known as hibbut ha-kever, the pain and anguish of the
grave. In order to destroy the illusory
identification
of soul with body and avert the consequent pain in death,
hasidim would often engage in ascetic
practices
while still in this life. Particularly exalted souls would be able to
achieve this level of consciousness through
prayer and meditation, becoming oblivious to their physical body and
surroundings.
REMEMBERING ONE'S NAME:
The earthbound disembodied soul can
encounter
a number of dangers. If it is unable to separate itself from the
body even through pain, it can experience
a decay of consciousness and a turning into nothingness. An angel,
Dumah (Silence), is the guardian of the dead,
and wanting to prevent this decay, asks each soul for its Hebrew
name. The rabbis say that some people suffer
amnesia due to the shock of dying and are, consequently, unable to
remember their identity. In order to dispel
this amnesia, the learning of a mnemonic device while one is alive is
recommended: At the conclusion of every Amidah
(the central prayer of the service), the worshiper is instructed
to "sign off' by reciting a biblical verse
that begins with the first initial of his name and ends with the last
letter
of his
name. Among Sephardic Jews, the child is
initiated
into his/her own sentence at the bar or bat mitzvah. In this
way, the worshiper reinforces the memory of
his Jewish name at the end of every prayer service. Thus, in death,
even if he is unable to remember his name,
he will he able to remember the Torah verse, because Torah is eternal
and cannot decay. The soul will therefore
be able to follow the angels who summon it before the heavenly court.
THE CATAPULT:
Besides the problem of the soul maintaining
its identity, there is another difficulty. All the sounds that a person
has
heard during his life continue to vibrate
within his soul following his death, like clanging coins in a gourd. He
is.
thus, unable to achieve the subtle stillness
necessary to receive the angelic or heavenly voices. The nature of this
"static" can be compared to the inner
disturbances
experienced by someone trying to meditate in silence. In order
to rid the soul of this "dust," it is shaken
in the Kaf ha-Kela, the Catapult. The sages say that "two angels stand
at
each end of the world and toss the soul from
one to the other." It is almost as if the angels try to rid the soul of
its
accumulated psychic dust by putting it through
a cosmic centrifuge until only pure soul remains. Were this
treatment not administered to the soul,
however,
it would be unable to silence all the sense images and noises that
were carried with it from this world and would
have to wander in the world of Tohu (Confusion and Emptiness)
for ages. In one Hasidic tale, a lost soul
who has already roamed for hundreds of years in such a void cries out,
"Would that I already had reached Gehenna!"
GEHENNA:
The Jewish idea of Gehenna (Gehinnom) is
not
hell, but rather a purgatory where the soul is purged from all
defilement that has accumulated on it during
its life on earth. Although there are worse places to be, there are
certainly better. This purgatory is often
described in lurid physical details of fire and cold, yet the rabbis
warn
against seeing Gehenna as a material entity.
It is rather Ike the pain of anxiety intensified by silence and a deep
awareness of the evil committed. Curiously,
according to tradition, Gehenna is emptied on the Sabbath. Some
claim that this respite is only granted to
those who had kept the Sabbath in their lives. Others disagree,
claiming
that Gehenna is emptied for all; were it not
for the weekly bliss and light which the Sabbath provides, the soul
would be unable to endure the anguish of
Gehenna.
THE GARDENS OF PLEASURE:
When a soul is ready to enter Gan Eden
(Paradise,
literally the Garden of Eden), it must first be immersed in the
River of Light, created from the perspiration
that flows from the heavenly hosts as they fervently sing glory to the
Highest. This immersion is to empty the soul
of any lingering earth images so that it may, without further illusion,
see heaven for what it really is.
First the soul enters the lower Gan Eden,
which
is a paradise of emotional bliss. While on earth most persons are
unable to experience more than one dominant
emotion at a time. However, the bliss of the souls in the lower Gan
Eden is likened to a majesticchord of benign
emotions, which the soul feels towards God and towards other souls.
In the Hasidic view, heaven is organized into
societies. Those souls who share mutual interests are drawn together
so they can serve His Blessed Name according
to their own specialty and individuality. Each heavenly society is
taught by its own rabbi and led to further
celestial attainments. Thus, the lower Gan Eden is the heaven of
emotional fervor.
Before a soul is raised from the lower to
the
higher Gan Eden, it must again immerse itself in the River of Light so
that it will forget and forsake the furor
of the emotions. for the even greater delights of knowing God through
understanding. The serving of God with insight
through the study of Torah is itself a reward. The societies of the
upper Gan Eden are organized into yeshivot
(schools! in which a blissful understanding of the divine mind is
attained. Each midnight, the Holy One, blessed
be He. Himself appears and enters Gan Eden to delight in the
sharing of His blessed wisdom with the
righteous
who have gained the upper Gan Eden.
MOURNING FOR THE DEAD:
Many of the customs of mourning have
developed
in order to assist the soul through its many trials in the afterlife.
In order to help the soul avoid the amnesia
described above, it is customary for the mourners to remind the soul
"your name is so-and-so. and do not forget
it." The reciting of the mourner's Kaddish (see "8 Common
Misconceptions Jews Have About Judaism ) helps
to "cool the fires of Gehenna." The maximum sentence for this
purgatory is twelve months: however. the
mourner's
Kaddish is only recited for eleven months. so as not to insult
the dead by implying that he/she would have
to serve the full term.
Each year on the yahrzeit (anniversary of
death)
a higher rung of Gan Eden is achieved by the soul. While the soul
celebrates its birthday into heaven with its
celestial friends. the living traditionally celebrate the aliyat ha-
neshamah
(ascendancy of the soul) by praying for a
more exalted position in heaven for that soul.
Since souls are incapable of acquiring new
merit after death, the living can transfer credit to the account of a
loved
one, thus enabling it to achieve higher
levels.
One of the most potent means is by offering tzedakah (charity) in the
name of the deceased. Another is soul.
Particularly
potent in this regard is the study of Mishnah because it has the
same Hebrew letters as the word neshamah
(soul).
In these ways incarnate souls can help discarnate souls that
have gone beyond.
IBBUR AND DYBBUK-- ON BEING POSSESSED:
Not only can the souls of the deceased be
helped
by those here below, but the dead can return the favor. At
moments of great danger they can come to
forewarn
their loved ones through dreams and visions, helping them
through teals and temptations. A soul is said
to have come into ibbur (literally, pregnancy) when it enters, in a
benign fashion, the body and soul of a person
living here on earth. Often such an ibbur can raise a person to great
temporary heights. Ibbur, however, can also
help the discarnate soul who is in need of only one mitzvah (deed
carried out to fulfill God's commandments)
in order to round out a particular incarnation. Instead of risking the
danger of another incarnate existence it can
receive the needed merit from the living by helping someone as an
ibbur. The custom of naming children after
the deceased is a means of affording the departed another return to
life
or of creating affinities so that it, as an
ibbur, may help their offspring and receive help in return.
While the case of ibbur is an instance of
benign
possession, tradition has recorded many accounts of evil
possession, known as dybbuk (literally,
sticking).
If a person was wronged by another and this wrong was
responsible for its suffering, whether in
life or in death, it can seek revenge by possessing someone (not
necessarily
the wrongdoer) as a dybbuk. A dybbuk can be
educated in how to find spiritual guidance without harming the
living or it can be negotiated with by
offering
the performance of mitzvot on its behalf in return for its leaving the
possessed body. When it is recalcitrant,
however,
coercive devices must be resorted to (see "Rituals for Jewish
Exorcism").
REINCARNATION:
Nothing new can be gained in heaven. The
quantity
of mitzvot (deeds or blessings) and Torah acquired by the
time of death is what remains with a person
after death. In heaven one can gain only a deeper and richer
understanding of his life on earth. It is
for this reason that souls, once they have absorbed all that heaven has
to
offer, apply for reincarnation, i.e. in order
to attain further perfection. Reincarnation is also granted to allow
the
soul to bring about a restitution of the
wrongs
it has committed.
Some souls are so filled with the light of
knowledge and the warmth of compassion however, that the heavenly
court, the "supernal familia,"," will engage
in all kinds of ruses in order to reinvolve it in the work of saving
and
helping other souls still on the earthly
plane.
Reincarnation is an option at any point--after Gehenna, after the lower
paradise, or even after the upper paradise.
The process repeats until a soul has built its spiritual body.
RESURRECTION AND BEYOND:
After the coming of the Messiah, the
resurrection
of the dead is to take place. While the majority of commentators
understand this to involve a reassemblage
of the physical body previously inhabited, a minority opinion maintains
that this will be a materialization of the
level of spiritual body that the soul has built through its many
incarnations.
Those souls that have not completed their
spiritual body will, at the resurrection, materialize here on earth in
order
to perform the remaining mitzvot required
of them in an environment free of death and evil.
The Talmud relates that Rabbi Judah the
Prince,
the compiler of the Mishnah, used to return in a spiritual body
every Sabbath eve to sanctify the Sabbath
by celebrating the Kiddush (sanctification over the wine) for his
family.
He did this for an entire year. Only after
one of the servants of the family revealed these visits to neighbors
did
Judah the Prince take final leave of his
family,
never to return again, on the grounds that his coming would put
other saints to shame. Thus, Judah the Prince
had attained the fullness of the spiritual body during his last
incarnation on earth.
Yet even the completion of the spiritual
body
is not the ultimate state of being. Having attained such fullness, a
soul
can be "absorbed into the very Body of the
King," the ultimate aim of its yearning and longing. Thus the soul
merges finally in God, as a drop in the ocean.
-- Reb Zalman Schachter Shalomi
REINCARNATION AND CHRISTIANITY
Edgar Cayce's Story of Reincarnation (Part of the Cayce Files at Elevated Therapy)
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