Question: Is there heaven or hell after death according to Kabbalah? If so, do you have any intention of getting there after your physical, corporeal death?

Answer: Hell is a state when a spiritually elevated person falls into egoism. This is called hell. A person burns with shame because of his egoism. This is the fire of hell and punishment.

And when, on the contrary, one rises to the property of love and bestowal, one feels that one is higher than this world. One experiences the state of eternity, perfection, and infinity. This state is called paradise, heaven.

We sense these two states—heaven or hell—during our spiritual ascents or descents back into this world. Only Kabbalists are able to feel both states. They are not at all connected with the corporeal life or death.

Our bodies are just animals that are given to us only to serve as the basis of our physical existence. Based on this framework, our spiritual advancement is possible.

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks solely of our spiritual development. If we do not advance spiritually during our lifetime, we die as any other animal and that’s it for us.

There is no target of getting somewhere after our bodily death. After death nothing changes. But it is possible to attain the upper world during our lifetimes.

The purpose of Kabbalah is to achieve the sensation of heaven during our current lifetime. And then,our animal existence isn’t an obstacle. In other words, the body can die, but we are already in the upper world. This is exactly what needs to be done: develop our soul.

Each of us is given an animate body in this material realm. At the same time, we have a point, the embryo of the soul. If we develop this embryo, we begin sensing spiritual life through it. Then, the death of our body doesn’t matter! We start sensing the next level of universe in the subsequent dimension.

At the same time, if we don’t develop the point in the heart, nothing will happen after our physical death. The point in the heart, the embryo of the soul, will be born again in a new animal body, thus giving us another chance to advance with the help of Kabbalah.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/27/15

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Question: The physical body of a person is part of creation. If a person learns to live according to the Mitzvot (Commandments), will his physical body become immortal?

Answer: The physical body has no connection to Mitzvot. Observance of the Mitzvot is a correction of the ego to the characteristics of bestowal and love of others. It is specifically this characteristic that is called the corrected Adam (Man).

We are commanded to change gradually, time after time, each one of our 613 desires from egoistic to altruistic usage, and in this way, feel the upper world more and more with greater clarity through these corrected characteristics.

Question: What in Kabbalah is the body?

Answer: A body is a collection of desires. We now have 613 egoistic desires, meaning an egoistic body, and when we correct the ego, we acquire another, sacred body, meaning the desire for bestowal and love.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/11/15

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Question: Does a person lose his or her individuality after death? Do we lose the originality inherent only to each of us?

Answer: The thing called originality in this world is an animal feature. It is absolutely useless and has no value for a spiritually advanced person.

One’s originality is revealed upon reaching unity with others, when we open our soul through the overall connection. Only a soul remains genuinely distinctive, whereas various earthly properties are temporary and disappear.

Question: What is so special about the soul?

Answer: It is unique because of the mysterious fact that it is similar to the Creator.

The soul is a desire that has a potential to transform itself and become similar to the Creator. And this similarity is in each individual soul.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/10/15

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Question: Why do I suffer? Why do I owe everyone from the moment I am born?

Answer: You see suffering immediately leads to questioning the meaning of life. Otherwise, you would have kept on making money and having fun, settling for little, and letting life go by so that eventually you would have nothing left.

Suffering pushes you to use this life to reach the next level of wholeness and eternity and to ascend above death. Such an aspiration to attain the meaning of life is a very big present. The sufferings are necessary because otherwise you wouldn’t ask what this life is for.

Question: Couldn’t the Creator have invented a way that we would look for the meaning of life without suffering?

Answer: No, a person is merely a desire to receive and enjoy, and if he keeps receiving pleasure and fulfillment, he never would ask about the essence of his existence. Only deficiency, troubles, and sufferings can make a person ask questions about the meaning of life. This is how the world is arranged.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/27/15

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Question: How do Kabbalists communicate with the upper world?

Answer: Kabbalists exist in it, however, not as people, but as souls. After all, a Kabbalist is a person who has transformed his egoistic desires into altruistic, which are called his soul.

A soul is not something ghostly descending like a cloud from somewhere. It is not connected with the body. These are desires directed towards love and bestowal.

A person can sense the upper world, the system of the governing forces, within his corrected desires called the soul. The one who fills this world with pleasure is called the Creator. Everything is very concrete–in one place.

Question: And what is the Kabbalist doing in this upper world?

Answer: He is enjoying it.
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From the Russian Lesson, 10/11/15

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Question: What is the soul and how is it born?

Answer: A soul is a certain space inside a human being in which one senses the upper world.

In an ordinary person living in this world, there isn’t a soul; there is only a point, an embryo, a drop of semen, from which develops the speaking level.

If one starts developing him or herself, submitting oneself to the Upper Light’s influence, the Light transforms the drop into a soul that develops from our Reshimo (spiritual informational record).

Question: Does a soul have a gender?

Answer: No. There are various modifications of the soul, but it doesn’t really matter. Each one of us has a soul. But at the same time, there is one common soul for everyone.

Question: How do we calculate the number of souls? Is it possible that is an excess of them?

Answer: What does “an excessive of souls” mean? The soul does not exist apart from a human being. If one develops it internally, then one has a soul. If not, one doesn’t have a soul. Each one of us is granted a chance to cultivate a soul and feel the next level of existence, the future world.

Question: What do souls do after death?

Answer: Souls do not die and have nothing to do with life or death of a physical body.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/27/15

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Question: Are there people who are not afraid of death?

Answer: Fright, fear of non-existence, the end of life, all of this is a natural feeling.

And if I don’t stop there, but become separated from something very small, dirty, and disgusting, as if I am moving on to another job, or traveling somewhere for a vacation, or just changing my life for something more comfortable, I don’t feel that I am losing something and I am not afraid to separate from it.

On the contrary, I see both worlds. And the transition from one world to another is completely painless, without difficulty, since we feel the upper world many times more brightly and tangibly than our world, and we live simultaneously in the two worlds. As it is said, “You will see your world in your lifetime” (Berachot, 17a).
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Question: Why do I need to correct what the Creator created? I feel as if I am protesting against Him.

Answer: We must protest so that we will unite and connect between us in spite of our ego. This is like a puzzle that parents buy for a child and ask him to assemble the 50-100 pieces together.

These efforts develop the child because he must imagine how to connect the separate parts. So also all of us, if we connect ourselves into the right complete puzzle, will then see a picture between us called the “world to come, the upper world.”

Question: Is this world to come the same world that we reach after death?

Answer: The world to come we see during this life. The world to come is characterized as the approaching new one in which we attain a wonderful unity between everyone, “like one person with one heart,”  “and you shall love your friend as yourself.” Thanks to this connection, we begin to discover a completely new level between us.

We are changed internally so that we begin to feel that all of us are connected. Thanks to this, humanity is integrated and unified with all the rest of nature: the still, vegetative, and animate are also joined to humanity. And then a person begins to understand and feel the entire world such that he includes it within himself.

That is what each one begins to feel: I, you, he, and everyone. For all of us are integrated into a single force, a single desire, a single thought, and thanks to this, we reach a completely good world. We rise above life and death, above all problems and troubles, here and now in this world, as is written: “You will see your world in your lifetime” (Berachot 17a).

All of this is in our power; so come, let’s take advantage of this opportunity correctly. Let’s think about this; only through our connection and unity will there be salvation for us and for the entire world.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 9/20/15

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Question: How does a Kabbalist answer for himself the question, “What am I living for?”

Answer: From the point of view of the wisdom of Kabbalah, our lives are divided into two parts.

The first part is responsible for the physical (beastly) state of the person. Concern for the body, offspring, nourishment, security, and so forth, which is to say, everything that a beast is concerned about, the person also is concerned about.

The second part of our lives is the opportunity to attain what is found above our body because we have other needs. If a person feels a need to attain the meaning of life and thinks about how to attain a state in which the higher management, the upper world, the new reality, will be revealed to him, then he comes to the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Today in our system, we already are teaching more than two million people in the world, and these people gradually attain the second half of the meaning of existence, meaning the exit into the upper world.

Along with this, the person continues to work and live in our world, as it is written, “May you see your world in your lifetime” (Berachot 17a) [meaning the upper world], and he will live simultaneously in the two worlds.

The meaning of human existence in the physical world is to attain the upper world and continue to develop within it continuously.

Our world is one of the levels in the great metamorphosis, and the next stage is the upper world from which come all the signals for the management of our world. So, the meaning of our lives is specifically revealed there.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/20/15

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The Torah, “Numbers,” 15:30 – 15:31: But if a person should act highhandedly, whether he is a native born or a proselyte, he is blaspheming the Lord, and that soul shall be cut off from among its people. For he has scorned the word of the Lord and violated His commandment; that soul shall be utterly cut off for its iniquity is upon it.

Question: What does “that soul shall be utterly cut off” mean?

Answer: It is impossible to cut the soul off, for after all, this is the discovery of the characteristic of bestowal, love, the Light, in a person. If we make our egoistic desire similar to the Light, the upper force, then this characteristic of bestowal and love begins to perceive the Upper Light, be filled with it to the degree of equivalence with each other, and this is called a soul. In this manner, we connect ourselves with the Creator, with the Light.

Our main function is to gather all of our separate internal desires, intentions, thoughts, and feelings together under one solitary intention of bestowal and love outside of ourselves. And then to the degree that at any given moment they will be joined and connected within us, we create within us an object called the Creator and we feel Him within us. The characteristic of love and bestowal that this person can create within himself is the Creator.

Question: So why is it said that if, “a person should act highhandedly… shall be utterly cut off for his iniquity is upon it”?

Answer: If a person was on a spiritual height or he had the possibility of rising to this height, but he does the opposite, then he falls, descends from this height. It follows that the previous soul is apparently cut off and he must produce it anew, but already on another, greater level. So the descent is necessary.

In every stage you must fall from the previous level and rise to a higher level. When we read in the Torah, we see how the people made mistakes all the time. The question may be asked, couldn’t they learn anything?! But they must commit sins; they must discover the poisons of their ego within them again and again, then correct them and rise even higher upward. Along with this, they must be happy about their descent! As it is said, “A Tzaddik (righteous) will fall a thousand times and get up” (see Proverbs 24:16). This is our way.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/13/15

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