I once asked my teacher Rabash the same question: “What happens to a person’s soul when he dies?” And he answered that it is just like when you take a dirty shirt off at the end of the day and throw it into the washing machine….

So also at the end of life you take off the body from the soul and discard it. The body rots, whereas the soul continues to live. After all, you remain alive after you take off your old shirt. In this way you remain alive even after taking off the physical body.

Question: So how does the soul exist without a body?

Answer: The soul even exists now without a body. It only accompanies it and doesn’t touch it. The soul exists in another dimension that you don’t feel.

Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “The Peace,” that: “Thus, in our world, there are no new souls the way bodies are renewed, but only a certain amount of souls that incarnate….Therefore, with regard to the souls, all generations since the beginning of creation to the end of correction are as one generation that has extended its life over several thousand years….”

The period of the development of the soul here in this world is 6,000 years. This development began with Adam HaRishon (the first man) who lived 5,775 years ago, and will continue to the end of 6,000 years. This means that another 225 years are left for us. During this time all of us must develop our soul, meaning our part in the collective soul, and connect everyone together into one soul.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains this entire process. 14 billion years ago the material evolution of our universe began from one spark; it was used as the beginning of the “Big Bang.” That is how the evolution of inanimate nature began. Two billion years ago the first plants appeared on Earth, then the animals, and after that the human. The human species developed until a desire to attain the source of his life, the upper world, the next level, began to develop in him.

Development proceeds and advances from the inanimate to vegetative, to animate, and after that, the human. And the human must attain a higher level, which is called the development of his soul, and rise to the next level, the upper world. And in the upper world there are also the phases of the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human. But there are spiritual levels that we need to develop and rise to an even higher world. And that is how we pass by way of the five worlds.

Question: Does it follow that Adam HaRishon lived 5,775 years ago, who developed the soul within him?

Answer: Yes, and so he is called Adam HaRishon.

Question: Does this mean that everyone must develop the souls within them during the next 225 years?

Answer: Yes, all of them without exception, in 225 years or before then. So we see how this development is accelerating; time is becoming very thick and is seemingly shrinking and compressing. If we don’t develop the soul within us, if we don’t push ourselves towards development, we will be thrown into terrible pressure from the forces of nature that will pressure us through all kinds of disasters and problems; they will push us towards development of the soul.

Development of the soul can only happen in this world, and secondly, it can be renewed only through connection between people. Through the connection between us we give shape to the single soul that is general and common to us all.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/1/15

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Question: Is there a heavenly court that determines where the person will go after his death, heaven or hell?

Answer: We are within a rigid system that is bound with iron fetters. This is a program that encompasses and includes all of creation.

Through our behavior, which depends upon our characteristics, we influence the system and feel its reaction. This is called judgment and mercy. According to how the person influences the system, it reacts, influences, and acts on him. This is called the “heavenly court.” So, we need to learn how to behave to influence the system only positively.

Question: Does it follow that we feel heaven or hell here and now and not somewhere after death?

Answer: Absolutely! There is no other heaven or hell other than what is found here in this world. I myself determine where I am found, in heaven or in hell. If I determine that my egoistic desire is hell because it buries me underneath it and doesn’t let me reach and attain eternal life, I feel myself in hell.

It is excellent that you have understood this. It means that now you will try to break out of your ego and attain heaven, and you truly will begin to feel yourself in an eternal and perfect world. You will feel that you are living in heaven and will not be concerned about your body at all.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/1/15

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Question: Is there eternal life?

Answer: There is eternal life but not in our corporeal body. Our biological body is a machine that cannot exist more than many decades.

Science can extend the life of the body up to several decades more than we lived in the past, but it is hard to understand why people should want to live so long if it isn’t in order to develop the soul inside us. We see that people today live twice as long, and even three times longer than then they did 200 or 300 years a ago.

Eternal life is life in the altruistic desire, not in the egoistic desire. It is because the ego kills itself, while we can live forever in the desire to bestow because it doesn’t disappear and is continuously renewed. The desire to bestow connects to other people and lives in them.

When a person develops the soul inside him, which means the love for others, he exits his narrow world that is filled with pain and problems and enters a wide eternal world.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103 FM, 2/1/15

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The spiritual world is right here, but as long as you don’t have a soul you don’t see it. If you hadn’t developed from a drop of semen, you wouldn’t feel this world either.

But because your body develops from this semen, you feel this world through it. The same thing happens with the soul; it also has a father and mother.

Question: What kind of connection exists between my soul and my relatives: father, mother, and siblings?

Answer: In the entire general system of one single soul there are parts that are closer to me and further from me. Closeness or distance in the spiritual world is derived from this. It is not by chance that specifically these people become my parents, and not others. It is not by chance that I marry specifically this woman and have specifically these children.

All of this is derived from the general system that has already been created and stabilized. It is known from the start what will be with me; I only discover this for myself. But all of these events already exist in potential, as potential forces.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103 FM, 2/1/15

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Question: Can I be incarnated as a cat in the next cycle of life or will I also be a person?

Answer: A person always remains a person, a man – a man, a woman – a woman, and a cat – a cat. Matter remains the same matter.

All of the theories and fantasies about the reincarnation of souls in various animals and even in plants are erroneous.

And in general, the soul doesn’t belong to the body. The body exists only to create conditions for developing the soul. But to the degree that the soul is developed, the body begins to receive new physical characteristics, which help us to develop the soul further. Everything happens for this purpose only.

Question: I don’t understand; what happens with a person after he dies?

Answer: Don’t we see what happens to a person after his body dies? The body rots and turns into dust. If a person doesn’t develop the soul within him, then only a conscious element of the soul is left, which must create a body again.

Question: What happens if I have developed a soul?

Answer: If you have developed your soul to the necessary level, meaning you have corrected it absolutely, then you no longer need to be incarnated any more into this world, and the soul will live forever.

Question: Will that soul itself be my “self”?

Answer: Specifically the soul is the “self.” A person is his soul, whereas the body is only material that accompanies him and helps in developing the soul.

Question: So why do the Kabbalists sometimes write that a person is reincarnated into animals, for example, into a pig?

Answer: This is written metaphorically. “Reincarnated as a pig” means that desires like those of a pig come to a person, which he had apparently abandoned a long time ago.

Just as sometimes in a person’s life he behaves like this and we call him a “pig.” In the same sense Kabbalists speak about incarnation as a pig, meaning such characteristics like a pig appear in a person, but it is clear that he remains a person.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103 FM, 2/1/15

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The next level of our development is called the upper world.

Question: But doesn’t natural evolution happen outside of our desire without being contingent upon freedom of choice?

Answer: Freedom of choice is given only in the choice of the way in which we go towards the goal. But the soul must be developed in every person.

This is like in a school in which there are children who learn well and enjoy life. And there are those who don’t want to learn who are punished and suffer. But ultimately they also finish school: either due to their good desire or through punishments and suffering. So we can also go and develop our soul in all kinds of ways, but the result is already determined from the start.

Question: Does this mean that I must develop my soul during this life in this world? Isn’t this some kind of abstract concept existing somewhere in the next world?

Answer: We develop the soul in this world because the soul is the power of bestowal and love, connection with others. So it is possible to develop it only at a time when I am an egoist, and it is up to me to overcome my ego and approach other people. Only through this activity, through this yearning, do I develop within me a new power of unification and connection with others, a power that is called the “soul.”

Question: Does this mean that the development of the soul is simply the development of new characteristics?

Answer: The soul symbolizes the development of new altruistic characteristics. The soul is the power of bestowal in a person that doesn’t exist in him now when he is an egoist. At the present time there is only a tiny nucleus in us, a potential force that can develop into a soul. I can develop this potential so it will develop into an active force. To the degree that this potential is actively realized, I begin to discover a new world before me.

With this new characteristic I will see a new world. Even today I see this world through my characteristics, within my ego, while the higher spiritual world can be seen with the characteristic of bestowal. Just as today we see only this world as real and live in it with our bodies, we begin to live in the spiritual world with our souls.
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From the Radio Program Israeli 103FM, 2/1/15

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Question: Can we change the script of our life, like in a movie?

Answer: This is exactly what the wisdom of Kabbalah recommends that we do to become the director of the movie of our life. We change the reality that we feel by our internal changes.

If we want to ascend to another level of perception of reality we have to correct our desires, to correct and to modify ourselves, we should begin to draw the goodness and improve ourselves of the impure ego and the hatred towards others. We will be able to see a different world to the extent that we improve our attributes.

This doesn’t mean that we should simply become more friendly and kinder to those around us. The wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t teach us to be kind to our neighbors but rather teaches us to perform a serious change in our nature. We don’t need to change anything around us, but only ourselves. We change the world, the perception of our reality, though our internal changes. We begin to see that all of reality is the Upper Light that fills creation. There is nothing but the Upper Light, but each of us sees the picture that he has drawn with his attributes in it. This means that we draw our world by ourselves.
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From the Radio Program Israeli 103FM 2/8/15

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If our intellect and emotions were arranged a bit differently, then all of the reality that we perceive today would seem completely different. We could pass through walls that seem solid to us…

They would suddenly become airy, and what was airy, on the contrary, would become solid. Properties of matter in nature that are not known to us today would be discovered.

Question: Can you really pass through walls?

Answer: Certainly not. The idea is that a person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah discovers hidden phenomena in nature and sees a different picture of the world. He begins to live within it in addition to his normal existence in this world. He is found simultaneously in two channels of the perception of reality. It is as if there were two channels on our television. The first channel is what we perceive through our physical senses. And the second channel is what we perceive through our spiritual senses, called Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.

Similar to the senses that are in our bodies: sight, hearing, smelling, taste, and touch, we also have five kinds of feelings that belong to the soul: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.

Question: And what do we see on the second channel?

Answer: On the second channel we see another world in which there is a network of forces that govern our world, that is the one broadcast on the first channel. If we want to discover how this world operates, what moves it, which forces manage it, where its control point is found, from where all the decisions go out, all this is found in the spiritual world. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to enter into it, in order to truly receive an opportunity to manage our situation, our life. Then we wake up from the dream in which we were living all the time. For after all, we can look at ourselves from the side and understand what kind of a dream we will be found in if we don’t attain the upper world.

Question: If we are asleep and are not seeing the real life, why isn’t there some kind of alarm clock that will wake us up to it, like the alarm clock that wakes us up every morning from sleep?

Answer: There is an awakening like this at the time of death. Death interrupts our dream and we stop dreaming about this life. The world that we see now is the lowest world among all the worlds; there is nothing lower than it. Yet, in spite of it all, it gives us some sense of life, even though it is very limited and misleading. It is possible to clarify and analyze this feeling to see its falsity. With the help of the wisdom of Kabbalah we learn to turn our new senses as if they were all turning in different directions: counterclockwise or clockwise. Thus we create all possible combinations and we can see the forms of other worlds, worlds on different levels of the perception of reality. To do this it is only necessary to learn to manage our nature, our desires.
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From the Radio Program Israeli 103FM 2/1/15

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Question: You said that the wisdom of Kabbalah is an internal part of the Torah. Does this mean that Kabbalah refers to religion?

Answer: Due to the study of Kabbalah, a person completely changes one’s perception of reality and begins to take a different attitude to one’s familiar concepts. The Torah refers to the use of force of the Inner Light, its correction, and rise above the current perception of reality.

The fact that a person reaches the love of neighbor, takes one out of his limited and confined world into a spacious, eternal, and higher world. This technique allows a person to really begin to live in a completely new world, and not just to psychologically calm oneself. A person moves from one world to another, changes one’s organs of perception that depict one’s entire worldview.
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From the Radio Program Israeli 103FM, 2/8/15

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Question: If the world is the way I perceive it in my attributes, what will happen to it when I die?

Answer: We have to try to change reality before we die. When a person dies he is released from the perception of reality in his physical senses.

If he hasn’t acquired the feeling of another reality by then and hasn’t begun to perceive it according to his freewill, he has no other reality. Therefore, he has to return to this world, to the same state, and he gets another chance to attain control of his reality during his lifetime.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, if a person transcends the perception of reality inside himself and tries to be inside the others, he begins to see the world through them and then the picture that he sees is called the upper world. It is because he sees it in senses of bestowal and not of receiving, through the eyes of love, not hate.

Start to ascend above your body according to the condition of “love thy friend as thyself” and you will see a reality that is external to you. It isn’t the same world that you perceive inside you through your five corporeal senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. You ascend above them and feel reality that is external to you the way it actually is, in its true form.

Until then you perceive every object inside you in the way is depicted by your feelings and emotions, but if you ascend above yourself, you transcend the limits of your body and perceive everything the way it is. This means that you feel the upper spiritual world.
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From the Radio Program Israeli 103FM 2/8/15

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