A Body for the Sake of the Soul: Why Do We Die?
Josia Nakash
February 21, 2006
What do we need death for and what is its purpose in the correction process that man goes through?
If so much effort goes into getting us here to this world, then why do we have to leave it? What is the point of death? Is it possible to live in this world without dying? If a person needs to live one hundred or six hundred years, why not get the whole chain of reincarnations over with in one shot? Why does he need to keep dying and being revived over and over?
Where does the instance of death come from anyhow?
The instance of death comes as a result of the general soul called the First Man (Adam) splitting into 600,000 souls. That is where the whole process of our correction began.
God created the soul, a system of desires, whose goal is for ?the creation? otherwise known as ?the will to receive? (us!) to reach a state of eternity and perfection just like God. This allows us to be part of a state called ?good and benevolent?. In order to reach this state we need to be exactly like God, in other words be a Creator in all manners, since only the level of the Creator is a level of perfection and eternity.
In order for us to reach that level, we need to recognize the entire divergence of our state, how opposite we are to God, and want to reach a state of being the same as Him. It is possible to know the extent of this divergence and want to correct it through many acts, in an extended order of act after act, in which each of man?s desires is divided into many parts.
The process of correction of each and every desire and the merging of all these desires with others requires very slow and gradual treatment. This happens in each of the 600,000 souls, of which each was also divided into billions of souls.
The following are the stages we go through in this demanding process:
A person reaches a state of total despair from his situation, and goes through an inner qualitative development (not quantitative). In other words his insides are turned upside down. And in order to do it completely, he needs to disconnect from his previous situation and rise to a higher one. This can only be done by getting rid of a previous reality, and coming in again, from the starting point, slowly, together with the personal development, the physical and emotional, into what is called ?birth?.
So it turns out that our life, even though may seem wasted at times, definitely must appear as it does. A Kabbalist has attained the entire system and sees that it is impossible to do otherwise, but a person that is only at the level of this world cannot justify what?s going on.
So a person who agrees to undergo a process of correction, and who is made of material that is opposite to God that definitely requires correction, must live a long life of a thousand years, coming back each time to enhance his attributes, feelings and achievements.
If that is so, why do our lives appear to be wasted? We sleep 7-8 hours a day, look after our bodily needs for about an hour, and invest a few hours in earning a living, etc. so why is only a tenth of our day devoted to spiritual needs if that is the most important thing in life and our only goal? Why are our lives arranged in such an illogical manner?
The reason for this is simple. There are many systems that exist in reality, getting more sophisticated and developing without our being aware and without our intervention. Just as there are various processes taking place in our bodies by deeply intelligent systems that we don?t feel like we feel our live bodies, there are many systems that need to exist around us and inside of us. These are human and spiritual systems that we can?t reach or touch. We simply live our lives and go through corrections in a variety of frameworks, even if we?re not fully aware of how they take place.
Chain of Corrections
A man has to learn in his spare time the true method for correcting our souls, which he is perfectly capable of and obligated to carry out. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us the method of correction and how we should behave. Once we embark on this path, the spirit of this process is ingrained in all other parts of our life.
When a person advances in his studies he begins to open all of reality and see it as a single connected and complex system, bringing all parts of nature to complete the thought of creation (God?s plan). If he positions himself properly inside the overall process, he can reach the top.
In the process of bringing the eternal and perfect world closer, we always march from the partial to the whole. That is why each and every time we are not able to straighten out and evaluate our next position properly. We cannot justify it because it appears to be unattainable and something we cannot understand. Every time we need to advance, out of a seemingly lack of choice, in which the questions will remain unsolved forever.
The questions can only be solved when one reaches a higher place, looks back, and really sees what there was before. But when one looks forward, we still have the same question, with the only choice being to rise upward to a higher level.
In this life we are not capable of merging with one another in a soulful manner. The outer peal of our corporal body differentiates us from each other and does not allow such a connection. But when we rid ourselves of our ego and exist solely as souls, we can connect and continue correcting ourselves. The spiritual connection between souls provides the same situation as the soul of the First Man ? the corrected soul. In the spiritual world our souls exist without bodies and are therefore connected. At the end of the day all of humanity will reach a state where will be connected body and soul, as ?one man with one heart?, in connection with the upper force.
Why is everyone born with their own particular traits? Why do we tie ourselves up in a particular partnership with another? Why are we born precisely to certain parents and under special conditions?
We can only answer these questions when we see the entire correction chain of all the souls, and the participation of each soul with the rest. That is when we?ll discover the way that each of us goes through a perfect chain of reincarnations that is most optimal and efficient for us. In the time that a man is given to acquire the knowledge of the method of correction, his goal is to relate to the process he is undergoing with wisdom and understanding.
Like Changing A Shirt
To the Kabbalist, death feels like one of the necessary event in his life that he must go through in his process of correction until reaching the final destination. Each and every one of us has a chance here in this life to end the entire process and not incarnate again. We are only going through all these incarnations to reach the goal of equivalence of form with the upper force. Kabbalists tell us that it?s possible. The Kabbalist sees all of our physical existence as being on a lower level than spirituality. Since he identifies himself according to his spiritual life, his physical life takes second place to that.
There is a story about Rabbi Baruch Ashlag (see picture), who when asked by his students how someone in spiritual attainment relates to death he answered: ?I see that you came to the lesson today in a new shirt. Did you change into it before the lesson?? he asked. ?Yes I did,? replied the student. Then Ashlag said, ?Just like you know you need to change your shirt that is how a person who resides in his soul looks at his physical body and knows that in time he will have to change his body, yet nothing beyond that. He relates to it just like changing a shirt.?
A Kabbalist identifies with the upper force, which is on a higher level. Since this identification with the upper force is so complete, he practically sees his physical existence as lifeless compared to his spiritual level.
Some believe that through certain deeds in this world a man can create a better reality for himself in the afterlife. There is a lot of hearsay about this that a person?s ?good deeds? will bring him to the Garden of Eden, etc. But a person in the upper world has no more than what he achieved in this world. If a person doesn?t deal at all with spirituality, why should he receive a level he hasn?t earned?
Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, also known as the Ba?al Sulam (Hebrew for ?owner of the ladder?), who wrote the commentary on the Book of Zohar and many other Kabbalah books, writes that a man in this world cannot exist without knowing the nature of this world, so he must research nature and come to know it. That is how he will learn to get along and know how to find food, create clothing, etc. To the extent of his control over the corporal reality, he can fill himself with what he needs. The same goes for the spiritual reality. Just as my body cannot exist here without knowing this world, my soul cannot exist in the spiritual world without having knowledge of it. Kabbalah provides us with that knowledge.
If a person completes these two parts of his existence, in his body and soul, the two parts that he completes credit him with the goal that is called the Thought of Creation (God?s plan), meaning ?to give to His creations.? It is for that reason that Kabbalists turn to people everywhere without any discrimination for age, gender or nationality, and explain in every language that there is no way to prevent incarnating again, prevent trouble, blows and suffering, except through coming to know the upper world.
Kabbalists explain that everything that happens in this world is a result of the upper world, where all the forces and events descend from to this world. So if a person wants to change their life, they must rise to the spiritual level, and there, at the root, make the change. All the suffering man experiences is for the purpose of accelerating his learning the spiritual laws, the spiritual reality that determines and controls all of reality.
The soul is the foundation, the core of man, his ?I?, and the bodies that the soul dresses in exist and return to this world in all sorts of cases only to help the soul rise up and reach its real state. The body is trivial next to the soul, even to the extent that it is possible to change its parts. The body exists solely for the soul. Therefore, the moment a person finishes correcting his soul, he is absolved of the obligation to return here to this world, dressed in a body. With the help of study man acquires the knowledge and method for changing his destiny. Then he learns how to live in an entirely different manner, in a perfect and eternal state.
So what do we actually take with us when we leave this world? Only our spiritual achievements. Everything else -- the homes, the cars, bank accounts, stocks, wardrobes and all other material objects and achievements have absolutely no value in the upper world. The only thing that has any meaning in the upper world is your spiritual level, meaning the extent of your equivalence of form with God.
Let?s take someone like my husband for example. He works in the market. No, not the stock market, the fruit and vegetable market. For all outside purposes, he is the same person he was before coming to study Kabbalah just a few short years ago. But his goals have changed drastically in that time. Like most of us, he was just passing the time up till then, waiting to see what would happen next. Now, beyond making a living in this world, he is in pursuit of the highest goal of all. A goal, that in my eyes places him far above the wealthiest and most respected people of our time. Because while those people are in a race to achieve all they can before they die and have no idea why they are doing it, my husband is in a race to acquire eternal life and knows exactly how far he is from achieving that ultimate state.
We will eventually smarten up and realize that death and all the other things we like to think of as ?bad? were all put here for our own good. We will stop crying about the injustice of it all and start carrying out the true role we were put here for. Every man woman and child is capable of rising to that level in our time.
Josia Nakash is a marketing consultant and copywriter in Israel. Having searched for meaning for many years and found it in Kabbalah, Josia is dedicated to promoting the hidden wisdom that is now available to all. You are welcome to visit her blog Kabbalah For Women and contact her with feedback or questions at josia@kabbalah.info. ? Copyright 2006 by Josia Nakash
If so much effort goes into getting us here to this world, then why do we have to leave it? What is the point of death? Is it possible to live in this world without dying? If a person needs to live one hundred or six hundred years, why not get the whole chain of reincarnations over with in one shot? Why does he need to keep dying and being revived over and over?
Where does the instance of death come from anyhow?
The instance of death comes as a result of the general soul called the First Man (Adam) splitting into 600,000 souls. That is where the whole process of our correction began.
God created the soul, a system of desires, whose goal is for ?the creation? otherwise known as ?the will to receive? (us!) to reach a state of eternity and perfection just like God. This allows us to be part of a state called ?good and benevolent?. In order to reach this state we need to be exactly like God, in other words be a Creator in all manners, since only the level of the Creator is a level of perfection and eternity.
In order for us to reach that level, we need to recognize the entire divergence of our state, how opposite we are to God, and want to reach a state of being the same as Him. It is possible to know the extent of this divergence and want to correct it through many acts, in an extended order of act after act, in which each of man?s desires is divided into many parts.
The process of correction of each and every desire and the merging of all these desires with others requires very slow and gradual treatment. This happens in each of the 600,000 souls, of which each was also divided into billions of souls.
The following are the stages we go through in this demanding process:
A person reaches a state of total despair from his situation, and goes through an inner qualitative development (not quantitative). In other words his insides are turned upside down. And in order to do it completely, he needs to disconnect from his previous situation and rise to a higher one. This can only be done by getting rid of a previous reality, and coming in again, from the starting point, slowly, together with the personal development, the physical and emotional, into what is called ?birth?.
So it turns out that our life, even though may seem wasted at times, definitely must appear as it does. A Kabbalist has attained the entire system and sees that it is impossible to do otherwise, but a person that is only at the level of this world cannot justify what?s going on.
So a person who agrees to undergo a process of correction, and who is made of material that is opposite to God that definitely requires correction, must live a long life of a thousand years, coming back each time to enhance his attributes, feelings and achievements.
If that is so, why do our lives appear to be wasted? We sleep 7-8 hours a day, look after our bodily needs for about an hour, and invest a few hours in earning a living, etc. so why is only a tenth of our day devoted to spiritual needs if that is the most important thing in life and our only goal? Why are our lives arranged in such an illogical manner?
The reason for this is simple. There are many systems that exist in reality, getting more sophisticated and developing without our being aware and without our intervention. Just as there are various processes taking place in our bodies by deeply intelligent systems that we don?t feel like we feel our live bodies, there are many systems that need to exist around us and inside of us. These are human and spiritual systems that we can?t reach or touch. We simply live our lives and go through corrections in a variety of frameworks, even if we?re not fully aware of how they take place.
Chain of Corrections
A man has to learn in his spare time the true method for correcting our souls, which he is perfectly capable of and obligated to carry out. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us the method of correction and how we should behave. Once we embark on this path, the spirit of this process is ingrained in all other parts of our life.
When a person advances in his studies he begins to open all of reality and see it as a single connected and complex system, bringing all parts of nature to complete the thought of creation (God?s plan). If he positions himself properly inside the overall process, he can reach the top.
In the process of bringing the eternal and perfect world closer, we always march from the partial to the whole. That is why each and every time we are not able to straighten out and evaluate our next position properly. We cannot justify it because it appears to be unattainable and something we cannot understand. Every time we need to advance, out of a seemingly lack of choice, in which the questions will remain unsolved forever.
The questions can only be solved when one reaches a higher place, looks back, and really sees what there was before. But when one looks forward, we still have the same question, with the only choice being to rise upward to a higher level.
In this life we are not capable of merging with one another in a soulful manner. The outer peal of our corporal body differentiates us from each other and does not allow such a connection. But when we rid ourselves of our ego and exist solely as souls, we can connect and continue correcting ourselves. The spiritual connection between souls provides the same situation as the soul of the First Man ? the corrected soul. In the spiritual world our souls exist without bodies and are therefore connected. At the end of the day all of humanity will reach a state where will be connected body and soul, as ?one man with one heart?, in connection with the upper force.
Why is everyone born with their own particular traits? Why do we tie ourselves up in a particular partnership with another? Why are we born precisely to certain parents and under special conditions?
We can only answer these questions when we see the entire correction chain of all the souls, and the participation of each soul with the rest. That is when we?ll discover the way that each of us goes through a perfect chain of reincarnations that is most optimal and efficient for us. In the time that a man is given to acquire the knowledge of the method of correction, his goal is to relate to the process he is undergoing with wisdom and understanding.
Like Changing A Shirt
To the Kabbalist, death feels like one of the necessary event in his life that he must go through in his process of correction until reaching the final destination. Each and every one of us has a chance here in this life to end the entire process and not incarnate again. We are only going through all these incarnations to reach the goal of equivalence of form with the upper force. Kabbalists tell us that it?s possible. The Kabbalist sees all of our physical existence as being on a lower level than spirituality. Since he identifies himself according to his spiritual life, his physical life takes second place to that.
There is a story about Rabbi Baruch Ashlag (see picture), who when asked by his students how someone in spiritual attainment relates to death he answered: ?I see that you came to the lesson today in a new shirt. Did you change into it before the lesson?? he asked. ?Yes I did,? replied the student. Then Ashlag said, ?Just like you know you need to change your shirt that is how a person who resides in his soul looks at his physical body and knows that in time he will have to change his body, yet nothing beyond that. He relates to it just like changing a shirt.?
A Kabbalist identifies with the upper force, which is on a higher level. Since this identification with the upper force is so complete, he practically sees his physical existence as lifeless compared to his spiritual level.
Some believe that through certain deeds in this world a man can create a better reality for himself in the afterlife. There is a lot of hearsay about this that a person?s ?good deeds? will bring him to the Garden of Eden, etc. But a person in the upper world has no more than what he achieved in this world. If a person doesn?t deal at all with spirituality, why should he receive a level he hasn?t earned?
Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, also known as the Ba?al Sulam (Hebrew for ?owner of the ladder?), who wrote the commentary on the Book of Zohar and many other Kabbalah books, writes that a man in this world cannot exist without knowing the nature of this world, so he must research nature and come to know it. That is how he will learn to get along and know how to find food, create clothing, etc. To the extent of his control over the corporal reality, he can fill himself with what he needs. The same goes for the spiritual reality. Just as my body cannot exist here without knowing this world, my soul cannot exist in the spiritual world without having knowledge of it. Kabbalah provides us with that knowledge.
If a person completes these two parts of his existence, in his body and soul, the two parts that he completes credit him with the goal that is called the Thought of Creation (God?s plan), meaning ?to give to His creations.? It is for that reason that Kabbalists turn to people everywhere without any discrimination for age, gender or nationality, and explain in every language that there is no way to prevent incarnating again, prevent trouble, blows and suffering, except through coming to know the upper world.
Kabbalists explain that everything that happens in this world is a result of the upper world, where all the forces and events descend from to this world. So if a person wants to change their life, they must rise to the spiritual level, and there, at the root, make the change. All the suffering man experiences is for the purpose of accelerating his learning the spiritual laws, the spiritual reality that determines and controls all of reality.
The soul is the foundation, the core of man, his ?I?, and the bodies that the soul dresses in exist and return to this world in all sorts of cases only to help the soul rise up and reach its real state. The body is trivial next to the soul, even to the extent that it is possible to change its parts. The body exists solely for the soul. Therefore, the moment a person finishes correcting his soul, he is absolved of the obligation to return here to this world, dressed in a body. With the help of study man acquires the knowledge and method for changing his destiny. Then he learns how to live in an entirely different manner, in a perfect and eternal state.
So what do we actually take with us when we leave this world? Only our spiritual achievements. Everything else -- the homes, the cars, bank accounts, stocks, wardrobes and all other material objects and achievements have absolutely no value in the upper world. The only thing that has any meaning in the upper world is your spiritual level, meaning the extent of your equivalence of form with God.
Let?s take someone like my husband for example. He works in the market. No, not the stock market, the fruit and vegetable market. For all outside purposes, he is the same person he was before coming to study Kabbalah just a few short years ago. But his goals have changed drastically in that time. Like most of us, he was just passing the time up till then, waiting to see what would happen next. Now, beyond making a living in this world, he is in pursuit of the highest goal of all. A goal, that in my eyes places him far above the wealthiest and most respected people of our time. Because while those people are in a race to achieve all they can before they die and have no idea why they are doing it, my husband is in a race to acquire eternal life and knows exactly how far he is from achieving that ultimate state.
We will eventually smarten up and realize that death and all the other things we like to think of as ?bad? were all put here for our own good. We will stop crying about the injustice of it all and start carrying out the true role we were put here for. Every man woman and child is capable of rising to that level in our time.
Josia Nakash is a marketing consultant and copywriter in Israel. Having searched for meaning for many years and found it in Kabbalah, Josia is dedicated to promoting the hidden wisdom that is now available to all. You are welcome to visit her blog Kabbalah For Women and contact her with feedback or questions at josia@kabbalah.info. ? Copyright 2006 by Josia Nakash
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