The Journey of the Soul: Pre-life, Life, and Afterlife.

so the Jewish idea of heaven is you go there if you can't be here but we much rather be here this is the best place which means that the souls in heaven are not resting in peace they are impatiently waiting for this world to get its act together to become a holier place and then they will come back to this world Thank You rabbi you look like a group who speak Yiddish Makenna dad Nitish not the whole speech okay that's all the others we're gonna do it's a universal fundamental question that every human being asks sooner or later where do we go from here what happens at the end of life and the way it's worded the way the question is asked is is there life after death we're gonna find out that that question is really miss worded it's not after death because life doesn't die so if you're saying is there life after death no what's dead is dead the question is what dies and what lives or more fundamentally what is life and what does it mean that life left where did it go it can't just disappear nothing just disappears where did it go so religion says well there are two places to go up or down there's no up and there's no down when it comes to life life doesn't take up space so there's no up or down in terms of space so what happens to appreciate what happens when life leaves we first have to understand and appreciate what happens when life comes what does it mean that somebody is born we don't ask that question we ask why do people suffer why do people die why are people born why do people have fun ever ask that question why is there pleasure nobody asks that but why is there pain so in order to understand one we have to understand the other so what does the Torah tell us the turret says very descriptively that when God created the first human being he fashioned a body out of earth and then breathed into it a living soul which means the body doesn't come with life the body is not a living thing it's a hundred pounds of clay where does the life come from that is something that God in invests into the body he breathes into the body a living soul now the rest of creation if you remember everything else God created he created by speech God said let there be there was only when it comes to the soul when it comes to life does the Torah say he breathed life into the body he didn't say let it come alive let it live the difference between speaking and breathing both involve breath but what the breath you use for speech is the superficial this the SUP the the the this the breath that exists on the surface or near the surface and that's why you can talk endlessly and not get tired at least I can but when you're blowing up a balloon just a little balloon after a minute you're exhausted it's not because you're using up more breath but because you're using a deeper breath or an inner breath the breath that is necessary for life the breath you use for speaking isn't necessary for life you can live without it you can't live without speaking but the breath that is the breath of life this this you can't you can't afford to exhaust from yourself because it's essential so when God created light and God created grass and God created animals he said let there be he used a surface breath not a very personal inner but when he gave life to the human being he breathed something from within himself into the human being very very different now if you're a little aware in scientific terms I'm Stein came up with this brilliant insight where he says the universe is made up of mass and energy different kinds of masses different kinds of energies what he what he discovered was that energy can become mass like the expression if you talk a lot you're building a wall of words that keep people from getting any closer to you so here is energy becoming a mass it's words it's turning into a wall so energy becomes mass and mass can dissolve into energy that does not include life life is not energy it's certainly not electrical energy life is a completely different entity different from mass different from energy what exactly is life life is a living entity that in the human being is composed of ten or more functions we call it a soul what is a soul a living energy a living being that thinks feels behaves that's a human being and that comes to the body not from the body so how does the soul come to the body so we're told some fascinating things King David says in Psalms my mother and father abandoned me but God gathered me in what is he what is he saying what is he talking about he remembered the moment of conception when he was conceived holy people don't forget so he remembered the experience of being conceived now what do you call the the conception it's not even a fetus yet an embryo as I got I hate that word [Music] cute little baby why would you call it as I got so possibly you know that I hear but whatever that little being is at the moment of conception it is experiencing the most dramatic and the most traumatic moment of its existence it has made contact with the physical world it hasn't developed much yet in the physical but it's made contact so King David says I remember when that happened to me I was feeling a little helpless and I looked around to see who was babysitting who was taking care of me I looked at my father he was sleeping I look at my mother she's sleeping and Here I am tiny little beam going through the most traumatic experience I'm all by myself but then I realized no God is there guiding my experience and that reassured me and I was able to continue to develop 40 days before conception the soul is told that it's going to be born you have time to acclimate to the idea that you're leaving heaven and you're going to be born into the physical world the soul doesn't like that is not thrilled by the idea but it does have time to get used to it so when does the birth of a child begin essentially 40 days before conception and the Torah it says every time every time a woman was given a blessing that she was going to have a child there was always this time next year twelve months doesn't take 12 months now not the part we know about but it's more than nine months because there's time for the soul to get adjusted to go from heaven to heaven until it comes down into the conception now at the moment of conception the soul is complete because the soul is never under under-developed the soul is always complete life is life there's no partial life a little life but the physical needs time to grow and develop and evolve so at the moment of conception the soul is completely matured the body hardly exists which means when you have a maybe the first thing you do is completely spiritual it's hardly physical at all and that's why the education you're given in public school and how babies are made is so inadequate it only describes the body and at the moment of conception the most dramatic part of birth there is no body or hardly but there is a soul so here's the shocker from the moment of conception the in the embryo hears everything sees everything feels everything and understands everything because it's a complete soul and all of those activities are soul activities the eye doesn't see the soul sees through the eye it hears through the ear it speaks through the mouth it thinks in the brain it feels in the heart but it's the soul doing it not the body parts which means that when the embryo here's the conversation that the parents are having it hears it better because it's not using the ears because the ears haven't developed yet when the ears develop and the child is born now it's going to hear through the ear and it doesn't hear as well any more it hears better without the ear it sees better without the eye some people say they've had had of body experiences or near-death experiences they saw they heard they saw better they could see three-dimensional because they're not using their eye the soul is seeing without the eye hearing without the ear so it hears and sees better person in a coma god forbid same thing they hear everything they see everything they just can't communicate to others and we know this is true because there are people who were in a coma for two or three years and then they come out and they remember everything that was said in the room while they were in a coma so there's a group in Israel and here shall I am a group of women they're dedicated to visiting people in comas in the hospital they will come and tell you what week it is what Torah portion is being read this week what it says in the Torah portion and some of these people come out of the coma and their scholars there tell me there half of them they know every partial because when you hear without the body you hear better you remember better you understand better that's why at the end of life the body is still perfectly intact but the soul is gone so the body hears nothing sees nothing says nothing because all those activities are life activities that come from this living being called the soul so it would be silly to ask where does the soul get its energy from it is energy where does it get its life from it is life that's like the comedian who says what a battery's run on the batteries need a battery no they don't they are the battery therefore the question is there life after death is not an appropriate question at all life does not die it doesn't even make any sense life can't be dead just like death can't live life can't die so whether the soul continues on without the body of course it does a soul is a soul it's not a body so what happens at the end of life the soul that was invested in the body separates from the body and goes back to where Souls come from so what does the body do from dust from dust you are and to dust you return so there's this famous poem if I remember this correctly it says life is earnest life is good life is earnest and the grave is not its goal from dust you are and to dust returnest was never said of the soul so what goes back to the dust what came from the dust which is only the body where does the soul go well like everything else it goes back to where it came from fully alive with its memory intact with its relationships in place still devoted to the people that it was devoted to while I was in the body and it continues to live in fact it continues to live better than it was in the body because now it doesn't have to accept the restrictions of the body so the soul of your grandfather in heaven hears you better sees you better than before he passed away when his hearing and his I cipher a little schwa without the hearing aid so the next step in the development of the life settling into the body merging with the body is at forty days after conception after 40 days of conception the body has already begun to develop a personality it's already either male or female it's becoming diminish the next step after that is three months the third month of pregnancy the soul and body have really merged the body is now alive five months is the next and then birth concerning birth King David makes another amazing statement we've all heard this well we didn't realize what what the significance is even as I go in the valley of the shadow of death I am Not Afraid for you are with me everybody knows that Psalm what's he talking about where is this valley of death and why does he go there he was talking about the birth he remembered being born he remembered being conceived he remembered being born and here again very traumatic scary the reason it is so scary is because for the soul this is a major change the body doesn't know the difference but the soul does and when the soul goes into panic mode and is feeling contractions the body of the baby also experiences the contraction of being born so whatever happens in the spiritual eventually is reflected in the physical the happier the soul is to be in the body the healthier the body is going to be so King David says like this when I was going through the valley of the shadow of death which means when I was being born when I was in the birth canal I had left a perfect life inside the womb it's heavenly I'm not yet breathing on my own outside the womb it's a valley it's a dip between two lives life in the womb and life outside the womb and there's a little danger there there's a touch of hint of death a shadow of death and it's very scary but what kept me going was God's presence I was not afraid because you were with me if you read any of the descriptions of near-death experiences Kubler Roth how does she describe it you're going through a dark tunnel there's a light at the end of the tunnel and there's an angel urging you to come into the light well actually that's a flashback to your birth experience when you were being born you were going through a dark tunnel there was a light at the end of the tunnel and there was this guy all in white urging you to come out because that's what he gets paid for it so when a person has a near-death experience he flashes back to his original near-death experience how does King David's a shadow of death you're not dying it's near-death people who die have a completely different experience we don't know much about it because they don't talk much now it's still not over after the body is born there's again a 30-day period of merging coalescing body and soul becoming one and that's why until 30 days after birth a child is not yet the baby is not yet considered viable only after 30 days is it a viable child for a boy there's also the significance of the eighth day before the eighth day it simply is too dangerous for a circumcision I don't know what the blood being absorbed in the bottom I'm not sure but until the eighth day there cannot be a verse now the influence the intelligence the morality of your soul influences your body also in a growing and increasing fashion by the time a girl is 12 the goodness the holiness of her soul is fully settled in for a boy it's at 13 so life comes in gradual stages and merges more and more with the body until you can't even tell them apart the body is alive at the end of life the reverse process begins first there's a premonition most people know 40 days before they pass away they know it's happening some are more conscious some are a little less conscious but there's an awareness to think about tying up loose ends saying goodbye to people they don't realize consciously what they're doing but that's that's what's happening some people know exactly how long it's going to be to the very minute so that corresponds to the 40 days that the soul is given just to get used to the idea the body and soul then begin to separate in stages it's not a total shock for the first three days after the body and soul separate the soul can't tear itself away it's painful it resists it doesn't want we sit Shiva seven days because for seven days the soul is fighting the separation the first three days are the most intense does neck the second four days are not quite as intense but the whole week the soul is trying to hold on to the body refusing to leave so the shiva it turns out is not really for our benefit to express our own grief it's to stay in touch with the soul as the soul goes through its transformation so the shiva is like continuation of the funeral funeral means accompany the person to his resting place that's the physical part it doesn't end there you don't just say goodbye you stay in touch in empathy with the soul so when the soul is really in pain you feel that pain when the soul's pain what lightens up a little bit you lighten up a little bit which explains a very interesting thing why does the Torah tell us how to grieve grieve for seven days and then get up whoa I need ten days I need a month I'm gonna grieve forever how can you tell people how to grieve and what about those people who say two days enough the Torah is not telling you how to grieve the Torah is telling you how to remain in sync with what's going on with the soul you're grieving over and that's why at the end of seven days when the soul has pretty much made peace with the fact that it's no longer in a body you're not being sympathetic anymore so the Torah says the Shiva is over I mean you want to grieve and you want to be sad about it that's just your human reaction but Shiva is over then there's a 30-day period the ocean the soul is still going through major changes now it has to get comfortable with being in heaven and by the way what exactly are heaven and hell unfortunately we get more of a Christian picture than we do of a Jewish picture hell is where the soul goes to be punished and it burns it's roasted with pitchforks and demons and how do you burn a soul you can't burn a soul the only way a soul can burn is shame when you're feeling shame and your cheeks get hot that's burning with shame when the soul comes to the world of souls and it doesn't remember how to be a soul it's gotten used to being a body maybe it still smells like a body and it feels really embarrassed and uncomfortable that's hell when a soul comes back to the world of souls after a hundred and twenty years of being in a body and it just picks up where it left off and just goes naturally right back to being a soul among souls that's heaven so heaven and hell are not a place it's an experience if you can just slip right back into heaven and be a soul like you were before you were born that's heaven if it takes time to readjust that's hell so hell is not a punishment it's a necessary readjustment or recalculating from the pleasures of the body to pleasures of pure soul so you can have two souls sitting right next to each other one is in heaven and the earth one is in help because one of them is perfectly comfortable and the other one is like some people walk into a synagogue and don't know which book or what side of the book or when to say that sit down and went to stand up that's gonna help it's so embarrassing so here's a soul comes to the world of souls and it doesn't remember how to behave like a soul how long does it take for the soul to make that readjustment maximum twelve months you know souls are pretty smart they catch on quickly particularly when it's just going back to their original nature so how long can it take her ready for a soul to catch on and start acting like a soul if he's really dense have really thick maximum 12 months and that's why we say Kaddish for 11 months we don't want to insult the soul by saying it needed the whole 12 months we also don't want to shortchange it in case it does need so we go 12 month 11 months because the Kaddish that we say helps the soul in its readjustment so life comes in gradually life leaves gradually but what does it mean that it leaves it moves on it does not stop living so we are told a number of interesting things about the soul after it's left the body the souls always attend the wedding's of their children grandchildren and great-grandchildren this is their future they're not going to miss it so when at the beginning of the wedding ceremony we sing Baruch habah we welcome people think we're welcoming the bride and groom no we're welcoming those souls who didn't get an invitation but they're attending the wedding so we welcome those souls up to three generations sometimes up to ten generations they also attend every circumcision the souls of your parents your grandparents and your great-grandparents come to the celebration of their great grand child's circumcision the other significant event is on at the Seder on Pesach when you ask the four questions and you say Tata is revealed by their fragment fear Cassius you address your questions to your father and you do this even after your father has passed away and when you say that your father's soul comes to hear your questions now you can talk to your father at any time but on Pesach there's something special the the presence of your father's soul is so much stronger than usual because that's the father's role at the Seder he's not gonna miss it let me tell you a beautiful story the previous of evident the Deborah's father-in-law who came to America in 1940 when he was a young child he discovered that he had a real gift for writing when his teacher noticed how well he wrote he urged him to keep a diary from the age of nine previous had ever kept the diary and at nine years old what can he write his memories of when he was four and when he was five and when he was six so we get a glimpse into the life of arriba had a very young age growing up in the home of his father who was the dead but before him his grandfather was the dead but before that so here's the story that he records in his diary when he would come home from Heder every day he had a vivid imagination so when he'd come home he would go into his grandfather's room when his grandfather passed away they left the room intact his grandfather's office there was a large chair stuff in a big winged wingback chair he would climb into the chair and he would review the stories that his teacher told him and fade her and he would flesh it out he would like really put in all the details to imagine exactly how it happened for example Yaakov I'm sorry Avraham was sitting at the door of his tent and three people were coming down the road and Avram ran out to greet them and asked them into his tent and they turned out to be angels so he would come home after that and he would sit there painting the picture for himself exactly what that looked like I can have it one day he came home and this was after his teacher had told him a story from the Talmud from the Gemara the Gemara says that Rebbe you hooda who was the author of the Mishnah or the editor of the Mishnah when he passed away he was granted a wish which mitzvah do you want to continue doing and he said I want to continue making kiddush from my family on Friday night and he was granted that wish so every Friday night he came back from heaven to his family and he made kiddush for them this little boy comes home after hearing the story goes into his grandfather's room climbs into the chair closes his eyes and starts to draw the picture in his mind of 1/8 of a soul coming down from heaven the Sun is setting it's Friday night the candles are on the table he picks him through the window everything ready okay he comes in he makes kibish he he gave it all the details in the color as he's thinking this he hears a voice in the room he opens his eyes his father who was the devil is standing at his grandfather's desk facing the chair he's standing on the far side of the desk facing the chair where his grandfather would sit and study and his father is speaking and crying and he's wearing his Shabbos clothes with with with the guard oh like a formal prayer like and this and this six-year-old boy says I thought I probably shouldn't be in the room at that time so I just quietly snuck out he wasn't shocked he wasn't surprised the soul when you need the soul of your father or your mother or your grandfather when you need them they are available to you the holier they are the more freedom they have to come and go into this world most souls are not given that permission they can talk to you from a distance they can't be sitting in their chair talking to you but holy people have more more authority so the soul never dies it can't life can't die life lives and life is not the same as enter it's a completely different thing energy can become mass life never becomes mass life lives which means that at this very moment your parents souls in heaven your grandparents souls in heaven are completely conscious and aware of what's going on in the room right now and they're probably quite pleased that you're here nothing embarrassing about that and they worry about you and they pray for you they try to pull strings for you so when something really amazingly good happens remember to thank them they probably made it happen because you know you didn't so a little gratitude to our parents should never end because they never stopped being parents the third Rebbe the third lubavitcher rebbe when his wife passed away he said to his children you lost a mother I lost a wife a mother is good from a distance to a mother can be very far away and she's still mothering you but a wife from a distance so my loss is greater than yours which is true loss of a spouse is greater than the loss of a parent because parents don't go very far they hang around they come visit they remain involved in their children's lives so when we say you skir on yom tov i when we say Kaddish we're talking to a living soul we're talking to someone who knows whether you're talking to them or not so people who don't say you skir they're gonna have to explain that to their parents someday where were you I was there you didn't show up maybe that's why so many people will go for a you skirt but for no other part of the Dava name because for the you skirt the soul of your parents lets you there you can't say no to your parents so what does all this tell us the punch line the punch line is this when the soul leaves the body it really doesn't want to it fights it struggles wants to stay here so that expression that you've heard many many times when somebody passes away he's in a better place now not Jewish for Jews there is no better place than here heaven heaven is nice really nice comfortable enjoyable safe holy still not better and the difference is here we can serve God in heaven God serves you it's a reward we would much rather do the serving than be served we would much rather be employed than retired even if you get a gold watch so the Jewish idea of heaven is you go there if you can't be here but we much rather be here this is the best place which means that the souls in heaven are not resting in peace they are impatiently waiting for this world to get its act together to become a holier place and then they will come back to this world so as much as we want to see the world become peaceful we want to see the world become holy we want to see the world become a godly place they are more desperate than we are because we can at least do something pitch in make it happen they're helpless we also don't have a fear of hell I mean nobody wants to go there but if you gotta go you go like the guy says I don't want to go to heaven I don't know anybody there I'd rather go where all my friends are so if we're not afraid of going to hell we're all going question is only for how long will it take a week to make the adjust the adjustment will it take a month two months five months but we're all going we all have to make that transition we get really comfortable being a body all of a sudden you're not a body that takes some adjustment so it's not a terrible thing if you can avoid it fine so this is the Jewish thinking on life and death heaven and hell it all ends up good no soul is ever lost or abandoned every soul ends up back in heaven I've got to go through a wash cycle it goes through the wash cycle hot water okay hot water but it gets cleansed it gets free of the physical memories and it goes back to being a pure soul and the more pure the soul is the more it wants to come back to earth and serve God rather than be served that's why we're looking forward to the coming of Messiah because as much as we would like this world to be beautiful our ancestors in heaven those that have been there for generations for millennia they are so impatient they want us to get this world fixed up so that they can come back so we know why Messiah is an important issue we also know why we believe in the resurrection of the Dead Souls don't like being in heaven not once they've been on earth the real purpose in God's plan the real purpose for resurrection is that every Mitzvah we do couldn't happen without the soul because a dead body can't do mitzvahs but at the same time no Mitzvah can happen without the body you can't eat matzah without a body you can't make noise with a grogger on Porton without a body you can't light a Shabbos candles without a body in fact the body deserves more credit for the mitzvot than the soul because the soul only adds the proper intention it's the body that does the mitzvot so the question is when the soul leaves the body it goes to heaven and it is rewarded well what about the body when does the body get its reward never that's not God's Way so the resurrection of the Dead is simply a matter of justice God says you did the mitzvot when your soul was in a body and together perform the Mitzvah so ultimately the reward will have to be when you are again in your body so that you can be rewarded in the same way in which you did the mitzvot so the resurrection of the Dead literally means your body the one you did the mitzvahs with that has decomposed will recompose come back to life with its soul and receive its due reward for the mitzvahs that the two of them together performed so it's not simply a matter of poetic concepts of bodies coming back to life it's a matter of justice it would be wrong for the body not to be rewarded and the only way it can be rewarded properly is with its own soul back so now we have a whole new dilemma we know that we've had other lives we've been here before that's called reincarnation if you've had many lives which body ain't going to come back to it's the same soul different bodies so which body are you going to come back to some people say you get to choose your favorite body some people say you can choose the best features of each body and kind of put it together like a mr. Potato Head that would not be justice justice means every body that ever did Mitzvahs needs to be rewarded so you can't pick just one body it's gotta be every one of them because everybody you were in perform mitzvahs so the soul has to divide itself and go back into the body in which it was most successful so what's gonna happen after the resurrection when you are now five different people and you're sitting at the table together all five of you what a family so we're very grateful that God is in charge of that project because it's a little overwhelming keep track of who's who when they're coming and going and which body which soul for which Mitzvah even the biggest computer would not be able to handle this project but we look forward to the coming of Messiah because making the world holy is not an option it has to happen well it's not optional it has to happen the world was created to be holy and we are the ones who are supposed to make it holy so every Mitzvah we do a little more holiness every good deed even even a good intention creates positive energy in the world which makes the evil go away and that's why every time God forbid there's a bad event an evil event a tragic event our response is we need more goodness we can't let that start to spread we need to increase the goodness in the world until it completely displaces all the evil we've been at it for three thousand three hundred and thirty years we've made some progress we don't necessarily see it yet but it's all there we've planted all the right seeds the question is when will it start to show that's what we mean when we say we want mushiya we want to see the fruits of our Labor's we've devoted ourselves to this project through fire and water through thick and thin nothing stopped us nothing will stop us so we're the results we're the fruits we're getting a little impatient so mashiac means the world has matured the world has become what God envisioned and we did it we were his agents and when the world becomes positive and beautiful the way it's meant to be no soul will remain in heaven this will be greater than heaven so they will all want to come back and that's the resurrection so it's all one little package it all hangs together it's all necessary not wishful thinking and that's why we're still here we don't live in fantasy we outgrew that a long time ago we know what we're doing it's real we should all see very soon very quickly the end of our project the completion of our project the world has got to get good it's got to get good and when it does we'll be able to say we did our share we added our Mitzvah to the huge pile of mitzvahs and if you think that you feel good about it imagine how good your father and mother grandfather and grandmother will about it that's the story of life from a Jewish perspective what do you think no I really meant what do you think partner with Rabbi Friedman visit it's good to know org forward slash support [Music]

Channel: Rabbi Manis Friedman

Views: 317,290

Rating: 4.7642093 out of 5

Keywords: Rabbi Manis Friedman, Manis Friedman

Id: Hng19dbBGfA

Length: 58min 2sec (3482 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2019