Editor’s Note
What you see from there…
From the dawn of history, death and reincarnation have fascinated humankind. Both death and reincarnation are shrouded in mystery, and throughout the generations people developed diverse theories attempting to understand death and what happens before and after it.
Kabbalists, researchers of the complete reality, did not return from the dead to tell us what happens there. Rather, they experienced our world and the spiritual world simultaneously. The surprising thing about it is that they stated that we don’t have to die to know the “next world.” Instead, we can and should reach it while we are still alive.
The beauty of it is that they also left us with a method that grants each of us the possibility to reach the same wondrous attainments and achievements that they experienced.
Their words teach us that our lives are like a sequence of scenes in a film. The highlight of thisfeature is the meeting with the wisdom of Kabbalah. This encounter is our door to the spiritual world, and only from that moment on do we really begin to reincarnate—from one spiritual degree to the one above it, until we reach the top of the spiritual ladder. All that we experience throughout the millennia leading to that point becomes nothing more than transitory lifecycles.
In the 11th issue, we are inviting our readers to embark on a journey beyond their imagination. When we know the purpose of these incarnations and the purpose of our lives, we will be able to lead our lives to a place of happiness, tranquility, and spiritual perfection.
Don’t Wait for the Next Life
Our lives are like a sequence of scenes. The highlight of the story is the meeting with the wisdom of Kabbalah, when we take the reins into our hands and set the pace. Only then do we begin to reincarnate, and each incarnation is a phase in the spiritual development. Each incarnation brings us closer to the Creator.
One of the most mysterious Midrashim(commentaries) in the most important book of Kabbalah, The Book of Zohar, reveals one of the deepest secrets of existence: what happens after we die. It reveals what happens to us the minute we close our eyes for the last time, where the soul goes and what reincarnation really is, according to Kabbalah.
Things You See from Here, You Don’t See from There
“Come and see what is written, ‘If thou know not, O thou fairest among women’: the Lord replies to the soul, if you have come and did not look at wisdom before you came here, and you do not know the secrets of the Upper World, go thy way, you are not worthy of coming here without knowledge… meaning reincarnate a second time into the world.”
--The Book of Zohar, Song of Songs, Vol. 10, item 486
Kabbalists, researchers of reality, did not return from the dead to tell us what happens there. Rather, they lived in our world and in the spiritual world simultaneously. The surprising element about it is that we don’t have to die to know the next world. Instead, we can and should achieve this sensation while we are still alive.
Kabbalists left us with a method that grants each of us the possibility of reaching the same wondrous attainments that they experienced. To understand this, we must understand what life and death are, and lift the mystery surrounding reincarnation.
The Wheel of Transformation of the Form
First, let me present the opinion of our sages… there aren’t any new souls as the bodies are new, but only a certain amount of souls that incarnate on the wheel of transformation of the form, …Therefore with regards 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 until it developed and became corrected as it should be.”
--Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, “The Peace”
Kabbalah books were written by people who lived their lives in the world just as we do.But at some point in their lives, they came across a method for spiritual ascension, which helped them to feel a higher reality. At this spiritual degree, they were exposed to the secrets of creation and experienced a reality that is above and beyond limitations of time, substance, life, and death. They saw the circle of life as a continuous process of spiritual growth, a series of phases leading to one purpose: to bring each person and the whole of humanity to feel the eternal and complete sensation of life. During this process, a person transcends from one spiritual phase to the next, and each such phase is called a “reincarnation.” According to Kabbalah, this is the only meaning of the term “reincarnation.”
Unlike the popular belief, replacing the bodies between one lifecycle and another is not considered reincarnation.
From Life to Life, from Will to Will
Kabbalah explains that each of us comes to the world with a “package” of desires, like a spiritual magnetic charge. Just as one is born with a unique sequence of genes, which designs one’s personality and tendencies, the charge we receive is the foundation for our spiritual development.
This foundation is also the basis that determines our outlook on life. It designs not only the way we experience thoughts and emotions, but even the course of events that will befall us. To progress and evolve to the highest spiritual degree and truly begin the process for which we were created, each of us must undergo preparation in the form of a series of lifecycles.
During each such lifecycle, an individual accumulates desires, which one will gradually develop from one lifecycle to another. As soon as we finish realizing our desires in the present lifetime, we stop feeling this world. We call that cessation of sensation, “death.”
Thus, we progress on the axis of growth from one life to another, from will to will, until we arrive at the turning point. At this point, a new desire evokes in us, which directs us to attain the spiritual reality. This new, spiritual desire is called “a soul.” From this moment on the soul begins to evolve in spiritual degrees. It is only from this point onward that we begin to relate to what a person experiences as an incarnation. This is because incarnation, according to Kabbalah, concerns only a person’s spiritual evolution.
Reality’s Genetic Code
Kabbalists that have completed the process and reached the height of the spiritual ladder, tell us that the whole reality is operated by a vast spiritual mechanism. This is a complex system that operates both the spiritual and corporeal worlds, and everything within them. Try to imagine a gigantic database that contains information about everything that happened, that is happening now, and that will happen at any time in the future. Within that mechanism, all of life’s processes are hard-coded—thesouls, and the spiritual and corporeal worlds. Kabbalists refer to this genetic code of reality as Reshimo (record).
The Reshimo is the DNA, the spiritual genome, and it is responsible for taking creation through the entire evolutionary process, at the end of which each of us will live in complete harmony and balance with the Upper Force.
Writing Life’s Storyline
The Reshimo exists within each of us, and secretly operates the course of our corporeal lives. Moreover, it leads our spiritual evolution, taking us from state to state, and like a movie projector, projects sequences of images into our lives. We laugh, cry, grow, fall in love, win, learn, become angry, and start a family. This sequence of shots, which keeps surprising us every time, is what we call “our lives.”
As we grow old, the pace of the shots slows down, as the last shots of our lives are screened before our eyes. When the movie ends, the projector is turned off and the screen darkens like an abrupt end of a movie.
This is the state we call “death.”
But the projector is turned right on again, a new sequence of shots appears, and we move on to the next Reshimo, the next lifecycle. Thus, our lives’ feature is rollingonce again.
Everything we have collected, saw, learned, and acquired in this world becomes qualities and attributes that we are born with in the next round. Thus, we are born with a new package of properties, but at the same time, the situations and the events we face become more complex and demand a more serious and thorough handling. The new Reshimo brings before us a series of states that are adapted specifically to suit the evolution that we will experience in the current cycle. This Reshimo also determines how long we will live, to which family we will be born, and what we will experience in life.
However, this spiritual mechanism is not random. Rather, it is predetermined in every detail to bring us to achieve life’s goal. It develops us from one will to the next, until we finally arrive at the most developed desires from among all the desires that we have experienced in life—the desire for spirituality. Only when this desire awakens in us will we begin the reincarnation process that Kabbalists write about.
The Last Cycle
The emerging of the desire for spirituality is called “the birth of the soul.” Here, for the first time, we are given a chance to begin to evolve in spirituality. Until that moment, our Reshimo is realized only on the corporeal level, leading us through continuous cycles of life.
Before we begin the spiritual reincarnation, our lives move along routinely, without discovering a special meaning or explanation. Now, however, we are at a new point in history—weare ready for the beginning of the evolution of the soul.
The real evolution of the Reshimo (our soul) begins with an encounter with the method that tells us about cycles in the spiritual world, the wisdom of Kabbalah.
From this point on, the evolution of the Reshimo and its momentum depend only on the individual’s choices. When we find the wisdom of Kabbalah, we can let into our lives the only means that will develop the Reshimo from life to life at a different level from what we’ve known thus far. The spiritual force that we will draw from reading in genuine Kabbalah books will bring us to feel that actual reality.
Instead of looking at imaginary pictures, projected into our lives, we will experience the genuine reality, which appears to our eyes in its full glory.
The spiritual degrees that a Kabbalist experiences change the whole way in which one perceives reality. A Kabbalist discovers the hidden forces that operate our world and understands the reasons for everything that happens in it.
The wisdom of Kabbalah is the only means that enables Kabbalists to begin the process of the reincarnation of their souls, and change degrees and states without having to end their physical lives. Each shift of a spiritual state is considered a new incarnation, and each incarnation brings us closer to perfect balance with the Upper Force, the Creator.
In the course of a Kabbalist’s spiritual work, he or she becomes increasingly sympathetic to the Upper Force, and farther apart from the sensation that our world is the only world that exists. Such a person begins to feel the spiritual world as the real world, and corporeal life as imaginary.
When Kabbalists go through all the spiritual degrees that they must complete, they feel the Upper Forcein their souls, and are granted a tangible connection with it. At this stage, they reach the apex of the realization of their Reshimo, the highest spiritual degree, in which they experience life as eternal and perfect. When Kabbalists reach that degree, they no longer have to return to our world.
Changing Shirts
So, do Kabbalists live forever? We know that Kabbalists, like all people, pass away. This makes us wonder what kind of sensation they are talking about.
When Kabbalists speak about eternal life, they do not refer to eternal physical life. They mean that a Kabbalist’s soul that has risen to the spiritual life while the Kabbalist was alive continues to exist eternally. The Kabbalist’s body, however, passes away like any other person’s. The spiritual and corporeal realm are completely detached from one another, hence a Kabbalist’s sensation of life does not end when physical life ends.
One of the greatest Kabbalists of our time, Rabbi Baruch Ashlag (Rabash), described what a Kabbalist who realizes his or her Reshimo and achieves the spiritual world experiences. He said that a Kabbalist’s life ends in our world the minute he or she is no longer needed by his or her generation. But while it appears that the Kabbalist passed away from the world, the soul of the Kabbalist continues to exist in the spiritual world, eternal and full of love, just like the Upper Force, which it has attained.
Rabash described the sensations of a Kabbalist who switches between one lifecycle and another, as long as he or she has not reached the peak of the spiritual ladder, the highest degree. He compared this transition to changing the shirt you’re wearing with a clean one.
Rabash explained that those who have already attained spirituality, feel their bond with the eternal Upper Force as the most important thing. This sensation of reality as whole and eternal becomes the main reality that such a person experiences. In such a state, physical life feels like a shirt one has to put on, and take off at the time of death, and replace with a clean one in the next life. After “changing the shirt,” the Kabbalist continues the spiritual work from the point he or she had stopped in the previous life.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
You can therefore see the utter necessity for anyone from Israel, whomever he may be to engage in the internality of the Torah and in its secrets. Without it, the intention of creation will not be completed in man.
This is the reason that we reincarnate, generation-by-generation through our contemporary generation, which is the residue of the souls upon which the intention of creation has not been completed, as they did not attain the secrets of the Torah in the past generations.
--Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to From the Mouth of a Sage”
Kabbalists described their lives as a sequence of events, which culminates at one point in time: when they come across the wisdom of Kabbalah. This point is a golden opportunity to finally come out of the maze we have been living in all through our lives.
The wisdom of Kabbalah grants us the ability to break the cycle of routine we find ourselves in, moving from one lifetime to another, not knowing why we die, and, even more so, why we live.
Now we can finally embark on a new journey, filled with vitality and hope, and which leads to perfection. All the events we previously experienced, in this life and in previous lives, suddenly take a new and positive meaning. We understand the reason for which we came into this world and we live in eternal bonding with the Upper Force, the force of love. Thus, when we climb to spiritual perfection, we will no longer have to return to this world, and we will not be afraid of death, for we have chosen life.
All You Ever Wanted to Know about Reincarnation, but Didn’t Dare to Ask
What is a soul?
A soul is a new desire that appears in each of us at some stage in our development. This desire makes us ask questions about our lives and the reason we exist, and gradually brings us to take interest in the spiritual reality and crave it.
Who has a soul?
Contrary to what most of us think, not everybody has a soul. A soul is a spiritual vessel, a kind of “sense” through which the Kabbalist perceives the Creator—the perfect and eternal force of giving and benevolence. We can talk about the birth of a soul only from the moment a person begins to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, the method that develops one’s soul. If one studies Kabbalah and strives to feel the spiritual world, the sensation of the soul begins to formulate in that person.
About reincarnation
In our ordinary lives, there aren’t any “real” souls or incarnation. There are only lifecycles. We pass time on Earth. An incarnation occurs from the moment we begin our spiritual path. The term “incarnation” symbolizes a new, higher spiritual state, that our soul reaches.