Reply To: How to Cope?

There is another dimension of immortality discussed in the Talmud. It asks: Do the dead know what is happening in the world of the living?[xvi] After an involved discussion, the Talmud concludes that they do have this awareness.[xvii] The Kaballistic philosophers explain that the soul achieve a degree of unity with God, the source of all knowledge, and therefore also partake of His omniscience.

When a man dies, he enters a new world of awareness. He exists as a disembodied soul and yet is aware of what is happening in the physical world. Gradually, he learns to focus on any physical event he wishes. At first this is a frightening experience. You know that you are dead. You can see your body lying there, with your friends and relatives standing around crying over you. We are taught that immediately after death, the soul is in a great state of confusion.[xviii]

What is the main source of its attention? What draws its focus more that anything else? We are taught that it is the body. Most people identify themselves with their bodies, as we have discussed earlier. It is difficult for a soul to break this thought habit, and therefore, for the first few days, the soul is literally obsessed with its previous body. This is alluded to in the verse (Job 14:22), “And his soul mourns for him”.[xix] This is especially true before the body is buried.[xx] The soul wonders what will happen to the body. It finds it to be both fascinating and frightening to watch its own body’s funeral arrangements and preparation for burial.

Of course, this is one of the reasons why Judaism teaches us that we must have the utmost respect for human remains. We can imagine how painful it is for the soul to see its recent body cast around like an animal carcass. The Torah therefore forbids this.

This is also related to the question of autopsies. We can imagine how a soul would feel when seeing its body lying on the autopsy table, being dissected and examined.

The disembodied soul spends much of its time learning how to focus. It is now seeing without physical eyes, using some process that we do not even have the vocabulary to describe. The Kabbalists call this frightening process Kaf HaKela – it is like being thrown with a sling from one end of the world to another.[xxi] It is alluded to in the verse (I Sam. 25:29), “The soul of my master shall be bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord your God, and the souls of your enemies shall He sling out, as from the hollow of a sling”. The soul perceives things flashing into focus from all over, and is in a state of total confusion and disorientation. One of the few things that the soul has little difficulty focusing on is its own body. It is a familiar pattern and some tie seems to remain. To some extent, it is a refuge from its disorientation.

Of course the body begins to decompose soon after it is buried. The effect of watching this must be both frightening and painful, the Talmud teaches us,”Worms are as painful to the dead as needles in the flesh of the living, as it is written (Job 14:22), his flesh grieves for him”.[xxii] Most commentaries write that this refers to the psychological anguish of the soul in seeing its earthly habitation in a state of decay.[xxiii] The Kabbalists call this Chibut HaKever,[xxiv] the punishment of the grave. We are taught that what happens to the body in the grave can be an even worse experience than Gehenom.[xxv]

This varies among individuals. The more one is obsessed with one’s body and the material world in general during his lifetime, the more he will be obsessed with it after death. For the man to whom the material was everything, this deterioration of the body is most painful. On the other extreme, the person who was immersed in the spiritual, may not care very much about the fate of his body at all. He finds himself very much at home in the spiritual realm and might quickly forget about his body entirely. This is what we are taught. Tzadikim are not bothered by Chibut HaKever at all, since they never consider their worldly body overly important.[xxvi] In general, adjustment to the spiritual world depends greatly on one’s preparation in this world. Our traditions teach us that the main preparation is through Torah.

Many of us think of death as a most frightening experience. Tzadikim, on the other hand, have looked forward to it. Shortly before his death, Rabbi Nachman Bretslaver said, “I very much want to divest myself of this garment that is my body”.[xxvii] If we truly believe and trust in a merciful God, then death holds no terror for us.

This is a description of what our tradition teaches us about the soul’s existence. Most of these facts are from the teachings of Chazal in the Talmud and Midrash as interpreted by the Kaballists. Here we have synthesized their interpretations with the terminology of modern scientific concepts. The result is a consistent view of soul and human personality as realities that do not possess the body’s temporal discontinuity called “death.