Droshos - Living and Dying with Hashem

[דרשות_0127_הסתלקות הנשמה]

Two Different Ways To View Death

(The words which we will say here, with siyata d’shmaya, should be l’iluy nishmas, to elevate the soul, of my mother, may I be an atonement for her and illuminate her with precious light.)

“Akavia ben Mehalalel said: Look at three things and you will not come to sin. Know from where you come, and to where you are going, and in front of Whom you will give an accounting.” Know from where you come – from a rotten droplet. And to where are you going? To a place of dirt, maggots and worms. And in front of Whom will you give an accounting? In front of the King of all kings, the Holy, Blessed One.”[1]

Simply this all sounds like one statement, but it is really two statements. The first statement is, “Know from where you come, and to where you are going, and in front of Whom you will give an accounting.” The second statement is, “Know from where you come – from a rotten droplet…”, etc.

The first statement is describing a higher perspective, whereas the second statement is describing a lower perspective. From the lower perspective, “Know from where you come – from a rotten droplet.” A person is formed from a place of deficiency and rottenness. The nighttime is when one is conceived, and the nighttime is a time of deficiency, for the moon became minimized. And at this lower perspective, “Know to where you are going – to a place of dirt, maggots and worms.”

But the higher perspective says “Know from where you come”, the fact that Hashem gave a person a neshamah, and at that perspective, there is also “And to where you are going”, meaning that the life spirit returns to Hashem Who gave it to the person.

The Fetus In The Mother: The Time When The Soul Dominates

Man’s conception begins at 40 days, in which it is decreed in Heaven if the seed will be a man or woman, strong or weak, wise or foolish, wealthy or poor.[2] The seed matures and at 3 months the fetus is recognizable, and birth can take place at 7 or 9 months, whereupon the fetus becomes complete. In the mother, the fetus is nourished by the mother, eating and drinking everything the mother eats and drinks.[3]

That is all from the lower perspective, but from a higher perspective, a candle is lit above the head of the fetus, where it is taught the entire Torah by an angel and it is in a blissful state. This is all because of the neshamah that Hashem has given it, “a portion of G-d from above”, and that is how a candle can be lit above the head of the fetus, a flame that reveals the Torah of light.

This is where the neshamah combines with the body. In the fetus, the neshamah presides over the body. Although the fetus comes from a rotten droplet and it is eating and drinking entirely the mother’s diet, its neshamah controls its body, a candle is lit above its head and it is taught the entire Torah.

Birth: When The Yetzer Hora (Evil Inclination) Enters

When the fetus emerges into the air of the world, an angel comes and strikes the baby on the lips, making the baby forget all of its Torah learning. This is the first appearance of the person’s yetzer hora. The yetzer hora asserts itself as soon as the baby emerges, waiting and ready to make trouble for the baby as soon as the baby is born. Forgetting is called shikchah, from the word choshech, darkness. When the fetus emerges into the air of the world, it has really entered into darkness, for This World is compared to darkness.[4]

Then the body begins to dominate. The body covers over and hides the neshamah, and from then on, all of one’s deeds, words and thoughts are easily swayed towards evil. “For the inclination of the heart of man is evil from his youth, thinking only of evil all day.” If a person chas v’shalom is swayed at times after the evil inclination, either into committing a sin, or even something permissible but which is “a disgusting one who acts within the parameters of the Torah”, the person has increased the body’s physical hold on him, covering over the light of his neshamah.

But the neshamah within him is forever active. The mere fact that the neshamah is inside the physical body is enough to purify the coarseness of the body. If a person were to become entirely evil, there is still an inner light, the neshamah, which is hidden within him. The neshamah is the motivating factor behind all of one’s deeds, words and thoughts (the three garments of the soul), purifying the body. But since the body is coarse and physical, and a person is drawn towards the physical, “A species has found its species and it is awakened”, the physicality is awakened while the inner light, the G-dly intellect, becomes covered over.

Igniting The Neshamah

When one does any act of a mitzvah, or he speaks words of Torah, or he thinks of something that is truthful and inner, the garments of the soul (action, speech and thought) become joined with the light of the neshamah, and then the inner light of the neshamah begins to ignite. “Even the empty ones among you are full of mitzvos like the seeds of a pomegranate.”[5] Every Jew has good deeds, words, and thoughts. Every Jew does mitzvos, and when does mitzvos, the light of the neshamah is ignited.

But usually, the coarseness of the body creates a stronger pull towards evil, countering the neshamah, and the ignited spark of the neshamah remains only as a momentary spark, a little illumination that is overpowered by the body’s physicality and by sins, which dominate and overpower one’s inner light. And concerning this, Chazal said: “Know from where you come – from a rotten droplet. Know to where you are going – to a place of dirt, maggots and worms.”

The Spark Can Get Bigger

When a person becomes purer, he slowly begins to recognize the sparks of the radiance of light of his neshamah, which is revealed according to the level he is at, and this spark continues to ignite and shine stronger. It is like when the sun begins to rise, where a ray of light slowly gets bright and brighter until the entire sky is shining.

There are a few people who merit that their spark gets bigger and bigger, meaning that their feelings become holier as their life continues. Sometimes they feel it on Yomim Tovim and sometimes they feel it at special opportune times of the year, and sometimes they feel it when they are dedicated to doing a mitzvah (either in action, speech or thought), in which they feel a spark of their neshamah’s light, which purifies and brightens the physicality of their body.

But usually, when people feel a spark of their neshamah, they remain with just the spark and it doesn’t get bigger for them, more or less.

Illness

When one takes ill, the spark of the neshamah can become bigger for him, when his body weakens, allowing his neshamah to bypass the body and come forth. But that will only be the case if the spark is already a strong presence in his life. If the spark is already there, it gets larger and brighter when he takes ill, and this is the meaning of what Chazal said, “The Shechinah is above the head of the bedpost of an ill person.”[6]

Death

When a person is at the brink of dying, and his body had dominated his soul in his lifetime (and if he is not among those who die to sanctify Hashem’s name), his exit at death will be felt according to the level of his neshamah’s spark at that time.

If the spark of one’s neshamah wasn’t that much of a presence in his life, his death will be a difficult experience for him: “The Angel of Death is full of eyes, and when an ill person is about to die, it stands above his head with its sword stretched over him in its hands, and a droplet of bile is hanging from it. The ill person sees this and becomes terrified, and opens his mouth in fear. The angel of death throws the droplet of bile into his mouth. From this, the ill person dies, and from this the person decays, and from this the person’s face becomes greened.”[7] It is the same drop of which Chazal said, “Know from where you came, from a rotten droplet.” Just as when the person was born, his evil inclination controlled him from the time he was born, so too when the person leaves the world, through the angel of death with his sword stretched over him, the rotten droplet returns and becomes awakened. “He is the evil inclination, he is the Satan, he is the angel of death.” The end of his life mimics the beginning of his life – a life, and a death, controlled by the yetzer hora, who later becomes the angel of death for him.

But when a person becomes worthy of the spark of his neshamah getting stronger within him, and when he is constantly in touch with it, the entire longing of his very life and soul is for that light. When he is leaving the world, the light of his neshamah, the light of G-dliness that was hidden in his neshamah, will now shine strongly for him. “Their spirit increases as they expire, and to the earth they return.” [8] And the Sages explained on the verse “For no man can see Me and live”[9] that “In their lives they cannot see (Me), but in their deaths, they can see (Me).”[10] When the soul sees the Shechinah, the person dies, and that is how the soul leaves the world – from amidst a bonding and a connection to That which it has just seen.

There can also be an intermediate level between a difficult death and a blissful death. When one is deathly ill, the soul may not leave his body at once. Chazal said that for seven days before death (when one is deathly ill), the soul slowly leaves, step by step. This is similar to the way one’s soul entered him when he first came into the world: For the first seven days until Bris Milah, the soul slowly enters him, and at his Bris Milah, all the parts of his soul has finished entering him. Similarly, when the soul is leaving the body at death, it goes out slowly, over the course of seven days.

During the days in which the soul is leaving, it doesn’t immediately return to its source. Rather, it hovers over the body and purifies it.

If one’s body was very coarse due to living a physicality-dominated life, he receives very little purification from the soul as the soul hovers above him at death.

But if he is elderly, or if he was very weak due to illness, or if he suffered a lot in his life and he attained an inward disconnection from coarse physicality, the spark of his soul can shine strongly for him at death, and as it hovers above him when he is dying, his body becomes purified by the soul. The parts of his soul slowly leave him and they hover above him and surround him, infusing his body with the soul’s light and purifying the body, as his soul gains control over his physicality. It is similar to the state of being a fetus in the mother. And when that is the case, death is experienced as seeing the Shechinah, where the soul leaves the body and returns to its root.

The Light Of The Neshamah

But there are those who merit in their lives to ascend further than the place where the “spark” of their neshamah is, and they become connected to the very light of the neshamah.

The light of the neshamah can become shined within a person, which is the verse “And I will walk before Hashem in the land of the living.”[11]Such a person lives a life basking in Hashem’s light, which is the verse “In Your light, the light can be seen.”[12], and “For as I sit in darkness, Hashem is a light to me”,[13]. The “light of Hashem”, which is also called the “inner light” (ohr pnimi), shines within the light of the neshamah. It is when one is attached with Hashem on the level that there is none other besides Him.

When one is living at such a level will, the light is revealed to him, but the very d’veykus (attachment) that he has with Hashem is an attachment to something Intrinsic which is beyond all revelation and which cannot be seen by him. When one lives like this, his life is spent near Hashem. The light of Hashem hovers over him and shines for him, and his life resembles Olam HaBa, the Next World, in which Hashem’s light surrounds the person and shines.

Certainly, even when one lives at such a level, he will have to interrupt it, because his various physical responsibilities and just being on this world don’t allow him to be fully spiritual. But the basis of his life is that he lives in Hashem’s light surrounding him. This is the meaning of a true Torah scholar, which is called “Shabbos”, which is entirely light. It is known that on the first Shabbos of Creation, darkness didn’t yet serve light (and the darkness didn’t appear yet), allowing the light to shine for 36 consecutive hours: on Erev Shabbos, Shabbos night, and Shabbos day.

For such a person, when he is leaving the world, the light of the Shechinah becomes revealed to him, in the actual sense. His soul will be yearning to return to her root, “like iron drawn after a magnetic stone”, like a child running to greet his father. The Sages called it “death by the kiss of Hashem” – the pining of the soul for Hashem.

In Summary

Thus there are three ways how a person can leave the world.

(1) One who lived life at the lowest level (with the body dominating his soul) has a difficult death. The angel of death terrifies him with his sword, causing the person to gape in fear, and a droplet of bile falls into the person’s open mouth, and the person dies from this droplet.

(2) If one lived with the “spark” of his soul active in his life, death becomes a time of revelation of Hashem’s light for him, which becomes shined within the light of his soul. The light of the soul becomes shined for him, and he leaves the world, to go towards that light, the light of the neshamah.

(3) If one lived even more spiritually, in which he was conscious of Hashem’s Presence in his life, basking in Hashem’s light as he lived, death becomes a revelation of the Shechinah for him. It is like in the future, when Hashem will remove the sun from its sheath, and it is like how iron is drawn after a magnetic stone. At death, the soul of a person who lived with Hashem in his life will yearn strongly to go back its source, easily leaving the body and the world, to return to where it came from. “And the spirit will return to G-d Who gave her”.[14]As Rabbeinu Yonah says in Shaarei Teshuvah[15], “At the end of one’s lifetime, if one fulfilled his mission faithfully, he returns and comes back with joy, with eternal happiness upon his head.”

These three different levels of experiencing death have only been explained here briefly, and understandably they can be broken up into many further subtleties and varying levels.

Burial

When a person lived life at the lowest level chas v’shalom (in which the body dominated his soul), he returns to the dirt, a place of maggots and worms. He returns to the earth in the lower sense, meaning that he enters into the place where there is death, and that is where the body undergoes chibut hakever, the “beating in the grave”, in which his lowly state of living makes him becoming connected to the ground, after being interned there.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. If one lived a life in which the light of his neshamah shone for him and it was an active presence in his life, the neshamah hovers over the body, according to the intensity of how much he revealed it in his life, and even as his body is lying in the ground after death, the light of the neshamah continues to hover over his body and protects it.

In the soul, the Neshamah is the highest level, which shines onto the Ruach, and the Ruach shines onto the Nefesh (lowest part of the soul). The Nefesh shines onto the body and sustains the body. The light of the soul hovers over the body and the body is sustained according to the amount that the soul is shining. That all concerns the body, which undergoes burial.

Getting subtler, there are different soul roots of people. Some have a soul root that entails “repairing the vessels”, so their soul protects their body after death and keeping the body intact. Others have a soul root that entails “Eat bread dipped in salt and drink water in a cistern”, they are meant to undergo more divesting of the physical, and therefore at death, most of their body decomposes, with only their bones which remain.

Ascending Back To Above

The soul does not remain at the grave (whether it is the Ruach, or the Nefesh, etc). Rather, it leaves the grave so that it can ascend higher and higher. However, Rabbeinu Yonah says that “The soul of a wicked person, whose entire desire is for the physical and material, and which was separate from serving from the Creator and divided from its root, it descends lower at death, to the ground, to the place of its desires. It becomes like the earth it desired, which is to descend and which cannot ascend. But it is forcibly raised upwards so that it will receive its due judgment….and even after it is raised above, it naturally descends back to the earth.”

But if one had spent a life in which he sanctified his actions, speech and thoughts, and his thoughts were exalted and heavenly, thinking about what is Above, then his thoughts will naturally rise higher and higher, and he becomes connected with the nature of the soul, which yearns to rise higher. Such a person does not have to be forcibly raised to above, for already in his lifetime he had revealed his soul’s nature for this ascent to above. With a light thought, he can rise to above. It is only a person who became wicked in his lifetime whose soul wants to go back to the earth, for it is forcibly raised to above against its nature, and it needs to undergo the process of Kaf HaKela (the sling) in order to be forcibly raised.

When the soul rises above, to the extent that the light of the soul already shined during a person’s lifetime, that is how easy and blissful the ascent to above will be. When his soul is leaving his body, those who were connected to his personal share will join him: His relatives, those whom he was close with, and the souls of tzaddikim whom he had a special connection with. All of them will come to greet him. One of the sages, when he was dying, told those next to him: “Prepare a seat for Chizkiyahu HaMelech” (who is coming now to greet me).

This serves two purposes. It calms the body and the lower levels of the soul, so that these lower layers of his existence shouldn’t be terrified of death. But on a higher level, it comes from those who lived a life in which their soul was active, which causes those who were connected with his soul to gravitate towards him at death, now that his soul is shining strongly.

To the extent that a person lives more spiritually, in which he was aware that his life is all about spending his life with Hashem, he will live with Hashem also at death, when he ascends to the upper worlds. For this, the soul thirsts and yearns, that its life here on this world should become a reality of “An eternal life, planted within us.”

If one lived here on this world a life that was dominated by physicality, he will have difficulty separating from that physicality at death. And if one was connected with others only superficially on this world, he will have difficulty at death when he feels that he is taking leave of them [because his entire connection to them was superficial and now he will have nothing left of it, for he is not intrinsically connected with them]. But when a person lived in the inner world, living a genuine and inner life, a true spiritual life of the Torah and Hashem’s light, it will be much easier for him to leave behind physicality, at death. The level that a person lived at on this world will remain his level, and the only difference is that on this world, he was connected to physicality through the coarse garments of physicality, and in the next world where he will be divested from physicality, but he is still found at living on a level of physicality and connection to materialism (thus if he had lived a life of the body on this world, he remains that way in the next world).

Judgment

When the soul is judged above, concerning where it will be placed above in Heaven, he is judged on two levels: On one’s specific actions, as well as his overall level, of where he belongs.

To the extent that a person was connected to Hashem during his life, his soul level and his place in the higher world will be higher and loftier. There are two levels within this: One who is prepared (mezuman) for the life of the Next World, and one who is a ben olam haba. The first level, mezuman, being prepared for the next world, is like who gets invited there, and from there onward, he is prepared. But a ben olam haba is a higher level: When one goes to his higher place because he has become intrinsically connected to there.

But if a person isn’t connected to any of these two levels, he is judged according to all of his specific and separate actions, just as he had lived in the world of separation on this world. At that level, a person is judged according to his specific actions and according to his specific role and capabilities that he was given in life.

If one lived a life of truth, a life of being “internal” – a life with Hashem – he ascends from his physical existence to the spark of the light of his neshamah, and then he rises from that spark to the actual radiance and light of his neshamah. His soul, in its depths, is attached with Hashem. The depths of his mind and heart are attached with the holy Torah, and there is where he is found.

R’ Eliezer HaGadol told his son, “My son, I am going to bliss with Hashem and His splendor.” When one lives on this world in the pleasant bliss of being connected with Hashem, with His honor revealed in all of His splendor, and when that is a person’s very life, he will go from one plateau to another on this world, and after death as well, he will go to the bliss of Hashem and His splendor, rising from place to place. His death will be like what is said in the verse, “Kiss me with the kisses of His mouth, for Your friendship is better than wine.” [16]When the soul leaves the body that sheathes it, it is the time for the soul to be revealed in its glory, just as Hashem will remove the sun from its sheath in the future. Such a death is a resemblance of the giving of the Torah: “Just as it was given, that is how it is taken. Just as it is given with 600,000, so is it taken with 600,000.”[17]

Of this level it is said, “He sits in Aravos (heaven), glad and rejoicing, that a soul has come to Him which is clean and righteous.”[18] When one dies, three groups of ministering angels come to greet him, just as the Gemara says regarding the death of Rebbi. It is entirely peaceful and entirely blissful and pleasant, for a person who lived with Hashem in his life.

To the extent that a person reached the depths of the light of the neshamah during his lifetime, a person become worthy of leaving in the world in a manner that is exalted. Just as the Jewish people left Egypt surrounded by the parts of the Mishkan, surrounded by the Shechinah as they journeyed, so does the soul go from one place to another. And just as in the journeys in the desert, each journey was “by the word of Hashem”, so can a person’s life on this world be a journey in which keeps rising higher, with the word of Hashem. And at death, when all physicality falls away and he is no longer blocked by it, all of his light can be revealed in its glory.

This is the life that tzaddikim live, and this is the death of tzaddikim, who are called alive even in their deaths. The way that tzaddikim live, is the way they die, and it is the same way they traverse the upper worlds, constantly living with Hashem’s light surrounding them.

After one dies, those mourning him remain below on this world and they cry for his loss, that he is no longer here. But the souls above are rejoiced to see him, and they join the happiness of the clean, righteous soul when he returns to above. And if one is connected to the light of the neshamah, he can connect even here to the joy of that neshamah above, and that is the depth behind the concept of hilula d’tzadika, remembering the righteous on their day of departure from this world. It is the joy of connecting to the happiness of the righteous souls above, who have gotten even closer to Hashem’s light, who ascend higher every year on their day when they left the world, to behold the pleasantness of Hashem, to live in Hashem’s light, with the true longings of the depths of the neshamah that senses and yearns for Hashem, to become attached to Him and to become integrated in Him.

Of this it says, “And the soul of my master is bound in living bond with Hashem your G-d”,[19] where the soul is miskalel bo Yisbarach: integrated in Hashem.