Admit it, you've always wondered - what really happens after death?

This is one of the most intriguing questions in the world: when the body stops functioning, does life cease, or is there a continuation after death? What happens after we die? Apparently, it is difficult to know what happens in a place from which no one has returned, but in truth, we can know quite a few things in light of testimonies from the world beyond that are received, and in light of what has been passed down to us in the Jewish tradition since the giving of the Torah.

There are many records of people who have experienced near-death experiences ("clinical death"), which provide a fairly detailed description of what they experienced there "on the other side." In addition, they tell details they saw and heard during that experience, for which there is no rational argument that can provide an explanation of how they could have known those details. For example, things that happened on other floors of the hospital and in other distant places, or events that occurred around them while they were in clinical death.

Although there are scientists who deny the possibility of life after death and explain it as various biological phenomena that deceive the person, in contrast to other scientists who claim the opposite. From their perspective, they are right, but pure science is capable of grasping only tangible things, and it has no ability to deal with what is beyond consciousness. It is precisely religions and mystical methods that are not afraid to deal with this field, and therefore they are often able to provide more successful explanations for anomalous phenomena, such as toddlers speaking foreign languages at a native level, communication with spirits from the other side, and phenomena of clinical death.

What happens before life?

"Near-death experiences" provide an opening to understanding what happens after death, but before that, one must dwell on the question: what happens before life?

Before the soul descends into this world, it is in a place called the "Hall of Souls." When its time comes to descend into this world, it is shown all the spiritual worlds that exist in the dimension beyond, the entire dawn of history, and it is explained its purpose and role in descending into this world within a body. Then that miracle of the wonders of creation occurs, in which a lump of flesh suddenly turns into a living creature. A few cells connect together, grow and swell, and suddenly hands, feet, a pancreas, a brain are formed. And then, in one moment, the silent lump receives a soul and becomes a creature with consciousness and personality.

According to the Jewish perception, a person is made of a combination of two opposites: a physical part, the body - "For dust you are and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19), and a spiritual part, the soul - "And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7). In the original state, these two parts are separate from each other, and when they connect miraculously, life is created. What happens during the creation of life is a process opposite to what happens at the end of life, when each part returns to its place - the body returns to being matter, and the soul returns to its source. The body rots in the ground, and the soul continues its eternal life, just as it was before it entered the physical body.

What happens after life?

The Bible does not refer much to the description and detail of the world to come, the world of souls, and one of the reasons for this is our inability to understand concepts that we do not know within the framework of our earthly lives. The reason for our inability to understand what really happens in the world beyond is our lack of ability to grasp such spiritual concepts as long as we see, hear, breathe, and live in a world of boundaries, physical dimensions, and matter. What happens to a person after he leaves this world is similar to a fetus that is in its mother's womb, which is unable to grasp that there is "life after birth." Even if theoretically we could communicate with the fetus, it would not be possible to describe to it the world outside, because it lacks the required perception ability. Concepts like light, color, touch, society - are inconceivable from its perspective.

We are all in such an "embryonic" reality, and we are unable to know exactly how it feels when the soul leaves, and what the world that is beyond this world looks like, but this does not mean that they do not exist - they are simply in a higher spiritual layer.

In various books of the Torah's secrets, it is described what happens to the soul when it arrives in the world of souls. It is amazing, but quite similar descriptions were given by people who experienced clinical death and returned to life - even though they had never studied these books.

It is important to note that we have no understanding or grasp of what those events are that occur in the dimension of the soul when it leaves the body. Terms such as heaven, hell, court, and even punishment are not identical to the concepts we imagine now. It is important to understand that their meaning is not literal, but in the absence of an ability to conceptualize accurately to describe the phenomenon, concepts familiar to us from our world are used.

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A. The transition to the world of souls - after a person's passing, his soul is still in the vicinity of his body, and therefore he knows what is happening around his body. And so it is said in the Talmud: "Everything that is said in front of the deceased, he knows" (Tractate Shabbat, page 152, side b). This knowledge corresponds to the many descriptions of clinical death cases, in which people describe what happened around them, despite their state in which they were without a pulse, breathless, and without brain activity.

After that, the soul is privileged to see higher sights and revelations, as brought in the holy books: "At the hour when a person's days are completed to leave the world, permission is given to the person to see what he was not permitted to see" (The Holy Zohar, Genesis 218), and also "For it says: for no man shall see Me and live. In their lives - they do not see, but they see at the hour of their death" (Bemidbar Rabbah, end of Nasso).

Likewise, it is brought in the Holy Zohar that at the hour of passing, the deceased's relatives go out to meet him and accompany him: "His father and his relatives are there with him, and he sees them, and becomes acquainted with them, and they go and accompany his soul to the place where it will dwell" (The Holy Zohar, Genesis 218, item 2).

B. The Heavenly Court - after the soul arrives in the upper spiritual world, it stands before a court composed of judges. In the court, the soul is judged for all its deeds during its life: commandments and good deeds on one hand, and sins and negative deeds on the other.

The soul is shown all its deeds in this world from the moment of its birth until the moment of its passing, as the sages of Israel wrote: "When a person departs from the world, all his deeds come and are detailed before him" (Sifrei, Haazinu). After that, scales are placed before it, when all the positive deeds it did during its life are placed on one side of the scales, and the negative deeds are placed on the other side of the scales.

People who experienced clinical death, or people who received messages in a dream from their deceased relatives, tell that every smallest deed is documented and taken into account in that trial: a small sum of money that they borrowed from a friend and did not return, a small favor they did for another person without thinking, an insult and injury or encouragement and strengthening of another - everything is written in the ledger, and as the Mishna says in Tractate Avot: "And all your deeds are written in a book," nothing is forgotten.

It is understood that these are not simple moments for the soul. Another moment and its fate is decided, and then it will be decided where it is headed, when every decision has eternal and fateful significance. However, in every trial there is a prosecutor, but there is also a defense. Every commandment and good deed that a person does during his life - serves for him as a defense attorney who stands by his side in court, and on the other hand, every transgression and negative deed creates an accuser who testifies against him in that trial.

C. Heaven or Hell, reincarnation, and more - at the end of the trial, it is decided what the soul's judgment will be. Has its journey of correction ended, and is it worthy to reach heaven, or has it not yet reached its perfection? In the event that the soul has not yet managed to achieve its purpose, it will have to go through a few more paths before arriving at the desired station - heaven.

What do you feel in heaven? Not much can be known, but the sages taught us and said: "The righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the radiance of the Shekhinah" (Tractate Berakhot, page 17, side a). The meaning of this - supreme pleasure, immense joy, and happiness that has no limit, which we cannot understand as long as we are inside a body...

D. The world to come in this world - heaven is not the final station for souls, as many might think. Heaven is nothing but a temporary intermediate station for them. The final stage of creation will occur after the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. What will happen then? It will be heaven on earth, a perfect physical reality in which corrected souls will return to live inside a body of eternal life. The spiritual pleasure that those who merit to live this way will have will be so immense and infinite that we have no faint idea about this type of pleasure whose source is absolute connection to the Creator of the world.

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