Questions I received on the soul:
Question: What happens to the soul when the body dies?
My Answer: The soul is “a part of the Creator,” and the Creator is the quality of bestowal and love. So, a person acquires a soul when this quality of “love for one’s neighbor” emerges in him. However, he does not have a soul until he acquires this quality of love and bestowal, and is similar to an animal. This is why it is written in Kabbalistic texts, “All of you are like animals,” “A person is born a small animal,” and so on.
One can acquire the quality of bestowal and love only under the influence of the Upper Light, which is a force that corrects one’s egoism. This Light is called Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif ) or the Creator because It surrounds us and we are inside it. It is written, “The Creator is like water that cleanses Israel (Mikve Israel Hashem), where Israel is Yashar-El, meaning, one who aspires to the Creator, to bestowal and love.
What does this mean? A person perceives our world using his natural, egoistic qualities. When he obtains the altruistic quality of bestowal and love, he feels the Upper World inside this quality. This means that he acquires a soul.
Once he acquires this quality, it stays with him even if his egoistic quality vanishes, or in other words, even if his body (the matter we feel in our sensations) dies. And that’s because there is only one created matter - the desire, and all existence is felt within this desire. If the desire has the intention, “for one’s own sake,” then one perceives “our world” or “this world.” If the desire has the intention, “for the sake of one’s neighbor,” then one perceives the Upper World or the Creator.
The birth of our bodies, our life and death, are but the emergence and extinction of the Light inside the egoistic desire. Spiritual birth, on the other hand, is the emergence of the desire to bestow and to love outside of oneself (to act not for one’s own sake, or not in order to feel egoistically comfortable).
The desire to bestow is independent of the egoistic desire, through which we feel our bodies and this world. Therefore, when the body dies and the feeling of this world vanishes, what remains is the altruistic desire and the feeling of the Upper World.
Question: How can the soul “see,” “feel,” and “perceive” without the functioning of the brain?
My Answer: We feel everything inside the desire. The brain only helps us to distinguish what we see, or rather, what we desire.
Question: Is it really possible for the soul of a person who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, who has lost his memory and cognition, to restore all of this after death?
My Answer: Once a person develops the soul, the quality of bestowal, it never disappears.
Question: Why does it happen that infants and small children, whose souls have not yet been corrected, die so young?
My Answer: By existing for as long as they were destined to, they corrected a particular part of their spiritual development.
from rav laitman
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