Life: What's Next? - Rabbi Yitzchak Botton

[Music] [Applause] [Music] today we're going to discuss a question that really most people should be asking themselves and if they're not asking this question and unfortunately they might wind up with a unpleasant surprise later on in life and the question is what happens to a soul after it leaves this world you know part of Judaism obviously explains that we have an eternal soul within and you know the hidden teachings the teachings of Kabbalah explained in quite detail what happens what is the journey of that soul once the person passes away and so we want to get into that a little bit today in general we're told that there are basically two places that you can go you know there's I guess the five star hotel and then there's the we won't call it a koala baby that you can compare to maybe be jail would be interesting in human analogy but basically the soul can either go to a place called GaN Eden it's really a world for souls it is often called Olam haba the world to come not to confuse it with the idea of the world to come that comes at the end of the entire 6,000 year period when we will greet mashiac and there'll be a revival of the dead that world to come is the ultimate world to come that comes at the end of this entire story of our life so to speak but as a borrowed term we discuss GaN Eden we call Olam haba because it comes after a person dies so there's an idea that of all of our mother comes after the entire span of life 6,000 years are finished and there's an Olam haba that comes when a person's personal life is finished and it is Olam haba so to speak and that all of my bar could be gone eating which is a place where the soul takes pleasure in that experiencing divine revelation it's a world of reward it's called a world of reward the soul is rewarded in it to a certain degree for its good feeds the missiles that it has done and certainly if a soul manages to stay clean and free from sin then all that'sthat's all he has to experience the great tsadikim that we know come into this world the leaders of the Jewish people the very holy role models that we have they leave the world and go straight to GaN Eden the different stories that mentioned how when it Sadiq passes away so it's a great great simcha in heaven and all of the study came in and all the upper the angels in the upper world that they're all aware of this great event that this great fabric is coming now to to the higher realms and they greet him with great great joy and it's a great simcha that's for the great tsadikim but unfortunate for the average person that has a mixture of good and bad so the story isn't so simple there's GaN Eden is of course a place that that that is still available to the average person because again it's done hopefully many mitzvahs but we introduce another place that we can go that is genome genome in English the terms used as hell or purgatory really Jahannam is also a world for souls but it's the world for souls to go to that has unfortunately through either a lack of performance of mitzvahs but more so because of transgression has to go to in order to cleanse and purge their body they are their soul of the blemish of sin sin damages the soul it's something we have to be very clear about just like fire burns and can be very destructive so - sin is we're compared to a spiritual fire it burns it damages the neshamah the analogy given is the idea of a soul becoming dirty or that when you take the idea of taking minerals from the earth gold for example that we see is so beautiful and shiny that after a lot of work goes into refining and purifying that gold but if we would look at a piece of pure raw gold from the earth it's mixed with all kinds of things it would look ugly and tarnished so one example they give is that example that through sin negativity and blemish attach itself to the neshamah and it has that appearance that that it's tarnished appearance and just like we throw the gold into the fire really hot fire to to purify it imperative its blemishes so to the soul must go through so to speak the fires of Gehenna in order to become cleansed from its sins with this idea we can appreciate the whole concept of Jahannam it's not really punishment for the sake of punishment if there's no idea in any religion about a God that sits above and says you betrayed me now you will suffer Kuster Shalom that is not at all the approach of what the whole concept of a genome is about and no is it actually something there to help us you know if a person for example has a beautiful white shirt spent a lot of money on it one of these design their shirts we want you know a lot of a lot of money and he unfortunately tarnishes it it gets it dirty stained so he doesn't want to throw away the sheriff the shirt is very important very valuable so what do we do we take it to a dry cleaner with laundry mats and they and we fix it that's it is an example that we give that we're giving it for the idea of Gangnam Kappa for example the words cut power which translates to atonement to become atone for one sin is from language of cleansing and cleanings you know scrubbing and getting out with the blemish so really Katara is compared to connected to cleansing and that's what the soul must go through it must go through a cleansing period the stage work to become clean and restore to its former beauty and glory then it becomes ready to go to Ganesha the world where souls have a benefit and you know bask in the revelation of the vine of divinity and so we can appreciate what Ganim is in this context you know is really there for us there is actually a story brought for one of the great kabbalist that was you know it had involved himself in trying to help souls that had left the world speaking with one of the like a heavenly guard appointed over different souls and on an occasion speaking to this guard spiritual entity he was explained that the court in heaven is not at all looking for you know you know vengeance looking to get even its purpose is to you know evaluate the person's case meaning his sins and prescribing the remedy like a doctor prescribed medicine and they prescribed what is necessary in order for the soul to become better to perfect and heal and cure the soul and once that's accomplished so happily they see the hopes I'll go to Canadian the world of souls that are very positive and beneficial and so that is really the purpose of genome is really there for us and that is a big misconception that most people are not aware of that Souls go to Ganim for their own good as a result and a consequence of their actions now there is a third idea I want to talk about and what this will conclude today's discussion of what happens to the soul after it passes away and that is one more option unfortunately that exists for souls that are so bad in their lifetime that Jahannam is not enough to fix them meaning that they're so bad they cannot even get into getting them and that is a very scary thought imagine you know you're you're begging pleading please let me intervene on and they're strapped they're sucked out of gana because even Ganon has its limitations as to what type of soul it can fix and so these souls that are so wicked and have done such that maturely neshama are sentenced to much harsher penalties could be hundreds of years that they have to you know wander in an in-between stage where they suffer tremendously we're not here to scare everybody but there are made Russian that speak about this there's a famous leadership every Activa that speaks about a soul that was so bad that it was trapped and it suffered for a long long long time and one of its suffering we'll just mention one was that it was decreed upon that soul to gather wood for fire and he would have to gather it and then they would burn him alive in that fires is of course all happening in the spiritual sense but they would bird him in that fire repeatedly over and over again for an amount of time that we would you know you know cringe at the thought of how much time he was going through that suffering and all that was before he could go together and of course Jahannam is itself this very harsh you know suffering the ramble explains that the honam's the suffering of Ganim is worse than the suffering that we find in the book of Job so it's something that we should all really take very seriously if that's not enough to scare a person into behaving so then I don't know what is and with that in mind even of course we're not robots and it's hard for us to instantly change his life to become an exotic but knowing how real the troubles that await us if we neglect our responsibility in this world our will hopefully give us a push in the right direction and it's interesting with the small push you know let's imagine this road is downhill so again up the hill it's a little bit hard but once you have a push and it's downhill it's you can go very far once we push ourselves in the beginning it might be hard to change our habits to change our ways once we give that push then it's just easier and easier and before you know it you'll be standing in the place of the study team and you'll have that opportunity to go when your life is over - Gunn Aidan instead of unfortunately the other ideas that we mentioned today maybe will merit a judgement of mercy and they will merit to see the good that awaits us in the afterlife [Music] you