Kabbalah Library

5. When a person is about to go to that world, and he is in his sickness home, three messengers come to him, and he sees there what man cannot see while he is in this world. That day is the day of upper judgment, when the king asks back His deposit: the soul. Happy is the man who returns the deposit to the king as he was given it, without spoiling. If the deposit has been made dirty with the filths of the body, what will he say to the owner of the deposit?

6. He raises his eyes and sees the angel of death standing before him with his sword drawn in his hand. The saboteur and the ruler in the breaking of that man. Nothing is as hard for the soul as her parting from the body. A person does not die before he sees the Shechina, and because of all the passion for the Shechina, the soul emerges from the body, to welcome the Shechina. Once the soul has departed from the body, who is the soul that it can adhere to the Shechina and be accepted in her?

7. Once the soul exits the body and the body remains without a spirit, it is forbidden to leave it without burial, as it is written, “His corpse shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall indeed bury him that day,” since the dead who is without burial twenty-four hours, which are day and night, causes weakness in the organs of the Merkava [chariot/structure], to which man implies, and detains the work of the Creator from being done. It is possible that the Creator has sentenced him immediately to another incarnation, on the same day when he passed away, to do good to him, but as long as the body is not buried, the soul does not come before the Creator and cannot be in another body in another incarnation, since another body is not to be given to a soul before the first one is buried. This is like a person whose wife had died; he is unfit for marrying another woman before he buries the first. For this reason, the Torah said. “His corpse shall not remain overnight on the tree.”

8. When the soul is separated from the body and wants to go to that world, she will not enter that world until she is given a different body, from light. Afterwards, she can come in. We know this from Elijah, who had two bodies: one in which he was seen below, by people, and one in which he was seen above, among the high and holy angels. As long as the body is not buried, it is an affliction for the soul and the spirit of impurity is ready to be on it and defile that body.

9. Because the spirit of impurity is ready to defile the body, a person should not leave that body for one night since the spirit of impurity is present at night and wanders throughout the earth to find a body without a soul to defile it. Hence, at night he is more defiled. This is why he warned the priests saying “No one shall make himself impure for the dead among his people.” Because they are holy, the spirit of impurity will not be on them and they will not be defiled, since a body without a spirit, the spirit of impurity is ready to be in it.