Reincarnation According to Kabbalah
- Reincarnation according to Kabbalah is a process of spiritual ascent that requires development of the soul while alive in this world.
- Without spiritual development, reincarnation is merely cycles of physical birth and death, lacking our participation and awareness.
- Reincarnation happens with our active participation when we develop an intention to bestow upon our inborn desire to receive.
Introduction to Reincarnation According to Kabbalah
Many people associate reincarnation with folklore and mythical tales. Reincarnation exists in many traditions. It is often used to promise rewards or to spark fears of punishments. But how does Kabbalah explain reincarnation?
The beginning of the way Kabbalah explains reincarnation requires an introduction to understanding the soul.
If souls exist, then they must reincarnate. But what is a soul? Many people believe that the soul is the force of life within the body. They see a corpse and assume that it lacks “the soul” as a force that was thinking, speaking, and acting.
However, according to Kabbalah, the soul is not simply the body’s force of life. We consist of a body and something beyond it, which many assume to be the soul. But the way the public perceives reincarnation, as the movement of a soul from one body to another, is not how Kabbalah explains it.
What is the soul? The soul is the force of bestowal that we can acquire above our inborn desire to receive. This force does not exist naturally within us. Our nature is egoistic, a desire to receive for personal benefit alone, and the nature outside of ours is the desire to bestow, also called “the force of bestowal.” That is where our soul exists. We thus need to develop our soul, which means to develop an intention to bestow upon our inborn desire to receive, and when we acquire the force of bestowal and receive the ability to bestow, it is considered that we have acquired a soul.
There are different levels of the soul. In Kabbalah, we call them Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida. The more we transform our egoistic intention upon our desire to receive into one of bestowal, the more we rise in the soul’s degrees. This process is called “the reincarnation of the soul.” It is a continuous spiritual ascent. At each degree, more of the force of bestowal dresses in us, bringing us closer to our life’s origin.
What Happens If We Do Not Acquire a Soul?
If we do not acquire the intention to bestow upon our desire to receive, then we have no soul, only a spark. This spark is a potential soul. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is also called “a part of God from above” and “the point in
the heart.”
If we do not develop this spark during our lifetime, then nothing significant happens after our corporeal death. We simply lose the feeling of this world, our body ceases to exist, and we return to another physical body—another set of five senses run by a similar egoistic operating system—to receive another opportunity to develop our soul.
This means that only the process of spiritual development determines our reincarnations. If we do not engage in spiritual transformation, our only connection to reincarnation is the cycle of physical life and death, and we lack awareness of this process.
The Process of Reincarnation
The process of reincarnation requires us to rise above our ego, correct our egoistic self-aimed intention upon our desire to receive, and transform it into an intention to bestow. Each step in this process is considered a new incarnation.
However, if we do not develop spiritually, we reincarnate at the lowest level of perception and sensation, experiencing only physical existence. In this case, reincarnation happens unconsciously: we are simply born into a new body, which as we mentioned is a new set of five senses that are run by a similar egoistic operating system, and restart in this lowest level of life.
Kabbalists, however, consciously undergo reincarnations while still alive by rising through spiritual degrees. If we apply ourselves to the method of Kabbalah, then we can experience several reincarnations in one lifetime.
Reincarnation and the Conservation of Energy
We can draw a comparison between reincarnation and the law of conservation of energy in physics. Just as energy does not disappear but only changes form, the soul does not vanish: it continually develops through different states.
Each reincarnation refines the desire to receive and brings it closer to its spiritual state of bestowal. The body is a temporary vessel for spiritual work. When we correct our desire to receive, we transition into a higher state of existence, with the intention to bestow above our desire to receive.
Resurrection of the Dead
At the end of this transformation process, called the “end of correction” (Gmar Tikkun), there is a concept called the “resurrection of the dead.” In Kabbalah, “death” refers to our egoistic self-aimed use of our desire to receive. This ego is repeatedly annulled throughout the correction process.
When we correct all egoistic intentions upon our desires, they become revived as desires that operate with a bestowing intention. This is the meaning of the resurrection of the dead: our former egoistic qualities now function in a direction of bestowal, resembling the force of bestowal itself.
Our Choice in Reincarnation
Ultimately, we can choose how we reincarnate, whether through physical cycles of birth and death, lacking awareness, or through rising up the soul’s degrees while alive in this world.
The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches that reincarnation is not about changing physical bodies but about changing our spiritual states. Each correction we undergo—each application of the intention to bestow upon our desire to receive—brings us closer to our final state as a soul that exists in a state of pure bestowal. When all humanity unites in the quality of love and bestowal, reincarnation will no longer be necessary.
To correct our souls, we should develop connections of love, mutual consideration, responsibility, and bestowal between us. By doing so, we unite, as it is written, “as one man with one heart.” Then, our reincarnations will lead us quickly to the best possible state.
Reincarnation FAQ
Is Reincarnation a Truth or Just an Illusion?
Our entire evolution is a form of reincarnation, which we can view in two ways. If we view it from the ego’s perspective, then it seems as if we live and die, forget everything, and we then have another life because we have not yet completed our correction or fulfilled the purpose of our life—to be able to live beyond this world in the intention to bestow above our inborn desire to receive.
If we have no knowledge of this process, if no one ever taught us what internal reincarnation is, then we will perceive our current life as just another physical life that eventually perishes. However, if we understand that the evolutionary process on the human level and the soul’s evolution is an internal one, and that reincarnation happens every time we make a correction—placing an intention to bestow upon our desire to receive—and by doing so, move to a higher degree of similarity of form with the upper force of bestowal, then external physical reincarnation does not have to take place.
We can have several reincarnations within what appears to be a single physical lifetime. Reincarnation is thus a reality, both physically and internally. The question is: How do we experience that reality? How do we experience the force of evolution? Do we experience it on a physical level, or do we grasp onto the spiritual force that develops us? Grasping onto that force does not require physical death. It rather requires a shift out of the egoistic intention for self-benefit to an intention to bestow, and to positively connect with others and nature.
Do Kabbalists Believe in Reincarnation?
Kabbalists do not believe in reincarnation. They study it, see it, watch it, and invite everybody who so wishes to do the same.
In Kabbalah, there is no belief in the sense of blindly believing something someone tells us. The first rule in Kabbalah, which is first and foremost a science, states that “the judge has only what their eyes can see.” This means that everything comes through study, research, experimentation, observation, and direct experience. We must exist within a certain perception to understand it.
Faith, as commonly understood, does not exist in Kabbalah. What is faith? If someone tells me something, should I simply accept it as fact? Kabbalah does not work
that way.
Do We Reincarnate? If So, What Part of Us Reincarnates?
Yes, we reincarnate, and we can experience reincarnation either internally or externally depending on whether or not we participate and agree with the force that develops us.
Death was inserted into the system of our existence as a result of what Kabbalah calls “the shattering of the collective soul.” We call every part of that soul “an individual soul” and it consists of 613 desires that focus on receiving for themselves. A developmental force constantly evolves these desires to their perfect state: the transformation of our inborn egoistic intention upon our desire to receive, where we wish to enjoy at others’ expense, into an intention to bestow above our desire to receive. This process continues unraveling until all desires become corrected with the receiving-to-bestowing inversion of our intention. No matter how it might appear while we undergo this process, everything always progresses and never reverts. All spiritual development is cumulative.
An incarnation begins with the appearance of a desire in its uncorrected state. Initially, this desire is egoistic, i.e., it enjoys in a self-serving direction. Eventually, inside its own self-satisfaction, it starts to sense that it is not just taking from nowhere, but that it receives from a greater force giving to it. Once it reaches this realization, it starts wanting to experience fulfillment and enjoyment differently, not by receiving, but by giving. It does so because it perceives the status of giving as greater than the pleasure of receiving.
To achieve this, it needs to stop experiencing itself as a receiver. To help with this transition, it is given what Kabbalah calls a “screen” (Masach), i.e., an intention that lets it bestow above its innate desire to receive. This is the beginning of new life lived in an outwardly-directed mode of bestowal, or in other words, the beginning of our life in the soul.
At first, each new state of reincarnation feels empty or dark because the vessel (the desire) is still attached to its old definition of life and pleasure, the one it is trying to leave behind. Even though the future state is bigger and better, it feels completely opposite to our past perception, so until we attain our more advanced state, we are clueless as to what awaits us there.
At the corporeal level, the same mechanism plays out as a force that dresses itself in physical bodies, each with unique talents and personalities, appearing and disappearing over several generations. With each new generational cycle, we completely forget our former life. Why? It is because we need a completely new mind to grasp the spiritual transformation that we need to eventually undergo. In other words, the need to attain a higher level of reality does not let us remain in the same mind. Instead, we need a new one. The new mind functions as the operating system necessary for our next stage of development.
What Part of Us Reincarnates?
The part of us that reincarnates is the individual soul in the process of realizing its connection to the collective soul. That is the basis of the inner “I” or “self.” Eventually, we come to realize that the physical body exists solely to help elevate and refine the soul, rendering the body insignificant in comparison. We can exchange organs and limbs with other species and continue living, even without all of our body parts, all the while continuing to develop the soul.
A Kabbalist is someone who has learned how to participate in this process of transformation of the egoistic intention to one of bestowal, similar to the upper force of bestowal itself. They can internally pass through several lifetimes in a single day. By doing so, the soul experiences such delight that eventually, the need to descend into this world disappears, and we exist in a completely different, eternal, and
perfect reality.
However, until this inner quality awakens in us, until we transform our egoistic intention with one of bestowal, we need to continue being born and dying according to the perception in the egoistic desire.
