Memory, Consciousness & the Afterlife: "Making Your Soul's Mixtape"

So first of all I just want to acknowledge that Bahashem those who are here present with us in actual physical space you've joined us at the Leviet Library which is a uh a thriving center of uh early childhood education. and it's a lending library. Uh it's a center of the community right here on central avenue in Cedarhurst in the five towns which is run by Kabad the five towns and the levy library is named for a young man whose yard site was just observed the shabasim ramen and this event is in conjunction with the yard site and we want encourage everybody to do your part by pledging your mitzvah at mitzvah for levy.com mitzvah.com and uh hopefully also throughout tonight's lecture you'll understand just how meaningful that is. So, uh, tonight's lecture has an anacronistic title. You know what I mean? Anacronistic. It's uh, it's an anacronism, but I'm repeating myself. An anacronism is something that uh is out of time, meaning it's not in the right time. So, uh, I came up with the title, making your soul's mixtape. And then I started getting feedback and people were like, "What's a mixtape? That's so outdated. That's so old." So, I actually I I discussed it with my daughter, my 20-year-old daughter, Tyel, who does basically is my right-hand man, right-hand woman. She runs all the the back end of everything on Soul Words. So, I said, "They're they're telling me it's very outdated. Should I call it making it your um MP3 playlist?" And she, as a good 20-year-old should do, she rolled her eyes. She said, "That's even worse." So, I said, "Well, I don't know what they call it now. I don't I don't know what the kids call it nowadays, but when we were kids, we called it a mixtape. That's what we called it." Okay. So, whatever it's really called, please forgive me. And I hope there's some type of analog to this in 2022. Um, yeah. So, [laughter] yeah. [sighs] to to understand the soul's mixtape. I wanna I want to start with a with a big question which is probably the biggest philosophical question and scientific question that remains at least in the secular world, in this philosophical world and the scientific world that remains unresolved. And that is what is the origin of consciousness? Where does consciousness as a phenomenon emerge from? The fact that we are sensient beings. We're aware of ourselves. We have thoughts. We have feelings. We have memories. We have a sense of identity. Where does that come from? So in the secular world at least right now at least currently the popular worldview is materialism. Materialism is pretty much um in various different iterations the prevailing secular worldview. And that means materialism not to be confused with conspicuous consumption which is a perhaps a behavioral outcome of values that are based on nothing more than materialism. Uh but materialism itself is is simply the assertion that everything that is real is material. If it exists, it is physical. It's a physical thing. And there's nothing other than physical existence. So then the question that is posed to the materialists is where does consciousness come from? Um, if we're to believe that consciousness is simply the result of chemical reactions in a bunch of cells or tissue called the brain. Then we have to ask you know how does that happen? that a a a glob of cells produced this otherworldly, intangible, unobservable thing called called consciousness. And and when did it occur? Exactly when in the narrative did matter become conscious? At what point did a thing form some identity? The ability to to refer to itself, the ability to think of itself. Now, obviously from a Torah point of view, this is not a question at all because from a Torah point of view, we would say quite the opposite that consciousness is not a product of matter, but matter is a product of consciousness. There was divine consciousness and from it from divine consciousness from from the divine thought emerged creation including the physical plane as we know it. Which is uh at least in terms of answering this question the the Torah model is an easier model to accept. It brings up other questions, but uh it's easier to understand that matter emerged from consciousness than consciousness emerged from matter. And if we do understand that consciousness predated matter, that there was awareness before there were things, and that the brain does not create consciousness, but rather is, let's say, an antenna which is receptive to consciousness. Then uh it's also very easy to understand that the consciousness that makes me me and makes you you is not inextricably linked at all to our bodies. From a materialistic point of view, it is once brain function ceases, this dream or this myth called consciousness disappears. But from the Torah model, consciousness existed long before the formation of the body. Consciousness will continue to exist after the sess the sessation of the of the functioning of the body. and that even during the time when the body was functioning the body wasn't producing consciousness like uh as I mentioned earlier just so many chemical reactions popping off in a clump of cells but uh the the the physical gear the uh the hardware called the brain was just sort of tapping into something spiritual called the mind that uh exists beyond the physical brain. So when we understand things from that perspective um I think it's a little bit easier to to start discussing the idea of of afterlife and in fact I think to understand why afterlife is actually even a misnomer because afterlife implies iz that life has come to an end and now there's something that's after life. Actually the labaves spoke to a group of college students in the 1960s and and spoke to them in English and mentioned to them that the word afterlife is a misnomer and that the term that we use or one of the terms we use in Hebrew which is a very edifying term is histalous. Histoalus. Sometimes we translate it as removal but uh you may translate it also as relocation or even as graduation. What it means is that the person who was always here is sort of repositioning by shedding their body. But their life continues and they're just sort of uh relocating. That's what histoalus means. Actually, the Reba mentioned to these college students uh that there's a concept of the conservation of matter and energy that nothing is truly destroyed. Nothing is created. Nothing is destroyed. Everything is always there. It just gets reiterated into new forms. So the Reba said if you could understand that you could understand very well that the consciousness of a person even after the cessation of the of the life of the body or the functioning of the body that the consciousness merely repositions and uh continues functioning. You know, there's uh I heard this directly from uh a colleague, a friend, a mentor of mine whose yard site was just a few days ago, Rabbi uh Yeshua Binyan Gordon all over. So his yard site I think is tavis alfishes is it? No, it's tavis. So it was just a few it was a what's today? V. So it was a week ago. So uh I heard from him because I I I remember when he was sitting Shiva for his mother Allah Shalom. So when I came to him when he was sitting Shiva in Crown Heights. So he told me that when his father Allah Shalom his father Shalom bear garden was sitting Shiva for his mother. The Rebbit told their family that you should know that when a loved one passes away, they don't disappear. In fact, they're very close by. That said, powerful uh words, they just went up to the second floor. So, imagine that you're in a house and you're you're you're on the first floor and people are talking and they're going about their activities and everything's going on and then there's this person who you used to see, you know, if if the gathering would have been in an earlier time, that person would have been there. Now, they're not there. They passed away. So, you're looking around, that person's not there. Oh, they're not here. No, they are here. They're just on the second floor. They're just on the second floor. They're very nearby. Obviously, that's a spatial way of describing something, you know, first floor, second floor. It's a it's a metaphor because we're not talking about time space. We're not talking about physical location. But what we are saying is that just because somebody's physical body stopped functioning doesn't mean their consciousness ceased to function. It doesn't mean their conscious consciousness even went far away because as we were explaining consciousness was never locked to the body to begin with. There's a there's a story that was told by from uh and he went into with the he tells a story not of his own but actually of somebody else's. He was waiting to go into a personal audience with the deba and uh he saw this guy waiting his turn and the guy looked very troubled and he could tell by looking at him that he was a wealthy man. He looked sort of aristocratic but that he looked very very troubled. So this this from noticed this this wealthy man who looked very uh very disturbed and uh he noticed him going into Yiddis and he noticed him coming out. And when this this gentleman the wealthy man who looked very disturbed came out of Yiddis he looked completely elated. He he had serenity. he had uh it looked like he didn't have a care in the world. So this uh Rabinowitz goes over to the to the fellow and he says I'm you know I'm a stranger so you don't have to tell me but I saw you went in you looked awful and I see you're coming out and you look completely different. So this fellow explains that he had lost his son and that he couldn't get over it. He was inconsolable and he sought help and uh guidance and comfort from all sources and nothing was really working. And somebody suggested him to go to the uh to the labba and he went to the and the said in theory what if I were to tell you that you know your son he didn't die he went to a foreign country where there's no way to communicate with him but he's very comfortable and he's very happy there. as a father, would you be I mean obviously you would miss him, but would you be okay with that? Would you be happy for him? And he said, "Yeah, you're telling me you my son is happy. He's doing well. I mean, obviously I I wish I could communicate with him, but you know, if he's doing well, then yeah, I'm happy." The Reba said, "And now what if I told you that actually you can communicate with him except it's only one direction. You can't hear from him but he can hear from you. How? You can send him packages. You can send him care packages." So he said, "Yeah, that would make it even easier to bear." So the said, "So what I'm telling you is not a theory. It's the reality. Your son isn't gone. He moved somewhere else, but he's okay. He's comfortable. He's well. And you can even send him packages. Every time you do a mitzvah in his honor, he's receiving benefit from that. in heaven. He knows it's from you and it's elevating his position in Ghana in the in paradise. So this this idea that loved ones who have passed away are are still very much present and still very much aware and still very much conscious is something that it's not just something we say to comfort people who have lost loved ones. It's tied up with our entire worldview and our entire understanding of the nature of reality. If you understand that there's such a thing called consciousness and you understand that the materialists themselves cannot explain where this consciousness comes from. It's the biggest unanswered question in the secular world today. They cannot explain how consciousness came from matter, let alone when it happened. If you understand that matter comes from consciousness and that consciousness existed before and will continue to exist after the material, then it's self-evident. It's obvious that the same person meaning the personality, the the worldview, the the the way of looking at things, the the sense of humor, the temperament, all of that stuff that you knew as this person, that's not a physical phenomena. the interface. The interface the fact that you were able to observe it in a physical way. Yes. Yes. And and and and the loss of that is a loss. And we acknowledge that that's a it's that that it's a loss. And when we comfort mourers, that's what we're comforting them about is the loss of that physical window to the consciousness because it is a loss. But we're not comforting them that they lost the person, that the person ceased to exist. That's patently untrue. The person exists. And not only does the person exist, they exist like they always existed. They always existed and they continue to exist. You know, there there's a there's a there's a story that uh it's a well-known kabad story gets told very often because there's a story about the about the bravery of the the previous when he was in prison and he was being interrogated and uh it's a deep story and I don't think the depth of it is often explained. He's in prison and and the and the KGB is trying to make him crack. And as I'm sure all of us are aware, the uh the KGB were masters of psychological manipulation. That was their entire expertise was was how to crack people, how to intimidate people. And uh the story is that the the the previous Reb was annoying them because he wasn't rattling. So out of frustration, one of the interrogators pulled out a gun and he said condescendingly, "This little toy has been known to make people talk." So the previous Reb said this little toy is effective on those who have one world and many gods. But I have two worlds and one God. Now, obviously, the story in and of itself is an impressive story and an inspiring story, but it's also a very deep story. And I finally saw where the Reb, previous Reb's son-in-law and successor, actually explains the depth of the story. He says that when the previous rabbi told the KGB that I have two worlds and one God, he wasn't saying, and this is the way it's very easy to take the story. It's very easy to take the story like, okay, well, buddy, kill me. I have two worlds. I'll I'll leave this world or go to the other world. He wasn't saying I have two worlds meaning well I can always go to heaven you know like that's not what it meant. The Reba explains he was telling the interrogator who by the way was a understandably from the context of the story was a communist. The communists were materialists. Marxism is dialectical materialism. That's why he believed that religion is the opiate of the masses because he believed that anything spiritual was a distraction from the one truth which is the allocation of material resources. So the fed is telling this materialist, this communist, you think I'm in your prison. You think you're the boss and I have to cower in fear of you. You don't understand. You're looking at the tip of the iceberg. You're looking at the facade. You're not getting the big picture here. In reality, I inhabit two worlds. Not if you kill me I'll leave one world and I'll go to the other world. That's not what he meant. What the previous meant was even right now this little interchange that's going on is happening on two planes of reality simultaneously. The physical one you are privy to with your five senses and it looks like you've got the upper hand. But there's a spiritual parallel reality going on concurrently which might I add is an even richer, more involved, more detailed reality than the physical one. The physical one is really the most superficial. It's the end of the line. It's just a very thin veneer of of all of reality. But there are two worlds right now. He he didn't he didn't mean I'm going to go from this world to another world. He meant right now things are happening on two planes. There's the there's the physical which is like I said the tip of the iceberg and then there's the spiritual which is the much greater depth and they're happening right now at this moment. Everything's happening in two worlds. So here's the point I'm trying to impress upon you. It's not like people pass away and then they go to another world. Everything we've ever experienced, even while we're experiencing embodiment, is also taking place in the spiritual worlds. We just don't pay attention to it. Because when you are embodied, the physical stimuli are so intense that it distracts us from being sensitive to the spiritual reality that we are currently inhabiting. We are currently inhabiting more than one plane of reality, but the spiritual becomes covered up. It's like trying to hear a speakerphone in the next room over while there's a loud wild party going on in this room. So the spiritual would be like a speakerphone in the other room and then the physical stimuli of this world would be like the wild loud party going on right here in this room. What happens though when there's the cessation of the function of the physical body and it's no longer reading five senses, the five physical senses, seeing, hearing, smell, taste, touch. So now it's like all that static, all that distraction, all that um noise is finally canceled out. And now the person's consciousness is finally able to focus on the spiritual stimuli that were being covered up before. In fact, if we could describe what passing on from the physical world is for the one that it's happening to. It could probably fairly aptly be described as a a refinement of consciousness. losing stimuli which are noise and being able to focus in on stimuli which are meaningful. And so ultimately what happens is that the soul experiences profound pleasure in Ghana. That's the way we refer to paradise or heaven. We call Gan Eden, Garden of Eden. But we're not talking about the physical garden of Eden that Adam and Eve lived in. Talking about a spiritual plane. The pleasure that the souls experience in Ganeden is the pleasure of being able to immerse themselves purely in spiritual stimuli with no distraction anymore. with no more noise. This is what the Gmorrah says. Braha 17a that there's no eating and drinking in paradise but rather the souls of the righteous sit with crowns on their head and delight in the ray of the divine presence. What does this mean? They delight in the ray of the divine presence. It means they're finally able to experience unbridled, unfiltered spirituality without distractions. And it's wonderfully blissful. But this brings us to the discussion of the mixtape, my my clumsy uh anacronistic metaphor. I was one time I was on a trip, an Israel trip and uh a tour. I went on a tour and there was this young guy who uh he was going around with headphones the whole time. And uh it even became a joke like the tour guide would mention that uh oh he can't hear he's listening on his headphones. So I I was interested why he's so into the headphones and uh he explained to me that sometimes he'll listen to a song or he realized that sometimes he'll listen to a song and when he listens to a song it'll trigger a flood of memories where he was in his life when he used to listen to that song. And when he said that, I I I I immediately understood what he was describing. I think it's a fairly universal phenomenon that people uh experience. So he said, "So what I like to do is when I take a trip and I want to be able to relive it, I make a special mixtape." And he showed me is a little tape and it said Israel on it. That was was his Israel. And he said, "So now what'll happen is when I'll go home, if I'll ever want to relive the trip, I'll listen to these songs and I'll get all these memories flooding back." And I realized how smart that was that actually, you know, everybody takes pictures and you look at the pictures and uh I don't know, maybe for some people they're strong memory triggers. I'm not I'm not sure that they are, but it's true. Like that uncanny feeling that you get when you hear a song and it reminds you of exactly where you were, who you were with, how you were feeling. It's wild. And it could even like persist for years, for decades. It's like it's so uncanny the ability that it'll have to actually if someone were to ask were to ask you how were you feeling on September 23rd you know uh at 3 p.m. like I have no recollection. I don't even know what I was doing. Okay. Well, here's a picture. How were you feeling? I don't know. I'm looking at a picture of myself. I don't know how I was feeling. And then they play you the song that you were listen. Oh, I can tell you how I was feeling. All right. So think about your embodiment phase of your existence or your embodiment phase of your consciousness's journey as an opportunity to create a mixtape for a trip that you're going to go on. So, you're going to go on a trip and when you want to have memories to relive, you're going to listen to your your mixtape. And and and here's the thing, the the mixtape um what whatever you have, it's all you have. You don't get to add to it. You don't get to add new songs and you can't fast forward through it. So, pick wisely. But whatever you have, that's what you're going to have. And you're gonna have it for a long time. Long time isn't even an appropriate way to describe it because uh it's a it's a place that's above time. There is no time. But you're going to go and you're going to relisten to this tape over and over and over again. And every time you relisten, it's going to get more meaningful. It's only going to get more meaningful. The Gamorra says about uh heaven, fortunate is the man who arrives here. That means in the spiritual realm and he has his learning. Talmud means learning Torah study. Bey arrived in heaven with Torah study. Why? Why is that so important? Why does that make a person fortunate that he arrived in heaven with Torah study? And I'll tell you why. Because once you get to heaven, there's no new Torah study. And Torah study is all they do in heaven. Because remember, they're free from all of the noise. Well, when you get rid of all the noise and you only have truth left, what's the truth? What's the truth? Truth. Truth is Torah. Hashem's truth. So what do you think when when when it says that the souls in heaven are delighting are basking in rays of godliness? How does that function? What is that? So the cabala explains that the souls in heaven don't eat or drink. Yeah. Physically, but they do consume Torah study. That's their food. Torah study is the food is the delicacy which is served in heaven. But the thing is it's not new food. It's not new Torah information. It's relistening to your own mixtape. That's not how Khan Vital says it. But that's how [laughter] the Tyra that you learned in this lifetime during embodiment is your soul's mixtape. And then you go up there and you relisten. You can't add new stuff anymore, but everything that you have gets more and more meaningful every time you listen to it because it's Torah. It's not just truth. It's infinite truth. There are infinite levels. So what does it mean the the layers or the levels of Ganed? When we speak about an a should have an aliyah, what does it mean? An aliyah, an ascent. It's not a physical being anymore. Consciousness never was a physical being. So when we say it's having an ascent, it doesn't mean it's going physically higher. The elevation means an elevation in consciousness. You know, you ever speak to a kid about a topic and then you speak to an adult about the same topic? It's the same topic, but one has a deeper understanding of the topic. So the elevation of the soul means it has a deeper consciousness and so it relists to its mixtape and it appreciates the same song that it heard last year. Every year on a y site, the soul goes to another level. And now on the higher level, it says, "I thought I appreciated that piece of Torah that I learned. Now I really appreciate it on a whole new level." So there there's a hayy you know hayim is a safer of a that the the made of little thoughts tiny little like a paragraph sometimes it's just a oneliner. So there's there's a hayim from the the date is the 17th of manim of and it's a very short hayim even as hays go and it says that whatever you study down here in this world you're going to restudy up there in the higher world and the tamakadic that's [clears throat] the third rabb of kabad the grandson of the balat He says when a person therefore realizes that that's what happens. So when you learn a he says specifically a and you realize that up there you're going to relearn it on an incomparably deeper more rarified more spiritual level. He says this will motivate the person. And it will give him a whole new passion in in limatra. He says, it puts a little fire into him. I think this is one of the things that's most misunderstood that uh you know sometimes even people think it's boring to study Jewish law. It's very technical and I'm not a rabbi. Why do I have to know this stuff? And the reality is that all of Toyota operates simultaneously on uh multiple dimensions. We know there's the but there's the dush the so down here yeah we're physical people. Even when we try to learn kabala, the spiritual stuff, it's very abstract for us and we have to stretch our minds. So we relate more readily to the to the empirical stuff, the stuff that's demonstrable, you know, where you could actually look at it. You know, a cow gores an ax or ax gores a cow. Those are things that, you know, we know what that looks like. But cows and oxen is is is just the that's just the veneer. That's just the facade. That's just the most superficial level of an infinitely deep truth. Rabbi Deinstein All Shalom he was interviewed and someone was asking like don't you think that when they teach Talmud they should uh you know like update the examples like you know the examples and the Talmud like I said cows and oxen and whatever. So uh so Mishanzalt says that uh these these words that the Talmud are using are are principles. They're ideas. So when you read axe, it's not just an axe. It's talking about deeper legalistic principles like ownership and responsibility. Abstractions, you know, ownership and responsibility aren't things. They're ideas. They're not they're not concrete. They're they're abstract. So, uh, says that when you learn the gamut, when you're learning Talmud and you you come across an axe, you should know that an axe is not an axe. And the one who learns it and thinks that an axe is only an axe. He himself is the axe. He had a very sharp way of talking. He himself is the axe. But it's even more than that. It's not just that the axe is more than an axe because it's an idea, a legalistic principle, ownership, responsibility. liability that that's the first layer of abstraction. There are endless layers of abstraction to the point where everything you learned in this lifetime that you thought was mundane and pedestrian and everyday if you learn it the way they learn it in heaven. It's talking about the secrets of the universe. It's talking about the secrets of the universe. And this is the profound pleasure that the souls have in heaven is relisting to the Torah that they studied in this world and appreciating it on increasingly loftier levels, increasingly rarified and abstract levels. Remember the soul's transition from the concrete to the abstract. It's not binary. It's not zeros and ones. It's not either or. It's on a continuum. Obviously, the most radical phase of that transition is the first step when it first leaves the body. Obviously, that's the most radical, most jarring experience. And that's why the Jewish rituals of mourning are in place in order to ease the transition of the soul. You thought that the Jewish morning rituals were for the consolation of the family. That too, but that's a side benefit. Primarily, the Jewish morning rituals are to aid and to ease the transition of the soul that just left embodiment. Yeah, it's they get you coming or going because being born is traumatizing and leaving is traumatizing. That's what the sages say. Against your will, you're born. Against your will, you die. Coming and going is traumatizing. Okay. So, obviously the first the first step out of embodiment is very jarring. But really that transition never stops and the soul is going to increasingly abstract levels every single year. What do I mean by abstract? What I mean is the ability to think on an infinite plane, not to be trapped thinking in terms of uh of of the finite. The lowest level of thinking in finite terms is thinking in bodily terms. You know, like a person who barely can think more deeply than an animal. He can think about physical pleasure and how to procure physical pleasure. That's obviously the most low crass level of concrete thinking. But even within abstract thinking, there are levels. So what's happening in heaven is the soul is getting more and more free from finite thinking from relating to things and objects and closer to relating to first ideas and then ultimately to infinity itself. And this is profoundly pleasurable. Should be noted, by the way, that this mixtape that the soul replays in heaven over and over again, um, it's not just what's on the tape, it's not just which songs are there. But I guess maybe you could say it's how they were played. If you're into classical music, so you know that there are different recordings of the same symphony. I know a guy has a whole wall in his house of LPs. And he showed me his records and like half of them are the same symphony, but well this was this conductor. This was that conductor. Oh no, those were the same conductor but it was at this hall and this one was at that hall. Okay. So if you're a classical music nerd, you understand that. So there are different ways that the songs get played. So there's a a beautiful explanation of this in the mik of Leo from Rav Destler and he explains that the degree of toil that you invested into the study will the flip side of it is that that will be the degree of pleasure that is there for you when you relearn that same subject in heaven. So he says there could be a talum, a scholar who was gifted with a great head and he never really toiled. So he just showed up to yeshiva, he plunked himself down on the bench, he opened up the big books and everything went down smooth. So that's good. He's got a lot of songs. I guess he's got the whole stack of tapes, but he didn't have to invest a lot of effort into it. So, I guess you could say that's like a not such a great performance of the song. Then you could have a guy, a regular guy who uh maybe he didn't learn down here on such a deep level. It's okay. Up there, you'll get the depth. You'll get the depth up there. But down here, he toiled. He toiled. And maybe the guy had to make an honest living and support a family. And so, maybe he didn't go through all of Shas. And maybe he wasn't even learning a gam or maybe he couldn't even learn on his own. He sat at the shar and he listened to the rabbi's class but he had to focus and it was hard work. So that's a really good recording. That's a really good performance of that same song that he gets to relisten to over and over again. Now for this for the sake of full disclosure lest I be charged once again with sugar coating and focusing only on the positive. I will talk about negative stuff albeit briefly and I will say something which those who were in Tanya class this morning already heard. So you heard it already and you will not be further traumatized by hearing a new scary idea because you heard it already this morning at 11. This morning at our Tanya class, we learned chapter what chapter? Eight. Eight. Very good. And we learned about the slingshot, the cafaca. [sighs] What's this scary slingshot in purgatory? So, think about it like this. The way I said it this morning is imagine [clears throat] that all of a sudden all of your distractions are removed from you and you're finally able to just immerse yourself in that which is truly deeply meaningful. And then you show up to a wonderful class where somebody's speaking your language. They're explaining things exactly the way that you connect with it. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. And you no longer have other needs. So you're not worried about, oh, I got to go eat. Oh, what time do I have to get up in the morning? Got to go to work tomorrow. I got to get to sleep. You're not even you don't even have to go to the bathroom. You don't have any physical needs. So, you're just totally immersed in this wonderful flow of riveting information, picture perfect, and then some nudnik, how did he get in this class? I don't even know. How did they let him in? This nudnick creeps up behind you and starts jabbering, jibberjabbering in your ear and saying, "You know who's in the Super Bowl this year?" The year who's in the Super Bowl, whatever. I'm just making up whatever. Hey, let's talk about sports. Let's talk about TV shows. Let's talk about uh I don't know mundane stuff, boring stuff. [sighs] I don't want to hear this stuff. Why am I hearing this stuff? And then you realize, oh, you know who this nudnick is jabbering in my ear? It's me. I used to like to talk about this stuff. This is a recording of me. So the slingshot really means that now you're unfettered from the body. You don't have any limitations to totally immerse yourself in the truth and you're settling in and you're getting all connected to real spirituality. And then all of a sudden you hear this incessant prattling of this ridiculous stuff and it tears your attention away from what you were trying to immerse yourself in. And that's the slingshot. The slingshot is I'm trying to focus and I keep on having my focus pulled away. So, uh you asked this morning, how long does that go on? That sounds like hell. Well, yeah, [laughter] it is. It is hell. That's one of the things that happens in hell, purgatory, gehenn, however you want to translate it. Yeah. How long does that happen? So, I said 12 months, but we have a very liberal parole board, so usually it's 11 months. And uh then the prattling goes away. And then you're free to listen and relisten and relist and relisten to the recordings that you made. [sighs] So, you know, the message to everyone in this room who is embodied, and I don't say that to be cute or to be glib, because it's quite possible there are people in this room who are not embodied. We just don't see them. So, I mean, we do know that disembodied people do show up to things. And we know at a kapa, for instance, that the the ancestors of the bride and groom come to the come to the marriage ceremony. So, it is a thing. So, but right now I'm [clears throat] I'm just speaking to the embodied people. And I'll say this, if you are still embodied, please realize what an awesome opportunity it is to add another recording to the mixtape. If you have an opportunity to go to a class, even if you don't think the class is interesting, yeah, maybe not now, but there will come a point where you're going to find this class infinitely interesting and it will be good to have it on the on the tape. So that that's a message I want to tell to the embodied people. Now, regarding those who are no longer here, but who are on the second floor. Those whose uh consciousness is now free from its bodily attachments, but who are every bit if not more conscious than they were when you remember interacting with them in a in a physical way. What can we do for them? What can we do for them? So I mentioned to you earlier the story that the Reb told the the bererieved father that you can send your son packages. You can send them packages. So I want to talk about that and again um I want to encourage everybody being that we are in the leut library that uh mitzvah leav.com to submit your mitzvah pledges. That's the call of the hour right now. But I'm saying in general and all the time and all the time, what should we have in mind for those who uh whose consciousness has become freed from its physical limitations? Here's what we should have in mind. When the vilogon was on his deathbed, he was passing away. He was crying and uh his talidum asked why he's crying. He lived such a a pious life. How could he clearly it wasn't that he was upset that he was leaving the physical realm because of any material temptation or you know some bucket list thing. They and he clearly wasn't uh disturbed by the idea of judgment because he'd lived such a pious life. So they asked him why he's crying and he grabbed he grabbed his shirt and he and he grabbed at the talis cotton the garment under a shirt where you hang the the tits the fringes and and he said I'm about to leave a world where for a few copics small coins you can buy one of these you know the the wool garment the Jewish men wear under their shirt that has the fringes on it. I'm about to leave a world where for a few copex you can buy one of these and you can do the will of the creator and I'm going to a world where for all the treasures of that world you cannot buy one mitzvah. So there's a there's a saying of our sages that one minute of good deeds in this world is disproportionately greater than all of the world to come. And conversely, one moment of pleasure in the world to come is disproportionately greater than all of this world. What does that mean? Put the two together. For one small deed that we do in this world, it generates disproportionate pleasure for the soul in the next world. So we talked about before the food that we eat in heaven is the Torah that we studied. The clothes that we wear in heaven are the mitzvah that we did while here in a body. But here's the thing. We have the ability to send clothing packages to heaven. We can do more mitzvah in the merit of those who no longer can because there's one thing that the embodied souls can now do that the disembodied souls can no longer do and that is mitzvah. All mitzvah require a body. Even abstract mitzvah like feeling mitzvah like loving God is something you're supposed to feel in your heart supposed to be a physical feeling or amuna belief in God. That's something you're supposed to experience in your in your mortal brain. Mitzvah require hardware. They require a body. And then certainly things like you know uh putting on fillain you need the physical fillin you need the arm you need the head shaking a lul of an astr you need the physical you need the you need the four the four kinds and so on and so forth. They're all physical things and the souls in heaven can't do them anymore. And here's the thing, they are keenly aware of how pre how precious the mitzvah are. And by the way, I want to tell you something. I I I I have been asked this on more than one occasion. One particular one that I'm thinking of right now, though, is where somebody I've been asked many times. Well, the person who passed away was not religious. And in fact, they they they told me they were very happy not being religious and and they don't really want anyone to do any mitzvah and you know, you can donate some money to uh you know, a good cause, a humanitarian cause, but that's it. They don't want any mitzvah. And uh I remember one particular case I'm thinking of where the person was actually rather outspoken about that. He said, you know, don't don't do mitzvah for me. And obviously, we all know that the eternal consciousness of that person when freed from the limitations of mortal thinking and finite thinking and bodily thinking and concrete thinking now appreciates the value of mitzvah and is probably really regretting it. said anything to the effect of don't do mitzvah for me. So if you even if someone told you don't do mitzvah for me do mitzvah for them and if somebody didn't mention definitely do for them and if they did mention then definitely definitely do for them. We have to do mitzvah with them because the one thing they cannot do is use their bodies to do God's will. They don't have bodies now. I was one time when I was a bakar in my yeshiva days, I uh I went to a what we we used to call it a nursing home when we were kids. There were this was back in the in the 90s and you could still very easily find uh Holocaust survivors So uh in fact there were a lot of Holocaust survivors. So I went there and uh I met a guy. I mean I met lots of people with lots of stories. But one particular story this gentleman tells me about his village in Poland where they had 20 creator and uh 20 Torah scrolls. They had a big wooden shaw and on simas tora they would open up the ark and they would bring out all 20 scrolls and this was his favorite day of the year. So he said that when he went into hiding, his father told him that I'm not going to see you for a while, but when we meet up again, it was close to the time of the high holidays. So the father said, "Soon we'll meet up again. We'll be back in time together. will be back for some and I'm going to put you on my shoulders. We're going to have a special dance. I'm going to dance with you on my shoulders for some. So he says, "My father told me that and I I never saw him again. Not that simra and not the next simra and that for all the simas of the war until finally the war was over and I was in a DP camp. He says I was one of the youngest people in the DP camp. Generally there are not kids there and uh he says I was I was a kid and I was alone. I was in a DP camp and uh like a week after I arrived, it was Simra and I remembered my my father's promise to me who I haven't seen in years and I don't know if I'm ever going to see him. So he says he he started dancing and the way he told it to me sounds like he was probably the only one dancing which is quite understandable. There were not too many people in the DP camp the first after the war who were dancing on simra. She says, "I was dancing and some of the people there were mad at me because they thought it was a hutbah. Other people were scared for me because they thought I had lost my mind." So, uh, somebody came over and he like gently took me aside and he said, "Uh, Yingel, what are you doing?" And I told him the story. The last time I saw my father, he said, "We're going to get together as soon as this thing is over. We're going to get together again and you're going to dance on my shoulders." So now this thing is over. The war is over. My father said, "We're going to get together now. So what difference does it make if I dance on his shoulders or this time he dances on mine? So here here's what I'm telling you. Every soul, every person whose consciousness you got to know while they were in a body. So they've got everything they ever had when you knew them in their embodied state. And only thing they lost was a bunch of noise, a bunch of distractions. And what they've gained is total clarity and total truth. There's just one thing that they're going to need your partnership for, and that is they need to ride on your shoulders. They need to ride on your shoulders. So when you go and you put on fillin or you light chabas candles or you give saddaka, give charity or any other good deed that you do with your body. But I repeat myself because good deeds are bodily deeds. All mitzvah are done with the body. When you do a mitzvah, just remember, have in mind those who are on your shoulders and have in mind how much pleasure they are gaining from this. far more pleasure than we are presently capable of even being able to fathom because of our bodies. Our bodies hold us back and distract us. We cannot fathom the pleasure that those who ride on our shoulders have from our mitzvah when we take them along. We want to just finish not as a formality but as a heartfelt plea to Hashem that he should send Mashiach already and all all the souls should be able to come back in their own bodies and do mitzvah themselves.