How should we relate to a person’s passing from this world, to a funeral, and to comforting mourners?
From a spiritual perspective, the great goal of our development is to realize the principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” to connect with everyone “as one man with one heart.” This connection will bring us into identification with the general force of nature, the one force that underlies creation.
Progress to this goal follows a recurring process. By nature, opposite and egoistic desires awaken in our hearts, and we need to rise above them in connection and love. Day after day, desire after desire, we are called upon to correct them in the same way.
When we have completed the correction of all our desires and no new desires remain to be revealed, after we have devoted our entire heart to society, then the body remains empty, as it were, without the spirit of life.
The person’s corrected spirit continues to live within the collective, while society takes the empty body for burial. In doing so, we honor that external garment, that body which once held desires that were transformed and given to the collective in love. We accompany it on its final journey, wrapped in white burial garments that symbolize giving and bestowal.
“May His great name be exalted and sanctified.” The Kaddish prayer expresses gratitude. If a person has corrected the desires revealed within them, which is also called “sanctifying them,” then they become included in the perfect connection that exists among all people. A higher force is felt in that connection, and the gratitude expressed is for the help this force gives us in connecting with each other and becoming sanctified as well.
The efforts to rise above narrow egoism, i.e., the desire to enjoy for self-benefit alone at others’ expense, and to connect with others through love are what build a person’s inner being, the part they leave behind in the world. This eternal part does not belong to the body. It is connected to everyone. This is the human spirit. The soul.
The tearing of a mourner’s garment is an external symbol that we accept upon ourselves the continuation of the corrective process carried out by our departed loved one. Tears and fractures will appear within our hearts in the form of egoistic desires, but we will work to correct them and to build harmonious connections with others. This is how we continue their path. It is a kind of promise we make to them, a covenant of sorts.
Comforting mourners during the seven-day mourning period (Shiva) symbolizes participation. Those who come to comfort wish to join the mourners in following the path of the deceased. They seek to give one another strength to deepen mutual connection within society, which contributes to the elevation of the soul.
Memorial observances after seven days, thirty days, a year, and beyond become opportunities for reflection: Are we truly following their path? Are we continuing the positive connections they established?
In truth, no one really passes away except the body. The spirit that a person contributed to society remains within it, continuing to operate in the general process of correction together with everyone else. This is why people sometimes feel that those who are no longer physically alive remain present within them, guiding them and directing them in their lives.
This is true on both the individual and collective levels. Every generation exists in the inner essence of the generation that follows it. Just as this takes place on the physiological level and is expressed, for example, through genetics, so it also exists on the spiritual level.
Accordingly, there is no reason to grieve for someone who has completed their role in this world. More important is self-examination: Have I fulfilled what I could do to promote connection and love? Have I worked with all my heart so that we might all feel like one family?
Such reflection should take place every day.
Looking more broadly, all the disasters, problems, and suffering we experience, on every level and in every sphere, from personal life to global affairs, and especially those that affect us as a nation, testify to the fact that we are not keeping pace with the development required of us.
The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, while at the same time, increasingly egoistic desires awaken within people. As a result, the ego’s games threaten to sink the boat in which we all sit together.
Only a revolution in perception can help us here, a cultural, educational, and social revolution. A revolution that creates within us the feeling and understanding that evolution is guiding humanity to function as one great system.
Like different organs within a single body, we must learn to exist in mutual responsibility and cooperation.
We, the people of Israel, are meant to provide an example. When we learn how to connect among ourselves in love, we will lead humanity to its highest stage of development, to an existence in a spiritual dimension beyond life and death, time, space, and motion.
Based on “New Life 170 – What Is A Funeral In Spirituality?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.