From Life to Afterlife: Judgment of the Soul in Jewish Tradition - Part 2

In Part 1, we explored a few similarities between science and tradition regarding the soul's journey after life. In part 2, we will look at what the tradition has to say about what comes next.

A Process of Refinement

Tradition indicates that the soul's transition from the physical to the spiritual world occurs in stages. Some souls sense the change, immediately gaining peace and a new perception outside of time and space.

Other accounts indicate that a soul may be delayed in this transition. Generally, these are people who are caught off guard by the entire experience having not spent much time pondering or considering the afterlife.

Another way this can occur is through a deeply imbalanced attachment to the physical world and its pleasures.

In what I gather are rare cases, the person may not have realized that they had passed away at all until someone with a heightened degree of spiritual perception notifies them that they are no longer among the living!

Probably a more common reason for a delayed transition is when the soul is no longer bound by the body, it becomes immediately engulfed in the ethereal body. Known as the 'Guf Dak', this energy field is comprised of the aftereffects of our thoughts, words, and deeds.

In other words, this field is made up of the spiritual and emotional residue of how one lived their life. If one spends a lot of time in the thresholds of anger, jealousy, judgment, greed, etc - more time may be required to rebalance this field.

This should give us pause to consider how the content of our environment may be unhealthy for us now, but also in the afterlife. For instance, living in constant fear or worry will damage our physical health, but also create spiritual trouble for us down the road.

In addition, we should strive to bring awareness and intention to our day-to-day thought processes, helping us to refine our spiritual and emotional quality. The more we refine ourselves in this world, the less refinement we will need when we leave it.

The First Judgement

Numerous times throughout the Jewish tradition, we are told our transition to the world of souls begins with some form of interrogation inquiring into the nature of how we spent our earthly existence.

Remember, outside of time and space, all of history can be viewed at once, thus it is assumed the Angels holding court already know the answers to the questions they will ask.

To me, it seems this first stage might be some form of calibration to understand the degree of connection that our soul still has with the physical world.

In the Kabbalistic work, Gates of Holiness¹, we read: