We go through many stages when we’re here. We shed a baby body, go into a child’s, from a child to an adult, an adult into old age. Why shouldn’t we go one step beyond and shed the adult body and go on to a spiritual plane?
Dr. Brian Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters
As explained above, Dr. Raymond Moody was the first researcher to identify not only the existence of near-death experiences but a recurring number of consistent sensations associated with them. As we related, many reported floating above their bodies and watching the impassioned efforts of others to revive them. Others told of traveling through a dark passageway or tunnel. Still others described encounters with beings of light or with an all-encompassing warm, restorative light. Many understood that light to be G-d. And ultimately there was the life review, the dramatic and sometimes traumatic experience of seeing one’s life pass before one’s eyes.
In truth, very few individuals experienced all of these sensations. Most had one or two of them at best. Yet these four experiences — out-of-body travel, traveling down a tunnel, encountering light, and life review — are among the most common core near-death experiences reported over and over again.
How does the Torah understanding of life after life compare to Dr. Moody’s and other researchers’ findings? Before answering that, first a very important disclaimer.
Concepts brought in the more than two thousand pages of the Talmud are only the tip of the iceberg. Typically scholars can spend several months mulling over no more than ten pages of text. Working intensely on one piece for five, ten, even fifteen or more hours per day, they mine every nuance of every word, cross-referencing and comparing it with similar statements in other Talmudic passages, until the full significance of the text becomes clear to them — yet even then they realize that they have barely touched the surface!
The ensuing pages will frequently draw on Talmudic and Talmudic-like texts. It must be borne in mind that, as tempting as it is to believe one understands the concept based on the translation presented here, it is impossible for the uninitiated to grasp the full meaning of the concepts. Why, then, cite the texts? To draw parallels.
That word, parallel, is important to understand. Parallel concepts do not intersect. They are two entirely independent concepts, each emanating from a system unique to it. However, since they are parallel, they obviously share some common features. Therefore, the Talmudic texts brought here are meant only to draw parallels to the near-death experiences as reported by Dr. Moody and others. The intelligent reader will understand that these Talmudic passages only scratch the surface.
Full-fledged comparisons cannot be made for another reason. All the accumulated knowledge of the field of near-death research, which is only in its infancy, is not even like an ant compared to the Empire State Building. Thus, we cannot draw unwarranted comparisons between Talmudic texts, which contain more than appears to the eye, and current research, which is so recent.
That said, we can return to the question: How does the Talmudic understanding of life after life compare to Dr. Moody’s and other researchers’ findings?
The place to begin is to see if the idea of a near-death experience is found anywhere in the traditional Jewish sources. And the answer to that is yes.
Rabbi Joseph the son of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi became ill, and his soul left him. When he recovered, his father asked him, “What did you see?”
He replied, “I saw an upside-down world. Those who were on top here [i.e., in terms of status] were below there, and those who were [considered] low here were on top there.”
His father responded, “My son, you have seen a clear world.”1
How long was Rabbi Joseph dead? Was the upside-down world he saw the same world Raymond Moody’s subjects saw? These questions are unanswered. What we do know is that at least fifteen centuries ago the Talmud recorded the incident of a great man who left this world, caught a glimpse of the next world, and returned to tell about it.
There are numerous other parallel cases, not only limited to the Talmud. The Midrash — which, like the Talmud, is a primary source of Jewish teaching but deals less with law and more with ethics and esoterica — comments, for instance, on a verse in the book of Exodus. When Moses asked God to show him His glory, he was told, “Man cannot see Me and live,”2 from which the Sages of the Midrash inferred, “Man cannot see Me and live; however, when he ceases to live here [i.e., when he dies], he will see Me.”3
Another midrash describes the revelation at Mount Sinai:
The voice of the first commandment went forth, and the heavens and earth quaked, the waters and rivers fled, the mountains and hills jumped, the great oaks fell flat, the dead in Sheol stood on their feet...[and] the Israelites who were alive [then] fell on their faces and died.4
The import is that they died in order to hear the first of the Ten Commandments directly from God. Similarly, the Talmud records:
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: At every word that went forth from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, the souls of Israel departed.... If their souls had departed [i.e., they were dead], how could they hear the second word? The answer is that He...revived them.5
From these accounts we can say that the Sages of old understood the revelation at Mount Sinai almost as a collective near-death experience. The people had to die in order to hear the word of God.
The point is simply to draw a parallel between the basic near-death experience as reported in contemporary sources and the understanding of Judaism as it has always existed in the ancient primary sources. To the Jewish Sages of old, death generally led to the direct experience of God. It certainly was not a blank state of being.
Let’s now try to find parallels in some of the specifics of the near-death experience.
1. Pesachim 50a.
2. Exodus 33:20
3. Sifri, Beha’alotcha 103. Similarly, “The soul does not go out of the body until it beholds the Divine Presence, as it says, ‘For man shall not see Me and live’ ” (Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer 34a).
4. Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer 41; Bemidbar Rabbah 14:22.
5. Shabbat 88b.
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