חיים קודמים וגלגול נשמות

00:01 Speaker 1 This is Igress. Today we're looking at a collection of letters from all over the canon in order to answer a more central question, one that keeps on coming up. There's, uh, there's something called past life regression therapy, I believe. Uh, this is a apparently legitimate form of therapy involving hypnosis and other techniques that help people remember their past lives as a window to better understanding their current challenges. Uh, I'd like to tell you that this nonsense, which is almost certainly what it is, is confined to, uh, to pop therapy or pop psych culture outside of our holy Jewish communities. But I am also here to tell you that I've had no less than four phone calls in the past month about it, either asking me whether it's okay to get involved in these things or asking me how seriously to take memories of past lives. I also keep hearing incessantly, as a matter of fact, at the Yanakov share specifically about a, uh, about a book. There's apparently a book that just came out of people who claim that they remember being in the Holocaust. Uh, there's a whole Aish HaTorah article about how it's definitely true. So, uh, given that it's now reached a fever pitch, this whole do I remember my past life and what do I do with it kind of thing, today we're going to take a deep dive into reincarnation, which is Gilgul, uh, in Lashon HaKodesh, the Rebbe Shita on what to do with our past lives, whether we

01:07 Speaker 1 have them, uh, what to do with them, whether we can remember them, uh, and if we can remember them, what exactly we should be doing about it. So-

01:15 Speaker 2 I'm sorry, you, um, are you saying this is being used as a form of therapy that somehow experiences in past lives of my reincarnated soul have some bearing on my soul today? Is that the premise?

01:25 Speaker 1 That, that is the ridiculous premise, yes.

01:28 Speaker 2 Okay, cool. So you mean I can actually blame my iniquities on previous life selves?

01:33 Speaker 1 Your skepticism closely mirrors my own.

01:35 Speaker 2 Why is it a totally foreign topic? Don't we see that, uh, um, the Rabbeim, Ba'al Shem Tov and others gave tikkunim based off of-- So why is this whole premise foreign to us, that the past, uh, Gilgul affects our current life?

01:49 Speaker 1 This is exactly the two sides of the debate, right? When people call me, these are their questions, and, uh, and it's because there's-- it-- because of the two things that were just said, uh, the argument for and the argument against, we need a share on it. In any event, we have to start from the easy place. Let's start from the easy spot. Do we believe in Gilgul? Do we believe in reincarnation? I think you know we do, but it's probably worth proving. There's a letter from the Rebbe Ches, Taf Resh Pei He, that is from Chaf He Tishrei Taf Shin Chaf Daled. It's on your screen. And the Rebbe writes in response to a letter that was received, uh, that is brought in many Sefarim. There's such a thing as Gilgul Neshamas. This person wrote to the Rebbe that's brought in many Sefarim that a, that a soul can be reincarnated. Ɣafrat Ba'arichos Kisve HaAri z"l. Of course, this is at length in the writings of the Ari z"l. He even has a Shaar HaGilgulim. It's hard to miss. V'hachasidim Tzeirei Hasidus Lozen. And he asked the Rebbe, how does Hasidus view this doctrine of reincarnation? Now, he wrote this in Taf Shin Chaf Daled. I don't think you could write this letter nowadays. I think we've made it clear what we think, but maybe back then it wasn't so clear. So the Rebbe writes back. Ki De'inyanu Gilgulim Nimtzve Bkam Misvara, Mis-Misvar HaKedoshim Gam L'fnei Shel-- Ne'ari Zal Atzmem She'al Giluyim. The Rebbe says

02:47 Speaker 1 you actually will find mention of reincarnation in many holy Sefarim long before the Ari z"l, and I have written them in the margins. Says, um, Ɣa Zeh in Parashat Mishpatim. There's a Ramban, a Bechaiah. Says you'll find this in Rishonim, so you don't have to go all the way to the Ari z"l to find the idea of reincarnation. Afshur Ma'aspik Dai Vehesigah Ma'askim Al HaAri z"l. Even though, of course, the Ari z"l is enough, we do have it a lot earlier. B'va Na'ashe Iriniyen Ze Nisgabel Heim Be'Toldat HaHasidus Ve'ein Ga'etz Al Den Al Rebbe Eliyahu MiVilna BeTalmido. You should also know, the Rebbe says, that this idea was accepted by the people who learn Hasidus, but also accepted by the Vilna Gaon and all of his students, who of course, the Apis Nagda, the Toldas HaHasidus, who opposed Toldas HaHasidus. So this is not a Misnagdim-Hasidim kind of thing. The great Misnagda-- Misnag-Misnagsha, uh, Mekubalim also were into reincarnation. Im He Mekubal Davar Lama'arsha Acharim HaChoikrim Yisroel Gam Be'Am Beiniim, uh, Beininim Lo Nisgabel Etzlam Rai In DeKa'as Sebas She'ein Kan Makom L'fartzem. The Rebbe says it is true. We do have quite a few commentaries, uh, in the generation of the Choikrim, in the generation of the Rishonim who were not involved in Kabbalah, were involved in other ways of analyzing the Torah. We have several of them who don't believe in reincarnation, and now's not the time for us to explain why they thought that. The point is the Hasidus has it, Rishonim

03:53 Speaker 1 have it. We're very comfortable with it. It is a fundamental part of Yiddishkeit. And as a matter of fact, when it comes to knowing what kind of Gilgul you are, the Rebbe does sometimes tell people, and he certainly sometimes tells us. One of the most often cited ones, this one I brought from a letter only because this is an Igress share. I could have pulled this from any of, like, three hundred Sechas. This is in Igress volume thirteen, uh, and the letter is Daled Taf Kuf Vav in the middle of the letter. The Rebbe says, LeHa'areh Me'amum HaSefer HaKabbalah, I want to point out that which is brought in the Kabbalistic books. Asher Herdanig Be'Sim Mashiach Hu Gilgul De'Eretz Mitzrayim. That the generation that is in the final days of Mashiach coming, which is the generation that we're in right now, is a Gilgul of the generation that left Mitzrayim, of the generation that left Egypt. Shezacha L'golei Shenai DeGeula Rishon U'meishi Rabinu. We therefore, our souls experienced the first Geulah. We first experienced the first redemption by way of Meishi Rabinu. Visker K'lashan Azal Yadei Teshuvah Gula Achreina Amitazai DeGeulah Achreina U'meishi Rabinu. And then we will-- the, these same souls will be ultimately redeemed by Meishi Rabinu, who was also the Geulah Achreine with the coming of Mashiach through acts of Teshuvah. The Rebbe says this all over the place, that we should know that every one of us who's alive in this generation is a reincarnation of the souls that left Mitzrayim.

04:56 Speaker 1 Now, I mean, you, you could already use that to answer up about half of the people who are asking questions about what their past life was because almost all of them don't report being people who left Mitzrayim. They report something else. Now, I don't know if that necessarily is, is Mochraf. Could be that you were a reincarnation of the soul that left Mitzrayim and you had a couple in between. Just pointing that out. In any event, we also know that sometimes the Rebbe uses Gilgul as a threat. I believe we saw this letter together, but if we didn't, you're in for a real jarring experience. Uh, this letter is Daled Taf Taf Kuf Samech Daled. This is probably not a letter that should be publicized on a public Igress share, so I'm just going to do little parts of it. Uh, not that you, but not that you can't see it on your screen, and not that it's not in the WhatsApp group. But in any event, somebody wrote to the Rebbe saying that they wanted to kill themselves. So they write to the Rebbe saying they want to commit suicide, and they ask the Rebbe's advice on this, and the Rebbe says, "I already responded to you, don't do it." That's the first line, is the Ɣa Lisha SheHa'el Dati Ma'alav Lasis. It's a shock that you asked me what to do. I've already told you not to kill yourself. However, then in the middle of the paragraph, the Rebbe says an argument against,

05:49 Speaker 1 against suicide, besides the fact that of course it's forbidden and everybody has a choice, which is what the Rebbe says on the top, and you should seek help and therapy and whatever it takes to not be in that situation. He also adds in a-- that there, there's the carrot and then there's the stick. The stick goes like this. Ke'Ein SheKol Zanach SheNeshamah Eyn HaMa'ale Tafkir HaMitzvah Ve'ale HaMinas Ha'neira. Anytime the soul does not fulfill that which the Giver of the Torah commanded it to do, BaHi BeGilgul Achri Gilgul Be'olam HaZeh. He'll have to come back again and again in this world through reincarnation. Elek She'eid Kilkol Harei Gilgul Kach Yeseh. But since they did more sins, they're going to have an even worse reincarnation. Ein L'hafdah BeDam HaMitzvah, but let's not expand upon something that is painful to hear. V'eid Bar SheKol Ta'amah Maslis Kesah Zeh Ta'amah Be'olam HaZeh She'ein Kol Seh Din Si'as. And of course, he says that any reasons you have that you feel that you should be ending your life, they come from the Yetzer Hara, and they certainly have no bearing on reality. What the Rebbe's saying to this individual here, though, is if you don't like this world and you think that suicide is a way out of it, I've got terrible news for you. Suicide is a way back into it. You'll just end up reincarnated and in a worse situation than you're in now. So the Rebbe uses it to explain to us the incredible, uh, ma'alas

06:45 Speaker 1 of our situation, that we are the generation that will be redeemed by Mashiach once again with the coming of Mashiach. He also sometimes use it-- uses it to, uh, I mean, there's no nice way to put it, threaten somebody who wants to do something negative. We have Gilgul, and we use Gilgul absolutely We definitely know the gilgul. I mean, you also know we talk about it a lot. We talk about this person was a gilgul of that, and this one was of that, and we have and we have Midrashim. We, we use Gilgul, that's for sure. Uh, as far as knowing what happened in our past lives, in our past lives, the Rebbe does give us some guidance on this, believe it or not. Uh, this letter, we-- I don't think we saw this letter before, but I believe at the over Shabbos, someone mentioned a story related to this letter. This is a letter where somebody writes to the Rebbe about their Shalom Bayis problems, and the Rebbe tells them, maybe we did see, and the Rebbe tells them that your Shalom Bayis problems are a hint at what you need to fix in this reincarnation. It's very interesting. We're gonna read the middle paragraph. The letter is Aleph, Reish, and Nun, Zayin. The letter is from Taf Shin Yod Beis, and the Rebbe writes, "I've already written to you in prior letters, Certainly, there have been problems with your Shalom Bayis. You're gonna have to put in more effort, of course. It's very

07:47 Speaker 1 important to make sure your Shalom Bayis is fixed, your peace in the home. These difficulties that present themselves that make it hard for you to have Shalom Bayis, I don't know, the way that I heard the story behind this letter, his wife was really annoying. So the Rebbe says, "You have a whole lot of challenges to your Shalom Bayis. You're having trouble keeping a peaceful home." And the answer is, you should know that this is your task in this world, that this is, uh, that the-- that's quite likely that the reason why you're finding a challenge in this area is because this is an area that you came back into this life to fix. as explained in the works, in the works of the Arizal in the Burba Dach, and is explained like this, that besides for a couple exceptional rules, most Neshamas that are in this world nowadays were already here previously. And they're now back in a reincarnation. And the whole reason that they're here, the main reason that they're here is to fix the mitzvahs that they were not able to do in their prior life. Based on that, it should be understood. When it comes to, uh, of course, they're gonna have to keep all of the other mitzvahs. So the difference by them is when they come back to redo, to redo life in order to, uh, do the mitzvahs that they're missing, the difference is that the Yetzer Hara is not going to push so hard against the things

09:09 Speaker 1 that they've already accomplished. So I don't know. If somebody in their past life made Kiddush, and they always made Kiddush, and they didn't come back here to fix the Kiddush thing, the Yetzer Hara isn't gonna get them on Kiddush, so it doesn't argue with them on Kiddush. It goes after them on the areas that they messed up in the last life so that they won't mess up again. But so that it will remain a matter of free choice. So the Rebbe says, when it comes to things that you previously accomplished, the Yetzer Hara is not gonna hit you so hard. He's only gonna hit you a little bit in order to ensure that there's such a thing as free will. But when it comes to things that you did not complete in your last life, your Yetzer Hara is going to hit you the hardest. What, what we get from this letter, uh, first of all, is that the Rebbe's advice to someone who has a difficult marriage is to, uh, is to imagine that they are repairing a injury from a past life through this difficult marriage, which is just really interesting Shalom Bayis advice. But what we're using for our purpose is that the Rebbe says here that if you want to know what your past life messed up on, you actually can get a hint. Ask yourself what your biggest Yetzer Hara is. Your Yetzer Hara is not gonna bother you very much on things that you did well last time. So

10:14 Speaker 1 if you have a big Yetzer Hara for Lashon Hara, that probably means that last time you were here, Lashon Hara was your problem. Uh, it's brought in other Svarim, in other places, that, uh, outside of the Rebbe's work, but it's all over the place. There's a Gra in Mishlei, you'll find it on fourteen twenty-five, that says if you really love a certain mitzvah, this also means that that might be a mitzvah that you missed last time around in your Nefesh Elokis. Your, your, your, your Yetzer Tov speaks up and tells you, "Try that." So you do get hints. You get hints from your soul about your last life. Your Yetzer Hara hints at what your past life, uh, messed up by trying to get you to do it again. Your Yetzer Tov hints at what your last past life didn't accomplish by trying to get you to do it for the first time. There's an Arizal that says that, uh, if you have a preference for learning a certain area of Halakha, a certain area in Nigle, you like one Masach or one area of Halakha, it's very likely that that's an area that you didn't cover properly last time around, so your soul speaks to you and tells you to learn it. We absolutely, based on our experiences and what we're like in this world, can have a sort of guess about what our Neshamas were like in a previous life. And I don't know, if that's what past life regression therapy is, then

11:09 Speaker 1 not only is there nothing wrong with it, it's very productive. If a person wants to sit down and ask themselves, "What are my biggest Yetzer Haras? I'm going to defeat them. What are my biggest Yetzer Tovs? I'm going to listen to them." Then whether or not they're involved in reincarnation, they're probably doing the right thing. And the Rebbe here says that it also speaks to their reincarnation. However, there's a big but on top of this, which is that I have a ton of sources on this, and I found nobody who disagrees with this general premise, which is that we do not know our past lives. Now, we know for sure that big Tzadikim who can see right through the Neshama can absolutely tell you your past life. If you go to a, if you go to the Rebbe or you go to a big Tzadik, uh, who is able to see Neshamas, they can certainly see where your Neshama's been before if God decides to give them that ability. A prophet can see where your Neshama's been before. The Arizal was able to see where Neshamas have been before. But unless you are visiting the Rebbe or somebody of his caliber, of which there are few or none, uh, it's very clear all over the place that you will not be able to tell where your soul was previously, and no one else will be able to either, which means that anybody claiming to do a sort of therapy where they can help you find

12:05 Speaker 1 what your past life was is just making things up. Uh, before I show you sources in the Rebbe for this, I wanna show you a Pele Yoetz. The Pele Yoetz says this twice ex- uh, explicitly in his Sefer. Uh, let me make it a little bigger 'cause the text is tiny. One place where he says it is over here. I'm making the text a little bigger. Just a minute. First of all, he just talks about how scary reincarnation is. He says, It would make your hair stand on end. Uh, he talks about, uh, about all of the terrible things that would happen if you were to know your la-- your past lives. Especially sometimes people get reincarnated into rocks or into plants. They can be very painful. Animals, uh, they can go into animals and fish, um, even non-kosher fish, and that's apparently horrible too. But then he says Even though you are sometimes reincarnated into a person, you will not remember your prior reincarnation. Well, that seems pretty clear. But when you are reincarnated into a vegetable or a mineral, if you're reincarnated into a rock or an animal, a pet dog or something, you will not remember the details, but you will remember you are You will remember that you used to be something better. So what he says here is that all humans who are reincarnated, they don't have any memory of their past life if you're reincarnated into a human. And if you're reincarnated into a rock, a fish, a dog,

13:24 Speaker 1 then you will remember that you should be something better than you are now, and you'll be pained over it your entire life, but you also won't have a clear memory of what you were before. So we have from the Pele Yoetz, at least very clearly, that it's impossible for anybody to remember their prior Gilgul. He actually says this a second time in a second part of his Sefer. He says, Even though we do not know and we do not recognize any of our prior, uh, reincarnations, I could end the sentence there and just say, "Look, i- this is proof that you don't remember them." He then goes on to say there is one exception, there is one exception where we can know for sure who someone is a Gilgul of, and that is if someone dies without children and his w-- and his wife does Yibum, and then the firstborn that is-- the firstborn who is born from that Yibum, from that levirate marriage, uh, will be named after his father, and that person is a reincarnation of his father. And as a matter of fact, he says, it would be appropriate for his father and those who know him to let him know what his prior reincarnation messed up so that he has an easier time fixing it. So there's exactly one exception to this rule, and it's a case of Yibum. If a, if a person dies without children and his wife marries his brother, which is a mitzvah, and then they have

14:28 Speaker 1 a child together, that is a reincarnation of the dead brother/prior husband, and he should be informed of his prior . Your, uh, your, your deceased uncle was a, was a real piece of work when it came to Lashon Hara. You should watch yourself. But it's clear from the Pele Yoetz all over the place that we'd have no memory of our prior lives. Uh, there's also Pri Megadim. Uh, it's in Sefer Hamagid, so not his regular Sefer. His Sefer Hamagid, which is on the Hafteras. You'll find it in three two forty-six. He says that, uh, he says it was very specific that Hashem doesn't allow us to remember our pre-- our previous reincarnations 'cause they'd me-- they'd mess us up. Uh, if we remembered all the bad things we did, we'd be deeply depressed. If we remembered all the good things we did, if we were a big Tzadik and we remembered all the good things we did, it might lead us not to do them again 'cause we figured we're good enough. He says, uh, that there's a very good reason why we don't have memories of our past reincarnations. Uh, as, as for the Rebbe, the Rebbe a couple places explicitly says we don't remember our prior lives. But before I show you that, I just want to take you on a little tour of a couple other things the Rebbe says on this topic, and that is, uh, this is a letter, and here the Rebbe has a little paragraph at the bottom

15:27 Speaker 1 of a PS of a letter about reincarnation. In this PS, uh, somebody had made the claim that somebody who gets, uh, that somebody who gets killed will have to come back for another Gilgul in a certain case. I don't know what the case was, but I do know that he see-- that the Rebbe has issues with this in Nigla and in Tzaddis. He says, Al Pi Nigla, it looks like that doesn't have anything to do with that, how a person dies. The way a person dies doesn't, doesn't determine whether they have to come back again. And he says also Al Pi, Al Pi Kabbalah, uh, how a person dies doesn't determine whether they come back. It's whether they have any mitzvahs left to do. But then the Rebbe says one more thing down here that you might not have known, and I went and looked it up, and it turns out it's everywhere. I'm like, i-i-I'd never heard of this before. The Rebbe says, uh, it should be-- it's well known. It's in Shaarei Gilgulim in the Hakdama test. I checked. It really is there. Women don't get reincarnated. So first of all, um, I will tell you that, uh, i-i-i don't, I don't, God forbid, mean to say that to generalize anything about the genders, but a large majority, and at least half of people who are involved in these sorts of therapies or people who claim to have memories of past lives are women. And it's brought in the Shaarei Gilgulim of the

16:31 Speaker 1 Ari Z"L himself, no less than the Ari Z"L, that women, generally speaking, do not have Gilgul. It's true that sometimes they do on rare occasions. On rare occasions, a woman can, can come back in a reincarnation, but they essentially don't. They almost never do. So if, uh, if thousands and thousands of women, tens of thousands of women are claiming that they had prior lives, uh, we know that that's not true. They didn't. Uh, the majority of women don't come back for a reincarnation. This is a men's thing. Uh, moving onward to the Rebbe's Torah, though. Uh, let me make sure I didn't miss anything in my notes over here. Okay, yeah. We're gonna go to a Sefer. This is a Sefer from Parshas Ha-- from Parshas HaAzinu from Taf Shin Mem Gimel. You'll find it in the first volume of Torah Min Hanevach, Mem Gimel on page one O eight, and I need to find my place. Here we go. The context is cool, but doesn't matter for us right now. It should be very clear to everybody how important it is for us to learn the entire revealed and hidden aspects of the Torah right now. You cannot be satisfied with the fact that in a prior life you learned Pnimiyus HaTorah. You learned Chitzon in a prior life, therefore, you don't have to learn in mine today. Because first of all, you cannot know what happened in your prior life. Now, is that the Rebbe saying that it's impossible? No, but that definitely

17:44 Speaker 1 is the Rebbe saying in his own-- I mean, the, these-- the words say it right here, that one of the reasons why a person needs to stack the deck in their favor and learn everything in this life is because there is no way to find out what they learned in a prior life, strongly suggesting that you're not able to access memories of a prior life. Because if you could, you could just check the box you missed. Even if you, even if, even if you would know what happened in a prior life, since Mashiach is coming under this Gilgul, you're going to need to learn it anyway, otherwise only your prior life is going to have learned the Torah that it needs, not the current one. So the Rebbe says, you don't know what you did in your past life, and even if you did, you would have to do everything exactly the same anyway. This is reflective of the Rebbe's Shiur on this topic, as I'm about to show you in two more places, that the Rebbe's Shiur on this is essentially that we don't know, and even if we did know, it wouldn't matter. So that's a, a double, a double whammy for the, for the, uh, for the conversation of whether there is a point in trying to access a past life. The answer Al Pi Chitzon, as we're going to see, and I'll develop it in a second, is that, uh, is that step one, it doesn't work. It's a scam. It's

18:47 Speaker 1 not true. People are imagining it. They have dreams. I don't know what to tell you. It's not, it's not what the soul is saying, that's for sure. That's not true. But even if it was true, there'd be nothing you could do with it, so what's the point? Uh, I will add before we read the next thing that just in the haskalah chassidis, it doesn't make any sense at all that you could, uh, that you could have a memory of a past life because you should remember that your neshamah is not-- your, your neshamah is not your mind. Your brain is not your neshamah. Uh, you have a new brain. This is not the brain you had previously. There's no memories from what you had previously because the part that got transferred is the neshamah. Even the sefel and midah are just levushim of the neshamah, are garments of the neshamah, so your personality. Everything that makes you you is, uh, is completely new for this time around. It never existed in the world before. The fundamental spark that makes your sefel and midah run, that makes your personality run, that spark that's that's literally a piece of God, it comes back through Gilgul, but it has no experiences. The neshamah doesn't have a list of memories. There are no memories to a neshamah. A nesh-- mem-mem-memories are a sefel and midah. So, I mean, even in the haskalah chassidis, it doesn't make much sense that the soul could remember anything about its prior life. Uh,

19:48 Speaker 1 whereas it does make some sense that a tzaddik could stare at a neshamah and say, "I see where you were before." The idea that the neshamah could, on its own, talk to the brain and tell it what it was doesn't really make any haskalidic sense anyway. Anyway, uh, one more letter I wanna show you. Two more letters, actually. This letter is Vav Tzadik Vav. That's its label. It's in Tuv Shin Yud Ches. And, uh, here, somebody writes to the Rebbe asking, Not exactly our question, but close enough that it gives us a shitah. And that is, "You asked me what is the root of your soul on high." Now, he was, he was almost certainly not asking, "What was I in a prior life?" He was probably asking, "Am I a neshamah of Atzilut? Am I a neshamah of Briyah? Am I a neshamah of a Tzadik, a neshamah of a Benoni?" But I don't see a difference fundamentally between that question and the question of, "Where was my neshamah previously?" You're asking a Rebbe to tell you about something going on inside your neshamah. And the Rebbe answers, . You should know that there is a that Hashem never created anything for no reason. . This also applies to things that will inform us about Torah and mitzvahs and the ways to fulfill them. . So when it comes to you, . What would be the nafkaminah of me telling you? He says, "I could tell you the neshamah. I could tell you where

20:58 Speaker 1 your soul is coming from, and what exactly would you do with that information?" You have a Shulchan Aruch. In the Shulchan Aruch, it says everything you have to do. . What are you doing involving yourself in hidden matters? So , everything you need is in the Shulchan Aruch. I, I, I've seen in a lot of places in the Rebbe's letters, we've seen it in this year in a lot of places, and I do think that it's an overarching answer to the question of, "What about my past life? What about my prior memories? What about these-- What about the Holocaust dreams that are being published in a book? What about the past life regression therapy that's supposed to help sick people, uh, by helping them conquer their prior demons?" The Rebbe says, "I don't, I, I don't buy it." Everything that you need is in Shulchan Aruch, and, uh, everything you need i-- everything you need is in Shulchan Aruch, and whatever you might gain from Nistaros, um, you would have-- They wouldn't be Nistaros if you would gain something from them. There was a-- If Hashem knew that you would benefit from knowing your past life, we would know them. And certainly, if Hashem knew that we would benefit from knowing the root of our souls, he would have told us. So the Rebbe says, "I'm a tzaddik. Of course, I can tell you." And I believe the Rebbe could tell you what your past life was too. Why not? I think on some cases,

21:58 Speaker 1 according to certain stories, he did. Because in those particular cases, there was a nafkaminah. But for the average person, it doesn't really help to know in the first place, so why would you care? There's one more thing I wanna show you, and then we really are done. We'll open the floor for, for excited discussion. Uh, this letter is Hey Tuv Shin Yud. I have a suspicion that we saw this letter once before. I believe we did. And, uh, and, uh, it had nothing to do with, uh, with past lives. Nothing to do with it at all. But it has a, it has a for us, I think, that we can take out L'maase. The letter is Hey Tuv Shin Yud, and it's from the year Tuv Shin Yud Zain, Hey Elul. And somebody wrote that, Rachmanu Litzlan, there was a girl who was, uh, who was leaving the religion, and, uh, and she wasn't interested in Yiddishkeit anymore, and people wanted to blame it on sorcery. Somebody had cast a spell on her. They'd done . We believe that perhaps there was some sorcery involved. The Rebbe's answer is, . I want you to remove from your mind any explanation that has to do with sorcery. . This will weaken anybody's attempts to save her. If you believe that this is out of your hands, that some wizard cast a spell on her, then nobody's going to try to do anything to make things better because you believe that it is inevitable. Even though they

23:05 Speaker 1 sin, they're still a Yid. We have to use nature to try to find solutions to our problems. We have to look for, uh, for reasonable ways to possibly cure this problem by her. What, what am, what am I taking from this letter? Somebody tells the Rebbe, "I have a serious problem, and I believe that I can use sorcery to solve it." Or not to solve it, excuse me. "I have a serious problem, and I believe that I can use sorcery to explain it." That is, that my problem comes from some Kabbalah thing or some mystical thing. And the Rebbe says back, "Get that out of your mind, because the day-- the moment you decide that your problems come from something that is completely out of your control, you will stop trying to solve the problems instead." And instead, the Rebbe says, "I want you to invest in natural ways to fix things using , using nature, not using, uh, not using magic." I think this applies very directly to what we're talking about when it comes to questions like, uh, past life regression therapy, where, uh, the, the theory is that if I can only find the-- If I can find that the reason that I'm suffering right now is because of something mystically, spiritually, magically that happened in the past, I can blame it on that. And the Rebbe's answer is, if you blame it on the past, if you blame it-- if you blame your situation now on your past life, this will

24:15 Speaker 1 get in the way of your, of your, of your work in this world. It's going to make you less effective right now. You'll end up hanging, uh, all of the problems you have on some prior existence of yours, and you'll end up not working toward a solution. What does the Rebbe prefer? If somebody needs therapy, they absolutely should get therapy. We had a whole shiur on therapy and what kind of therapy the Rebbe's into. Uh, if somebody needs, uh, medical interventions, psychological interventions, absolutely. But magic interventions? Magic just-- Magic, especially magic about a past life, just takes the responsibility away from you to fix things, and that's not something the Rebbe's into whatsoever. So to, uh, sum up everything we've talked about, 'cause we really, we've been on a journey today. Uh, we demonstrated that Gilgulim definitely are within our shitah. We talk all the time about reincarnation. We had a, we had a letter, and we had a few letters demonstrating the Rebbe uses, uh, reincarnation to, uh, to excite us about the fact that we are in the generation Mashiach's gonna be in, as well as the genera-- and we are reincarnations of the generation of the Let Meitznayim. We talked about how, uh, somebody who wanted to end their life was told by the Rebbe that it's not worth it, mainly because they're going to have to come back again anyway, and it's going to be worse the second time around. We, uh, we also sawthat we can figure out from

25:16 Speaker 1 our situation right now, specifically from our yetzer tov and our yetzer hara, what our prior life was like. Although we can't figure out exactly what our prior life was, we can figure out some details about it. Our yetzer hara is a good indication of what things we messed up last time. Our yetzer tov is also a good indication of what things we messed up last time. If you very badly want to do a mitzvah or very badly want to do an aveira, that's a pretty good sign that that's the thing that your soul is here to fix. Uh, but when it came to whether we can actually have memories of our past lives, we had Perush HaPelagiot who says at least twice that you absolutely cannot. We had an Arizal that says that you cannot. We have the, uh, we had the Rebbe saying in a sefer that people don't know. We had the Rebbe saying in a sefer that even if I did know, I wouldn't tell you. We had a note saying that, first of all, uh, at least half of the people who are asking this question wouldn't have been coming back in a gilgul anyway because women, generally speaking, are not reincarnated. And we ended off by saying that relying on, relying on magic and relying on prior lives and things like that as a way of helping us out of difficult situations is almost always counterproductive. So the long and short answer to this question, if I had to put

26:13 Speaker 1 it in a sentence, is I am, uh, I'm, I'm quite confident from the Rebbe's Torah and from Torah bechalal and from Kabbalah and from Chassidus and from everything that I looked at to prepare this, that, uh, you don't remember your past life. And, uh, the people who are trying to make money off of therapy with you to try to convince you, you remember your past life are making money. And, uh, and that's about it. And as for, uh, as for whether it's even possible, I'm not even sure it's even possible outside of a tzaddik specifically telling you what your past life was. It doesn't look like it's something that's even accessible. And even if it was, as the Rebbe says himself, I'm not sure why you would want it.

26:45 Speaker 3 Two, two things I wanted to comment. You know, I guess it seems like there is, there is-- you can split this conversation and it's about if you-- if we talk about developing a shita, right? So the shita is that knowing what your-- what things you have to be metaken in this world is a valuable thing to know, right? Whether it's you recognizing it from yetzer tov or yetzer hara, or following Shulchan Aruch and doing the things that you have to do. So recognizing that I'm for sure a gilgul from somewhere, let's say, and I recognize that I have a tikkun to make in this world, and a tikkun to make on my neshamah, um, and I have something I have to do, so therefore, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna follow it, that has value to it. Knowing where I came from or what my past was and what is my specific-- what could be something that happened in the past that's shaping my current is irrelevant and doesn't mean anything 'cause you either can't know it or even if you could know it and be told it by somebody who knows it, it won't be, it won't be useful.