15 The World to Come: A Perspective

Jewish thinkers have held two opposing conceptions of life after death, or what is known in the Jewish tradition as the World-to-Come (Olam Haba). On the ‘intellectualist’ conception maintained primarily by Maimonides and Gersonides, the World-to-Come is an immaterial realm that exists in the present, which one enters upon death as a ‘pure intellect’ in virtue of the knowledge acquired throughout one’s life. On the alternative ‘supernaturalist’ conception defended by Nachmanides, Crescas, and others, the World-to-Come is the future post-Messianic reality of our own physical world, which one enters by being resurrected in a physical body when this time arrives.

At the heart of the debate between these two camps are two fundamental and inter-dependent questions: First, what is the fundamental nature of the self, such that this self could survive death and come to exist in the World-to-Come? Second, what is the metaphysical nature of the World-to-Come, such that one could transition from life in this (current) world to life in that alternative realm? In what follows, we’ll see that each view faces challenges in answering these questions in a way that makes clear how it is that we can come to exist in the World-to-Come as ourselves. As Crescas and others have argued, the intellectualist faces a challenge in explaining how it is we who come to exist in the World-to-Come—it is not clear that the pure intellect that survives death on this view is tied to us in the right way to constitute survival of one’s self. The supernaturalist, on the other hand, struggles to provide an explanation of how it is that we come to exist in the World-to-Come as ourselves. The appeal to supernatural Divine intervention takes the place of explanation at junctures in the view where an explanation appears to be unavailable.

After presenting the central commitments of each view and briefly sketching the philosophical challenges they face, I will propose an alternative direction for thinking about these issues that is grounded in and inspired by Hasidic Jewish thought. I will suggest that the Hasidic tradition can be interpreted so as to offer an alternative conception of the World-to-Come—one that integrates certain core aspects of the two familiar views into a unified metaphysical picture, and may have the resources to resolve the difficulties they face at the same time.

The intellectualist and supernaturalist approaches to the World-to-Come can be seen as providing distinct sets of answers to four central questions: When, Where, How, and In Virtue of What. Attention to each view’s answers to these four questions can help elucidate each view as it stands on its own, as well as clarify key points of difference between them. The four questions, then, can be spelled out as follows:

When: When does the Word-to-Come exist and when does one (come to) inhabit it?

Where: Where does the World-to-Come exist and where does one (come to) inhabit it?

How: How does one (come to) inhabit the World-to-Come?

In Virtue of What (IVOW): In virtue of what does one (come to) inhabit the World-to-Come?

On the intellectualist conception, the World-to-Come is an immaterial realm that exists now, in some sense alongside the physical world. A person comes to inhabit it immediately after death, as her intellect is severed from her physical body. This intellect (or intellectual soul), holds the knowledge that one has acquired throughout one’s life, and it is in virtue of this knowledge that she comes to inhabit the World-to-Come. This survival is simply a natural consequence of having acquired knowledge of eternal abstract truths—cognition of these truths is taken to be an immaterial aspect of a person that is eternal by nature, just as the content it grasps. Untethered to a physical body, the intellect continues to enjoy this grasp in an unencumbered state in the eternal realm of the World-to-Come.¹

The intellectualist’s answers to the four questions we’ve spelled out can thus be summarized as follows:

When: The World-to-Come exists now, and one comes to inhabit it immediately upon death.

Where: The World-to-Come is not (in) this physical world; rather it is metaphysically elsewhere—an immaterial realm distinct from the physical world we inhabit.

How & IVOW: One comes to inhabit the World-to-Come by virtue of the knowledge one has acquired, via the eternal existence of this very cognitive attainment.

The alternative to the intellectualist view is the supernaturalist conception, which differs from the intellectualist view on all four points above. On the supernaturalist view, the World-to-Come is this very world, after the final redemption and resurrection. One comes to inhabit it by supernatural Divine intervention, and in virtue of the Divine service and devotion achieved in this lifetime. Given that the World-to-Come does not yet exist, one does not come to inhabit it immediately after death. Rather, there is an additional realm one enters upon death where one’s soul awaits the final redemption, at which point the whole person (soul and body) is resurrected and thereby comes to exist in the redeemed physical world of the future—the supernaturalist’s World-to-Come.²

The supernaturalist’s answers to our four questions can thus be summarized as follows:

When: The World-to-Come exists not now, but later, after the final redemption and resurrection.

Where: The World-to-Come exists in (or is constituted by) this very physical world.

How & IVOW: One comes to inhabit the World-to-Come via supernatural Divine intervention, and in virtue of the Divine service and devotion achieved in this world.

The two views can thus be seen as standing on opposite poles on a number of points: For the intellectualist, the World-to-Come exists now but not here, while for the supernaturalist, it exists here but not now. For the intellectualist, we come to inhabit the World-to-Come due to, and purely in virtue of, the nature of the soul and its cognitive attainments, while for the supernaturalist, we come to inhabit the World-to-Come due to a supernaturally based relationship to the Divine.³

At the heart of the debate between these two views are two fundamental and inter-dependent questions: First, what is the fundamental nature of the self, such that this self could survive death and come to exist in the World-to-Come? Second, what is the metaphysical nature of the World-to-Come, such that one could transition from life in this (current) world to life in that alternative realm?

These two questions can be reformulated as inter-dependent requirements that a comprehensible view of the World-to-Come should be able to meet: On the one hand, it must conceive of personal identity and the self in such a way that would allow for a person to survive death and come to exist in the World-to-Come. At the same time, it must conceive of the metaphysics of the World-to-Come in such a way that is compatible with this possibility—i.e. such that we could come to exist there. Together, a view’s underlying commitments on these two points should provide ground for an explanation of how it is that we can come to exist in the World-to-Come as ourselves.

Both views I’ve presented face familiar challenges, which can be framed as difficulties in addressing this last question. Specifically, each view is challenged by a different side of the requirement that it be one’s own self that can come to exist in the World-to-Come: The intellectualist faces difficulties in explaining how it is we who come to exist there; while the supernaturalist is challenged to fully explain how it is that we can come to exist there, in the supernaturalist’s World-to-Come.

Starting with the intellectualist view, we can ask whether the kind of survival the intellectualist’s World-to-Come promises truly constitutes survival of one’s own self—a kind of survival which we could value and look forward to in a first-personal way. As Crescas and others have argued, it’s not clear that the self which survives death and comes to exist in the intellectualist’s World-to-Come is a self we can identify as our own. More than this, it is not obviously identifiable as a self at all.⁴

On a common way of formulating the view, it is the intellectual soul which survives death by virtue of its cognitive attainments. This suggests that what survives is both the knowledge one has attained as well as a consciousness of that knowledge—a kind of self that is the bearer of one’s intellectual attainments. But closer attention to the Maimonidean understanding of the intellectual soul suggests that it is nothing over and above the content of one’s knowledge; i.e. the grasped facts themselves, which survive by nature of their eternal existence. The abstract truths one knows are themselves eternal, and thus continue to exist irrespective of a person’s conscious grasp. This, at least on one understanding of the view, is what survival of the intellectual soul consists in.⁵

On this understanding, the kind of survival promised by the intellectualist is a far cry from the kind of survival we could, in a first-personal way, look forward to: it is not an individual conscious subject who survives, but only the abstract truths she has succeeded to grasp. But even on the initial, more intuitive interpretation of the view—on which what survives is the conscious grasp of the knowledge one has attained in addition to its content—it’s not obvious that this is a kind of self we can truly identify with. Eternal contemplation of abstract truths is deeply different from the kind of consciousness we currently enjoy. Even if we can identify this conscious grasp as our own, or as the activity of one of our parts, its survival is not obviously sufficient for continued personal identity; what persists on this view seems to be something of or in us rather than our selves.⁶

The supernaturalist, on the other hand, offers a much ‘fuller’ existence in the World-to-Come: as in this world, existence in the World-to-Come is of an embodied soul. The soul survives death while the body is resurrected, the two coming back together for embodied existence in the World-to-Come.

The underlying view of personal identity here seems, at first glance, much more ordinary than on the intellectualist’s view above. The identity of the person who comes to exist in the World-to-Come as our own is secured by the fact that it is the very same combination of body and soul which comes to exist there. More generally, however we understand our current existence, our existence in the World-to-Come is supposed to be of the very same kind. We simply come to exist at a later time in history, as exactly the kind of beings we are now. So on this conception of what existence in the World-to-Come consists in, it’s not difficult to identify it as an existence we ourselves could enjoy. But difficulties arise on another front: namely, in considering the question of how it is that we could in fact come to exist there.

In considering the transition we are supposed to undergo in coming to exist in the World-to-Come after a completed life in the current world, a crucial question arises. What is the criterion of bodily-identity that allows the resurrected body to be the very same body one has before death? On the one hand, the supernaturalist takes existence in the World-to-Come to be essentially embodied, and as we’ve just seen, it is the prospect of existing in the very same body that allows us to conceive of existence in the future post-Messianic period as our own. But it’s not obvious what could make the resurrected body identical to the body one has in the current world, given the intervening death and decay. Neither sameness-of-matter nor physical continuity appear to be viable options for conceiving of sameness-of-body here: sameness-of-matter is not necessary or sufficient for persistence of the body even in our current lives, and there is an obvious break in physical continuity between death and resurrection.

A wide range of options have been considered in the attempt to make sense of personal identity in the context of resurrection, including views on which identity doesn’t require that one be resurrected in the same body,⁷ as well as views that attempt to re-think the persistence conditions of bodies in various ways, or to explain resurrection in terms of sameness-of-matter or variants of physical continuity after all.⁸ But these views face challenges, and the lengths to which some go in attempting to provide a coherent metaphysics of resurrection illustrate that the task of explaining resurrection in a way that preserves personal identity is far from straightforward.⁹ It appears that if we are to stick to a familiar understanding of personal identity which allows us to easily conceptualize what it would mean to exist in the supernaturalist’s World-to-Come, it becomes far from obvious how it is possible for us to actually come to exist there.¹⁰

The supernaturalist will surely appeal to Divine intervention in explaining how resurrection is to occur. But the appeal to Divine intervention can only serve as an explanation of how something that is physically impossible or improbable can nevertheless come to be; it cannot suffice as a way out of what appears to be a conceptual or metaphysical impossibility. The question of how it is that we can come to exist in the supernaturalist’s World-to-Come is, at least to come extent, a conceptual one: In what sense can we exist there, given the ordinary conception of personal identity that allows us to recognize life in that future world as possible to begin with? There is a conceptual gap in the explanation here, not just a physical impossibility.

The supernaturalist can of course fill in the details of the model in various ways, and my purpose here is not to argue conclusively against this or the intellectualist view. Rather, it is to sketch familiar challenges, and to point out that it’s from two different sides that difficulties for the two views arise. Unlike the intellectualist, the supernaturalist faces a challenge in fully explaining how it is that we can come to exist in the World-to-Come. Given the more familiar understanding of selfhood and personal identity the view seems to presuppose, how are we to come to exist there, in the future post-Messianic physical world, if we do not survive in the ordinary physical sense? Resurrection is mysterious not only physically, but also conceptually and metaphysically, and the supernaturalist’s appeal to Divine intervention does not suffice as an explanation of how it is to be understood.

These challenges may not be insurmountable, or may be seen as simply bringing out the potentially unintuitive commitments of each view. Nevertheless, in what follows, I’d like to explore an alternative: a view of the World-to-Come inspired by Hasidic Jewish thought.

Here I propose an alternative direction for thinking about the nature of the World-to-Come that is grounded in and inspired by Hasidic Jewish sources. I will suggest that the Hasidic tradition can be interpreted so as to offer an alternative conception of the World-to-Come—one that integrates certain key aspects of the two views presented above into a unified metaphysical picture, and has the resources to resolve some of the difficulties they face at the same time.

The central claim of the alternative proposal is as follows: Existence in the World-to-Come is constituted by the attainment of a distinct perspective on this very world; the World-to-Come does not (in an important sense) come after this-worldly existence, and it is not metaphysically ‘elsewhere’. Rather, it is an atemporal perspective on this very reality—a world that is already here, from a perspective we have yet to attain. In what follows, I sketch how this proposal might be developed and consider how it might address the challenges raised above.

To present the alternative proposal in more detail, we’ll first need to gain a basic understanding of some central principles of Hasidic metaphysics.

The first central tenet of Hasidic metaphysics that will be essential to the picture I go on to develop is that fundamentally speaking, there is only God. Everything else exists, in some important sense, non-fundamentally.¹¹ There are number of different ways in which one might understand this idea. Samuel Lebens has suggested understanding the position as a kind of idealism, on which we are fictional characters, or figments of God’s imagination.¹² An alternative possibility is to think of everything (other than God) as simply grounded in God’s will, unity, or existence. There are various ways in which such a grounding-based picture could be understood (some of which might entail or be equivalent to versions of idealism), and I won’t try to map out or choose between them here.¹³

For our purposes, I’ll speak in terms of perspectives—which I understand to be ways of seeing or identifying reality as a whole.¹⁴ On the Hasidic picture, the fundamental perspective is a perspective from which everything is unified, and there is only (a single, unified) God. Everything ‘else’ is an expression or manifestation of God’s unity—not a separately existing state of affairs.

Importantly for our purposes, this includes space and time. That is, space and time are not fundamentally real on the Hasidic metaphysical picture; they, like the rest of the physical world are grounded in (or expressions of) a fundamentally atemporal and non-spatial completely unified reality. It is only from a non-fundamental perspective that we see ourselves as individual spatio-temporal beings, separate from others and the rest of the world. We might call this the common-sense, or physical-worldly perspective, from which there are in fact separately existing physical entities extended in space and persisting through time. But from a (more) fundamental perspective, the physical world of our everyday experience—including space, time, and our own selves—is seen as grounded in a non-spatial and atemporal reality.¹⁵

With this brief sketch of the Hasidic metaphysical picture in the background, we can now begin to present an associated alternative conception of the World-to-Come.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav describes the World-to-Come as the World that is coming—a realm that is not metaphysically later or elsewhere, but exists in some sense, here and now.¹⁶ Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Spira of Dinov identifies the World-to-Come as being a ‘hidden world’ as opposed to the ‘revealed world’ which we currently inhabit.¹⁷ Rabbi Tzadok Hakohen Rabinowitz of Lublin speaks of the World-to-Come as being a realm that is hidden as well as ‘above time’.¹⁸ Rabbi Nachman,¹⁹ Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter²⁰ and other Hasidic thinkers also describe the World-to-Come as being ‘above time’, or as having ‘no time’, and Rabbi Nachman, among others, describes it as a world that will, in the future, be revealed.²¹

In addition, these and other Hasidic sources describe particular times in a person’s this-worldly life at which the World-to-Come, and in particular its quality of being ‘above time’, is in some sense accessed or revealed. These include Shabbat (the weekly Sabbath), which Hasidic sources explicitly describe as being ‘like (or an aspect of) the World-to-Come’ (me-ein Olam Haba);²² Yom Kippur, which is described as being ‘above time’;²³ as well as any day on which a person does teshuva—repentance, or more literally, return to one’s source and real purpose in the world.²⁴

How might these ideas be understood? In what sense might the World-to-Come be, on the one hand, currently hidden but ‘on its way’ to being revealed, above or beyond time, and nevertheless at some points (and in some sense) accessible during one’s existence in the world we currently inhabit? Neither the intellectualist’s nor the supernaturalist’s World-to-Come seems to fully fit these descriptions: the supernaturalist’s World-to-Come does not exist yet, while on the intellectualist view, it’s not obvious why the World-to-Come should be seen as ‘hidden’, or on its way to being revealed. Further, on neither view is it obvious why or how the World-to-Come would be in some way accessible at the particular times mentioned above.

No doubt, a range of interpretations is possible, and my work here is not ultimately meant to be exegetical. Nevertheless, I think there is an alternative conception of the World-to-Come that can be seen as arising from—or at the very least, inspired by—these and other Hasidic sources on the backdrop of the more general metaphysical picture I sketched above. The proposal is thus meant to be a possible way in which a Hasidic metaphysics of the World-to-Come might be understood.

The proposal, then, is as follows: The Hasidic thinker’s World-to-Come is to be understood as a particular kind of perspective on this very world, different, and not (fully) accessible, from our ordinary physical-worldly perspective, but nevertheless not a metaphysically separate realm from the reality we currently inhabit.

As we’ve seen, the Hasidic metaphysical picture takes the ordinary perspective on the physical world—from which there are multiple distinct physical objects, existing in space and persisting through time—to be a non-fundamental perspective on reality. From a more fundamental perspective this multitude of physical objects is seen to be a mere expression of a deeper, and much more unified reality.

It may be, then, that in dying and ‘coming to inhabit the World-to-Come’, one accesses—or is able to adopt—a perspective that is (at least) closer to the fundamental perspective, and from which one sees one’s previous physical-worldly perspective as having been non-fundamental (and perhaps, in some sense, illusory). The crux of the proposal, then, is that coming to exist in the World-to-Come is constituted by the attainment of this more unified perspective on reality. The World-to-Come itself is thus not a ‘place’, or a metaphysically separate realm, but a different kind of consciousness of, or relationship to, this very world. The self that comes to inhabit the World-to-Come is of the very same kind we currently—fundamentally—are, and it comes to inhabit that world by attaining or adopting the perspective in question.

The World-to-Come is thus understood as being ‘hidden’, ‘above time’, and nevertheless on its way to being, and sometimes in fact partially, revealed: It is a more fundamental perspective on this very world, which we can gain partial access to simply by shifting our perspective. Shabbat, Yom Kippur, and moments of repentance are times which invite this kind of shift in perspective. When one ‘steps back’ from ordinary life concerns and the rush of everyday life, it is possible to see one’s existence—even in this ‘current world’—in a different light.

Much remains to be explained here, but we can now say something about how what I’ll call the Perspective View of the World-to-Come answers the four questions we started out with: When, Where, How, and In Virtue of What:

When: Not later or at a time at all, but (from) an atemporal perspective on this very world.

Where: Not elsewhere, but (from) a non-spatial perspective on this very world.

How and IVOW: By, and in virtue of, attaining an atemporal and non-spatial—more fundamental, and more unified—perspective on reality.

As we did for the other two views, we can now ask about the underlying conception of personal identity and the self that would allow us to survive death and come to exist in the World-to-Come on this view: What does it mean to survive here, and how is the self that comes to exist in the World-to-Come to be seen as one’s very own?

To answer this question, we’ll need to return to the background Hasidic metaphysical picture on which the view arises. On this picture, the self is not seen as fundamentally spatio-temporal or separate from the rest of reality; rather, it is seen as a particular expression of Divine unity, not ultimately separate from other such expressions that manifest themselves as the ‘rest of the world’.

Further, all that separates us from the awareness of this reality—an awareness which would, on the perspective view, constitute existence in the World-to-Come—is our current adoption of the physical-worldly perspective instead of the more unified perspective of the World-to-Come. So all that is required, metaphysically speaking, to come to inhabit the World-to-Come is a shift in perspective, which is a kind of change we are already familiar with from our ordinary lives.

Of course, this particular shift in perspective may not be a simple thing to envision, but shifts in perspective are in general the kind of thing we assume persons can survive: we often come to see ourselves, our lives, or the world in a new light. Further, even radical change in perspective appears to be possible—people sometimes change their conception of reality in very significant ways. Change in perspective is thus a familiar kind of change which we typically assume that subjects can undergo, even if the content of these changes is sometimes radical and their results are difficult to identify with before they occur. Especially if one changes one’s perspective on one’s own life and nature, we can imagine that while the resulting perspective may be difficult to identify with before the change has occurred, after the fact, the case is one in which one can be said to now see one’s very own self in a new light.²⁵

While further questions remain, we can now see the tools which the perspective view has at its disposal to explain how it is that we can come to exist in the World-to-Come as ourselves: the familiar notion of a shift in perspective on the one hand, and the assumption that the perspective of the World-to-Come is a more fundamentally accurate perspective on the very world we currently inhabit on the other. The idea, very roughly, is that if all it takes to come to exist in the World-to-Come is a change in perspective, through which we come to see our lives and our own selves for what they truly are (and were to begin with), a kind of survival is secured: At least in some sense, we cannot fail to survive a change which is constituted by seeing ourselves for what we really are.

The perspective view thus has resources to explain how it is we who come to exist in the World-to-Come, and at the same time, needn’t appeal to supernatural Divine intervention to explain the process by which this is to occur. That is, unlike the supernaturalist view, the perspective view can take our coming to exist in the World-to-Come to be a ‘natural consequence’ of our fundamental nature. The perspective view might thus be seen as incorporating some of the central benefits of each of the two classic views: like the intellectualist, it can explain how we come to exist in the World-to-Come given the nature that it and we are taken to have; and like the supernaturalist, it allows that the self that comes to exist in the World-to-Come is ultimately of the very same kind as we are now.

A number of concerns might arise here. First, one might worry that the difficulties raised earlier for the intellectualist view apply here as well: If coming to exist in the World-to-Come involves coming to see ourselves as not having the kind of separate existence we assumed we had, can this truly be considered individual survival? And even if sense can be made of the notion of individual survival here, is the surviving self one we can truly identify with? Second, one might wonder about the link between physical death and the adoption of a more fundamental perspective—how is death supposed to bring about the relevant shift?

To address these concerns, it will be helpful to briefly set them aside, and first note another benefit the perspective view may be able to offer. The perspective view has the resources to address another critique that is often brought against the intellectualist view: namely, that the latter fails to acknowledge the role of virtuous action and Divine service in one’s attainment of life in the World-to-Come. The Maimonidean view maintains that these activities ultimately bring one to better intellectual understanding, but many take this to be a departure from the depiction of the World of Come in classic Jewish texts: Jewish sources explicitly describe attainment of the World-to-Come as being the result of Divine service and devotion to commandments, at least in addition to intellectual understanding.²⁶

On the perspective view, Divine service might be more naturally incorporated into the picture of how one comes to exist in the World-to-Come. Shifts in perspective often come about as results of actions, not just of new understanding. Divine service and intellectual understanding might thus both contribute to one’s attaining something closer to the fundamental perspective even in this world, or at least to making that perspective more readily accessible. The more one can access and identify with the perspective of the World-to-Come during one’s this-worldly existence, the more one can identify the future perspective of the World-to-Come as potentially one’s own.

This piece of the puzzle can begin to address the concerns raised above. The perspective view can allow that, in some sense, the extent to which we are able to identify with the future perspective of the World-to-Come is precisely the extent to which we survive; One survives not only by attaining the perspective in question, but also by virtue of the fact that one can currently—at least to some extent—identify it as perspective that she herself could attain.²⁷ This may depend both on one’s conception of one’s true nature and relationship to the Divine, and on actions which serve to help make the perspective in question more accessible.

This leaves the question of how individual survival is possible here unaddressed. The difficulty is one faced by many mystical traditions, and addressing it properly would take us far beyond the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, it’s crucial to note that Jewish sources take it to be essential that survival in the World-to-Come is the survival of an individual self, and not a dissolution of the self into an undifferentiated whole.²⁸ To accommodate this requirement, one might allow that the perspective of the World-to-Come is not the most (or absolutely) fundamental perspective—rather it is a more fundamental perspective than that of the physical world. While from an absolutely fundamental perspective, there is only God, there is a perspective from which there are various and particular expressions of Divine unity, and it is only from such a perspective that an individual self can survive.²⁹

Survival, then, can be considered from multiple different perspectives here, which can also help us say something about the relationship between physical death and attainment of the World-to-Come. It is only from our current temporal (and non-fundamental) perspective that attainment of the World-to-Come is seen as something that happens at some particular future time. But from the atemporal perspective of the World-to-Come, death is simply the release of the perception of oneself as a separate spatio-temporal entity. What’s ‘left behind’ after this perception is released is all that was really there all along: A deeper awareness of oneself as a mere expression of Divine unity.

No doubt, this leaves a web of questions unaddressed; A full exposition of the view is far beyond our scope here. Nevertheless, we can now see the outline of a Hasidic alternative to the intellectualist and supernaturalist conceptions of the World-to-Come, together with the unique resources such a view may appeal to in addressing a range of familiar challenges. The possibility of seeing the World-to-Come as a perspective to be adopted, rather than as a distinct metaphysical realm, opens the door to a radical re-conception of the relationship between life in our current world and existence in the World-to-Come.

Ankur Barua

Olla Solomyak sketches a sophisticated response to some philosophical puzzles relating to the nature of the afterlife, by way of engaging with two competing Jewish understandings. After highlighting certain conceptual difficulties in each, she offers a rational reconstruction, by developing the idiom of ‘perspective’ (thus, the title embodies a delicate pun), of a third viewpoint associated with Hasidic Jewish visions. I will begin with an outline of the two conceptions and of her alternative cosmology of the World-to-Come (Olam Haba), before reflecting on these visions from the standpoints of some Vedāntic Hindu worldviews.

According to the ‘intellectualist’ conception, the World-to-Come is a nonphysical domain that is categorically distinct from the spatiotemporal world. This domain (already) exists now, but not right here amidst medium-sized objects such as tables, trees, and taxis. By virtue of the knowledge that the intellect or soul acquires of eternal truths, this nonphysical entity immediately enters the World-to-Come on the dissolution of the physical body at death. The opposing ‘supernaturalist’ conception envisions the World-to-Come as reconstituted from the spatiotemporal fabrics of our everyday world through divine creative intervention. This domain of the final resurrection does not exist yet, so that death is not succeeded immediately by the World-to-Come—rather, one waits for the redemptive horizon to dawn through divine intervention. By virtue of this-worldly service and devotion to the divine, one enters into a perfected relation with the divine in the afterlife. Solomyak helpfully summarizes these distinctions in this way: ‘For the intellectualist, the World-to-Come exists now but not here, while for the supernaturalist, it exists here but not now.’

Solomyak argues that both these conceptions face certain challenges with respect to the ‘requirements’ for a plausible view of the World-to-Come—firstly, an understanding of the person who survives death, and, secondly, an account of the process through which the person may exist in the post-mortem state. The ‘intellectualist’ conception is, well, overly intellectualist—the World-to-Come is characterized by an unvarying cognitive grasp of a certain stock of eternal truths such as ‘2+2=4’, but it is not our worldly self, with its richly varied and highly valued conscious life, that survives there. On the ‘supernaturalist’ conception, the resurrected body is united with the soul, so that the subject-in-this-world and the subject-in-the-hereafter are the same kind of embodied being. However, notwithstanding the voluminous literature devoted to the problem of how the resurrected body can be identical with the this-worldly body, Solomyak suggests that a conceptual gap remains in the task of explaining the resurrected life in a way that preserves personal identity.

Against this conceptual backdrop, Solomyak sketches a Hasidic alternative—the World-to-Come is an atemporal perspective on our everyday existence in this very world. This perspective is distinct to, and not completely accessible from, our current empirical perspectives, but does not constitute a separate spatial destination that one travels towards. This third viewpoint is shaped by a cardinal principle of Hasidic metaphysics which states that only God exists in the most fundamental sense, and the spatiotemporal world has non-fundamental existence. Therefore, to inhabit the World-to-Come is to move away from our non-fundamental perspectives and attain the transfigured consciousness of a more unified perspective, from which worldly fragmentation is seen to be rooted in indivisible reality.

This Hasidic vision is deeply resonant with the Vedāntic claim that (only) Brahman, the divine ground who or which is absolutely indivisible and immutable, truly exists, and finite beings, which are subject to divisibility and mutability, exist (only) derivatively. This ‘derivativeness’ has been explicated across Vedāntic universes in two distinct ways, mirroring the two alternatives that Solomyak indicates. Styles of Advaita Vedānta associated with Śaṃkara (c. 800 ce) veer towards metaphysical idealism, according to which the empirical world—with its seemingly solid objects such as laptops, chairs, and tables—is a non-substantial ‘projection’ of the cosmic self (ātman, Brahman) beyond all qualities and all descriptions. Difference does feel very real, but it is, in the ultimate analysis, shaped by deep misconception. In contrast, according to the styles of Vedānta which are shaped by the motif of devotional relationship (bhakti) between devotee and the supremely personal deity (Brahman), the empirical world is ontologically real, and enjoys dependent existence through its grounding in the divine being. For instance, in the cosmology of Rāmānuja (1017–1137), the finite self and insentient entities such as chairs and tables are dependently real—they are real insofar as they are not mental projections (or ‘hallucinations’), but they are existentially dependent at all times on the unqualified reality of Brahman, who is the Lord Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa. For instance, a laptop is what it is because of its existential dependence on the Lord. Thus, both Śaṃkara and Rāmānuja, in their articulations of the Vedāntic notion of nonduality (advaita), would agree with the Hasidic view that the world is an expression of God’s fundamental unity—however, the crucial intra-Vedāntic dispute is over what measure or mode of ontic reality the world possesses or receives. For both Śaṃkara and Rāmānuja, the spatiotemporal world is not metaphysically separate from Brahman, but they have divergent conceptions of this non-distinction from the divine source.

Now, Solomyak’s Hasidic conception is located somewhere midway on this Vedāntic continuum. On the one hand, the perspective view reflects the Advaita notion that the ‘I’, space, and time are not ontologically real (sat) but are conceptual constructions through which we navigate the world. From our common-sense standpoint, which is shaped by deep ignorance (avidyā) about the way the world is, we mistakenly regard our own individual selves (jīva) as ontologically distinct from one another. From the fundamental standpoint of Brahman, however, these quotidian differentiations are non-substantial or epistemically illusory (māyā) representations of Brahman, which is atemporal and nonspatial. Therefore, liberation (mokṣa) from the cycles of reincarnation (saṃsāra) is akin to effecting a perspectival shift in which the sage realizes that they are, in their spiritual essence, ‘always-already’ beyond all spatiotemporal limitations. That is, the afterlife of liberation does not arrive after this life, but is already here with the arising of enlightening self-knowledge (jñāna) and the dissolution of the principle of individuation—this is the state of liberation-in-life (jīvanmukti). From a metaphysical perspective, the liberated sage is not this or that individual but is (nondual with) indivisible reality. To invoke a spectral metaphor, a follower of Śaṃkara does not first distinguish between seven colours—violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red—and then remind herself of the fact that they are all manifestations of the indivisible white light. Rather, she ‘always-already’ views the indivisible white light as seemingly divided into seven different colours. It is the white root that is ultimately real, and the chromatic routes are departures from reality.

On the other hand, however, the perspective view reflects the emphatic assertion of bhakti-based Vedāntic visions that the liberated self retains its individual identity as a loving devotee of Brahman, the Lord. For instance, according to Rāmānuja, liberation consists of a self’s understanding that it is at all times dependent on, supported by, and controlled by the Lord—he rejects the notion that the self and the Lord are nondual in the sense of constituting an undifferentiated unity. To return to our metaphor, a follower of Rāmānuja too would see the seven colours as multiple manifestations of the one indivisible source of luminosity, but for her these colours have distinct ontic individualities. White light and the seven distinct colours constitute a relational unity. Moreover, Rāmānuja emphasizes the cruciality of performing virtuous (dharmic) actions which are suffused with and structured by the attitude of devotional surrender to the Lord. Therefore, liberation is catalysed not simply through a trans-conceptual shift but through the ongoing interplay of meditative reflection on the scriptures, devotional love, and embodied cultivation of virtuous living. In contrast, while for Śaṃkara, certain patterns of Vedic ritual activity (karma) play a propaedeutic role in preparing the aspirant for liberation, the sage in jīvanmukti has transcended the requirements of all such activity.

Thus, both a follower of Śaṃkara and a follower of Rāmānuja would begin to develop a re-formed perspective on the world as rooted-in-the-divine at all times. For them, Brahman is both mysteriously hidden in the here and now, and progressively accessible to aspirants with clarified insight. That is, Brahman is simultaneously transcendent to and immanent in all finite beings.

In the end, Solomyak’s Hasidic alternative seems to be somewhat nearer the Advaita end of the conceptual spectrum. In Advaita, it is not meaningful to ask, ‘when did you become liberated?’—liberation is the atemporal perspective that deep reality is fundamentally nondual. The attaining of liberation is a more robustly temporal phenomenon in Rāmānuja’s cosmology, especially given that Rāmānuja rejects the possibility of jīvanmukti. The supreme goal of devotional communion with the Lord cannot be attained in the present state of embodiment—rather, on their spiritual trajectory of purification across multiple rebirths, a devotee will seek to move away from their hankering after worldly objects until their liberation when they will see the Lord as the indivisible centre of the world.

Bronwyn Finnigan

Olla Solomyak discusses Life and the Afterlife from the perspective of Hasidic Judaism. She presents it as an alternative to two dominant Jewish conceptions of the ‘World-to-Come’, the intellectualist and the supernaturalist, each of which she finds problematic. According to the intellectualist conception, a pure intellect with knowledge of eternal abstract truths enters an immaterial World-to-Come after death. Solomyak argues that this inadequately accounts for how the ‘individual self’ survives death, since our ‘first-personal’ sense of ourselves consists of more than an abstract grasp of spiritual truths. This implies a Jewish desideratum for an adequate account of the World-to-Come: (D1) it is the individual self who survives death and exists in this state. According to the ‘supernaturalist’ conception, the World-to-Come is the physical domain in which we presently exist and into which the individual is physically resurrected at some time after death. The problem with this, for Solomyak, is that it inadequately accounts for how physical resurrection occurs. Its defenders insist it requires divine intervention. Solomyak argues that explanatory gaps remain, such as which of our physical dimensions are resurrected (surely not our decomposing corpses) and how the relevant physical dimensions could possibly be resurrected at some later time. This implies a second Jewish desideratum for an adequate account of the World-to-Come: (D2) it needs to provide a reasonable explanation for how the individual self enters this state.

Solomyak’s Hasidic alternative promises to meet both desiderata. It does so by distinguishing two perspectives on reality; a ‘non-fundamental’ perspective of ‘common-sense’ in which we are spatio-temporally structured individual selves, and a ‘fundamental’ perspective in which ‘we’ are viewed as mere ‘expressions or manifestations’ of a ‘single, unified God’. While Solomyak claims that the fundamental perspective ‘grounds’ the non-fundamental, she does not take a position on what this implies for the status of non-fundamental entities (i.e. whether they are ‘fictional characters or figments of God’s imagination’). She also admits that she hasn’t explained how the individual self ‘survives’ death or the role of death for realizing the fundamental perspective. She nevertheless thinks this Hasidic account can satisfy D1 and D2. It satisfies D1 because it is the very same individual self that realizes these two perspectives. And it satisfies D2 because, while some account is needed to justify the validity of the two perspectives (not offered here) and to explain how the fundamental perspective is realized and ‘unhidden’ (also not offered here), the individual self is not assumed to enter the World-to-Come in any ontologically substantive sense that needs explaining.

How might a Buddhist respond to this proposal? The general explanatory strategy is familiar. Buddhism and other Indic philosophical traditions frequently employ a distinction between two standpoints on reality; one that is non-fundamental and reflects common-sense descriptions of a physical world populated by spatio-temporally distinct entities, and another that is ultimate or fundamental. Buddhist philosophers disagree amongst themselves about how best to characterize the ultimate or fundamental mode of reality. None, however, assume that it consists of a single, unified God that grounds whatever non-fundamentally exists.

Until modern times, the idea of rebirth, or a life after death, was widely accepted and asserted by Buddhists. We might ask whether their idea of rebirth satisfies the Jewish desiderata, D1 and D2. A quick argument against D1 might suggest itself. D1 is the desideratum that the individual self survives death. The Buddha taught that there is no self. So, one might argue, it cannot be the individual self who survives death. But this raises the obvious question: who then is reborn after death? A more sophisticated answer is needed that shows how the Buddhist denial of self is consistent with rebirth if the concept of rebirth is to make sense. This answer would also need to satisfy some version of D2. That is, it needs to tell some story about how whatever is reborn can be reborn.

Buddhist philosophers have a lot to say about these issues, and offer different explanations that turn on different conceptions of the relevant sense of self that the Buddha denied. I will here sketch one early Buddhist position and argue that while it might satisfy a version of D2, it is unlikely to satisfy D1.

The Buddha denied that there is a self (ātman). While there is debate about the exact scope of this denial and its implications, most Buddhists understand it to at least reject the existence of a permanent, unchanging and eternally existing substance that persists through time and across lives. Instead, what we call persons, are empirically and conceptually analysed as dynamic and highly complex causal systems of psychophysical elements. The Buddha offers several classifications of these elements. The most well-known is of the five aggregates, according to which persons are analysed to consist of: (1) material bodily elements, (2) elements of feeling, (3) elements of discriminative cognition such as perceptions, thoughts, and recollections, (4) volitional elements such as intentions and reactive attitudes, and (5) events of consciousness. This analysis is assumed to be exhaustive; there is nothing else that constitutes a person other than tokens of these five types of elements. According to the Buddha, all these elements are impermanent and depend on causes and conditions for their existence. Moreover, their unification as a ‘whole’ system (a persisting person) is not considered to be a real substance with causal properties. Buddhists attribute to the Buddha a distinction between two standpoints on reality, the conventional and the ultimate, to explain why we nevertheless talk as if there were persisting persons and assume them in our social, linguistic and moral practices (Siderits 2003).

Can this Buddhist analysis of persons satisfy D2? How is an individual person reborn? On an early Buddhist view, persons are reborn in the sense that key elements in the causal system of psychophysical elements that we conventionally identify with that person extend beyond the boundaries of their natural death. While the physical elements fall away at death, elements of a subtle form of consciousness have causal effect across this boundary and spark an embryo into sentience. Certain volitional elements also causally transmit into the next life since they are the bearers of the karmic debt accumulated as the result of good and bad actions performed in this life. They causally influence the nature of the persons next mode of existence (i.e. whether they are reborn as a divine being, a human, an animal, a hungry ghost, or a hell denizen) and cause some auspicious or inauspicious events to occur in that life (Jackson 2022). While this might seem mysterious in the sense of being experientially unverifiable (except by the spiritual insight of an enlightened being), the underlying mechanism is thought to be similar in kind to what regularly occurs in a single lifetime; it is held to be akin to the fact that the psychophysical elements of an infant are not identical to, but causally related in the right kind of way to, those of the adult later in life.

What about D1? This is the desideratum that it is the individual self that survives death and exists in the World-to-Come. By ‘individual self’ Solomyak means a first-personally aware subject of experience; ‘me!’. Is it me that is reborn in the next life on the Buddhist account? This is complicated. Some Buddhists argue that subjective awareness (on some minimal construal) is constitutive of certain modes of consciousness (Coseru 2012). But there are different views about what this amounts to (Finnigan 2018) as well as about which mode of consciousness has causal effect in the next life (Batchelor 1997; Jackson 2022). If it turns out that subjective awareness is constitutive of the kinds of conscious events that do have causal effect in the next life, then it might be argued that it is ‘the same’ subjective awareness both before and after death but only in the sense that those conscious events are causally related in the right kind of way. This account is unlikely to support a sense of ourselves persisting across this boundary, however. On most Buddhist accounts, the experience of a persisting ‘me’ involves more than just subjective awareness but also inferential and conceptual activities supported by memory. These cognitive supports tend not to feature in accounts of what crosses the boundary of death. We typically do not recall our past lives, for instance, and so are unlikely to recall our present life when reborn into the next. It is also thought to be much more likely that we will be reborn as some kind of animal (or hungry ghost or hell denizen) due to the bad karma generated by our misdeeds in the present life. If this is right, and while there are complex issues around the nature of animal sentience, it is unlikely that the relevant mode of subjective awareness will possess the rich sense of ourselves that we might hope to continue in our next life.