Likutay Moharan - Torah-teaching 275

275 - Every Mitzvah and Mitzvah That One Performs Creates One Candle from It

Know that every mitzvah and mitzvah that one performs creates one candle from it [see Zohar Terumah 166, Kabbalistic idea of spiritual lights from deeds]. And when a person departs, if it is a great soul that is very precious in the eyes of the Name, blessed be He, then they give it to search in the treasuries of the king—to search and take what it wants from the treasuries of the king, blessed be He. And this is the ultimate of all pleasures of the world to come. And for searching, one needs candles, as our rabbis, of blessed memory, said [Pesachim 10a]: that searching is with candles, and they learned from the verse "The candle of Hashem is the soul of man, searching all the chambers of the belly" [Proverbs 20:27]. And the candles are made from the mitzvot as above, in the aspect of "A candle is a mitzvah" [Proverbs 6:23]. But for these candles, the soul searches after departure in the treasuries of the king. And this is the aspect of "In the dead free" [Psalms 88:6]—once a person dies, he is made free from the mitzvot [Shabbat 151a]. Free is the aspect of searching that is made from the mitzvot, because the mitzvot are candles through which the searching occurs as above. But there is a tzadik who kills himself in his life, and also while still in life he searches in the treasuries of his father [G-d, symbolizing accessing divine wisdom even in this world through self-nullification].