Q: How many lives does a person have to live?
A: It depends on the individual. You can calculate the number of lives needed for man if he advances against himself, by the force that necessitates him to advance. But one cannot foresee how many lifetimes will be spared when the hastening of the way is one’s own choice, one’s freedom.
Our souls continue to return and clothe new bodies until that moment when we are able to control ourselves completely.
In the Kabbalah, there is a field called “incarnation of souls.” It deals with the incarnations of each individual soul: how many cycles it has to go through before it reaches its peak, and when it is in full control of itself and fully participates in the creation of the world. But let us assume that your soul needs seventeen more cycles to attain its completion. In reality, you can go through them within one lifetime; it all depends on the pace of your advancement.
One cannot say how many cycles each soul will have. It is our own choice. Therefore, each one of us can, in this lifetime, experience several additional cycles and cut the road of correction much shorter, and experience a level of existence completely different from that of today, where we will not feel the transition between life and death.
Q: When does the soul dress in a physical body - is it at birth, or at another time?
A: The dressing of the soul in our biological body does not relate to the physical age of the body. When a person begins to feel a desire for the Upper World (by desire, I mean a genuine yearning for the Upper World), it means that a soul has clothed him.