Q: Is reincarnation the appearance of a new soul, which brings about the birth of a new person?
A: We do not count people like we count cattle heads; not by physical heads, but by spiritual heads, meaning by their desires and their aims. If those desires and aims have transformed in quality, we have a new person before us!
Q: But I’ve read in several other places in your books that reincarnation means there are many appearances of the souls in bodies in our corporeal world, and that this occurs until they reach their individual end of correction.
A: It is true when you speak about the unification of the soul and the body, at which time the body is like a cover, a shirt for the soul.
Q: In your book, you write: “Just as we must seemingly serve our egoistic desires (our inner “gentiles”), so we serve all the nations of the world in the physical world. Our spiritual state is what determines our situation in this world.” Is that really so?
A: To the extent that we serve our inner desires in order to enjoy them, instead of serving the Creator, we are not serving ourselves, but the nations of the world. They are the ones that enjoy the fruits of our work, not us. Therefore, we have to know that we are the only ones who can change our fate, and only through the spiritual world, through inner change and self-correction.
Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag writes about it in his "Introduction to The Book of Zohar" (item 66 through the end).