Eventually everybody asks, "What now after the Rebbe has passed on?"

First of all, you must know—-even though it doesn’t answer our question—-that the Rebbe is still here with us. Just as a parent who leaves this world is still with his or her children—-but much, much more so. Just as any tzadik, for whom death is no more than a passing from the confines of the body to a freedom to work within this world without such limitations. But even more so.

For a tzadik as transcendent as the Rebbe, none of the events of this world, not even death, effect any real change. His life is truth, and truth is constant. He guides those who are bound to him as he guided them before, and continues to channel light and blessing into our world and for those in need, as he always has. The only change is for us, that our flesh eyes looking out of a coarse world, cannot see a tzadik before them. And that is our question: How can we be expected to carry on with our window shades down?

The question is really a larger one: Where are all the tzadikim when we need them most? Once upon a time, people lived a simple life and had clear direction from their teachers and parents. They believed with simple faith that wonders and miracles could happen, and that G–d could speak with Man. What need did they have for tzadikim? Now, with our disillusion, confusion and apathy, now we need someone transcendent to show us that G‑d is still possible. Yet now we are more alone than ever.

The answer is that each one of us must find our window now. The tzadik within. The place where the tzadik and the student are no longer two beings.

That is the whole purpose. For all of time and all of creation was directed to this point: A point when the people no longer look above for G‑dliness to pour down from the heavens but search for that G‑dliness within themselves, within the people of the earth who belong to the earth. When heaven has reached earth and speaks from within it. From within each one of us.

The tzadik has shown us where to look. Now he hides so we may discover.

Soak in the wisdom of the Rebbe, not as words, not as ideas, but in attempt to feel the tzadik within them. Find a place where the teacher and student merge.

Once enough of us have done this, it will be time for the blind to be pulled from over our eyes, for all the walls to be dissolved and we will see the world for what it truly is. We will know wisdom once again from the Rebbe’s mouth—until there will no longer be a teacher and a student. We will have arrived.

May that be sooner than we can imagine.