Musar על יבמות 50:18

Adam had been created and placed in Gan Eden in order לעבדה ולשמרה "to work and preserve it" (Genesis 2,15). The mystical dimension of the word לעבדה, is עבודה service of the Lord. He himself was meant to be the "service" or, as we expressed this later the "offering." He was a "living sacrifice." While alive in a body, he was supposed to be what the souls of the righteous are nowadays after they have left this earth and their bodies behind and when the archangel Michael offers their souls on the Celestial Altar. In an ideal world the attachment to G–d expressed by the word קרב would have existed during man's lifetime. Man is supposed to be close to this image of himself since man on this earth was created in the image of the אדם who sits on the "throne" in the Celestial Regions, the mystical dimension of אצילות. The domain of the אצילות is the domain from which unification with the אין סוף is possible. I have explained this process in my introduction to the chapter תולדות האדם.