There is a reason why funeral rituals are so important. Death rites can be comforting on an emotional level, but they also come from a deep understanding of the human body and how it works. We did some research and came up with some important points that show how funeral rites help both the living and the dead. In this post, we will look at the importance of performing rituals after the death of a loved one, as well as the fundamentals of shraddha. let’s dive straight in.
Why We Perform Funeral Rites
Everything in here has accumulated over time. It’s a chunk of earth that we painstakingly gathered. Whatever we have ingested must be expelled atomic by atomic. Additionally, the process of dying causes the mind to lose its capacity for free will. Everything you have built up stays the same, including the software that is your karma and the more subtle parts of your body and mind.
Heaven is the condition of being where all your needs are met and you feel completely at peace. “Hell” is the name given to a very bad place to be. These places do not exist on a map; rather, they are realities that one can have.
Assume you read today that the stock market is down and you lost a lot of money. It’s fine that you lost that; you still have this. Engage in some activity with the intention, “Let me be joyful today,” and you’ll likely find that it brings you joy.
Depression is a compulsive state that sets in when you lose this control. Now, you’ll act based on your habits and the qualities you’ve learned. Therefore, when you lose your body, you also lose your discretionary intelligence, and you can only act in accordance with your tendencies, in whatever direction they push you based on the software you’re running.
Since there is no longer any need for judgment or discernment, even a small amount of positivity can have a profound effect on the mind of a person who has passed on. One nasty element multiplied by a million is still quite unpleasant. It’s similar to how kids don’t know when to stop playing, so they keep going outside even if they’ve had plenty to eat and drink.
After death, one loses all ability to judge, much more so than a young infant. Then, a millionfold growth can be expected from every virtue implanted in the brain. Heaven and hell refer to these places. Heaven is the condition of being where all your needs are met and you feel completely at peace. “Hell” is the name given to a very bad place to be. These are not places in the physical world, but states of being experienced by a disembodied life.
There are numerous rites designed to ensure that even the smallest amount of sweetness reaches such a dull intellect, where it can then grow ad infinitum, allowing the devotee to enjoy a state of blissful, self-induced serenity. The point of funeral rites is precisely this.
Care for the Deceased
It is possible to change the course of that life by going through certain rituals. From this foundation, all of these funeral rites were developed. When someone dies, one of the first things people do is tie their big toes together. This is crucial because it will seal the Muladhara chakra, making it impossible for that life to re-enter the body.
A life that hasn’t been lived with the understanding that “this body is not me” will want to enter through any opening, but the Muladhara chakra in particular. When the body begins to cool down, the Muladhara is the last place to lose its heat because it is the source of life.
Whoever hasn’t learned that “this body is not me” will try to get into the physical world by any means necessary, but especially through the Muladhara.
Historically, we’ve been taught that once someone dies, their body must be burned before a specific time limit has passed, all because life has a way of trying to come back. The living also benefits from this. It’s natural to have irrational thoughts after the death of a loved one, such as the possibility that God may intervene and restore them to life.
No one else has ever experienced this, yet your mind may play tricks on you anyway due to the strong feelings you have for that individual. Similarly, the life that has exited the body believes that it can still go back into the body.
Research on Cremation’s Biological Effects
The first step to ending the drama is to set fire to the body within an hour and a half. On the other hand, they could have waited four hours to be sure that the person was really dead. But the body should be carried away as quickly as possible.
People in rural areas traditionally buried their dead so that the earth that had fed their ancestors could continue to do so. You go to the grocery store and buy your food, but you have no idea where it comes from. It follows that interment is no longer recommended. In the past, when bodies were buried on their own land, salt and turmeric were applied to hasten decomposition.
The finality that comes with cremation is another positive aspect. You’ll notice that when someone close to them dies, there will be lamenting and sobbing, but once the cremation begins, the mourners will be silent, as if the reality of the situation has finally sunk in. This is true not only for those still in their bodies but also for those who have recently left them. The longer the corpse is kept, the more confident he or she remains, believing they can somehow return.
In addition to helping the deceased on their path, death rites benefit the living. If the deceased leaves a lot of unfinished business in the world, it won’t be a good place for us to live. It’s not like ghosts will appear and scare you.
Rituals make the environment recycled for you
However, this will have an impact on the surrounding environment. People’s mental states near you will be affected. It will also have an impact on the quality of life in the surrounding area. Because of this, every culture in history has come up with its own unique set of funeral rites. Quite often, this is done to alleviate the emotional distress of those closest to the person. They were not completely devoid of significance or scientific basis. But, probably, no other society has as elaborate methods as the Indians do.
No other civilization has examined death with the level of insight and depth that this one does. Whole systems exist to aid a person’s death in the most positive way possible, beginning at the moment of death or even before. They strive to make the most of life from every angle in order to achieve Mukti, or liberation. They hope to find meaning in death itself if death is inevitable so that they can finally achieve Mukti. So they constructed strong ceremonies for the dying and the deceased.
Today, these rituals have grown even more crucial because practically everyone is beginning to die in ignorance without the necessary understanding of the life mechanism within themselves. Historically, infectious diseases and famine were the leading causes of death. Humans wanted assistance with more than just their physical selves, so they developed an entire scientific discipline to do it. When they were in the body, maybe others nearby could not figure out what the sickness was, the person did not get the appropriate treatment, or something else happened, and they died.
So, they hoped to help people in some way after they died. This would make sure they went away quickly and didn’t hang around. This is the genesis of the scientific rationale for these practices. Sadly, though, it has mostly become a pointless ritual done by people who don’t have the right knowledge or skills.
Teenagers Are Most Targetted
Teenage life is the first thing these soulless beings go after because it is the most basic and defenseless form of human life. If we don’t treat the dead properly, teenagers in such a culture will suffer a lot. The first thing these disembodied beings gravitate towards is adolescent life since that is the easiest and most vulnerable human life around. People have said that the fast physical and mental growth of teenagers is like animal molting.
Due to this, it is during this time that life is most malleable. Adolescents are like sponges, soaking up whatever vibes are floating around them. Teenage girls are considerably more vulnerable than teenage boys to these influences. But pre-adolescent children, up to about the age of 10, tend to be resistant to such illnesses. Nature has given them that protection, so you don’t have to defend them much. It is primarily children between ten and twenty years of age that can be impacted.
When I say someone is impacted, I don’t mean they’re going through some kind of hormonal change or that they’ve lost it due to drugs or alcohol. That can also happen, but there are various kinds of influences that they can come under. You can see how hard it is for kids to grow up today just by watching them become teenagers. Adolescence in prior generations didn’t present quite as many challenges.
This is due, in part, to the fact that we do not properly honor the dead. It’s like having uninstalled software lying around, and the complexities of adolescence are bound to mess with it. So, whether they knew how or just wanted to, people in all cultures have tried to give teenagers safe places to hang out.
Why is it so crucial to perform shraddha? (rituals for the deceased)
When someone dear to you dies in India, everyone gathers around the body and watches. If a body is kept for more than three days, hair will begin to grow on it. The lack of a clean-shaven appearance indicates that this was formerly a male. It’s natural for the nails to develop at the same time. Undertakers shave and cut the nails of dead people in cultures where they want to keep their bodies for a long time.
That’s just how things work out in real life. Just so we’re clear, there’s a spiritual life and there’s a physical life. There are five primary expressions of prana, or physical life energy. Samana, prana, udhana, apana, and vyana are the names for them.
Understanding The Dying Processes
Once a doctor pronounces a person dead, Samana begins to leave the body within 21 to 24 minutes. Samana regulates the body’s core temperature. Once a person dies, their body immediately begins to cool down. Historically, people have only used their noses to determine if a person is alive or dead; they did not bother inspecting the pupils of their eyes or any other physiological indicators. Seeing as how the nose has turned chilly, they assumed the worst.
Prana leaves the body between 48 and 64 minutes after a person is pronounced dead. Udhana leaves somewhere between 6 and 12 hours later. Before Udhana leaves, the body might be revived by tantric methods. Once Udhana has left the body, it is extremely unlikely that it can be brought back to life. Then, after an additional 8–18 hours, Apana will go. Then, prana’s conserving quality, called vyana, begins to leave the body; in the case of natural death, such as one caused by old age, this process can take anywhere from 11 to 14 days. During that time, the body will still do some things, giving the impression that it is still alive. Unless the body is completely crushed, the aftershocks of a person’s life that was cut short in an accident while it was still active will be felt for another 48 to 90 days.
The Rationales Behind Funeral Practices
There are steps you can take right now to improve your life later on. While it may seem to you that a loved one has passed away, from the perspective of the deceased, all that has happened is that they have left their body. A person is no longer a concern of yours once they have passed from the physical body. If they returned now, you wouldn’t even know them, much less identify them, and that should be enough to make you feel afraid. Your relationship with them is bodily, mental, and emotional, so if they died and came back to life, you would be terrified, not in love. After death, those two things are no longer present.
After death, one loses all ability to judge, much more so than a young infant. Then, a millionfold growth can be expected from every virtue implanted in the brain.
The mind is just a collection of information that has its own tendencies and shows them in a certain way. Logic and reason cease to exist after death. The effect of even a small dose of positivity on their outlook will be magnified a thousand times over. One nasty element multiplied by a million is still quite unpleasant. It’s similar to how kids don’t know when to stop playing, so they keep going outside even if they’ve had plenty to eat and drink.
After death, one loses all ability to judge, much more so than a young infant. Then, a millionfold growth can be expected from every virtue implanted in the brain. Heaven and hell refer to these places. Heaven is the condition of being where all your needs are met and you feel completely at peace. “Hell” is the name given to a very bad place to be. These places don’t exist in the real world. Instead, they represent the subjective realities of a life that has lost its body.
Customs Celebrated at the Time of Death
There is an entire science behind what to do at various stages, regardless of how well or absurdly it is really done now. In many cultures, the first thing done to a dead person is to tie the big toes together. This is crucial because it will seal the Muladhara chakra, making it impossible for that life to re-enter the body. Whoever hasn’t learned that “this body is not me” will try to get into the physical world by any means necessary, but especially through the Muladhara. When the body begins to cool down, the Muladhara is the last place to lose its heat because it is the source of life.
The reason why, traditionally, we always said that once someone dies, you must burn the body within an hour and a half or a maximum of four hours is because life attempts to return. The living also benefit from this. It’s natural to have irrational thoughts after the death of a loved one, such as the possibility that God may intervene and restore them to life. No one else has ever experienced this, yet your mind may play tricks on you anyway due to the strong feelings you have for that individual. Likewise, the life that has left the body thinks there’s a chance it can return.
There are a lot of rituals to follow to make sure that even a little bit of sugar doesn’t go to waste in someone’s otherwise tasteless brain. Putting out the body fire within 1.5 hours is the first step towards ending the drama. On the other hand, they could have waited four hours to be sure that the person was really dead. However, the body needs to be removed as soon as possible.
Farmers traditionally buried their dead so that the land that had fed their ancestors could continue to do so long after they were gone. You go to the grocery store and buy your food, but you have no idea where it comes from. It follows that interment is no longer recommended. In the past, when the dead were buried on their own land, salt and turmeric were applied to hasten decomposition.
The finality provided by cremation is a positive aspect of this choice. You’ll notice that when someone close to them dies, there will be lamenting and sobbing, but once the cremation begins, the mourners will be silent, as if the reality of the situation has finally sunk in. This is true not only for those still in the body but also for those who have recently left it. It’s possible that so long as the corpse is present, he or she will continue to believe that they can somehow return.
There are numerous rites designed to ensure that even the smallest amount of sweetness reaches such a dull intellect, where it can then grow ad infinitum, allowing the devotee to enjoy a state of blissful, self-induced serenity. This is the intended result of the rites, assuming they are carried out correctly.
What is Runanubandha and How It Affects Us
Most of you have probably heard of “runanubandha,” which denotes a sexual or romantic relationship. According to Sadhguru, physical contact of any kind creates runanubandha, a bond between the two people involved. This includes being related by blood or by sexual attraction, but also just holding hands or trading clothes. Traditionally, upon witnessing a person’s death, one learns how to destroy the runanubandha entirely. Ashes are scattered in the Ganga or the ocean to break up any potential runanubandha you could have with the deceased.
You need to fully break this runanubandha so that you can move on with your life. Otherwise, it will influence your physical and mental makeup in the same way it does in today’s cultures. Nature has kept these dangers away from kids under the age of eight, but if we don’t take care of the dead properly, it will hurt teenagers the most. This is because disembodied energies are always there, and they target the youngest and weakest victims first. Adolescence is a time of great change, and you can see that it is impacting people’s lives today.
We don’t take care of the dead well enough, and these runanubandhas are all over the place. This is one reason why being a teenager is harder now than it was in the past. It’s like unpatched software, and it always seems to have the greatest impact on teenagers’ daily lives.
How do you Disconnect to your feelings
Is it even possible to disconnect from your feelings? Feelings are separate from and ancillary to other aspects of existence. The runanubandha, or physical similarity, between the living and the dead, is what needs to go, as it can lead to illness and mental instability. Simply feeling something is not harmful. It’s healthier to remember the good times you shared with the person who passed away and take comfort in the memories you made together.
But if Runanubandha is there, it weakens your physical and mental structure in such a way that you are suffering rather than appreciating all the wonderful things that occurred between two individuals, and furthermore, it will lead to a certain aberration of life. To prevent this from happening, we focus on wiping only the physical memory. You shouldn’t forget how you felt and how it made you feel, and you shouldn’t forget the experience itself. Why should you forget someone who was so important to you? That bond is one you must always treasure.
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