What is the significance of performing proper funeral rites?

From: nishita

What is the significance of performing proper funeral rites for dead bodies by burning them as ordained in our vedic scriptures? Does it have any implications on the spirit soul in accepting its next body? Why this is different for different religions of the world for eg: muslims bury dead bodies, parsis abandon it for self-degradation,etc? Does it have the same effect as that mentioned in the vedic literatures?

Transcript

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Thank you Question from Nishit What is the significance of performing funeral rites for dead bodies by burning them as ordained in our Vedic scriptures Does it have any implications on the spirit soul in accepting its next body Why is this different for different religions of the world, for example Muslims bury dead bodies Parsis abandon it for self-degradation etc. Does it have the same effect as that mentioned in the Vedic literature Answer The purpose of the proper funeral rites as given in the Vedic literature is to facilitate the soul on its onward journey to the next body When the body is burnt as it is recommended in the Vedic funeral rites, then the soul no matter how attached it is to the body recognizes that there is no chance of entering into the body again and continuing life in that body and therefore the soul becomes more ready to go on to the next body and continue on its forward journey That’s why cremation is recommended in the Vedic literature as a standard Now for some great souls like Sanyasis, burial may be recommended because for them they have no attachment to their bodies and their bodies are sanctified because they have been used for the service of the Lord and by burying those bodies those places can become spiritually potent and they are in one sense like the Samadhi places of those great souls So that is the exception for very few people but in general it is recommended the body be burnt Now when the body is buried as it happens in the Abrahamic religions at that time the possibility of the soul hanging around near the burial place hoping somehow to enter into the body increases more and more and that’s why these places often become haunted by ghost like creatures and this ritual originates in the misconception that is there within the Christian tradition that the soul and the body are somehow related to each other Actually in the Biblical tradition or in the Abrahamic tradition there is not much philosophical knowledge about the soul So the Christians and subsequently the Muslims and previously also Jews, they often drew from pre-existing bodies of knowledge to come up with their own conceptions of the soul integrating those conceptions with the Bible So there are two schools of thought There was one Saint Augustine who drew from the insights of Plato and Socrates who in turn drew their insights from the Vedic literature and Saint Augustine very clearly said that the body and the soul are different but later on just before the time of the renaissance 13th-14th century there was another Christian theorist Thomas Aquinas who tried to integrate Christianity with the teachings of another Greek philosopher Aristotle who though a disciple of Plato had completely gone against Plato in many ways So Aristotle had the idea that the body and the soul are same because he said we cannot experience life without the body, that was his idea and Aquinas accepted that idea and his ideas have a very strong influence in Christianity and overall the kind of radical difference and disconnection in original sense between the body and the soul that is understood in the Vedic literature has never been very clearly understood in the Abrahamic religions and that has become further obfuscated, obfuscated means confused because of Aquinas idea that the body and the soul must coexist together so at the time of the final judgment these religions believe that the soul will be resurrected and will go back to God and just as they claim that Jesus was resurrected in his self-same body, the body with which they saw him similarly they feel that they will be resurrected in the same body now this of course has serious physiological problems if somebody has a 80-90 year old body, to live for all of eternity in that body would be miserable if we say that somebody is to live in a teenage body or a youthful body throughout his life somebody dies when he is young before, when he is very small as a baby, before he got a youthful body, which body will that person live in? if the child body is preserved there was never any youth body so what is the use of preserving a body that won’t be the body that is in eternity but anyway, despite these philosophical questions they also have the broad understanding that the moment of death is the time when one should remember God and one should help the other person to remember God and one should try to pray for that person’s future destination in an auspicious way so, Stephen Rosen Satyarajpur, one of his scholars, has written a book called Death and Dying in World Religions The Final Journey and there he describes how most religions talk about the importance of remembering God at the time of death but the clear support systems for helping a person to remember before and the clear support systems by which the soul can be guided onwards to its next journey after the moment of death, they are most clearly given in the Vedic literature now in these cases also after the soul sees that the body is buried and it really can’t enter into the body again the soul may become detached and go on to the next body beyond this there are other rituals that are performed it is described that the soul, when it goes from one body to another in between, in the transition the soul gets the preta body the preta body is not exactly a gross body nor is it a ghost body it is subtler than the gross body and grosser than the subtle body and it acts as a transition by which the soul can go from the present body to the next body so, the root purana explains that the shraddha ceremony that the pindadana ceremony that is done, all the rituals that are done up to the 10th day or in some traditions within the Vedic culture it may be 11, 12, 13 days all those food offerings that are given they in a subtle way comprise to make the preta body of the soul and then the preta body goes forward and when those initial set of last rites are completed then the preta body becomes a tool for delivering the soul to the next body now when these rituals are not done then the soul has to struggle to get the transitional body and it may have to draw on its own past karmas, some reservoirs that might be there of good karmas and through that it will get the body and will move forward so in general, if one follows the traditions that are given in the Vedic literature the transition becomes easier but overall it is the karma of the soul that takes the soul to the next body and guided by the super soul the soul will get that body whether the support systems are there or not the support systems will make it easier so in that sense they will also get the effect of getting the next body but the transition will be easier if one follows the rituals that are given in the Vedic literature Thank you