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What Should We Do With the Dead?
It is a common experience of all of us, miserable human beings,
that we love our parents more after they are dead. While they are alive,
they are a nuisance to us. They trouble us with their demands for discipline,
for performance. And when they die, we work off our self-felt, self-created
guilty feelings by expensive shraddhas, expensive ceremonies,
putting up big pictures on the walls. Why is it that we have to love
the dead and not the living? I mean, this is a very sordid bit of human
existence, that somebody has to die before they earn our love. What
is the use of weeping for the dead? Shall we not weep for the living?
So you see, instead of spending thousands of rupees on a
dead person’s cremation, and his shraddhas year after
year and the tarpana every amavasya
(new moon) day, if you have loved them well, cherished them well during
their existence, all this ritualistic expiation of our inability to
love becomes unnecessary. Love the living; it’s no use loving
the dead.
Now that brings me to the problem of those people who left
us. You know, fathers die, mothers die, and we put their pictures at
home and with great devotion we put a mala (garland) and light
a lamp. According to my Master, this is the most destructive thing that
we can do which holds back these souls from their own progress in the
afterlife. What should we do with the dead? First, of course, we bury
them or cremate them; that is physical disposal. As far as the mind
is concerned, love them and forget them. Most of you would probably
think that this is very inhuman and in some way a crazy advice. Forget
our forefathers? Yes. Because every time you remember them, especially
from the depth of your heart, it is a pull on that soul and you are
dragging them backwards. So with all these kriyas, rituals
associated with the departed, we think we are helping them but actually
we are putting a brake on their progress, whatever it may be. So I asked
Babuji, “What should be the way? If at all I remember my dead people,
what should I do about it?” Sometimes we have no control over our memory;
we don’t remember by choice. He said, “When you remember, pray to the
Master, ‘May that soul receive peace.’ That is enough.”
So all these essentially Hindu ideas, you know, putting the
picture (especially in a very prominent place) in the drawing room to
show our love and affection to our departed parents, putting garlands,
putting chandan (sandalwood), lighting the lamp, you know,
it is the most crazy thing to do. However good our parents may have
been, however elevated, we should not give them the status of gods.
A parent is a parent and is a human being. Unless of course, like my
Master, He was God. Then we don’t need to put a picture of Him and worship.
We worship Him in our hearts.
Indeed if you look to the ritualistic ideas of most of our
Hindu religious texts, you will find that there is more of destructiveness
associated with them than any helpful attitude towards the pitrus
(forefathers). Pitru worship is the most destructive single
ritual of our Hindu religion. So I would urge all of you, who are doing
it, to kindly stop it – in any form you see. And if you want to remember
them on the day of their departure, try to forget it, you will remember
them better. If memory comes, sit in meditation for ten minutes or fifteen
minutes. Pray to the Master, “Almighty Master! My departed father, mother,
brother, sister, whoever it may be, may your Grace flow towards him
or her. May he or she receive peace.”
Babuji told me that Lalaji Maharaj, wherever He went, if
He saw a graveyard, He would transmit; if He saw a tomb, He would transmit;
if He saw a burial ground, He would transmit, just thinking that all
the souls which have had their final departure from this place, may
they receive peace. And they did receive peace. So that was the way
Lalaji helped the dead souls with whom He had no connection whatsoever.
Anybody who has died (was buried) in this graveyard, let there be peace
in his soul. Wherever the soul is in this universe, it receives His
blessings, His Grace, a momentary peace. Somebody may say, “What is
the use of momentary peace? I want lasting peace.” But imagine, if a
man is about to commit a murder and at that moment peace descends on
his mind and the murder is stopped, is he not saved from the phansi
(the hangman’s rope)?
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