TLI Staff
New Delhi: Pitru Paksha, a 16-day period, when Hindus pay homage to their ancestors, started on September 10 this year and will go on till September 25, after which the 9-day festival of Navratri will begin. Legend has it that when Karna died during Mahabharata was and reached heaven, he couldn’t eat a single thing as it turned into gold the moment he touched them. This happened because Karna donated only gold in his lifetime and never offered food to his ancestors due to which he got cursed by them. Karna urged to return to earth for a period of 15 days to perform shraadh rituals and offer them food and water. From that time onwards Shraadh rituals came into being.
Sadhguru in one of his videos talked about the importance of death rituals. The modern day yogi said that while we all are aware about our emotions when a loved one dies, we aren’t aware about how the newly deceased person feels.
“In the manifestation of life, the physical life there is – let me separate this. This is life and physical life for the sake of understanding. The physical life has manifested itself. The physical life energy which generally is referred to as pran or prana has five basic manifestations. These are called samana, prana, udana, apana and vyana,” says Sadhguru.
Sadhguru further elucidates what happens when a person dies.
“Let’s say if a doctor is observing and they declared that a person at a particular moment that he is dead now. In the next 21-24 minutes samana will start exiting. Samana is in charge of maintaining temperature in the body. First thing that starts happening is body starts cooling down. Somewhere between 48-64 minutes, prana exits. After that between 6-12 hours udana exits. Till udana exits, there are tantric processes with which we could revive the body. But once udana exists, there is a micro, micro chance but that is an impractical chance except that it is impossible to revive the body once udana has exited. The next thing is apana – somewhere between 8-18 hours this exits. The vyana which is the preservative nature of prana will start exiting from beyond that. It can continue to exit up to eleven to fourteen days if it’s a normal death. For such a person between 11-14 days certain processes will be happening in the body to show that there is some element of life like nails growing, facial hair etc these kind of things can be noticed. If someone has died accidentally, or in other words, the life was vibrant and he/she died, that body, the reverberations of life will continue somewhere between 48-90 days. So till that time there are things you can do for that life,” says Sadhguru.
Importance of death rituals
Sadhguru says just like the loved ones associate with the body and emotions of the dead person, a person who has died also associates with his/her body as their own and till the time the body is there, they are in an illusion that they can somehow inhabit it back. Sadhguru says cremation is important to bring closure for both dead and his/her relatives as both the parties realise that nothing can be done now and acceptance comes.
“If somebody dies, the first thing you will do is to tie big toes of the dead body together. Typing it up will tighten mooladhara (chakra) in a certain way that the body cannot be invaded or attempts to invade by the body – by that life – once again because life has not lived with the awareness knowing this is not me. It has always believed – this is me. Though it comes out, it tries to enter through any orifice that is there in the body particularly mooladhara because that’s where life generates and as body starts cooling down the only region where warmth will remain till the last point – the last point of warmth is always the mooladhara. So it tries to get back,” says Sadhguru.
“If someone dies – within half-an-hour or max four hours, you must burn the body because this act is going on,” adds Sadhguru.