Dear Soul Arcanum:
I know that I will be long gone when I die, so it won’t really matter what happens to my body. I’m preparing to make a will, however, and I have to decide if I will be buried or cremated. I’m leaning toward cremation, but I have this bizarre fear that I may end up regretting it. I mean, what if I’m stuck in my body or something. Will I feel the process of cremation?
– Robin
Dear Robin:
If you did get “stuck” in your body, would you rather experience being embalmed? (Don’t freak out, I’m just messing with you!) Before we get into this subject in depth, please note that I don’t believe we will really care what happens to our bodies once this life is over, so it’s not something we need to really worry about.
Further, near death experiences reassure us that even if we are still attached to the earth and our bodies, we are not IN our bodies during periods of bodily failure. Our consciousness leaves our bodies, and is usually not too concerned with what happens to them at that point. There is a very detached, dispassionate feeling about the body, as though it is just an object or belongs to someone else. Most people who have an NDE have no desire to return to their bodies.
At the same time, however, many diverse spiritual teachings suggest that the rate at which we fully detach from the physical/etheric bodies varies from person to person. The more materially focused we were while living, the harder it may be to detach from the physical, and the more spiritually conscious and evolved we were when living, the faster and easier we’ll detach and move on to higher realms. It is interesting to note that throughout many different religious traditions, there is a common belief that a body should not be buried or cremated until three days after death, for some spirits may take this long to detach.
This practice may also be based on the concern that one can never truly pinpoint the exact time of death. As hard as this may be to believe, people have been pronounced dead, sent on to a funeral home, and then woken up there. Also, people with Alzheimer’s who have been catatonic for years may “die” and then come back and be mentally “all there” again. They may not have spoken a word that made sense for years, and then revive not only fully “with it” mentally, but with all the spiritual insights that typically follow an NDE.
Past life regressions suggest that at the moment of death, most people find themselves out of their bodies and floating upwards toward a light. Sometimes, however, spirits will linger near their bodies and try to communicate with loved ones, and may even attend their own funerals. Please note that they are not IN the body, but looking on from the outside. It is only when the body is laid to rest by burial or cremation that they let go and move on.
This burial/cremation question is a matter of great controversy between various religious paths. Christians and Jews tend to favor burial, but the reasons Christians feel this way are pretty crazy if you ask me. The Church has changed its position on cremation as Popes have changed office, but traditionally, Christians were taught that any “harm” to a dead body may hinder spiritual rebirth. I think this stems from too literal an interpretation of resurrection. Our next life will be a spiritual life – it is not our physical body we’ve left behind that will be reborn.
So many Christians opt to be buried – AFTER they’ve been embalmed. If they really believe that the body is important to the spirit after death, why would they want to disembowel it and pump it full of chemicals? Further, what in the world are they trying to preserve it for? I think Orthodox Jews are on target with their approach to burial. There is no embalming, and the casket must be simple and made only of wood. This is very natural and designed to speed the return to the earth of the physical body through decomposition.
On the side of cremation, we have most Hindus, pagans, and many Buddhists. Here it is generally agreed that cremation facilitates a break between the soul and the physical and etheric bodies, and helps the soul to move on to the next world. The soul is said to rise heavenward with the smoke of the fire. It is believed that cremation thus prevents spirits from becoming earthbound.
While it may seem gruesome to ponder what we want done with our bodies after we die, I think there are a couple more issues we might want to ponder in making this decision:
First, though many of us seem to have forgotten this, human beings are OF nature. We are part of the natural world. We have effectively removed ourselves from the food chain, but our bodies are of the earth. Once our spirits have left, our bodies are no more important than the bodies of dead plants and animals. If we were to die by ourselves in nature, we would no doubt be eaten by wild animals. That seems to me to be a very normal, natural way to return the body to the earth. If we had died a couple of hundred years ago, we would have simply been buried in the earth or cremated according to the customs of the time and place.
Modern elaborate coffins, embalming rituals and headstones are big business. The funeral industry is profiting from our fears about death and our lack of spiritual understanding about the afterlife. Many people even believe that embalming is required by law, when that is basically not true.
In England, a “green burial” movement is well underway. Here, people are buried in some very simple biodegradable material like a shroud or cardboard coffin, and instead of a headstone, a tree is planted over the grave. In this way, as their bodies decompose, they remain part of the natural cycle of life and death.
I see two ideal options myself: one is to be cremated and have my ashes returned to the earth somehow. I like the idea of being scattered in nature, though there are lots of creative options these days. You can have your ashes rocketed into outer space, for example, and there is even a company that will pack your loved one’s ashes in fireworks so you can go out with a bang.
The other good option is a “green” burial in a cardboard box on the third day after death. This means only refrigeration until burial – no embalming. When in doubt, I say keep things natural – what’s good for the earth must be good for all its creatures too.
If you care about how your body is handled after death, you are indeed wise to specify that legally now – otherwise your grieving family members may defer such choices to a funeral director, and pay a lot of money for something you’d never want anyway.
Further, if we are truly concerned about what will happen to us after we die, the most powerful thing we can do is focus on our spiritual development right now. The more spiritually evolved we are, the faster and easier we will ascend to “the heavens.”
We must remember that when we move from earthly life, any business we’ve left unfinished will stick with us until we consciously address and change it. Our emotional issues follow us into the afterlife; our habits of thought continue. So if we are rooted in fear, anger, jealousy, revenge, gluttony, addiction – any of the habits we consider “sinful” – we’ll have to work through some dark shadows in the astral before we can move on. This is not punishment, but rather the natural out-picturing of our inner world.
As we never know when our “time to go” may come, it’s never too soon to begin to purify our hearts and minds so that when we do leave this life, we will soar to higher spiritual realms.
– Soul Arcanum