funerals

69:9.64. The urge for se­cu­rity and power. Com­mu­nism was fi­nally de­stroyed by the de­cep­tive prac­tices of pro­gres­sive and suc­cess­ful in­di­vid­u­als who re­sorted to di­verse sub­terfuges in an ef­fort to es­cape en­slave­ment to the shift­less idlers of their tribes. But at first all hoard­ing was se­cret; prim­i­tive in­se­cu­rity pre­vented the out­ward ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal. And even at a later time it was most dan­ger­ous to amass too much wealth; the king would be sure to trump up some charge for con­fis­cat­ing a rich man’s prop­erty, and when a wealthy man died, the fu­neral was held up un­til the fam­ily do­nated a large sum to pub­lic wel­fare or to the king, an in­her­i­tance tax.

95:2.4In time the Egyp­tians ob­served that dead bod­ies placed in brick­less graves were pre­served—em­balmed—by the ac­tion of the soda-im­preg­nated sand, while those buried in brick vaults de­cayed. These ob­ser­va­tions led to those ex­per­i­ments which re­sulted in the later prac­tice of em­balm­ing the dead. The Egyp­tians be­lieved that preser­va­tion of the body fa­cil­i­tated one’s pas­sage through the fu­ture life. That the in­di­vid­ual might prop­erly be iden­ti­fied in the dis­tant fu­ture af­ter the de­cay of the body, they placed a burial statue in the tomb along with the corpse, carv­ing a like­ness on the cof­fin. The mak­ing of these burial stat­ues led to great im­prove­ment in Egyp­tian art.

95:2.5For cen­turies the Egyp­tians placed their faith in tombs as the safe­guard of the body and of con­se­quent plea­sur­able sur­vival af­ter death. The later evo­lu­tion of mag­i­cal prac­tices, while bur­den­some to life from the cra­dle to the grave, most ef­fec­tu­ally de­liv­ered them from the re­li­gion of the tombs. The priests would in­scribe the coffins with charm texts which were be­lieved to be pro­tec­tion against a “man’s hav­ing his heart taken away from him in the nether world.” Pres­ently a di­verse as­sort­ment of these mag­i­cal texts was col­lected and pre­served as The Book of the Dead. But in the Nile val­ley mag­i­cal rit­ual early be­came in­volved with the realms of con­science and char­ac­ter to a de­gree not of­ten at­tained by the rit­u­als of those days. And sub­se­quently these eth­i­cal and moral ide­als, rather than elab­o­rate tombs, were de­pended upon for sal­va­tion.

95:5.13The teach­ing of im­mor­tal­ity for all men was too ad­vanced for the Egyp­tians. Only kings and the rich were prom­ised a res­ur­rec­tion; there­fore did they so care­fully em­balm and pre­serve their bod­ies in tombs against the day of judg­ment. But the democ­racy of sal­va­tion and res­ur­rec­tion as taught by Ikh­na­ton even­tu­ally pre­vailed, even to the ex­tent that the Egyp­tians later be­lieved in the sur­vival of dumb an­i­mals.

92:3.7But while call­ing at­ten­tion to the fact that re­li­gion was es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment and preser­va­tion of civ­i­liza­tion, it should be re­corded that nat­u­ral re­li­gion has also done much to crip­ple and hand­i­cap the very civ­i­liza­tion which it oth­er­wise fos­tered and main­tained. Re­li­gion has ham­pered in­dus­trial ac­tiv­i­ties and eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment; it has been waste­ful of la­bor and has squan­dered cap­i­tal; it has not al­ways been help­ful to the fam­ily; it has not ad­e­quately fos­tered peace and good will; it has some­times ne­glected ed­u­ca­tion and re­tarded sci­ence; it has un­duly im­pov­er­ished life for the pre­tended en­rich­ment of death. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, hu­man re­li­gion, has in­deed been guilty of all these and many more mis­takes, er­rors, and blun­ders; nev­er­the­less, it did main­tain cul­tural ethics, civ­i­lized moral­ity, and so­cial co­her­ence, and made it pos­si­ble for later re­vealed re­li­gion to com­pen­sate for these many evo­lu­tion­ary short­com­ings.

87:2.3The fu­neral ser­vice orig­i­nated in man’s ef­fort to in­duce the ghost soul to de­part for its fu­ture home, and the fu­neral ser­mon was orig­i­nally de­signed to in­struct the new ghost how to get there. It was the cus­tom to pro­vide food and clothes for the ghost’s jour­ney, these ar­ti­cles be­ing placed in or near the grave. The sav­age be­lieved that it re­quired from three days to a year to “lay the ghost”—to get it away from the vicin­ity of the grave. The Es­ki­mos still be­lieve that the soul stays with the body three days.

55:2.5Many fu­sion can­di­dates may be as­sem­bled in the spa­cious tem­ple at the same time. And what a beau­ti­ful oc­ca­sion when mor­tals thus for­gather to wit­ness the as­cen­sion of their loved ones in spir­i­tual flames, and what a con­trast to those ear­lier ages when mor­tals must com­mit their dead to the em­brace of the ter­res­trial el­e­ments! The scenes of weep­ing and wail­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of ear­lier epochs of hu­man evo­lu­tion are now re­placed by ec­static joy and the sub­limest en­thu­si­asm as these God-know­ing mor­tals bid their loved ones a tran­sient farewell as they are re­moved from their ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tions by the spir­i­tual fires of con­sum­ing grandeur and as­cend­ing glory. On worlds set­tled in light and life, “fu­ner­als” are oc­ca­sions of su­preme joy, pro­found sat­is­fac­tion, and in­ex­press­ible hope.

55:2.6The souls of these pro­gress­ing mor­tals are in­creas­ingly filled with faith, hope, and as­sur­ance. The spirit per­me­at­ing those gath­ered around the trans­la­tion shrine re­sem­bles that of the joy­ful friends and rel­a­tives who might as­sem­ble at a grad­u­at­ing ex­er­cise for one of their group, or who might come to­gether to wit­ness the con­fer­ring of some great honor upon one of their num­ber. And it would be de­cid­edly help­ful if less ad­vanced mor­tals could only learn to view nat­u­ral death with some­thing of this same cheer­ful­ness and light­heart­ed­ness.

86:4.8Al­most ev­ery group had a dif­fer­ent idea re­gard­ing the des­tiny of the ghost soul. The Greeks be­lieved that weak men must have weak souls; so they in­vented Hades as a fit place for the re­cep­tion of such ane­mic souls; these un­ro­bust spec­i­mens were also sup­posed to have shorter shad­ows. The early And­ites thought their ghosts re­turned to the an­ces­tral home­lands. The Chi­nese and Egyp­tians once be­lieved that soul and body re­mained to­gether. Among the Egyp­tians this led to care­ful tomb con­struc­tion and ef­forts at body preser­va­tion. Even mod­ern peo­ples seek to ar­rest the de­cay of the dead. The He­brews con­ceived that a phan­tom replica of the in­di­vid­ual went down to Sheol; it could not re­turn to the land of the liv­ing. They did make that im­por­tant ad­vance in the doc­trine of the evo­lu­tion of the soul.

87:2.10The dead were sup­posed to use the ghosts of the tools and weapons that were theirs in life. To break an ar­ti­cle was to “kill it,” thus re­leas­ing its ghost to pass on for ser­vice in ghost­land. Prop­erty sac­ri­fices were also made by burn­ing or bury­ing. An­cient fu­neral wastes were enor­mous. Later races made pa­per mod­els and sub­sti­tuted draw­ings for real ob­jects and per­sons in these death sac­ri­fices. It was a great ad­vance in civ­i­liza­tion when the in­her­i­tance of kin re­placed the burn­ing and bury­ing of prop­erty. The Iro­quois In­di­ans made many re­forms in fu­neral waste. And this con­ser­va­tion of prop­erty en­abled them to be­come the most pow­er­ful of the north­ern red men. Mod­ern man is not sup­posed to fear ghosts, but cus­tom is strong, and much ter­res­trial wealth is still con­sumed on fu­neral rit­u­als and death cer­e­monies.