We do not apply right methods in burial. Immediately after death place the body in a dark room without draughts, then place a warm water-bottle to the feet and raise them to a slightly vertical position. This improves the circulation of the sheaths so that they can be easily loosened and withdrawn from the body. For we often bury people when their astral sheaths are still in the atmosphere of the body, and this causes great distress to the atoms that compose them, and afterwards react upon the higher mentality of the person who has left the shell.
The processes of disintegration are carried on for a considerable time, and the body should not be buried before three days unless in a warm climate. But above all it is better to cremate the body, as this gives the person peace of mind and his sufferings are lessened. When the astral shell still clings to the corpse it is then that its apparition appears to the sensitive mind.
Thoughtless people think little about the care of the dead; they imagine that no further care is needed. But if a person has died suddenly and his body has become chilled it causes him acute agony, and a low nature will avenge itself upon those responsible for its sufferings. Incidentally when assisting drowning people while out of the body I have not witnessed this agony; for there is an affinity between the astral sheath and water, both being of a protean nature.
Death has not its sting for the occultist as for the normal man: for whenever he enters his interior systems he goes through a form of death, but religions have so impressed their followers about the terrors of after death that many devout Christians fight against that which should sometimes be welcomed.
It is well that the femoral artery should be severed after the doctor has definitely decided that death has ensued, there having been cases of coma or trance state.
As the Earth breathes in and out as we do, graveyards are a menace to civilisation; in time cremation will take its place, and people will have an altar in their house for the ashes of those who have showered their love upon them when alive, but not the ashes of those who gave no love: the youth of the future will not worship their ancestors indiscriminately, but will only send the pressure of their love to those deserving it, and evolve them to higher levels of consciousness. In these ashes will lie the atmospheric links between their ancestors and themselves. Incidentally the pressure of a child’s prayer is one of the most protective forces known to the occultist, and in occult history Egypt was once saved from calamity through the prayer of a child. This will show wherein the Chinese have a greater wisdom regarding these things.
The Initiates say that the living should be respected, and when death awakens them into their own states of the Reality they will be given their incense and perfume. This means that when a person who has loved others and has been loved passes over, his love is perfume and incense to our mind, and as we inhale this we contact those who are far beyond us in the inner states of being.
Death is but an awakening into another state of consciousness, and the Greeks treated this beautifully, as can be seen in their sculptures. It should be awaited with joy and not with misgiving, seeing that we return to those spheres that are of the nature of our being.