DO WE NEED TO APPEASE "SOULS"?
Today is KARKIDAKA VAVU and we mortals are expected to feed the souls of our forefathers so that they get eternal salvation!


I have been asked as to why I do not celebrate this traditional ritual?

I DO. OR AT LEAST I DID... But for completely different reasons.

I simply enjoyed the idea of arranging some good food which my ancestors liked, use the occasion to remember fond snippets from their lives and thoughts and to create a feeling of gain and power of not worrying about loosing them. Nothing more than that. Then I realised that I can do this any time. Just close the eyes and think of the tender moments with my Mother or Father and enjoy those moments.This memory does positive things if the memories about our elders who passed away are inspiring.

There may not be any gain by remembering an ancestor who was a criminal, because the effect of remembering him is only going to work inside the mind of the person who remembers and not on the soul that does not exist.

But the religions are telling us that souls are craving for Moksha and they desperately seek your action to accomplish that. Not only in Kerala, this deception goes on... In Tamilnadu they celebrate Aadi Amavasi to appease the spirits and bring in good fortune for the living.In North India, they celebrate Pitrupaksha shraddh. This religio philosophic theory is there all over the world. Chinese people in Singapore and Malaysia celebrate Hungry Ghost Festival in September.Halloween was originally born to appease the spirits.In Ancient Rome, there was LEMURIA, which was like our vavu in most respects.All saints Day of Christians was a rectification or depaganisation of Lemuria.In Nepal they have Balachathurdashi. In Nigeria, they have EGUNGUN festival for the dead.

So practically all religions and regions in the world have their soul/ghost memorials and all those religions have their own God/Soul stories which do not match each other. So the obvious conclusion is that these ideas are originating from Anthropological and social concerns.

Purpose of all death rites and soul related festivals and rituals is to simply reaffirm societal bonds and social structure itself.

Nobody likes the death of a dear one.To ease the anxiety of numerous crises faced by fragile human life and particularly the sting of death, humanity invented Karkidaka vavu and the various other rituals parallel to it from various faiths.

DEATH is an unpleasant but necessary END.It must give way to new LIFE.By celebrating souls and symbolically offering them salvation , we just want to erase the blackness of death.. and to this end the rituals are OK as a diversion.

SOUL is no GHOST that changes from body to body as we are made to believe by using impressive sounding prose.

There are three types of SOUL

1.RATIONAL SOUL(Means MIND or INTELLIGENCE)-It makes all the decisions for us.

2.SPIRITED SOUL(Means WILL)-WILL to do what the intelligence dictates

3.APPETITIVE SOUL(Means our emotional element that wants and feels)

Let us learn to accept that there is absolutely nothing beyond this.

To put it in the most simple way, "SOUL" is just a poetic synonym for MIND.If any Swamiji says otherwise, you don't have to believe him or her.

My explanation is very simple.If I have to differentiate between a physical ME and a spiritual ME, then I will be forced to conclude that The Law Of Conservation Of Energy is all wrong.I am not yet prepared for that suicidal thought.

Do you remember your childhood when religion explained how rain and thunder occurred.Soon we learned that they were all lies. Today SOUL is explained in the same way.

So let us not allow Devaswam board, RSS, SNDP, VHP, Bible society or Islamic council to dictate how we must remember our elders.

That is an honest thought for the day.

A.P.Jayanthram