The idea of feeding souls, or of sustaining souls..particularly the souls of family, is ubiquitous to human culture and belief. Not just in the past, but in the present as well. That's what people are doing in Mexico city on the 31st of october, for example. A soul unremembered is a soul un-awakened..or worse...
Have I heard of it, yes. Do I believe it? No. Whatever soul I have will die when I die. I only need to die once to be dead. I think that the idea of impermanence is difficult for us to accept because our entire identity and experience is built around the notion of personal permanence. We can't even imagine what it's like to be nonexistent...even though the person trying to imagine it in a given moment will almost certainly cease to exist long before they die.
On a biological level, on a psychological level. I suppose that's the grand irony of our fear and hopes for the hereafter, as I see it. The thing we worry about is happening to us every minute of every day, and has happened to us many times over, and we just don't notice it.
Maybe we don't notice it because that person is no longer around to remind us that it's happened?
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