M3001: Question no. 01 on burial and cremation as temporary measures

M3001

On burial and cremation as temporary measures

Martinus Answers Readers' Questions

Question: Of what significance is it for the organism or body if it is buried or cremated after death?

Answer: Both these forms of disposing of dead animal organisms are highly imperfect phenomena, since they both constitute an assault on the cycle of life itself. They are only provisional arrangements existing exclusively by virtue of the imperfection or, seen from a cosmic point of view, still low stage of modern culture. The only thing that can be burned without creating conflict in or interuption of the cycle of life is mineral substance, which here means substance that has dried out naturally and is therefore totally free of moisture. To burn animal substance is to burn life or living beings, even though they are, in relation to us, only micro-life or micro-beings. The ultimate consequence of this is that cremation is a breach of the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill", and to a corresponding extent is a contributory cause of the removal of any protection against a similar fate for its originator.

In a higher culture of the future, by virtue of the far higher respect for everything living one will have there, one will treat all corpses in such a way that they will undergo a process through which the life of the substance is allowed to die out in a natural way. By hermetically sealed isolation from everything that can produce rotting, and likewise from unsuitable temperatures and fire, indeed from everything that can produce unnatural decomposition, one will create conditions so that the substance or corpse will pass from its animal state to the mineral state, and only here be helped to decompose by unnatural means.

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Question no. 1
First published in Danish in Kontaktbrev no. 1, 1950. Translated by Mary McGovern.

Article ID: M3001
Published in the English edition of Kosmos no. 6, 1989 and no. 1, 2004

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