Importance of lineage

Hello, my dear friends, hope you’re doing well.

Now in India, the Pitru Paksha is happening. That’s a time to remember the ancestors and offer them our gratitude. How do we do that?

How do we express gratitude to the departed?

We usually do it through certain rituals, through specific mantras and rituals together, conducted by priests who know the methods. We also serve food to all the beings around us, starting with ants and insects, to people and all the species of the animal/bird kingdom as much as we can.

There’s nothing better than feeding the hungry. You know that, and we do that.

Now, let’s think about the Science behind, Science, as in S-c-i-e-n-c-e, and not s-i-g-n, behind this thought process.

It’s important to know. We are inheritors, all of us. What have we inherited? First of all, we have inherited ourselves. Where did we come from? From two people, father and mother. So, we have inherited ourselves from them. So, if you think backwards, who is our father and mother? They are the representation of the lineage that we came from. As we have inherited ourselves from the lineage, we have inherited our parents as a living representation of our lineage. This is very important to understand. So, when you take care of your father and mother, you are taking care of the lineage.

Suppose you look after your father and mother with love, care, genuine devotion, and genuine love, that automatically transmits or transfers your gratitude to the lineage because most of the people in the lineage probably are not existing now. Many people, like your grandparents or grandparents of your grandparents, they would have all gone.

How can you express gratitude to them? How can you express kindness, love, compassion, respect?

You can’t because they are not there. The right thing to do is to consider your father and mother as the living representation of your lineage and respect them. Express gratitude, express love and kindness. Do whatever you can for them.

Many of us are working outside our houses; we are not even in our hometown. We may not even be in our neighborhood where we can go and meet them. They’re probably far away, flights away. So how can you make sure your father and mother are happy, and they’re taken care of? You need to hire support. You got to hire support; use a part of your resources to ensure that your parents are happy.

So, it is our responsibility to look after our father and mother because they represent our lineage. When you look after them, and they are pleased, the lineage is pleased. That’s the only thing you can do about your lineage, at any given point in time.

If your grandparents are existing, take care of them as well.

Look out for them, make them happy, provide as best as you can within your given capacity for them. As I said earlier, we are inheritors. We did not happen by ourselves. So, when you inherit, you’re also responsible. Inheritance comes with responsibility. People are doing all sorts of things, just for the sake of wealth; sometimes things which are totally inappropriate for the sake of wealth. That’s very harmful to the lineage, not only for the person.

Remember, your children are going to inherit from you.

What are you going to pass on to your children?

If you do not clean up your lineage as best as you could, you would be passing on contamination to your children. They will have a heavy burden of bad karma, i.e., bad actions. Bad representation of anything is a heavy burden on ourselves. We need to clean it up; we need to clean our thoughts; we need to clean our actions. We need to clean up everything like we clean up our house every day. This is not just this one time; as long as you are alive, as long as you are active, as long as you have the capacity, you must take care of our lineage.

Same with children. Children are also a continuation of our lineage. We must take care of them. So, our responsibility is not just to take care of ourselves. As a refined species, with the capacity to understand and assimilate the subtle, even the capacity to experience the supreme consciousness, we must behave accordingly.

We have inherited two major things from our lineage.

One is the subtle, and one is the gross. We all know the gross. Gross consists of wealth, property, name, fame, and whatever we have inherited from our lineage.

What is subtle? Subtle are the aspirations, desires, good and bad things they did in society, that residual effect – they all come in the lineage.

Everything is inheritance.

You cannot just say I will only have property and wealth, but I don’t need anything else from anybody. That’s not true. It’s like a huge treasury where whatever actions each person has done has left a residue or a kind of bank balance, which all the lineage members inherit.

It especially goes to the people who are leaders of the clan, the eldest people, or the decision-makers, and those kinds of people will probably get a larger share. But as a principle, it goes to everybody. The good and the bad that you do definitely go to your children in essence form along with the gross inheritance that you transfer. So, the subtle is also transferring or getting transferred, as is gross. Both are getting transferred.

Pitru Paksha is apparently the time, as per the astrological calculations they say, that’s the right time to express gratitude and respect to the lineage so that it lightens the inherited subtle aspects.

It makes the residue of the good and bad actions of our ancestors slightly lighter, which will, in fact, reflect in your own life as a lightness of existence. So, what can we do? There are rituals, as I said in the beginning, conducted by priests, all the rituals are expressions of gratitude and expressions of respect. And that automatically makes things lighter. It’s not about one person. Don’t think that I’m doing it for my ancestor. Of course, you are doing it for your ancestor because there should be a point of contact; some representation, which you can connect to and do something. For that purpose, you are doing it for the departed, the known departed. But there are many unknown departed in your own lineage; probably you don’t even know them, but they are all getting benefitted.

So, it’s like a conduit, a pipe. When you do it, do the proper stuff, it goes to everybody. Just like the good and the bad which your lineage did has come to you. And what you do or what they did, along with what you do, goes to your children. So, this is the approximate picture. Then through feeding the poor, feeding the hungry, you dilute yourself, that’s basically sharing your wealth, with the underprivileged. Even all the species around, they all deserve to be happy, contented. So, we help them to be happy and contented, which makes us lighter and brighter.

As I said earlier, parents are the living representation of our lineage.

They are the living representatives. So, when you take care of your parents, automatically, the people who left, and the people who are going to be-both will be benefited, because they are an important link with the lineage just like we are an important link to our lineage. So, respect them and look after them as best as you can. Serve them with gratitude.

Now, gratitude is a very, very powerful thing. Probably the word gratitude is so much used, it’s become a cliché, but gratitude has huge power, just like respect. Respect is immediate. You can see the reflection of that in the society almost immediately; when you respect somebody, you automatically get more respect, it’s more tangible. But gratitude is an attitude.

If you have the attitude of gratitude, it kind of cleanses the air; it’s like a purifier.

It purifies, not only inside; it removes all the negativities from the environment. So, gratitude can never be underestimated. Gratitude is very powerful. This activity on this ancestral time of Pitru Paksha is actually an expression of your gratitude to all those who lived in your lineage and departed plus all the people who are going to come and take birth in your lineage in the future. So, gratitude is extremely important. This is a clear sign of expression of gratitude; when we give food to all the beings, we are extremely grateful that they are receiving it. There are beings whom we can serve. When they become contented, we become contented. And when you keep giving, you keep growing; when you share, you become bright, you become light.

So, this is a time for extreme purification, where you express extreme gratitude to your lineage, and in a year, this period should be considered as one of the most important periods to make yourself light and bright, where you are deeply integrating yourself into the lineage, expressing respect, expressing love and compassion, expressing every positive aspect of you, in association with your lineage. And as much as possible, pass this on to your next generation.

If your children ask you, “Why do we have to do this, they are already gone, we can’t see them?” You have to say, “You can see them. Where? In yourself.” You are the representation of your lineage, living representation. There is nothing invisible. People have come and gone, but you have not gone. If you are alive today, if your heart is beating today, you are representing the lineage whether you like it or not. There is no other way.

Some people do not know their parents, orphans; people are born into difficulties. They also must do it, because this is their opportunity to cleanse up their path.

Instead of hatred or instead of remorse or disrespect to the lineage, if they choose to respect and gratitude and do whatever they can and for whoever they can, I always tell people that all the old people should be considered as your own parents. All the elderly should be respected as your own father and mother. So, all the people can be considered as your own. And that changes you. That changes the frequency of your lineage, that changes your own frequency. That makes you lighter and more effective in the world. Gratitude is a very powerful tool to make you graceful. Gratitude brings grace. Gratitude makes you grateful. So, gratitude can never be underestimated.

Mata, mother, with whom you have a relationship, more than the society, at least for nine months; father, the protector and the provider, who helped you to stabilize yourself on your feet, and Guru who guided you to the inner truth, which is sitting inside you. And finally, God, the energy aspect of you.

So, Mata, Pita, Guru, Devo- Mother, father, Guru, God are four integral parts of your life, especially for your stability.

If you connect to these four aspects, with respect, with gratitude, with extreme love and compassion, with kindness, with selflessness, you will have a great life; you will have a very stable life. If you just look at them as individuals, (of course they are individuals), but then you have something to do with them, and they had something to do with you. So, lineage had something to do with you. Without lineage, you are not here. You have to do something for the lineage.

It is said that the karmic combination of every individual is a mixture.

One is the unfulfilled desires that you came here to fulfill, that means what you wanted to do with a new life, with a new body. Second is the representation of the lineage, the aspirations of the lineage, the residue of the good and the bad which people of the lineage performed at their times; that residue. So, karma becomes more complex, when you think about these two main strains which have made you. Your unfulfilled desires, as well as the inherited desires of the lineage, they come and mix together like milk and water.

When you serve the lineage, when you pay respects to the lineage, when you devote yourself to the welfare of the lineage, and not only your family; (as I said earlier, looking at every species as your responsibility), then the lineage gets cleaner, lighter, and that will enhance your existence on Earth. You can see that in your stability, in your thought process. If you fill your heart with gratitude, you can weather any storms.

I leave this thought in your plate. Ponder over it. Think about it; discuss it. I wish you happiness, always.

This is Mohanji, for you.

Listen to an excerpt of this podcast here.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Vidya Mohite and Rekha Murali

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