*Day 33*
In the Chinese culture they have ancestral worship. Also in Brazil, Argentina and in other Latin American countries they do ancestral worship. I think in the Christian tradition there is 'All souls day" where you respect the souls and ask for their blessings.
That is one of the reasons that bodies are buried behind the church - to make that place more powerful. So ancestors have got one step more power. In sanskrit, they are called pitru.
There is one spirit which is one grade higher than the pitrs. They are kinnars. Kinnars are those souls who are behind big social work or political set ups etc. Then comes the Ghandarva spirits, who are behind every successful artist.
A great musician is not an individual person who is singing. Through him there is a spirit called as ghandarva, and ghandarva bring you great fame. Although they bring joy and happiness to the population, they make the person very miserable.
See, Michael Jackson brought joy to so many people but in his personal life he was so miserable. This is because ghandarva souls through the artists bring a lot of happiness to others, but for the individual they bring misery.
There are plenty of musicians and great celebrities such a Beethoven. You take the history and look into them. In all of them you see this pattern. The only musicians that were happy were the ones who found a path, the ones who had a Guru.
If they find a Guru, if they have a path, they are liberated. Otherwise they will be famous and will bring joy to others, but in their personal life they will be miserable.
Then from the ghandarva level is the Yaksha level, another grade of souls. A yaksha brings lots of wealth. So, very wealthy people are blessed by yakshas. Here again yakshas can bring comfort, but they don't give joy or happiness from the progeny.
People blessed by yakshas are not satisfied with their own children, their children's behaviour or their children's career. Something to do with their progeny makes them miserable.
They don't know happiness from their children or from their progeny. If it happens in one generation, it will definitely not be so in the next generation. Within three generations they will be miserable.
Again, if they walk on a spiritual path, this is avoided. These are yaksha souls and every city has a yaksha. New York has a yaksha, Los Angeles has a yaksha. Yaksha is the collective spirit of a place and there are so many yakshas.
One step higher than the yakshas are Devas and then there are Siddhas or the perfected beings. So beyond the yakshas there is one more level devas or angels. Devas are there between yakshas and the perfected beings - siddhas.
There are 33 types of devas and our body is governed by the devas. See a single cell divides itself and becomes a whole human body. Somewhere it becomes eyes, somewhere it becomes ears, somewhere it becomes nail.
Somewhere it becomes hair and in some other place it becomes a bone. That intelligence is there and these thirty three different impulses create our human body, and these 33 different aspects are different devas.
So the entire universe is under the control of devas. Devas are also called Gods and Goddesses - deva means gods and goddesses. It is not the God but gods and goddesses an aspect of divinity.
You may ask, “There is only one god, so how can there be so many gods and goddesses”. Yes, there is. Suppose you say rice. Rice means only one rice, but in rice there are so many varieties of rice.
Recently we had our agriculture seminar in India. A farmer came who was saving the seeds of various regions of India, and he said he had collected 174 types of rice. They are all different.
Basmati rice is different from the long dark brown rice, then there is black rice and there is sticky rice of Japan, which is so much different. The rice in Japan and in Thailand is different from the type from Indonesia and different from India.
So, there are different varieties of rice. The universe is of multiplicity and variety. Somewhere people fail to understand this.
