Yogi Ashwini

Be it haunted houses and creepy noises or spirits and ghosts, the eerie has been the theme of many tomes, scripts and shows. People have reported seeing apparitions and shadows or hearing their near and dear ones who died long back.

Are these just in the mind or real? Our scriptures talk in detail about afterlife and ghosts and spirits and also explain the reason for their existence.
On leaving the body, the spirit hovers around the physical remains for 13 days. This period can become longer or unending, depending upon the spirit’s attachment to its body, house, property or near and dear ones. The spirit may also stay on because of your thought. If your thought is very strongly attached to the departed soul and you are not releasing it then that can also tie the soul down to the place of its physical existence or to you.
The spirit has no relations, no friends and no home. It is free and needs to take birth as per its karmas and desires. That is why there are ceremonies to release it from the bondages of its latest life and existence. If it is unable to take birth due to lack of last rites duly performed, its own desire or your thoughts then it remains suspended body-less and becomes a ghost.
People who die before their karmically allotted time (akaal mrityu or “untimely” death), like those who commit suicide or who die violent deaths or in accidents, remain in the state of utter confusion and disorientation, without sometimes realising that they have crossed over. It also happens to people whose last rites are not performed and are not released into the spirit world.
They may lure living people by their knowledge of past, present and future and possess their minds if they grant access to their minds easily. They may grant them favours and this usually happens to people who give in to temptations without thinking of the consequences. But everything comes at a price.
In certain shamshan sadhnas, one can gain favour of the kind spirits who look for opportunities to enter the physical world for the fulfilment of their own desires and they grant you pleasures they themselves seek. But they never leave you, you become their slave and when the time comes to leave your body, you go with them, they take you to the nether world where you become a pishach like them and pay for the pleasures you were granted by them.
So it is best not to live in avidya (nescience) and assume that all that we do through the body are the finality of life. It is best to listen to your guru and do away with your bodily attachments and ego and release the departed soul. There are techniques given where you can bring the soul back into a body of your choice, but it’s best to let nature take its course.
Sadhaks at Dhyan Foundation, during various past-life experiments have found their present life sons and daughters to be their enemies from a previous birth. Remember a spirit has no relations.
Relations are temporary and limited to the five elements and the physical body, which is temporary and moving towards dissolution every second.

Yogi Ashwini is an authority on yoga, tantra and the Vedic sciences.