be avoided and a determination to make the
best of the matter should be cultivated. The situation may indeed be
bad, but we make it very much worse by our mourning. The funeral customs
of Occidental civilization are quite consistent with its materialism. We
act as nearly as possible as though we believe the dead are lost to us
absolutely. We make matters as gloomy as possible. Yet we are slowly
improving. Not so very long ago when anybody died those present stopped
the ticking of the clock, drew down the window curtains, moved about on
tiptoe, and acted generally in a way calculated to add as much as
possible to the awe and the gloom. We still wear somber and depressing
black and add all we can externally to our inward distress.

A more sensible attitude of mind may be observed at any theosophical
funeral and, with growing frequency, at the funerals among thinking
people. A funeral should not be the occasion of a final expression of
grief, but a gathering of friends who send kindly thoughts and helpful
good wishes to the comrade whose life work in the physical world is
finished. The general feeling should be very much like that of a party
of friends who go to the pier to see a well loved traveler off on a long
journey to remote parts of the earth for a sojourn of many years or
possibly a lifetime. There should be constant thought of his welfare,
not of the loss to his friends. Grief that thinks of itself is an
expression of selfishness and is detrimental to all. One should practice
self control in such a matter just as one would control a feeling of
anger under different circumstances.

Naturally enough the control of grief when one we love has passed on is
none to easy. But any degree of success is much better than no effort,
and will certainly help the one for whom we mourn. Much can be
accomplished by avoiding unnecessary incidents that bring vividly back
the keen sense of loss. Many people indulge the foolish custom of
regularly visiting the cemetery where the body has been interred. A
little analysis will show that this is only another evidence of our
materialistic modes of thought, and the custom serves to perpetuate
emotions that should never have existed. We can not, of course, think
too often nor too tenderly of those who have passed on, but we should
do nothing that leads us to think of them as being dead, or being far
away. The fact that they are alive and well and happy and near should
constantly fill the