In this country for thousands of years we have chosen not to bury the dead, but to give them to fire. There is a special reason for it.
Fire is the only thing you know which does not allow any gravitation. It always goes upwards. The fire is a symbol of your spirituality; it always goes upwards. No gravitation can pull it down.
Secondly, when you have lived in your body for so many years there arises naturally a certain attachment to the body.
The body is prone to be attracted by gravitation. But when the consciousness sees the body burning — with the body burning, all your attachments with the body, all your prisons that have taken you to many bodies in many lives, start disappearing. One feels a tremendous freedom rising with the flames towards the sky.
And you know … You see flames, and soon they disappear. They are visible only for a few moments, then they become invisible.
Fire is a great symbol of purification, of detachment, of rising vertically towards the ultimate space which is our home.
We come from there, and we go back there.
OSHO