According to Hindu religious beliefs, after death, a soul passes into another body. During its tenure in the body, the soul is in torment. Consequently, the soul is always seeking to free itself from incarnation so that it can attain enlightenment or moksa. Once enlightenment is achieved, both the body and soul can join their cosmic equivalents forever. Therefore, when a person dies, but its soul fails to achieve moksa, it will continue with the cycle of life through incarnations.

The religious rites which are performed to accompany a soul through its journey in the cycle of life incorporate these cosmic nations. The intervening journey between life and death is given high importance in Balinese rituals. Balinese believe that the mountains are the abodes of the gods, deified ancestors and souls which did not attain moksa.

The gods and deified ancestors will descend occasionally to earth during temple ceremonies to partake of offerings and to enjoy entertainment when the souls are ready to re-incarnate on earth, they will come from the mountains or straight from hell. That is why the mountains are revered as the holy places.

All the phases of existence, from pregnancy to birth and then from birth to death, will be accompanied by rituals. Their purposes are: to fasten the soul in its body before birth, to welcome it into the world, to take it harmoniously along the various stages of life, and finally upon death, to help its cast away all earthly bonds and rejoin the old country of its origins. Here it can merge with the sublime soul of the world, Paramata of God.

According to the principles of cosmic harmony, man is expected to reach moksa. To do this he or she should strive to fulfill three other goals of life: desire-kama, wealth-artha and virtue-dharma. Each of this goals should be fulfilled in an order of priority depending on the stage reached in life, such as when young, becoming an adolescent, getting married, and becoming old.

After marriage, priorities in life shift towards family and an accumulation of wealth or artha. Male heirs are regarded as important because it is these heirs of sentana who will implement the rituals of death and look after the family temples. They are a safe guard in the process of release. It is therefore important to accumulate wealth so that the rites for their ancestors and the community can be financed.

The Balinese death is a return to your origins. The preceding wheels of one’s life are the way to ultimate release. Not all corpses are cremated immediately, as some wait for an auspicious day, a collective ceremony or until their descendant have enough money to perform the rites. The cremation ritual is art minder of the cosmic symbolism of life.

The tower is a duplicate of the cosmos; the corpse is put in the middle, symbolizing its position between the spiritual and the human worlds. The sarcophagus, in which the body is burned, is a vehicle to take the soul away. The ashes are collected and taken to the sea. It is here that the soul passes through hell to be tortured and cleansed. The soul is then called back on shore and eventually taken back to the Mother Mountain, Gunung Agung. The soul is then enshrined in the family temple and the dead in now an ancestor, until the next incarnation.