Ceremonies after Death

Sir, I have a general question regards ancestral ceremonies.  After humans pass on to the other world, their kith and kin here perform ceremonies for 13 days and then annual ceremony every year under the belief that they come to have the food and offering. How far is it true and how far is it significant?

Well, they do not come to have the food. But that is a misinterpretation of this ritual my son. The prayers most certainly help. There is no doubting the efficacy of prayers that are said for, as you call them, 'the dead'.  But when these prayers are said, are
parroted without the right essence of the truth, they are meaningless. The prayers have an energy; have a power that helps the Soul onwards towards the Light, if the soul is in a state of confusion. After the soul has reached the Light, the prayers now help the soul to look around its 'new' surroundings, to see old familiar faces to accept the new
environment and then to rest.  No, the soul is not aware that the prayers are doing all this for it, but they do help the soul.  Now, about whether the soul comes to eat the food - the soul does not. But the soul is very much present at such ceremonies. Sometimes these ceremonies are used by the Guides to very forcibly point out to the soul that it HAS truly passed on.  When the soul is present and is aware, as much as you are aware, that the prayers are being prayed, because its 'physical' is dead, it helps the soul to accept this sometimes traumatic fact. When the soul has accepted it easily and comes for these prayers there is a genuine feeling of love that completely engulfs the soul, if the prayers are being said out of love. When you place the different elements including food, what you are doing, my son, is really treating the soul as a guest and you are telling the soul, that we have not forgotten you just because we cannot see you.  You are as welcome into our home and into our hearts as you always were. Secondly, all these elements that are laid out release their own vibrations and add to the power of the prayers.