According to Osho, no one can pacify another’s desire-laden subtle body; desire is utterly personal. A wife’s or son’s prayers and rituals cannot free the departed; they only transform the doer. By wishing to extinguish another’s desires, one dissolves one’s own. Therefore such rites are valuable as self-purification and understanding, not as intervention in the other’s journey.
You can’t calm someone else’s inner cravings; when you pray or do rituals for them, you end up calming and cleansing your own heart.