On October 10, 2022, Nirupama had asked you about aging and how she wants to reverse it. She was my dear niece. She passed away a month ago after a brief but intense illness leaving her parents and aunts devastated. She truly became ageless. Please help me cope with her passing, I want to assure her that she was and is loved and that she finds peace, healing and ultimate solace in being one with the higher power.
—Niti Mehta, India
Dear Niti,
I so sorry to hear about your niece, Nirumpama. She had written to us about a year ago having suffered in her young life and having turned to the immortal Babaji for understanding and guidance. She obviously knew her life would be a short one. That in itself is a blessing for she courageously confronted the truth of suffering, especially her own.
In our reply, we quoted Krishna’s assurance in the Bhagavad Gita that the soul is eternal and cannot be harmed in the way the body and all created things are born, live, and die.
You can very much assure her that she is loved by your daily prayers for her welfare in the subtle astral realms between human incarnations. All great traditions and saints tell us so: pray for those who have gone before us. One reason for this is that in the after-death astral state, we don’t have the organs of the body, nervous system and brain in the same way as we do in human, physical form. It is, literally, a more etheric state. It may be pleasant enough for good people but not clear enough to overcome sadness, confusion, or doubt that can attend being forcibly and prematurely removed from the physical human body especially in the midst of great pain, whether physical or mental.
Each day at the end of your time of meditation, hold her image in your mind’s eye at the point between the eyebrows and send to her comfort, love, and peace as a gift from your very soul. Let not any emotions or attachments cloud your prayer for her. (This is why doing this at end of meditation is best.) From time to time, hold the feeling of her presence in your heart as you go about your duties or as you pause between activities. This means of giving comfort should come from your soul and not the ego’s attachment to form or personality using merely human emotions. Ask God in whatever form you hold dear (Divine Mother, Krishna, guru, etc etc) to be the source of your blessings being channeled through your connection and love for her. This is important because the soul has far more power than the ego. Ego can hold Nirumpama back from progressing and feeling supported. It must be calm and impersonal (meaning without thought of return). ok?
May Nirumpama feel the blessings you send; may she be comforted; and may she continue her journey forward to Self-realization, energized by the gift of your divinely-inpired prayers.
Nayaswami Hriman
