In Hinduism, great stress is given not only on the care of the living but also of the dead. For the latter, a whole 16-day period in the month of Bhadrapada( September) is dedicated called Pitr Paksha(fortnight of the ancestors), where the ancestors are believed to descend on earth from the Pitr-loka to receive the offerings made to them.
During this time the living members of the family pay homage to their ancestors via food, clothing, and sometimes ornaments.
Brahman-bhoj is an integral part of this ritual where people invite brahmans to their homes for food, and donate clothes to them. Along with this crows, dogs, and even cows are also fed in the name of their ancestors.
It is believed that this ritual allows the material substance to get transferred to the astral side for the spirits. So what you give here, reaches your ancestors there.
This whole procedure goes beyond the boundaries of logical comprehension and you can't seriously explain how this is happening, still, I tried to find the answers and got a little bit of success too, but even that hovers around the periphery of logic.
It's believed that fire has the capacity to transform and transfer. Matter is considered to be made of 5 elements. Ether(aakash), air, fire, water, and earth. When something is offered to fire, it incinerates it and leaves only ether and air behind, which are the building blocks of astral world. After cremation of the dead, spirits get a vayu sharir(air body) which also is made up of two elements - ether and air. So this fire sacrifice or yagyas allows the matter to get transferred to the astral world.
Similar way, it's believed that a Jathar agni(fire of digestion) exists inside the stomach of all living beings. When food is offered to Brahmans and cows, this fire transforms the food and it gets transmitted to the astral world, available for spirits to enjoy. Knowing that we can safely say that Agni deva(Fire god) is the busiest courier delivery guy on this planet.
This fire method explains about the food but doesn't tell anything about the clothes and other materials because these things are never offered in fire sacrifice but still, they are believed to reach there, it simply means there are other methods along with the Fire Delivery Services which are either unknown, incomprehensible or are extremely technical to execute.
I am witnessing these rituals since childhood. My logical brain always questioned over the authenticity of these rituals, and this didn't stop even after getting initiated into the yogic lineage. This happens mainly because of lack of experience in such matters, and luckily in my case, the destiny didn't keep me waiting for long...
This incident happened a few months back even before the Pitr-paksha, and I got involved in it unintentionally.
A little bit of background before - I have a friend who's also a fellow disciple, Sarvadaman Johari. He has been experiencing a strange phenomenon of experiencing rich, vivid and ultra-realistic dreams since childhood. They are so detailed that while normal mortals like us struggle to tell the color of someone's clothes in dreams, he could tell the texture, sewing design, crease shape to even the amount of distance between the individual fibres!
He thought all his life that it's absolutely normal and everyone experiences such 4k quality dreams, before meeting a normal Homo sapiens, me obviously, whose dreams hardly crossed the 144p benchmark.
Not only the quality of his dreams is weird, the content isn't ordinary either. He had many strange experiences where he saw something random and it occurred in real life within few days.
Unimaginable jewellery designs appear in his dreams randomly, so he sleeps with a sketchbook to record those ideas as first task in the morning. In case of creative block, when other artists turn towards nature for inspiration, he moves towards his cozy single bed.
All that pales out infront of this particular feature - the frequent visions of the dead people in his dreams. He had many goosebumpy dreams where he woke up in the middle of the night because of seeing some dead man trying to talk to him. All over the world, it's a common understanding that the dead spirits try to make contact with the living via their dreams. Sarvadaman at one point was having such experiences way too frequently, so much so that he had to learn to ignore them completely, until one day when he couldn't...
Transferring matter from material to astral realm:-
One day when he was dead asleep, he saw a very strange dream - a very old familiar-looking lady wearing a saree appeared in his dream and started calling him "Chhotu...Chhotu"(his pet name). As usual, he first tried to ignore that, but after repeated calling, he realized that no one trying to contact him had used his name Chhotu before. 'This is very unusual,' he thought. So he turned his head towards the source of that voice and boom! His astonishment knew no bounds, it was his beloved Dadi(grandmother) who had left the world long time back!
The dream was so bright and clear he could see every strand of her gray hair. She was wearing a light pink saree, which he recognized instantly as the one his father had donated during one of her Shraddhas. She was looking exactly the way she had left, just a lot more powerful and contended. She looked at her kiddo with a smile, but her face was marred with some worry.
He asked, 'what happened, Dadi?'.
Her smile turned into concern and she started explaining how she had been doing pilgrimages all over the world with some people for a long time, she then pointed towards her feet to show how during the journey both her feet had got injured and are paining badly now. She then looked straight into his eyes with a piercing gaze and asked, 'Chhotu, do something...'.
Next thing then Chhotu remembers is waking up in the morning.
It could have been just like any other dream because he had been struggling from a long time to distinguish between a random dream and a genuine vision, both beyond his control, but somehow this time he was utterly sure it was true. Next, he did what any hallucinating person would do, call his friend.
My phone rang in the very early morning at around 11 am, yeah that's early morning for me! When I picked up on the 3rd call, he greeted me with 5-6 very decent gentlemanly English words like idiot, sucker, and others which I can't even mention here. When I asked him what happened, he told the whole story in one breath.
I asked, 'Cool, what do you want from me?'
He then replied, 'She needs meds, tell what we need to give.'
I was like 'Dude, I am a doctor of living human beings not spirits, and for sure there's no pharmacy in the astral world even if I tell you.'
He said 'Man, help me, I can't ask any other doctor, they'll think I have gone mad.'
'Yeah as if I am not thinking that. You promise I'll not get arrested by ghost police for prescribing without an astral medical license?' I asked laughingly.
'Bro, this is serious, listen to me,' he kept persuading me for sometime and finally we both decided to ask our main man, Guruji, directly. He'll tell not only about the authenticity of this dream but also about how to transfer those meds to the other world.
Next day I went to academy to meet Guruji and told him all that had happened. He listened to me very attentively and after I finished, he said 'it was genuine, she needs medicines.' This blew my mind completely, I couldn't comprehend the fact that even in astral world you are not free from injuries, I asked him how it was possible? Guruji then told me about the Ashwini Kumars, the physicians of the gods, he said the mere fact that gods have their own physicians means even gods and spirits need healing on the other side.
Finding me still confused and not satisfied, Guruji told me a story.
Sarvadaman's dadi also was a disciple of Guruji. On her deathbed, her daughter, Sarvadaman's Bua(aunt), took a promise from her mother to come back after death and tell her exactly how the astral world is. Few days after her departure, she came to her daughter's dream and simply said, 'whatever was there, same is here' and then left.
So it was like a double reinforcement for me, this was the second time she had come in someone's dream and interacted. Also, Guruji said that the dream was true, so I didn't have many reasons left to deny its authenticity. After clarifying all my doubts I asked him what to do now? He suggested two options - either put the medicines on her Sthaan or donate them to a Brahmini(female Brahmin), this way she'll receive them on the other side.
'But how we'll know she received it? I asked.
'Don't worry, you will' he replied with a smile.
I nodded, came back, and told Sarvadaman everything.
(Sthaan - Earth bound spirits who have not reached the Pitra-loka yet need a place of their own to remain attached to earth, for that hindus create a small platform with bricks and cement and via a certain ritual dedicates it to the spirit. Because Sarvadaman's dadi was a disciple of Guruji, her Sthaan was made inside the academy, so she could live and practise near her Guru happily.)
Next was my unique once-in-a-lifetime task, prescribing drugs for a spirit. As I was guided by the fact that whatever was here the same was there, I simply prescribed an iodine antiseptic ointment and a medium-strength painkiller.
His family decided to go with the second option of donating to a brahmini because it was hard for them to come to academy because of the busy schedule those days.
They gave those meds to their house-help, Rajni, because she knew an old Brahmin lady living nearby her home. She took the meds and left to deliver them.
Rajni came back the next day for work, earlier than usual time. Seeming extremely astonished and in sort of a hurry, she gathered everyone and started explaining what had happened.
When she reached the brahmini's home, she told why she had come, how Chhotu saw a dream and sent medicines to her in his dadi's name. Listening to the story, that old lady got deeply emotional and started blessing him and Rajni again and again.
Rajni asked what happened, she then told something which I think is the mother of all coincidences.
She explained - a day back she was coming home from somewhere and due to a bad step, injured her, you guessed it right, feet! She developed a small wound and it was paining badly. She needed meds but her family had gone to some place and she was all alone at home without any help. She felt as if God had given him that dream for her.
When we analyzed the whole scenario, two possibilities came, either it was just a coincidence and nothing more, or his dadi knew exactly which person would be having the same problem like her own self, so she somehow created a scenario, most likely via thought insertion in his mind, where those meds could reach to that person who would use them, and via that person reach to her.
All that analysis made us feel like we were losing our minds, and sadly enough, in matters of spirituality and not on some beautiful lady.
Now, all we needed was some confirmation for the astral delivery. Without any idea of how it'll happen, our waiting game started... one day passed, nothing happened, then 2nd day, still nothing, then 3rd day, then 4th, by this time we had lost all hope and started believing that it was just a very nice hallucination, but on the 5th day, magic happened...
Sarvadaman was again dead asleep, he heard the same voice again, 'Chhotu...'
He exactly knew what it was, his dadi had visited him again! 'I got them here, thanks,' she said that with a big smile and left. 'This was the confirmation guruji was talking about!' he thought. And this way matter had been successfully transferred to the astral world. We don't know how but it had happened, and luckily I was there during the whole process to witness it.
Even after such a detailed incident, my logical brain was not ready to accept this fact, maybe it never will, unless more such incidents happen with me in future.
I don't know if it was just a flight of imagination or a real incident, but it doesn't matter. Even if it was just imagination, it gave us a lot of entertainment and left us with a very nice story to tell, but if it was real, then I can proudly say, I am a Spirit Healer!