An ‘Encounter’ February 2025, Goa. Written in January 2026

I’m going to try to explain an experience I had in India. It happened last year (!)and I’ve been trying to work out how best to record it. I’ve needed some time to process what happened and realised that there is no rush to write this blog. Eventually I decided that the best way to capture it was speak it into a voice memo app and then have it transcribed, because at its heart this was an oral conversation. So here we go….

I was in India and had met up with my friend Jas and two of my sisters for two weeks. We had had a lovely holiday together. After that, I was going on a ten-day pilgrimage at the River Narmad in Madhya Pradesh. On her journey home Jas and I stopped off at Arambol in North Goa , There was a tantric goddess centre that our friend Amir had suggested we visit.

While I was in the town, I bumped into an older Indian man at a crossroads. He asked me what I was doing in India, and I simply answered honestly. I said that I was going to places of high vibration, on a pilgrimage and that it felt like I was following Lord Shiva and his vibration. This is known as being a Shiva devotee. In India, this is fairly normal conversation, though perhaps not coming from a Westerner.

He looked at me and said, “Ah, okay,” and then began writing down a list of places for me to go to. He said it was God’s will and that I must visit these places. To be honest I was in a bit of a rush, and the situation felt slightly inconvenient. He was writing very slowly, and although I stayed as long as I could, I eventually told him I had to leave because Jas didn’t know where I was and might worry. He said, “No, no, she’ll be fine.” And in fact, she was fine—she hadn’t even noticed I’d gone!

I told Jas what had happened, then we went out for dinner, and the next day we both went our separate ways. She went home via a nearer airport half an hour away, and I travelled by taxi to an airport about two hours away so I could fly to Indore and begin my pilgrimage.

When I arrived I was at the airport at 8am, who should appear but the same man! I was literally speechless. He handed me a small bunch of roses wrapped in newspaper with a little note.

I looked at him and said, “How did you know I’d be here?” He simply responded, “Mm.” Then I asked how he had got there, and he simply said, “it’s God’s will.”

He told me he hadn’t finished writing down what I needed to know and do, and he began writing again all in capital letters……very, very slowly. He had only just caught me—another minute and I would have been inside the terminal and he wouldn’t have been allowed to come in. As it happened, I had arrived early and had about half an hour to spare, so I stayed and talked whilst he wrote.

He told me that I needed to do some ceremonies. One was a ceremony for lost souls, and another was to clear my ancestral line. He took a pause from writing and looked me straight in the eye and said ‘did I know that some people are dead while they are still alive on the earth, and that this is a terrible thing?’ He said that if another person gave that soul permission to leave, then that soul will be eternally grateful.

This was a very unusual, unexpected incredibly deep interaction.

I told him that I felt as though I had had that conversation with my son. It had all been in metaphors but I thought, and hoped, Ben knew what I was saying. (I’ve written about this previously in my blog describing the last time I ever saw Ben alive which was on Solsbury Hill in Bath)

He looked at me very deeply and said, “That soul would be eternally grateful, if that is what you felt.” It felt as though he was double checking something. The moment was incredibly moving.

He then told me that his name was Giresh and that he had experienced mental health problems for 30 years. He had been brought up next to a temple in Panaji (capital of Goa) from his teenage years and had had a very difficult, hard life.

Then things shifted gear.

He began asking me about my son, and about the mental health services in Leicestershire (!) and then he said they were non-existent. He seemed angry. He then started talking about where my son went to university, which is in Groningen, in North Holland. He referred to “Benedict,” not Ben.

At that point, I was completely speechless. It was strange enough to be given a list of Shiva-related places to visit, but to be given such specific information about my son was mind-blowing. I took a beautiful photo of Giresh, We held strong eye contact for a long time.

I asked him what I could do for him. He had given me so much information, time and had travelled a long way to complete the information for me. He simply said, “Pray for me. Pray for my healing everywhere you go that is related to Shiva.” I told him, of course I would.

I asked him again how he had managed to get to that airport. I told him it had taken me two hours by taxi. He simply looked at me and repeated, “It was God’s will.” And it truly felt that way. The whole encounter was incredibly special. Beyond words which is why it’s been so hard to capture it for this blog.

When I later looked at the list he had given me, I didn’t really know where to begin. I didn’t know where the places were or what they would look like. Luckily I was already enroute to a pilgrimage to Maheshwa in Madhu Pradesh along the River Namada.

When I arrived I was quite disorientated and shaken up. I showed the list Giresh had written to Sangita who was running the pilgrimage and to my great surprise it made sense to her immediately. She said this is ok, you are on a pilgrimage and this is part of it. She didn’t seem as if it was anything out of the ordinary!

With her help I was able to complete quite a few of the things on the list. One of them was a ceremony for lost souls, which we did in the River Narmada. It was extraordinary—priests, chanting, flowers, oils. I decided to share it with the rest of the people on the pilgrimage (about 10 people) so that they could also remember people in their who felt like lost souls.

We also carried out a ceremony for ancestral cleansing on our family lines. It was deeply special. The river herself seemed to respond. As we were clearing, brown matter flowed down the river, something I hadn’t seen before or since. The river is usually very clean. It felt as though the river was mimicking or representing what was being released and spoken into it.

While we were sitting together through the night, I read out some of the things Giresh had suggested. One of them was to observe twelve minutes of silence at midnight on Shivaratri, on the 23rd of February. We were already staying awake all night, listening to mantras and sharing, so just before midnight I suggested we do it. We held the silence together. Another thing on the list completed. The whole experience felt like moving effortlessly with the flow.

The night before we held those ceremonies was Shivaratri- one of the most sacred nights of the Hindu calendar marking the union of Shiva and Shakti. During that all-night ceremony, I shared the story of what had happened with Giresh which sounds oddly similar to my maiden name Jeary . Perhaps I’m looking for connections. When you’re bereaved, you do look for connections everywhere—especially to something beyond this life, because the person you’ve lost is now beyond the life we live.

It has taken me a long time to make sense of all this. It’s still very hard to put into words. But I’ve since learned about a phenomenon called ‘spiritual messengers’ This happens where a soul no longer on earth can temporarily borrow another person’s body to deliver messages on the earthly plane. They often appear at crossroads, airports, bus stations—places of transition and movement—because that energy makes it easier to move between worlds.

I believe Ben came to me via Giresh as a spiritual messenger, to check that I was okay with him choosing to die and that he had my blessing. And He does. I feel blessed by the experience with Giresh. I also feel it has opened the door to ancestral line clearing, as I’ve been told there may be a curse on the family line—something I’m choose simply to listen to and work with energetically.

So, Ben, you continue to be present. You continue to influence and expand my understanding. You continue to open and broaden my mind. You are deeply, deeply loved, and you remain present in my life. And you often make me laugh!