The Mysterious Death of a Mystic Guru

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from news.bbc.co.uk July 16^th, 2004 with the headline: “Buried Guru Suffocates—An Indian mystic who undertook to be buried for the weekend as a penance to bring world peace has suffocated in his pit, police say. Ananda Swami, in his early twenties, had his followers bury him in a deep pit near Madras, saying he would come back at the appointed hour to bless them all. He apparently went underground in the hamlet of Vadi Padi last Friday night. The pit was covered with five wooden planks and then fires were lit close by. Ananda Swami’s followers were so convinced their Swami or god-man would come out with redoubled spiritual vigor that they arranged to feed over one thousand poor people to mark his emergence from the Samadhi, or underground trance.

“The mystic was scheduled to come out on Sunday morning.

“A large number of people from the surrounding area gathered at the site.

“It was not clear whether he had promised to break through the wooden planks on his own. The crowd waited and waited, and finally the anxious disciples removed the planks to wake Ananda Swami from his trance. However, the swami was found dead. Police removed the body for a post-mortem. People in the hamlet said Ananda Swami had undergone similar samadhis in the past, though for a much shorter time. It was thought he might have been suffocated by the smoke that seeped in from the fires lit by his followers.

“Ananda Swami's followers did not seem to find anything amiss with either what they had done or his failure to return alive.

"It's all god's will," one devotee said. "Perhaps his mission on earth had come to an end. We still revere him as god's own representative on earth."

Tom: Dave, what’s this all about? I think we ought to explain to our listeners what this guy’s thinking from his Eastern mystical world view as well as, I’m not sure what. Go ahead.

Dave: Well, it’s rather interesting he was going to come out on a Sunday morning. Was that to kind of show that he could do what Jesus did, who resurrected on a Sunday morning? See, you’ve got a basic, a lot of basic problems here Tom, as you know. The devotees say it’s all god’s will. Well what god are we talking about? Now he claims to be god.

In fact the famous saying in Hinduism is “that thou art.” The Atman in the individual soul is identical with Brahman in the universal souls. So he really is god. And what does it really matter? Whether he’s here or there or dead or alive. There’s no death in Hinduism. It’s all….

Tom: Maya.

Dave: You can go on and explain maya. It’s all maya. We make it up in our minds.

Tom: Well see that’s the problem Dave. Because their theology says one thing. It’s been handed down for centuries, yet they live in a real world. As you mentioned last week, the Dali Lama, when it rains he stands under an umbrella. When he needs to get from one place to another he gets on an airplane and goes.

So they live in a real world and they have to reconcile some of these things which are their theology with reality. It’s irreconcilable. So he would do something like this. Bury himself to demonstrate what? Well it didn’t work out the way that he planned. Now why is that if he’s a god-man? It doesn’t make sense.

Dave: Well he was going to do penance to bring world peace. That’s a delusion you know. If enough of us could just visualize world peace it would happen. Now he’s doing penance he said. To whom? What god is he doing penance to and why would that bring world peace? Again it’s like Catholicism, you’re going to suffer in purgatory in order to pay for your sins. It was a lunatic idea, I’m sorry Tom, just to be blunt. That he could bring world peace by being buried alive in a pit and somehow coming out. It won’t work.

But this is the idea that a lot of people have. That somehow if I could do enough good deeds or I could give enough to charity and I’ll turn over a new leaf. From now on I’ll do better. The problem with the world is that men are taking their own way. There’s evil in this world. Why? Because we’re like a cancer on the globe. Man is no longer following the instructions. The instruction manual, like a cell that’s out of control.

Tom: Dave there’s another part of this that I think people need to recognize. Some of this is sham; some of this is trickery. We found in our research over the years whether it be a Hindu guru trying to fake something like Sai Baba, or whether you have these gurus who have come to the West into drugs, into all kinds of things and their bodies begin to deteriorate and what do they say? They’re taking on the karma of the world. Like they’re suffering for everybody’s sins. It doesn’t make any sense.

Dave: Well Tom, the only thing that makes sense is that Jesus Christ our Lord who is God, who became a man, didn’t cease to be God, and will never cease to be man, he is the only one God man. Why did he do that? Because he took upon himself our sins. He paid the penalty that his own infinite justice required for sin. He paid the penalty for every human being and this allows God to justly forgive. The penalty had to be paid. And if we will accept that penalty that Christ made for us. We give up life as would live it and we accept his life as ours, then we can say with Paul, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, but yet not I, but Christ lives in me and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” This is what God offers. It’s not some Hindu mystical trip to moksha or to escape time, sense and the elements or whatever. But this is as you said, the real world and this is the only solution that there is.