death beyond death. 83
figure 6
ManikarnikaGhat, Banaras, where Agehananda Bharati received
his midnight initiation, becoming a sannyasi.Photo by John Hawley.
me, saying, “Hurry, BrahmacariRamachandra, theacaryais waiting for you.” But
when I came within sight of Swami Vifvananda, he was reclining in a niche in the Durga
Temple and said calmly, “Oh, you have come fast. There is still half an hour. Go and
worship the Devi. You have been wanting to; this is the time.” Until that moment I had
not known that I wanted to worship Her. I went to Her shrine on top of the Manikarnika,
and I worshipped Her. As I rose to leave, Vifvananda was standing at the temple en-
trance. “Follow me now,” he said. He walked swiftly toward the cremation ground, and
I followed him. The pyres are about five yards from the road that winds its way through
the ghat; the stakes are set on a platform that cannot be seen from the road, though it is
visible from the river. We ascended the platform. There were three burning pyres: one
of them almost extinct, two burning violently with a bright flame and vehement crack-
ling sounds. This is the stage at which even thedahasaris(the Dom-caste “burners,”
who officiate) no longer distinguish whether the fires are produced by the firewood or
the bones of the corpse. Two dead bodies were being made ready for the cremation, one
that of a young woman with her stillborn child tied to her under the same red cloth, the
other that of a middle-aged man. The heat was intense, but I was only mentally aware
of it—it did not seem to cause perspiration. The stench was powerful, but somehow my
mind grouped it with the other external paraphernalia of the consecration.