Allahabad: Devotees prepared a huge bed of logs on Monday to cremate the embalmed body of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles' guru who taught transcendental meditation to the West. He died at his Dutch retreat last week.
Long queues of admirers filed into a hall the size of two tennis courts in one of Hinduism's holiest towns for a final glimpse of Maharishi's body kept seated cross-legged, as if in deep meditation, on a throne decorated with flowers.
His body covered in white silk, eyes shut and the head held in place with support, the mystic's face looked pale and shrunken under strong spotlights.
In one corner students from a school run by his order chanted ancient Vedic mantras. Many sat with folded hands looking at the funeral preparations.
People spoke in hushed voices. At a short distance, devotees built a huge pyre overlooking the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers, and a mythical third river, the Saraswati. Millions of Hindu faithful bathe every year at this site in the belief it will wash away their sins and liberate them from the cycle of birth and death.
"This is where it all began," said Robert Roth, spokesman of Maharishi's global order, referring to the town where he spent many years studying.
"After the cremation, a marbled tomb is going to be built on his ashes."
Volunteers plastered cow dung paste, considered sacred by Hindus and also used as a disinfectant, on a funeral platform decorated with marigold flowers in the compound of a sprawling hermitage the guru built in 1989.
Girish Srivastava, a nephew of the Maharishi, which in Hindu means "great seer", said instead of placing the body supine, it would be seated cross-legged in a lotus position on the pyre and lit in keeping with religious traditions.
Maharishi's meditation techniques became famous after the Beatles visited his ashram in India and celebrities such as filmmaker David Lynch to Mike Love of the Beach Boys endorsed him.
But critics dismissed him as a hippie mystic, recognisable in the familiar image of him laughing, sitting cross-legged, wearing a white silk wrap-around with a garland of flowers around his neck beneath a scraggly white beard.
He also championed "yogic flying", said to be the ultimate level of transcendence in which practitioners try to summon a surge of energy to physically lift themselves off the ground.
On Monday, many were seen seated in meditation at Maharishi's "ashram" or hermitage.
"This is a profound moment," said Matthias, a hippie-looking German who gave only one name. "The light's been lit in us."
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