The Inner Urge

In 1949 a handsome Hindu named Narayan Acharya left a wife, a five-year-old child and a promising political career, to follow "an inner urge to do penance and bring peace to the world." Wandering through the Himalayas, he practiced the mystic arts of yoga, learned to do without food and water for long periods at a time. According to one admirer, Narayan even mastered the trick of levitation, and once flew for three miles through a Nepalese jungle. In the same jungle Narayan had himself buried alive for 24 hours, and survived to tell newsmen of the milky white "soul light" that had surrounded and protected him through the ordeal.

But for all his skills and sufferings, Narayan failed in his first purpose. Recently he got to thinking that if he performed a really long penance, God might be pleased enough to bring "peace to the world." A fortnight ago, frail, black-bearded, 56-year-old Narayan let himself down to the bottom of a deep, six-foot-square pit outside of New Delhi. He spread the skin of a deer on the pit's wooden floor, placed his sandals carefully by his side, sat down and assumed the cross-legged "lotus position." Then he passed out a signed statement: "If anything wrong happens to my physical body, nobody should be held responsible but myself." At Narayan's signal, the pit was closed with wooden planks, and ten feet of earth were shoveled on top.

For nine days, sophisticates in New Delhi's clubs and coffee houses argued over whether Narayan was a fake or not. There was probably a secret tunnel leading into the tomb, said some. But in a hut near the pit, Narayan's sole disciple, faithful Wamana Acharya, sat praying day after day. Last week, as the tenth day of the ordeal dawned, sightseers from all over New Delhi streamed to the burying place afoot and on camelback to watch Narayan's disinterment. Cymbals and harmoniums clanged and wheezed, hucksters did a land-office business in hot tea.

Women with babies in their arms peered anxiously over the pit edge as workmen shoveled. At last the burial chamber was opened, and Disciple Wamana entered alone with gifts of flowers, fruit, coins, and ghi (melted butter) with which to massage the yogi. The crowd waited tensely. Wamana emerged alone, his face the color of ashes. The pit, he said, was hot as a furnace; Narayan thought it better not to come out until the following day. The crowd roared with disapproval, and Wamana went back to the pit. Soon he emerged again, this time to confess the truth. Narayan, he wailed, was dead.

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