Upstairs, in the Hall of Darshan, in the ashram of the Old Baba, Arjun Puri, a dozen frightened individuals gathered for this most terrific of yoga demonstrations.
Shri Mahant Kapil Puri invoked his lineage, reciting it backwards, starting with his guru, Shri Mahant Arjun Puri, back twenty five hundred years through Adi Shankaracharya, back another 2500 years past the advent of the present Age of Kali, and then back through countless millenniums, past the Dwapara Age, into the Treta Age, to the Lord of Yogis, the three headed Dattatreya, and past him, past Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, all the way back to the first guru, Maha Shunya, the Supreme Void.
His eyes rolled back in his head as he sat in siddhasana, his legs crossed, the soles of his feet facing his body. He cleansed his nerve currents with Pranayama, alternating the breaths through his right and left nostrils. He lowered his head and his last breaths shook the hall with thunder.
The Old Baba stood behind him and placed his hand on Kapil Puri’s head. It is said that with his last breath, the walls reverberated with the mantra SHIVO HAM SHIVO HAM, and on the last HAM…. He(eeee) I Am(mmmm)…. 
A mercury like substance exploded from the top of his head splattering into a million liquid crystalline shards and covered the room and everyone in it with a fine white ash as it hit the dry air.
As the ashen faced witnesses recovered their senses, they filed by one by one to prostrate themselves before the lifeless corpse of my guru ji sitting erect in perfect yogic samadhi.
His disciples removed his clothes and bathed him in the holy waters from the Ganga that had been brought up from the river, just outside the ashram, in a brass bucket. Then they dressed him in silver vibhuti, the ashes of the sacred fire which he tended during his lifetime.
They clothed him in the finest silken saffron cloth and tied a red bandana around his head. He held a rudraksha rosary in his right hand, now counting his mantras forever.
As the news of his samadhi spread, hundreds of his devotees appeared, garlanding him with marigolds until his peaceful face was barely visible emerging from a mountain of yellow and orange flowers. HARA HARA MAHADEV! they shouted, Hail the Great God Shiva Known as Hara, as they marched through the streets of Banaras carrying on their shoulders Kapil Puri sitting in samadhi on a palanquin. Drummers kept the beat as thousands joined in the procession.
Having made a grand circle informing all of Kapil Puri’s supreme victory over death, they reached the banks of the Ganga, where they were met by a long boat. Kapil Puri was rowed out to the middle of the great river, stuffed into a burlap sack filled with stones, and dropped over the side.
NAMAH PARVATI PATE HARA HARA MAHADEV!!
Hail to the Great God Shiva, Lord of the Lady of the Mountain!
