Transcendence

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Today's podcast features two stories about very dark religious rituals.

The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.

The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called Final Act, and it's about a gruesome discovery on a farmer's property in India.

The second story you'll hear is called The Metamorphosis, and it's about the ancient Buddhist monk practice of Sokushinbitsu.

But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

So, if that's of interest to you, the next time the Amazon Music Follow button is counting something really important, start shouting out random numbers to mess them up.

Okay, let's get into our first story called Final Act.

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On the evening of April 15th, 2023, a mother and father named Hansa and Himu Makwana stood on the front doorstep of a little shack in a little village in western India called Vincia.

With these two parents were their two kids, a son and a daughter, who were 12 and 13 years old, respectively.

And they were really excited because tonight they were going to be spending the night with their uncle and their cousins, who lived in this shack right in front of them.

And so moments later, the door to this shack opened up and immediately the two kids ran inside calling out for their cousins.

And the uncle, who would open the door, he just smiled and said hello to Himu and Hansa.

And the parents, they're calling after their kids to, you know, please behave, listen to your uncle, be good.

But they were already gone.

And so finally, the uncle said, don't worry, they're fine, we'll have a great night, we'll see you tomorrow.

And so Himu and Hansa thanked him very much, and then they turned around, they grabbed each other's hands and began walking out towards the dirt road that would take them back to their own home.

The village that Himu and Hansa and their kids and their uncle and their cousins all lived in was a very poor, run-down farming community where for the most part people worked really hard but barely got by.

But this night, as Himu and Hansa walked along Sturt Road, passing by the shacks and tiny apartments and fields and livestock that were kind of all over the place, they weren't thinking about, you know, the struggles of daily life in this village.

Instead, they were thinking about how beautiful the village was that night.

The sun was starting to set, and so the sky was this beautiful orange, and all the cows that had been out that day kind of wandering around the village were all starting to stand up and make their way back towards their stables for dinner.

And with every step the cows made, the little bells on their neck would ring out.

And so the scene in front of Himu and Hansa was so beautiful and peaceful that for a moment they just stopped on the road and kind of took in the sights and sounds.

And then at some point, a group of cows who were making their way to their stable came up onto the road right where Himu and Hansa were, and very quickly the couple stepped back to make sure no mud or dirt got kicked up on their clothes.

Now, Himu and Hansa were farmers by trade, and so on most days they would wear clothes that were covered in mud and dirt.

But this night was different.

Himu and Hansa were wearing their finest outfits, and they were not about to get them dirty.

Hansa had on her beautiful red dress, and Himu was wearing a starched white button-up shirt.

After the cows had crossed the road and suddenly the path was clear again for Himu and Hansa to walk on, Himu paused before taking a step, and he turned and just looked at Hansa.

And Hansa, who lately had been feeling quite down, appeared to be very happy and radiant.

And so Himu just smiled at Hansa and at some point Hansa looked up and smiled at him, and then before long they were holding hands again strolling down the road.

A little while later, the couple turned onto their street, and just up ahead on the left side, just off the road, they could see their home, which was a small small concrete and brick structure but when the couple actually reached their property instead of going in the front door they walked around their property into the back side where all their crops were they were growing peanuts and cotton and Himu and Hansa just walked straight back away from their house through these fields all the way to the very back of their property which was marked by this huge stone wall that was as tall as Hansa was.

And when they reached this wall, they also reached their tent.

It was like this patchwork tent they had built with one side being supported by the stone wall and the other side, the side closest to them as they approached it, was supported by these pikes they had driven into the ground.

Inside of this tent was the family shrine to the Hindu god Shiba.

And over the last couple of days, Himu and Hansa had been working on this new addition to the family shrine.

It had been a lot of work, but it was finally done and tonight Himu and Hansa were finally going to be able to use it.

The couple stood outside the tent taking in the sights and sounds of the beautiful sunset and then one after the other they went inside the tent.

The next day, sometime in the afternoon, Himu and Hansa's children returned from their uncle's house after sleeping over there the night before.

And when they got to their home, home, they went in the front door and immediately called out for their parents.

But their parents were not inside the house.

And so the siblings walked all around the house and then went out the back door, thinking maybe their parents were out in the fields working.

But when they went outside, they saw their parents were not out there either.

And so as the kids stood there kind of wondering where their parents were, the boy said to his older sister, maybe they're in the shrine.

So the kids left the back of their house, they cut straight across the field all the way to that backstone wall where they found the shrine, the tent that was propped up against the wall.

And right away, the kids noticed something was off about the shrine.

Whenever their parents were in there praying, they could typically hear them from a distance as they walked up to the shrine.

But now, standing right outside of it, it was totally silent.

The kids finally lifted up the flap of the tent, and they looked inside, and once again, they did not see their parents.

Instead, what they saw inside of the shrine was totally confusing.

The shrine, which their parents typically kept absolutely, immaculately clean at all times, looked kind of dirty.

There was this weird, rusty-colored liquid kind of all over everything, including on some of the holy objects, like the picture and statue of Sheba.

And in the middle of the shrine where there was this fire pit were these two hunks of meat that looked like they had been placed in the fire and then forgotten about?

The kids knew their parents would never leave the shrine in this condition, nor would they spoil food and let it sit out on a fire and not eat it.

And so they're thinking to themselves, you know, what happened inside of the shrine and where are my parents?

And then, when they did one more look around the inside of the shrine, they noticed something that they had not when they first opened up the tent.

And when they realized what it was, they screamed and took off running.

This is the story behind what those children saw.

The night before, when their parents, Himu and Hansa, stepped inside the tent, they looked around and surveyed the shrine.

Right in the middle of the shrine on the ground was that fire pit, and then off to the right side of the fire fire pit was a small egg-shaped statue that was a statue of Shiva.

And then next to the statue was a picture of Shiva.

Shiva is a powerful figure in the Hindu religion.

He is viewed as a god of both rebirth and of destruction.

And when he is portrayed, like in the photo and in the statue that was inside of the shrine, his skin is smeared white with the ashes of corpses.

He has crescent moons in his hair.

And around his neck are snakes and skulls.

And so Shiva is kind of viewed as both a loving, kind god and also one to be scared of.

And so after the couple looked around at their shrine for a second, they got to work.

Even though that night it was very hot and muggy outside, the first thing the couple did was get some firewood off to the side inside of this tent, put it in the fire pit, and start a fire.

And then after the fire was built, Hansa began sprinkling orange flower petals all around the statue and picture of Shiva.

And at the same time, Himu got out a piece of paper and began writing a note.

And as he wrote, his hand shook with nervous anticipation of what they were going to do that night.

And then after Himu finished writing this letter, he and Hansa dipped their thumbs in ink and pressed them to the bottom of this note, kind of like signing the note.

And then after the note was complete, they folded it up and tucked it between the statue and the picture of Shiva.

Then, Himu and Hansa turned their attention to their newest addition to the shrine.

The new addition basically just looked like a big door frame, but without a door in the middle of it.

It was made out of scrap metal that Himu and Hansa had gathered around their village, and if you were standing in front of this structure, it would almost look like you were looking at a doorway into the fire pit.

And also draped over the top of this rectangular frame was a white rope.

And so Himu and Hansa moved over right in front of the structure as if they were going to walk through the frame into the fire.

But instead of doing that, they knelt down right at the base of the structure, right in the dirt, and then they both, in unison, began to say a prayer out loud.

And then after the prayer was done, Himu reached up and grabbed one end of this white rope, and he began pulling it until it was tight.

And then he pulled it a little bit more and a little bit more until he had it right where he wanted it and then he held the rope steady.

And then Himu, still holding onto this rope, along with Hansa, very carefully got down onto their bellies, Himu being very cautious not to give any slack to the rope or pull it any farther.

And then once they were in position on their bellies, all they would have heard was the crackling of the fire in front of them, and all they would have felt was their hearts beating in their chest.

Now, very likely, Himu and Hansa were terrified at this point, but this was their moment.

They had come too far, and they knew they had to finish this ritual.

And so, with one last loving look at each other, the couple nodded and then turned their attention back to the fire, and then Himu let go of the rope.

The rusty-colored liquid that Himu and Hansa's children would discover inside of the shrine the next day was Himu and Hansa's blood.

And the two hunks of meat that their children saw in the fire pit were their parents' decapitated heads.

The children realized this was the case when they scanned around the tent one more time and noticed their parents' headless bodies lying side by side at the base of the structure.

That was what, of course, caused the children to run outside and go find the police.

This new addition to the shrine, the metallic structure, was a homemade guillotine.

A guillotine is a device that kills people by cutting off their heads.

The white rope that Himu had pulled on was connected on one side to a very heavy metal blade.

And so when he was pulling the rope, he was pulling that blade up off the ground until it was positioned right above them.

And then he held it steady.

And then when he let go, the blade fell straight down, striking the backs of their necks, decapitating them instantly and sending their heads rolling forward into the fire, as designed.

When the police arrived at the shrine, they would find that letter that Himu and Hansa had written and then signed with their thumb tucked near the statue and the picture.

And in this note, Himu and Hansa would not give a reason for why they did this, but they would say, this was our choice, we wanted to do this, we just asked that our living family members take care of our children and our elderly parents.

No one has been able to give a reason for why Himu and Hansa intentionally decapitated themselves and then let their heads burn in a fire.

Their family has said there was no indication that the couple was going to commit suicide.

I mean, they seemed happy, they were not financially well off, but they were not financially struggling either.

It seemed like their life was good.

And so basically, this whole thing came out of left field.

As for the police, they believe that Himu and Hansa must have been performing some sort of black magic ritual where they believed if they lopped their heads off and allowed them to roll forward and burn in this fire, that that somehow would bring them closer to perhaps Shiva or or some other god or some other higher power.

But as of today, no one knows.

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Our next and final story is called The Metamorphosis.

Buddhists believe that human life is a constant cycle of birth, suffering, and then death.

And then you're reborn, you suffer again, you die again, over and over and over again, forever, unless you're able to achieve enlightenment, or nirvana, as it's called.

However, no one really knows what nirvana actually is, what it looks like, what it feels like, where it is.

Buddhists will say that the only way to actually understand nirvana is to experience it yourself.

It's kind of like trying to describe to someone what chocolate tastes like.

You can use any number of superlatives to describe the flavor, but until that person bites a piece of chocolate, they won't really fully understand it.

And so the goal of all Buddhists is to try to attain nirvana.

And every day, hundreds of millions of Buddhists all around the world try very hard to do just that.

But within Buddhism, there is a small subset of practitioners who have effectively dedicated their entire existence to attaining nirvana.

And these people are the famous Buddhist monks.

It is extremely difficult to become a Buddhist monk because the sacrifice is enormous.

You have to leave your family, your friends, society, all your possessions, your name, your status, everything,

and go live in a monastery, which is a kind of isolated place where monks live, and there you will spend your life living this very simple, very strict religious life where basically all you do is try to attain nirvana.

As a result of this extreme lifestyle that Buddhist monks live, they have developed a reputation for being some of the most disciplined people on the planet.

But even by Buddhist monk standards, their sacred ritual of Sokushinbutsu takes discipline to a whole nother level.

Sokushinbutsu was created over a thousand years ago up in the rugged mountains of northern Japan by a sect of Buddhists called the Shinon.

And the Shinon believed that you could attain nirvana through physical punishment.

And out of that idea was born the incredibly brutal Sokushinbutsu ritual.

In short, Buddhist monks can choose to participate in this ritual, and if they successfully complete it, they might attain nirvana.

But they won't know until the ritual is over.

Meaning, it's kind of like a big gamble.

Put yourself through absolute hell, and maybe you have this huge payoff, but maybe not.

However, trying to attain nirvana through other means was really difficult.

There was no other really clear pathways to nirvana.

And so having this one distinct pathway, no matter how difficult it was, was was really appealing.

And so, since its creation, hundreds and hundreds of Buddhist monks have tried it.

And maybe less than 100 have actually successfully completed it.

And then, of that 100 or less, only 24 have actually attained nirvana through this process.

The instructions for Sokushinbutsu are actually quite simple.

There are three phases.

Phase one is called Moku Jikagayo, which roughly means tree eating training, and it's primarily focused on the monk's diet.

It takes 1,000 days to complete this phase, however, most monks go much longer than 1,000 days.

During this phase, monks will only eat byproducts of trees.

Things like seeds, nuts, tree bark, tree roots, pine needles, and they will collect all this food on their own.

It should be noted though that some monks in this first phase will ingest small rocks.

This is likely done because they are starving and they can't find food, and by eating the rocks, the rocks take up space in their stomach and kind of curb their appetite a little bit, but because they don't actually digest the rocks, they're not technically breaking the phase one diet restrictions, and so they can continue on with this ritual.

Additionally, during this first phase, the monks adhere to a very involved and strenuous physical exercise routine, and then whenever they're not foraging for food or exercising, they are meditating.

At the end of the 1000th day of phase one, if the monk has survived, because sometimes phase one monks do die mostly from starvation, it is up to them if they are ready to move on to phase two.

This decision ultimately comes down to whether or not, one, the monk actually adhered to the strict rules of phase one, one, something really only that monk would know, and then two, whether or not the monk actually believes they are spiritually ready to move on to phase two.

Phase two is much shorter than phase one, but it is significantly more challenging.

And so the monks going into phase two, they really need to kind of bring their A game and have no second thoughts.

They need to be fully committed to phase two in order to successfully successfully complete it.

For reference, most of the 24 monks who successfully attained nirvana through this ritual repeated phase one two or even three times just to make sure they really were ready.

Phase two is called Nyojo and it roughly translates to deep meditation.

But a better way to think about what this phase entails is these monks need to enter into a sort of trance-like state, almost like an out-of-body experience, because what they're going to go through in this phase is so physically uncomfortable that unless you're able to kind of detach mentally, there's just no way to go through with it.

And so, during the second phase, the monks will sit down and meditate basically constantly for 100 straight days.

And during that time, they don't eat any more tree byproducts or rocks.

Instead, they have a liquid diet.

They drink a little bit of salt water, and they drink a lot of a very particular kind of tea.

The tea is made from toxicodendrum verniculum tree bark, which contains the same toxin in poison ivy.

Meaning, for phase two, you basically just sit alone by yourself for 100 days while simultaneously drinking a poisonous tea that causes a massive allergic reaction inside of your throat and stomach that causes an intense intense itching sensation inside of you that you cannot physically itch.

Also, this poisonous tea gives you explosive diarrhea and it makes you vomit a lot.

If you somehow manage to survive all 100 days of phase two, and unfortunately many monks don't, you automatically move on to phase three.

Unlike phase one, phase two never gets repeated, most likely because it almost certainly would be fatal to do so.

Phase 3 is either the easiest or the hardest part of the Sokushinbitsu ritual, depending on how you look at it.

It doesn't have a name like the other two phases, perhaps because so few people make it to this part of the ritual, but regardless, Phase 3 definitely has a strict set of rules like like the other two phases.

The Phase 3 monk has a small pine box that has no windows built just for them.

It needs to be big enough that they can sit inside of it in the lotus pose, which is how they typically sit when they're meditating.

And then once it's all built, the monk climbs into this box.

They put a lid over the top of it.

But they put a bamboo chute, like a bamboo pole, through the cover of this box.

So there is a breathing tube for this monk inside of this box.

And then they lower the monk inside of the small pine box 10 feet into this hole in the ground.

And then once they ensure the bamboo pole is going to be above ground so they can breathe, they fill the hole in with charcoal.

Before we cover what happens next in phase three, you need some context about what this ritual is actually doing to the monks performing it.

Phase one, tree eating training, serves two purposes.

The first is it's kind of like a big gut check.

It really shows who wants to do this ritual and who doesn't.

It's kind of like if you can't complete phase one, you certainly can't complete phase two or phase three.

So it's like a filter.

It weeds out the weak monks.

The second purpose of phase one is to literally shrink the monk.

The tree eating diet, combined with the constant physical exercise, removes all of their body fat and a lot of their muscle and so they're incredibly lean by the end of phase one.

And this will be significant when we talk about the end of phase three.

Phase two, deep meditation phase, serves two purposes as well.

The first purpose is that it puts the monk into that trance-like state, and then the second purpose it serves is the toxin inside of this poisonous tea kills off all of the naturally occurring bacteria and parasites inside of the monk.

Again, that will become significant when we get to the end of phase three.

Speaking of which, so in phase three, the monk is put in their box, they're lowered 10 feet into the ground, the breathing bamboo chute is installed, the charcoal is dumped on top of them, and then for several days, the third phase monk will sit in total darkness and meditate constantly.

And each day they have a bell down there with them.

They ring the bell.

That's the only thing they have to do besides meditate.

And above ground, there is a team of monks that are supporting this ritual and they're listening for that bell.

And the first day they don't hear the bell, it means the monk in the box has completed the ritual and now it is time to see if they have attained nirvana.

In Buddhism, someone whose body does not decay, aka a mummy, is someone who has cheated death.

And to cheat death is to remove yourself from the vicious human life cycle of birth, suffering, death, repeat.

Meaning, becoming a mummy is a way to attain nirvana.

And Sokushinbutsu is a self-mummification ritual.

Phase one shrinks the monk's body.

It removes their fat and muscle.

It also removes a lot of moisture inside of their body.

And their diet also withholds nutrients to all of the bacteria and parasites that naturally occur inside of their bodies.

And so those bacteria and parasites that normally would play a big role in helping decompose your body after death begin to die off.

And so the cumulative effect of phase one on these monks is that if they were to die at the end of phase one, their decomposition would be drastically slowed.

It wouldn't be mummy status, but it would be close.

The phase two poisonous tea, that toxin that they're drinking, that kills off the remainder of the bacteria and parasites that did not die during phase one.

Also, all the vomiting and diarrhea completely dehydrates them, which aids in slowing down decomposition after death.

Finally, phase three is the death phase.

The monk goes into their tomb, they're buried underground, and they ring that bell each day to tell the people on the ground that they are still alive.

And then when the bell stops ringing, it means the monk in the box is dead.

At which point, the crew on the ground removes the bamboo breathing pole and then lets the body sit in the box underground for another 1000 days.

And then after a thousand days, they pull the box up, they lift the lid off, and if there is little to no signs of decay on their body, it means the self-mummification ritual worked, they're a mummy, they've attained nirvana, and now their body is holy.

And so they're brought out of the box, they're dressed in robes, they're placed in the monasteries, and they are worshipped.

As for the unlucky monks who get to the end of Sokushinbutsu, but are found to be decomposing inside of their box when they're brought back up again, they're just placed back inside of their pine box and buried, and they are not not worshipped.

Sokushinbutsu was made illegal in Japan in the late 19th century, but we know monks continued to practice it into the 20th century.

And in theory, today, monks still might practice it in secret.

Thank you for listening to the Mr.

Balin podcast.

If you enjoyed today's stories, be sure to check out our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr.

Balin, where we have hundreds more stories just like this one, but many of them are not available on this podcast.

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So that's going to do it.

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Until next time, see ya.

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