Released in 1995
Directed by Bedi Brothers
Directed by Bedi Brothers
Storyline - A rare filming of a true Aghori, Ram Nath. It chronicles the sadhana of an Aghori, a radical sect of sadhus. Living for 12 years among the burning bodies of India's cremation grounds is the challenge of the Aghori, eating from a human skull whatever Lord Shiva provides.
Spiritually, for Aghori sadhu Ram Nath, the tantric challenge is to be reviled, to face disgust, to slay ahamkara and in so doing to become both ego-free and mystically empowered. His life of taking warmth, clothing and food from the dead, meditating in the earliest morning hours when no one else dares be among the ghosts of the burning ghats-all this and more is captured by the Bedi brothers. If disgust is what Ram Nath craves, there is ample opportunity for viewers to feel it, but through it all comes a mysterious respect for a sadhu said to be among only ten alive today who follow the extreme Aghori path.
The Aghori (Sanskrit aghora) are ascetic Shaiva sadhus.
The Aghori are known to engage in post-mortem rituals, sometimes involving cannibalism or necrophilia. They often dwell in charnel grounds, have been witnessed smearing cremation ashes on their bodies, and have been known to use bones from human corpses for crafting kapalas (which Shiva and other Hindu deities are often iconically depicted holding or using) and jewelry. Because of their practices that are contradictory to orthodox Hinduism, they are generally opposed by other Hindus.
Many Aghori gurus command great reverence from rural populations as they are supposed to possess healing powers gained through their intensely eremitic rites and practices of renunciation and tápasya. They are also known to meditate and perform worship in haunted houses.
Aghoris also hold sacred the Hindu deity Dattatreya as a predecessor to the Aghori Tantric tradition. Dattatreya was believed to be an incarnation of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva united in the same singular physical body. Dattatreya is revered in all schools of Tantra, which is the philosophy followed by the Aghora tradition, and he is often depicted in Hindu artwork and its holy scriptures of folk narratives, the Puranas, indulging in Aghori "left-hand" Tantric worship as his prime practice.
An aghori believes in getting into total darkness by all means, and then getting into light or self realizing. Though this is a different approach from other Hindu sects, they believe it to be effective. They are infamously known for their rituals that include such as shava samskara (ritual worship incorporating the use of a corpse as the altar) to invoke the mother goddess in her form as Smashan Tara (Tara of the Cremation Grounds).
In Hindu iconography, Tara, like Kali, is one of the ten Mahavidyas (wisdom goddesses) and once invoked can bless the Aghori with supernatural powers. The most popular of the ten Mahavidyas who are worshiped by Aghoris are Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, and Bhairavi. The male Hindu deities primarily worshiped by Aghoris for supernatural powers are manifestations of Shiva, including Mahakala, Bhairava, Virabhadra, Avadhuti, and others.
The gurus and disciples of Aghor believe their state to be primordial and universal. They believe that all human beings are natural-born Aghori. Hari Baba has said on several occasions that human babies of all societies are without discrimination, that they will play as much in their own filth as with the toys around them. Children become progressively discriminating as they grow older and learn the culturally specific attachments and aversions of their parents. Children become increasingly aware of their mortality as they bump their heads and fall to the ground. They come to fear their mortality and then palliate this fear by finding ways to deny it altogether.
In this sense, the Aghora sadhana is a process of unlearning deeply internalized cultural models. When this sadhana takes the form of charnel ground sadhana, the Aghori faces death as a very young child, simultaneously meditating on the totality of life at its two extremes. This ideal example serves as a prototype for other Aghor practices, both left and right, in ritual and in daily life." The Aghoris are also recorded to perform shava sadhana, worship with a corpse.
Aghori practise healing through purification as a pillar of their ritual. Their patients believe the Aghori are able to transfer pollution and health to and from patients as a form of "transformative healing", due to the believed superior state of body and mind of the Aghori.
