I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline, and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.
READ THE SERIES:
Part I: Inside Sadhguru’s Cult Empire
Part II: Unmasking Sadhguru’s Legacy of Abuse
Imagine you’re at home meditating with your wife. She suddenly collapses. You don’t call an ambulance. You don’t take her to a hospital. You don’t bring in a doctor. She dies.
Less than 12 hours later you burn your wife’s body despite knowing her family is on their way and has asked you not to touch her. When they arrive, it’s an hour too late—their daughter’s body is a charred corpse.
Then you proclaim your wife attained a form of enlightenment and say she’d been “wanting to die” for a while. You publicly state that 13 people witnessed her "enlightenment," only to later inflate the number and say that “hundreds” were present.
This is Sadhguru’s story.
For decades he’s explained the suspicious death of his wife in this manner, claiming she had “wanted to die” through mahasamadhi. At the same time, many have wondered for years whether he was responsible for her death.
Now, he’s reinforced the story in a dramatic 2.5-hour documentary about his wife, Vijji, where he repeats the same claims.
For the sake of argument, let’s accept his version of events.
Why is Sadhguru so certain about his wife’s cause of death? If she had truly passed out and died while meditating, it could have been a heart attack, stroke, aneurysm, or several other things.
There was no medical examination or autopsy—he burned the body too quickly for there to be one. We can’t know. Thus, Sadhguru’s aggressive attempt to control the narrative is suspicious.
And if this was truly ‘mahasamadhi,’ Hindu traditions treat that kind of death differently. It’s a burial or entombment rather than ordinary cremation. The rush to burn her body raises even more questions.
If there was no foul play, it’s anyone’s guess what her cause of death was. But in Sadhguru’s story, there is total certainty, and he wants total control over how the public is allowed to interpret what happened.
Analyzing Sadhguru’s Story
One of the strangest details is that the documentary (and his biography) tries to have it both ways.
In the film, a senior staff member says Sadhguru “was trying to do something to revive her.” His biography echoes the same idea, claiming he worked “ceaselessly” on her chakras.
Pause there.
If he recognized a deliberate yogic “exit,” why attempt revival?
But if he believed it was a medical crisis—why no outside medical intervention? Why no doctor? Why no ambulance? And why, afterward, the absolute certainty that it was mahasamadhi and that she left through a specific chakra?
The documentary also shows the emotional choreography that follows. A woman in the documentary recalls Sadhguru telling everyone, “Please don’t cry. It is not a sad matter. It is a proud moment for every spiritual seeker that she has attained mahasamadhi on her own.”
Is this how you talk during an emergency and tragedy? It sounds more like coaching.
The documentary can’t decide whether this was a medical emergency or a planned (and proud) spiritual act. In one breath he tries to revive her. In the next, he says, it was mahasamadhi, and she left her body through her heart chakra.
Sadhguru’s story continues to fall apart upon examination.
I interviewed one of Vijji and Sadhguru’s close friends and fellow disciples, “Karishma” (alias). She arrived on the scene just a few hours after Vijji died.
Karishma told me the “group meditation” story was invented by Sadhguru and the team right after the death. She said he was actually home alone with Vijji when she died.
“This is what we are going to say so there won’t be any problems,” Karishma told me they said. “Say we were all meditating, and that’s how she died.”
The original claim that Vijji was meditating with 13 people morphed into “Vijayakumari attained Mahasamadhi in the presence of hundreds of people,” as reflected by Sadhguru’s website.
This is clearly an embellishment to shape public perception.
The Cover Story
Is it more plausible that a healthy 33-year-old mother of a young daughter was "determined" to die through enlightenment, or is Sadhguru promoting this narrative for his own benefit?
After his wife's suspicious death and quick disposal of the body, he claims she had frequently talked about dying. How convenient.
Karishma told me she had dinner with Vijji the night before she died. She said Vijji had asked her to keep her schedule free in two days so they could shop. Vijji never mentioned anything about attaining mahasamadhi in the coming days.
Sadhguru’s cover story is that they had made several visits to an ascetic guru named Swami Nirmalananda, who was going to die by mahasamadhi. He says Vijji just “cried and cried” upon hearing of the swami’s story.
He claims that on the way home from a visit, Vijji expressed her desire to attain mahasamadhi. “I want to leave like he is,” he claims she told him. “I am really serious. You must help me.”
“You must help me.”
Really?
Sadhguru then says Vijji would “often” raise the subject of killing herself through enlightenment. What was her rush to leave this world? Why would he allow his wife to die and their young daughter to lose her mother?
There is a massive, glaring problem with Sadhguru’s story.
Vijji’s supposed “inspiration” for mahasamadhi did not even attempt such a thing. Everyone at the time knew the swami was dying of fasting, not mahasamadhi.
After his death in 1997, Hinduism Today reported that a letter he wrote had “calmly announced the 73-year-old swami’s intent to undergo prayopavesha, self-willed death by fasting.” They continued by stating, “Swami’s intent had been known for some time, and the local authorities had even posted police at the ashram to prevent what they regarded as an unlawful act of suicide.”
The article reports that a “steady stream of visitors came to dissuade swami” from his fast to the death. In Mysore and Bangalore, critics even called his action a publicity stunt. “A year earlier a Calcutta journalist wrote about Swamiji’s intent,” Hinduism Today reported.
The key point is that the police had originally planned to take him to the hospital and force-feed him.
Dying from starvation is vastly different than dying by attaining spiritual mastery over your soul and willingly exiting.
There was no basis for Vijji to have learned about mahasamadhi from Swami Nirmalananda. It’s merely a cover story Sadhguru invented to push his narrative.
We can clearly see how he utilized this fabricated story to suit his purpose.
The swami died on January 10th, 1997. Vijji died just two weeks later on January 23rd.
This was the perfect timing for Sadhguru to manufacture a story about the swami being Vijji’s secret source of inspiration to die. The swami was gone and couldn’t challenge his claims, and neither could Vijji.
Sadhguru’s Domestic Abuse
“We knew there were many strifes and disagreements,” Karishma told me of the relationship between Sadhguru and Vijji. The autobiography also describes quarrels between Sadhguru and Vijji over his close connections to other women.
A former colleague of Sadhguru alleges he physically abused her.
“I remember once around 1996 when one of the hosts with whom they were staying approaching me in a very concerned, worried manner,” he writes. “[Vijji] was found bruised with strangle marks and cried for hours loudly, saying she did not want to take sleeping pills and she didn’t want to die. I consoled the host, saying it is their private matter and not to interfere, and I confronted him directly instead. He brushed the matter aside, and we had a really rough conversation that day.”
He even alleged Sadhguru kept her forcibly locked away. “A few months later [Vijji] was placed in house arrest by him in the ashram, with nobody allowed to meet her,” he writes. At one point she even “ran away” and was “seeking refuge” away from Sadhguru.
This man mentioned Vijji having been left physically bruised.
Karishma also noticed a bruise the night Vijji died. “One of the ladies who wrapped the sari was suspicious that he beat her up,” Karishma told me. “There was a large black bruise on Vijji’s abdomen above the belly button where the ribs meet.”
Even the documentary acknowledges the existence of the mark. “We did notice that there was like a burn mark on her Anahata [chest],'“ a woman states in the film.
Sadhguru’s “brilliant” pivot was to claim that the mark is the chakra point where she left her body. “She left through her anahata," he stated, according to his biography.
How would he know?
Vijji’s father filed a police report in which he alleged Sadhguru was having affairs with other women in the ashram.
“My daughter used to say quite repeatedly about the illicit relationship of [Sadhguru] with other women,” he writes. “Also in 1995, some 4 persons from Coimbatore took my daughter to Bangalore in an unconscious state (suspected drugs injected) to our house. When asked, no explanation was given to me. When we asked our daughter, she complained that she was given sleeping pills forcibly, and they left her during the night.”
Both the father and Sadhguru’s colleague mention sleeping pills.
He concludes the report with his view on her death. “We believe that my daughter had been killed and then burnt in pretext of some benefit or reason.”
Several former members also accuse Sadhguru of sexual misconduct, verbal abuse, cultic indoctrination, and narcissistic exploitation. Two former staff members allege he asked them to help him kill rival guru Nithyananda. And there are other suspicious deaths.
A Master Yogi?
One of the most dubious aspects of this whole story is that mahasamadhi is only attainable by highly advanced yogis. A well-known example is Paramahansa Yogananda, supposedly one of the most accomplished yogis of the 20th century. The ability to leave your body at will is no easy task and requires many years of training.
Vijji was a young householder with a job and a child—not a renunciant saint with decades of public yogic training. How on earth would she have attained this ability?
At the end of the day, the story doesn’t pass the smell test:
A healthy, 33-year-old woman with a young daughter was “determined to die,” according to Sadhguru.
He went along with it, despite knowing it’d deprive their daughter of a mother and that she was his wife of many years.
There was no swami attaining mahasamadhi for Vijji to be inspired by.
Numerous witnesses and Sadhguru’s documentary acknowledge the existence of a black bruise on Vijji’s chest.
There are allegations of domestic abuse and affairs.
Mahasamadhi is reserved for master yogis, and Vijji was not one.
What do you think is a more plausible explanation for Vijji’s death? Mystical enlightenment or foul play? Let me know in the comments below.
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You have pieced together a very credible case. All the circumstantial evidences indicate a foul play. Sadguru appear to me a conman right from the beginning. An enlighten and realised person doesn't talk so much. Silence is the most noticeable tell-tale sign of enlightenment.
Thank you for holding the powerful accountable
Thank you for being you