by Douglas Martin: Swami Satchidananda, the guru with the gigantic cottony beard who opened the Woodstock festival by calling music ”the celestial sound that controls the whole universe,” died on Monday in Madras in South India. He was 87.

He lived in Yogaville, Va., a community he founded, and was in India attending a peace conference.

The swami, who used a title given to Hindu monks, arrived on the crest of a wave of fascination with India in the 1960’s, as sitar music, meditation and incense became standard features of college dormitory life. With a gift for irony, a mischievous sense of humor and a disarming way of ending his sentences with a slight ”hum,” he gave lectures that were part of the fun.

Peter Max, the artist of psychedelia, invited him to the United States in 1966, and his disciples included celebrities like the singer-composer Carole King, the jazz musician Paul Winter and the actors Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern.

Among the many Indian gurus then appearing in America, he was regarded as more tolerant of the often heavily medicated flower children. He attributed their frustrations to failed institutions and offered his teachings as a way to escape drugs.