Mahasamadhi of Bench Swami and Comet

 

Probably as a result of making a posting on this Blog and Website about Tinnai Swami, I received two emails (reproduced below) from an Arunachala devotee from Australia regarding an experience he and a friend had on the day of the Mahasamadhi of Sri Tinnai Swami on December 7, 2003.

 

Mahasamadhi of Bench Swami and Comet

"I was camped up on the mountain the day before Deepam in 2003. The next day people came up in the afternoon to join us. They told us that in the morning, Bench Swami had Mahasamadhi.

We watched from a ridge on the mountain as the fire was lit on the summit. About 5 to 10 minutes after the Flame was lit myself and my Israeli friend saw a large comet come down out of the sky and into the mountain.

It had a tail that was very long and was breaking off the back of it, the tail went through different colours, red blue, green yellow − immediately I looked at my friend and said 'Bench Swami'.

Since then, I never met anyone else apart from myself and my friend that saw the comet .... I now recently met a German man who had also witnessed the comet from the roof of Sadhu Om".

 

When I responded to the Arunachala devotee from Australia, he sent the below additional information. 

 

"The comet that we saw was nothing like a normal shooting star. It was so much bigger − about 50% the size of a full moon in the mid sky.

As it came down, it had a long tail that would break off the main section and it went through a display of colours as it came down − like through the rainbow. Red, yellow, white, blue, green.

We were camped near the cave that Omkar Amma spent time in back in 2002. From looking at the summit of the mountain and the Deepam flame, the comet came down just to our left and disappeared behind the ridge to our left.

It all happened very quick, but at the same time, strangely, very slow, maybe around a second or two at the most.

It happened 10 to 20 minutes after they had lit the flame. Both myself and my Israeli friend saw it from the ridge, and like I said, I recently talked to a friend, who saw it from the top of Sadhu Om’s place.

 

To those unfamiliar with Sri Tinnai Swami, I am posting below part of a moving narrative by Michael James on the life of this great sadhaka.

 

"Early in the morning on Deepam Day, 7th December 2003, a little-known devotee left his physical body in Tiruvannamalai, where he had lived for more than 54 years in the supreme state of atma-jnana bestowed upon him by the Grace of Sri Bhagavan.

The reason that he was so little-known, even among fellow devotees, can only be attributed to the divine Will of Sri Bhagavan, which can never be fathomed or explained by our limited human intellects. If at all any semblance of individual will could be attributed to this self-effacing devotee, he appeared to have chosen to live in such circumstances as would shield him from all but the barest minimum of public attention. Those who knew him respected that seeming choice and avoided publicising him in any way. But now that the human form has been cast off, I believe it is not inappropriate that I share with fellow devotees a little of what I know about him.

 

Sri Tinnai Swami

The devotee I am writing about was in his former life named Ramaswami, but for more than 40 years past he has been known as Sri Tinnai Swami, because he lived on and seldom moved away from the tinnai (masonry bench) in the verandah of the house of the family of the last Sri C.P. Nathan, who gave him food and shelter and attended to his few physical needs.

Sri Tinnai Swami was born in Coimbatore on the 12th December 1912, in a family of lawyers and doctors belonging to the small Telugu Brahmin community of that town. As a young man he was employed for many years as a biochemist in Madras Medical College, during which time he married and had four sons. Until his mid-thirties there was no indication in his outward life of the great inner and outer transformation that was to happen later."

 

To continue reading about the life of Sri Tinnai Swami, follow this link here:

https://www.arunachalasamudra.org/tinnaiswami.html

Subhalakshmi Amma

This is the view of Arunachala from the gate of Sadhu Om Colony which lies south of the Hill.





The next photograph is of the outside of the house in which Sri Tinnai Swami lived for over 40 years.





The below is of Subhalakshmi Amma, widow of the late C.P. Nathan, in whose home the atma-jnani Sri Tinnai Swami lived on a verandah masonry bench (tinnai) for over 40 years; attaining samadhi on Deepam Day, 7th December 2003. Subhalakshmi (who now lives with her daughter-in-law, Radha, in the Sadhu Om colony), for most of her life was in the blessed position of being able to serve and cook for two atma-jnanis; Sri Tinnai Swami and Sri Sadhu Om.


When I met Subbhalakshmi Amma this week, she told me of some of her experiences at Tiruvannamalai and memories of the saints living in her compound. She also recalled that the first time she came to Tiruvannamalai, with her husband C.P. Nathan, to take blessings from Ramana Maharshi was in 1946. At that time Subbhalakshmi was just 20 years old, and did not speak to Bhagavan, in its place she bowed to him.




In 1947 the C.P. Nathan family were able to make a permanent home a short distance south of Ramana Ashram, and were then able to offer a home to both Sri Tinnai Swami and in the family's adjacent home, Sri Sadhu Om. Subhalakshmi's two sons Arunachala Ramana and Amritalingam (and their wives) were also committed to the service of the saints living in their home. As well as serving the two saints, Subhalakshmi Amma has also been fortunate to be able to cook for many of the saints who occasionally visited her compound including such luminiaries as Yogi Ramsuratkumar and Sri Muruganar.

Subhalakshmi's daughter Radha (widow of Subhalakshmi's youngest son Arunachala Ramana) maintains the tradition of cooking for sadhus and pilgrims in her home at Sadhu Om and at her sattwic kitchen, Tamil food is served three times a day to visiting pilgrims and sadhakas.

The below photograph is of the pretty and serenely peaceful Sadhu Om Colony.




The current Sadhu Om Colony now comprises the samadhis of both Sri Sadhu Om and Sri Tinnai Swami. The below photograph is of the samadhi of Sri Sadhu Om.




And below is a photograph of the samadhi of Sri Tinnai Swami. As in life both saints lived in two adjacent homes of the same family, in death (samadhi) the tombs of both great atma-jnanis are positioned next door to one another.



The colony is also comprised of several beautiful cottages maintained by the Subhalakshmi family and occupied by visiting sadhakas and pilgrims.




"During the many years that he lived on their tinnai, C.P. Nathan, and his family were blessed with the good fortune of providing him with the little food, clothing and shelter that his body required, and in the early years in spite of their then state of poverty they performed such service not only to him but also to Sri Sadhu Om and other sadhus and devotees of Sri Bhagavan. Sometimes they even had to sell their cooking vessels in order to purchase provision to feed visiting devotees. All of us who had the good fortune to know Sri Tinnai Swami will be very grateful in particular to Mrs. C.P. Nathan, who in spite of many hardship serviced him with great devotion in every way she could especially providing him food, as she did till the end in spite of her advanced age and physical weakness."

Sri Tinnai Swami

While visiting Yogi Ramsuratkumar ashram I had to pass Sadhu Om colony, a small Brahmin compound on the southside of Arunachala. At this compound there are two samadhis, the first, Sadhu Om and the second, Tinnai Swami. I took the opportunity of being near the compound to visit the house where Tinnai Swami lived during the later part of his life. A little known jnani, who had chosen to live a self-effacing and almost invisible life here at Tiruvannamalai.

Photograph of Sri Tinnai Swami
reclining on his masonry bench

Swami attained samadhi on 7th December, 2003 (at the age of 91 years) on the morning of Deepam Day culminating a period of 54 years spent in the supreme state of atma-jnana. In 1948 Tinnai Swami had approached Bhagavan for permission to leave and take up a new position at Pondicherry, whereupon Ramana replied, 'Iru'. 'Iru' is a Tamil word that means 'Be', but in such a context would normally be taken to mean 'Stay' or 'Wait'. From that moment Tinnai Swami never left Tiruvannamalai and also remained fixed in the state of Self-abidance.

Eventually a house was built by a family of devotees of the late C.P. Nathan, and Tinnai Swami, lived on and seldom moved away from the tinnai (masonry bench) on the verandah of that house.

This is the masonry (concrete) platform
that he lived during his later years.

While he was alive, although his presence was shielded from the barest minimum of public attention, some of us were fortunately able to sit in the silence of his being and I personally experienced great help and inspiration by spending some short time with him.


The writer Michael James has said of the life of Tinnai Swami:

"In the eyes of the world, which attaches importance only to doing, overlooking the true importance of mere being, there may appear to be little greatness in the extraordinary life of Sri Tinnai Swami. He did not speak, write or teach anything, nor did he perform any other "useful" function. But whether we are able to recognise it or not, his mere being was a great blessing bestowed upon the whole world by Sri Bhagavan, the effect of which cannot be known or measured by our finite intellects."

The life of Sri Tinnai Swami is recorded in more detail at this link.