SHRI TAILANGASWAMI – A Saint

SHRI TAILANGASWAMI – A Saint by Mousumi Ghosh


ShriTailangaswami is worshipped as the incarnation of Lord Shiva at
Shivapuri, Varanasi. Millions of devotees regularly poured holy water
of river Ganga and offered flowers and Vilwa Patra on his head when he
sat in his yogic meditation on the ghats of river Ganga. Amazingly,
the fathers and grand fathers of many of these people were also among
his devotees.
He was truly ageless. He meditated in his physical body for a long
period of two hundred and eighty years. He acquired immense yogic
power but he did not remain secluded from the common people. Instead,
the common helpless man whether rich or poor, living or dead received
his vast divine blessing during the long span of his life time. He
granted life to a number of dead persons. He first revealed this power
in Rameshwaram. There he poured some water from his Kamandalu, the
water pot of the saint, on the dead body of a young man, and the young
man was called back to life. To the masses, he was not only a great
saint but also very kind hearted and easily approachable person. He
was god in human body. With his blessings, several people indeed
developed divine characteristics.
In the seventeenth century, he was born in South India. His mother who
was an ardent worshipper of Lord Shiva got him after worshipping her
Lord for a long period. From his childhood, he received divine grace.
For instance, her mother once observed that a beam of light from the
Lord’s temple in the home entered her child’s body. Her mother
instilled in him the spiritual quest. He decided to remain a bachelor
and she supported his decision. After his parents’ death, he left home
and the share of his property, to live a recluse He used to meditate
beside the burning Ghat in the outskirt of his village. There came his
Guruji. It is believed that the spiritual teacher of a person is
predestined and he/she appears only when the mind set of the student
is ready to receive the training.
He travelled and meditated in many places in Uttarakhand and beside
the holy river Narmada (Narmada Parikrama) . These were not at all
entertainments, but part of the training to bear with hard life, to
develop the attitude of non possession and to gain control over the
basic needs of human body like hunger and sleep. A saint acquired
great spiritual strength through this process. After a long period of
meditation, his Guruji gave him Diksha at Pushkar. Diksha is the
formal process through which the spiritual guru gives identity to his
student. His new name was Ganapati Saraswati though he was better
known in Varanasi as Tailangaswami as he came from the place Tailanga.
He was then seventy five years with a strong youthful physical
structure. When his Guruji died, Tailangaswami was eighty eight with
the same graceful body.
There were many remarkable incidents in his life. When he was
meditating in a forest in Nepal, the Rana (king) of Nepal came for
hunting a tiger. He missed his target and was surprised to find that
the tiger took shelter near the Yogi. The Yogi was comforting the
tiger. He also advised the king to abandon the jealousy which
instigated him to shoot the tiger.
He was once sitting beside the Tribeni Sangam in Prayag with his
devotee Ramkanaibabu. Suddenly, fierce storm and torrential rain
started. His devotee became anxious for his Guru’s safety whereas Guru
became anxious for a far away boat with a large number of people
swinging dangerously in the river. Suddenly, Ramkanaibabu noticed that
Tailanga swami vanished from his side. After a few minutes, he saw
that the boat had reached the jetty and among the passengers who were
just saved from the clutches of death, was Tailanga Swami. He
requested Swamiji to confide that how a person gains that immense
extraordinary power. The great saint replied that it is nothing
unusual. Divine strength is present within everyone. An individual
should be aware of it. The people in the so called materialistic world
are increasingly getting separated from their real nature. That’s why,
a natural action seems unusual to them.
Tailangaswami’s divine playground was Varanasi. He first appeared
there at Ashighat. He did not need any cloth. He roamed at ease from
one ghat to another like a child. He jumped frequently into River
Ganga and swam there for hours. Many people called him the son of
River Ganga- Bhisma.
Once, in his usual relaxed attitude, he was walking from Ashighat to
Lolarkkunda. A deaf person with severe leprosy was sitting at the
roadside. He was abandoned by all. Surprisingly, when this distressed
person saw the great saint, he started to chant Shivastrotam (the
mantra of Lord Shiva) in a melodious tune. The benevolent Sadhak
stopped; smiled .He assured him not to worry, advised him to take a
bath in Lolark kunda and gave him a Vilwa leaf. The patient became
completely cured. Similarly another day, he gifted a new life to an
old man suffering from severe tuberculosis.
An amazing incident occurred when Swamiji was staying at Hanuman Ghat.
A sophisticated lady was disturbed by this huge physical appearance of
this Sadhak in undress. She rebuked him a lot advising him to stay in
jungles rather than aimlessly roaming in this temple town. The
meditative Sadhak however remained calm and relaxed as usual. But, the
lady saw in her dream that Lord Viswanath became very agitated for
this incident and declared that her wish to cure her sick husband
would not be possible for her behaviour. On the very next day, she
came to Tailanga swami, apologised and fell on his feet. The ever kind
Sadhak gave him some ash (bhasma) and his husband became all right.
Similarly, a native king and queen once came to bath in holy Ganga.
When the queen was taking bath, suddenly, Swamiji came there, the
security persons started to beat the Sadhak when the locals came and
stopped them though he himself remained unperturbed. But the king
afterwards in his dream saw a furious saint cursing him. He requested
for forgiveness to Swamiji on the next day and received it instantly.
Once, the King of Ujjaini was enjoying a boat ride. They saw a huge
man floating in the river. They recognised him as their movable Shiva.
Tailangaswami also somehow became interested and came on the boat. He
suddenly wanted the big sword of the king. That sword was a gift to
the native king from the British emperor. Swamiji threw it into the
river. The king reacted strongly though his associates advised him not
to get agitated as the Sadhak never did any harm to anybody. But the
king refused to hear anything. Tailangaswami then obtained two
identical swords from the river and asked the king to identify his
own. The king was unsuccessful. Then Swamiji rebuked him and said that
the king was an egoist one and his mind was filled with greed and
ignorance. He could not take this sword with him after his death. So
the sword was not his property. The deeds of present and future only
remain with a person and nothing else. So the foolish king was
lamenting for the loss of a commodity which did not belong to him.
Some English men and women became disturbed by the sight of this naked
Sadhak and complained to the magistrate. The magistrate sent police
who asked him to go with them. The meditating Swamiji did not notice
them. They forcefully took him to the chamber of the Magistrate. There
he was handcuffed and taken to a confined room. However, after some
time, the security person found that he was not in that room. Instead
he was standing at a corner in the Magistrate’s room. In the meantime,
his devotees came with a local lawyer who knew the saint. He told the
Magistrate about this great Yogi. He informed him that he is a
Samadarshi that is to him everything is equal; he does not distinguish
between sandalwood and faeces. He does not require any garment.
However the British magistrate made a deal. He said that if to him all
things are equal, he should eat what the magistrate offered. The Yogi
agreed but said that the Sahib should first eat what the saint would
eat on that day. The Sahib agreed as he assumed that the normal foods
of the saints are mainly vegetarian items. However, the saint in front
of all people excreted faeces and offered it to the Sahib saying
that that product was his food for that time. The Mahayogi ate it
instantly and everybody was amazed and saw that it had been
transformed into a lip smacking food. The magistrate realised the
power of this saint and gave order that nobody would disturb him.
Some mischievous people once gave him lime water to see how it harmed
the Yogi. Afterwards they repented and confessed their act to him.
Tailangaswami urinated and excreted all the limewater.
His contemporary spiritual gurus respected him a lot. When Shri
Ramkrishna visited Varanasi, the two great souls met and exchanged
their philosophies. Prabhu pada Vijoykrishna Goswami also received
Tailangaswami’s affection. Once in a temple of Goddess Kali,
Tailangaswami urinated and threw the waste on Maa Kali. When Prabhu
pada Goswami asked the reason, he wrote on the floor
‘Gangodokong’ (water of river Ganga) and ‘Puja’. The temple was empty
at that time. Afterwards, when the priest and other people came,
Goswami told them everything. They laughed and assured that
Tailangaswami was Vishweswar himself. So his urine is indeed holy
water of Ganga. After a few days, Swamiji declared that he would
confer diksha to Goswamiji. Goswamiji was then one of his close
devotees. So he enquired that as he was a brahma , how could Swamiji
grant him the diksha? Moreover Swamiji’s activities seemed to be very
bizarre, so why Goswami would be interested to take Diksha from him?
Tailangaswami laughed heartily and replied that there are important
reasons. One needed a Guru to purify the body. So Swamiji would give
him the initial diksha but he was not the actual Guru of Goswami. He
gave a mantra to Goswami and asked him to go away. Swamiji said that
he had done what God had ordered him.
During his last days in his mortal body, he stayed near Panchganga
Ghat at various places and in the home of his earnest disciple
Mangalbhatta. One day he declared that he would leave his mortal body
in Samadhi yoga. It was heartbreaking news for his disciples. They
started crying but Guruji assured that he was not leaving them
forever. As his mortal body became very old one, it requires
replenishment. That’s the only point. However the devotees requested
him to live for more time so that they could prepare themselves for
the immense loss and create his statue. Guruji got upset to find that
his disciples still valued the valueless physical structure. However
they said that they could offer Puja to the idol. The kind Mahayogi
agreed and granted them one more month. He chose the date Sukla
Ekadashi, month Pous, 1887 AD. A huge statue and a big vault were
constructed. Mahayogi left his mortal body on the declared day in his
yogic posture. His mortal body was kept within the vault and the vault
in turn was immersed in river Ganga, his eternal space.