The French photographer Cartier-Bresson was visiting Ramanashram as Bhagavan neared death. He noted the following astronomical event which appeared in the night sky over the sacred mountain Arunachala as Ramana Maharshi died:
I saw a shooting star with a luminous tail unlike any I had ever seen before moving slowly across the sky and reaching the top of Arunachala, the mountain, disappearing behind it. We immediately looked at our watches. It was 8:47. We raced to the ashram only to find that the master had passed in to Mahanirvana at that exact minute. Nor was this experience only documented by a select few … All the English and Tamil papers which arrived this morning from Madras referred to the meteor which had been seen in the sky over the entire state of Madras at 8:47 on the night of April 14 by a large number of people in different places. These eyewitnesses had been struck by its peculiar look and behavior.
Ramana Maharshi who often circumambulated the sacred mountain as an act of worship seemed to be making his final arc around the mountain as a blazing light in the night sky.
