Age of Enlightenment🔗

Master, you have taken the name of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM and you promote the mission of Nithyanandam*, eternal bliss. Was this connection accidental, or designed?*

A new couple had come into town. They had two young naughty children. The boys were forever getting into trouble and the parents were concerned that if any mischief occurred in this town, their sons would surely get blamed.

The parents heard that the pastor was good with children and they took the children to him and explained the situation.

The younger boy went in to see the pastor first. The pastor, a large man with a loud voice told the boy to sit down and asked, 'Where is God?'

They boy stiffened with his mouth open. He attempted to speak but no words came. He just sat there silently with his mouth hanging open.

The pastor asked again even more loudly, 'Tell me now, where is God?'

The boy started to cry silently.

The pastor shook his finger at the boy's face and bellowed, 'Stop crying! I am sure you know. Where is God?'

The boy screamed and ran from the room as fast as he could. He ran all the way home, ran into the bathroom and huddled into a corner.

The older brother looked in after a while and asked, 'Tell me, what happened?'

The younger boy struggled for words and said, 'We are in real BIG trouble this time! God is missing, and they think we did it!'

There are two important truths you should know.

First, you do not need to have an enlightened person as your master for you to become enlightened. Your master need not be an enlightened being for you to become enlightened.

In any case, as long as you are not enlightened you will not even know whether the other person is enlightened or not.

So, there is no need to worry. It is your utter trust and surrender to that being that leads to your enlightenment. Even a stone, if you approach with trust and feeling of utter surrender, can enlighten you.

All that you need to do is to be open. Just trust and be open. This mood can work miracles.

When you trust Existence and allow yourself to be open to the energy of Existence, you fill yourself with love. Your heart center, the anāhata chakra, opens. As this love is spread outward without boundaries, it becomes compassion. When it extends out to the universe, to Existence, when you realize you are one with Existence, you are enlightened! There are many who have become enlightened just by opening themselves to idols. People have the wrong notion that in the Vedic tradition we worship idols. No, we don't. We worship through the idols. We worship the Existential energy through idols.

I had earlier spoken on Ramakrishna and his experiences with Mother Kali. When a true devotee approaches with an open mind and trust, miracles happen. The stone statue of the Mother Goddess enlightened a semi-literate person who was steeped in love, trust and devotion.

Second, if you have a living master who you have deep faith in, just follow that master's body language in everything that you do; just follow him in all your thoughts, words and actions. Whenever you need to make a decision, ask yourself again and again, 'What would my master do in this situation?' Then act the way you think he would.

I call this Living Enlightenment. Following your master blindly with total trust and a spirit of surrender, you will live in enlightenment and reach nithyananda, eternal bliss.

You asked whether my name was designed or accidental. The simplest answer I can give is that it is certainly not accidental that I have the name that I have now. At the same time it is not a name I gave myself or asked for; it was not designed by me. Had it been my own design, chances of its happening would have been different.

I left home at the age of 17. I had just finished my diploma course in mechanical engineering near my birth place of Tiruvannamalai. My parents were working to fix my elder brother's marriage. I was next in turn. Relatives were already exerting pressure on me to choose a girl for myself.

It had to happen some time, given my spiritual inclinations. One day, I decided, 'this is it'. I told my mother I wanted to leave home and become a sannyasi, a monk in search of the Truth. She started crying. She too knew it would happen but could not bear it when it happened. She did not stop me from going, she just cried. My father blamed her thinking it was something she did or said that caused my decision. I told him that it was my decision, nothing to do with what anyone else has said.

I left Tiruvannamalai, my hometown, and started my journey soon after from Chennai. I wore the two piece kavi – the saffron cloth – that I wear now, took a stick and my kamandalu – the water pot. These are the only possessions allowed to a sannyasi. I carried no money. I just got into trains and buses where they would allow saffron-clad people to travel without ticket and traveled far and wide across the length and breadth of Bharat.

In Bharat, it is still a tradition of great respect for the saffron clad. They don't stop you traveling in a train without ticket. In fact the ticket examiners used to buy me food, because I had no money and depended on others for giving me food. In one sense, I was a beggar, in another, at the mercy of the universe.

It was tremendous liberation when I started out this way. When I left home, the whole world suddenly became my home! Wherever I stayed, whether it was the banks of a river, a forest, a hut or a temple, that was my home. There was no restriction. Whoever gave me food was my mother. I truly understood the meaning of the words with which monks seek food, 'bavathi biksham dehi', which means, please give me alms.

The Universe, Parashakti, was my Mother.

When you set out with nothing in hand and nothing in the mind, you are no longer a beggar. You are the master! That's why it is said of Buddha that when he sought alms, it was he who seemed like the king and the kings who gave him alms seemed like beggars.

Over the next few years, I traveled all over Bharat, by train, by bus, on foot; I traveled tens of thousands of kilometers. I traveled from Kolkata in the East to Dwaraka in the West and from Kanya Kumari in the South to Lhasa in the North. This was the route that the great master Shankara took over a thousand years ago.

The Himalayan ranges were my favorite; the majestic mountains, their snow-clad peaks, the total uncertainty of what Nature could do the next moment – all these fascinated me. All I needed to do was to look, and I was overwhelmed. Wherever I went I found shelter and food. Mother of all Existence, Parashakti, was there to take care of me.

I stayed near Kedarnath for a while, in a location between Gaurikund which is the starting point of the trek and Kedar itself. Kedar is a very renowned pilgrimage center that has a temple of Lord Shiva. Shankara sanctified this temple over a thousand years ago. I lived in a place off the trekking path in a cave about 4 kilometers from Gaurikund.

One day as I was walking on the path, I saw a person coming straight toward me. He was smiling. He was just beautiful. His body was a shining gold color, majestic, and he was dressed only in a lower garment up to his waist. His chest was bare. As he came close to me he called out, 'THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM!'

Then something strange happened. He walked right through me. I was startled! I turned around to look. There was no one there. It was as if this person had walked into me and stayed inside. I also had no idea of why he called out the name THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. I did not know anyone by that name. I assumed that it was an indication to me to meet a person of that name.

Suddenly, I recalled that person from the pictures I had seen earlier. I had seen pictures of this great sage Mahavatar Babaji in a few places. He has been described most famously as the parama guru or the ultimate guru of Paramahamsa Yogananda. Yogananda went to the United States after his enlightenment and lived there teaching. I have been to Yogananda's jiva samadhi, the sacred burial spot near Los Angeles; it is a place of high energy.

There were many legends about Mahavatar Baba in the Kedar region. He is supposed to be a chiranjeevi, ageless and immortal. I had read that he could be seen in the Kedar area many times, even in the market place. In fact he appeared to one of our devotees during our Himalayan trip in 2005, but that is another story.

I had no idea why he appeared to me or why he said what he said, and I could not understand the reason for his disappearing inside me.

This incident may have been in 1996; I cannot recall exactly. A year or so later, perhaps in 1998, I was in the Kolkata region, spending time at Dakshineshwar, on the banks of Hooghly, which is the final form of Ganga. An old sannyasi became friendly toward me and insisted that he give me sannyas – initiation as a monk. I really did not want sannyas. I was quite happy as I was. Finally I agreed because I liked this man and he said that he needed to do this before he passed away. It was as if something was driving him.

Giving sannyas to someone is a detailed process, quite complex. First, one has to be ordained a brahmachari, then a sannyasi and so on. There are different stages in sannyas as well: vanaprastha sannyas, naishtika sannyas and so on.

The word sannyas in Sanskrit means a man who floods truth into his being and allows whatever that cannot stand the test of truth to be washed away. The truth dissolves, burns, washes away all conditioning and negativities that exist within. It is an acid wash. If you can do this, you are a sannyasi.

Sannyasi is not any one who wears kavi and lives in the forest. Only if you can let go everything for the sake of Truth, you are a sannyasi.

'San' means one who serves and 'nyasi' means to purify. If you can go through a truth wash like acid wash, you become a sannyasi. The only acid that will purify your being is the Truth.

On the appointed day, we went down to the banks of the Ganges, and without too many preliminaries he initiated me into sannyas, and declared that I shall henceforth be known as THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM!

I was startled!

I knew that to be called a Paramahamsa, there are additional requirements or one who truly believes that he is a Paramahamsa can declare himself as one as prescribed in the Paramahamsa Upanishad. Furthermore, his choice of name astounded me.

I asked him in surprise, how is it that in one single ritual he initiated me as a Paramahamsa, and why he chose the name THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM.

The name startled me because ever since the time I had seen Mahavatar Babaji, I had been looking for Parahamsa THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, because that is what I believed was the message to me, to look for this person, perhaps my guru. It had never occurred to me that Babaji was calling me by a name that I would be known by!

The old sannyasi said, 'This is what I was instructed to do'. I asked, 'By whom?' He said, 'Not by anyone living, but I had a very deep experience about what I needed to do. I have done that and my life's meaning has been fulfilled.'

This is how I got my name; first, from Mahavatar Babaji, and then formally from this old sannyasi on the banks of the Ganges. I never really had any formal Guru as such. Ramana Maharishi and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa were my spiritual guides. Annamalai Swamigal, a disciple of Ramana Maharishi, initiated me into a meditation that facilitated my first deep spiritual experience. This is described in detail in my biography, but I never trained under any master as a disciple.

I tell my disciples now that my lineage is that of Mahavatar Baba, and Kedar is our location.

So, in no sense did I plan this, and I was not trained in any manner to become THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. It was certainly not accidental. The planning was cosmic not human. That is the way the universe works, if you allow it to.

It took me another 2 years to realize the truth about myself. It happened in the forests of Omkareshwar, on the banks of the river Narmada.

I had been in this location inside the forest for a few months. I had done the parikrama of going around the sacred river Narmada. It was December 1999. On December 25th, I suddenly felt that all that I was doing was a waste of time. I felt strongly that I had followed all these great masters like Ramakrishna and Ramana foolishly and they had misled me. I felt that I had wasted the best part of my life. I was in deep despair and depression.

I threw away the photograph of Ramakrishna I had always carried. It was framed with a glass front, which broke as it hit a stone. I threw away my kamandalu, the water pot, and my japa mala, the rosary. Feeling that I had no reason to live, I walked toward the river. When I reached the river I kept walking into the river. I apparently lost awareness at some point in time.

When I regained awareness, I found that I was on the opposite bank of the river Narmada!

I have no idea till now as to what happened. The river was full. At the middle it would have been at least 30 feet deep. There was no way that I could have walked on the river bed and not been drowned. Whether there were stones all the way across the river that I walked upon, I have no idea. Whether I floated I do not know.

I did not swim, that much I know; simply because I never learnt to swim!

When I reached the opposite bank, my mind was clear. I had to walk a long way to find a bridge that would bring me back to where I crossed the river. There was no way now that that I would walk back the same way upon the water!

When I reached the cave where I used to stay, I sat down to meditate. I lost outwardly awareness. When I resumed outwardly awareness, I felt that I had become one with the Universe. Everything that was around me – the trees, the birds, the insects, the rocks, whatever I could see – were an extension of me. I felt boundariless. There was a deep feeling of calmness, peace and utter bliss within me. I had no thoughts at all. I was alone and undisturbed; yet I was not alone, the entire universe was with me. In fact I was the universe.

I was in nithyanandam, eternal bliss!

What followed will be covered in my biography in detail. There was a clear indication as to the meaning of my life from then on. When I crossed the Vindhya Mountains in the middle of Bharat on my way north, I had decided that I would spend all my life in the Himalayas. I had no desire to return to the south of Bharat where I was born and raised. But now, it was clear to me that I had to return. So, I started traveling southward.

What is Nithyanandam or eternal bliss?

Nithyanandam has nothing to do with my name. However, it has everything to do with my state. Nithyanandam is the expression of my experience. Eternal Bliss is the state I am always in. My mission as defined by Existence, Parashakti, is to transmit this blissful experience to others. This is the mission of my institutions now as well as the thousands of individuals who follow me as healers, acharya, ashramites, brahmacharis, sannyasis and devotees.

Bliss is our natural state. We are born blessed, and blessed to be divine. Do not believe that you are born as a sinner or to be a sinner. No God would call you a sinner. God, Existence or whatever else you wish to call that superior energy is nothing but compassion. That God or superior energy resides within you.

You are God!

People ask me, 'Are you God?' I tell them, 'Yes, I am and so are you. My mission is not to prove my divinity; my mission is to prove your divinity.'

The only difference between you and I is that I am aware of my divinity and I accept it. I accept it with a total surrender to that divinity, to that Existence, to that superior energy.

You as yet have not accepted it because you have not surrendered fully to Existence. The instant you do, you will realize you too are god. You will be enlightened. You will reach the state of Nithyanandam.

You may say it cannot be that simple. Many have said that before. It is that simple if you let it be that simple. ```

Human nature being what it is, we cannot accept anything simple. We need to complicate things. We need to believe that we are sinners. To consolidate that belief we need to do what has been described as sin. Otherwise what is the fun? Then we set out to dissolve all the sins we have accumulated. The problem is that by this time, we are so accustomed to doing what we think is not right, that we continue doing that and continue to work off that sin.

This comic cycle goes on endlessly. This is what our great sages called maya, illusion.

The way to realize you are divine is very simple. That is the way you were when you were children. Remember, when you were young, you were carefree, joyful, innocent, blissful and divine. What happened to you after that?

You grew up, actually you grew down. Your upbringing was really your down-bringing. Your education was your path to losing that bliss. You were conditioned at every stage of your life to bring yourself down from that loft space of bliss into one of suffering and sorrow. If you continued to remain blissful and innocent, you are termed mad and laughed at by your society.

Our society is populated with blind people, people who cannot see even though they have eyes; it is full of deaf people who cannot hear even though they have ears. It is full of people who are asleep even though they seem awake. Such people cannot accept and allow any one else to use their eyes and ears and tolerate anyone being awake.

A small story:

A famous actor was once taken to visit an asylum. They were shooting a movie in which he was to play a mentally disturbed person.

As he was being taken around the asylum, an inmate came up to him. The actor introduced himself by his name and offered his hand.

The inmate quickly took him aside and whispered, 'Listen, I too came here saying the same thing. They brought me here a year ago because I used to think that I too was you. They locked me up. You know what. They cured me in 6 months. Don't worry. They will lock you also up, and you too will be cured!'

This is the way of the world. If you are sane and awake, in the midst of those who are insane and sleeping, you will be looked upon as different.

Refuse to be conditioned. Refuse to accept that you are a sinner. Believe in your divinity. You will regain the bliss you lost.

It is easier to retain the bliss and if necessary regain this, when you start the right education when you are young. That is why in our Vedic educational system, children were left with a master when they were six or seven. They were initiated into techniques that strengthened their inner bliss. They were brought up in an environment that allowed them to discover their identity of inner divinity.

This is what my mission is about. It is to start with young children in our Vedic style gurukul schools in our ashrams and bring them up in their true state of innocence and purity so that they stay in bliss, so that they are in nithyanandam.

There is a lot to do, and little time to do that in. Fortunately, consciousness and awareness are increasing now after having declined for thousands of years. This does not mean that we shall all live in some ideal place, in an idyllic paradise. It, however, means that we do have a great opportunity now, as never before, to discover the truth of our own existence; the truth of our inner divinity and the meaning of our lives.

In the modern day world, materialism is king, capitalism the creed. There in lies the opportunity. Many of you have gone as far as you can go in this material world and found no real meaning. How much of good food can you eat? How many parties can you attend?

You can have many houses, but not one home. You may have many bedrooms, but find it difficult to sleep. You have all the money in the world, but you don't have time to enjoy.

Many of you in this day have realized that money cannot buy happiness. It is no longer a cliché to be laughed at, but the truth. There is no need to condemn money, it certainly brings you comfort, but it can never bring you happiness. In the absence of money, you can have happiness. Millions of people in the remote villages of Bharat and other regions live happily with hardly any wealth.

It all depends on your conditioning or lack of conditioning.

When you realize that you have achieved all that you could and still you are unhappy and discontented, you start seeking. You start looking for that intangible something, which will give you happiness. That intangible something you can only find within yourself, not anywhere outside of you. Once you realize this, you are set free.

Yes, it is true that spirituality is steeped in places like Bharat over many generations. However, there is a problem with this handed over culture of spirituality. When something is given to you free, you do not value it; you start questioning its utility; you do not care to find out.

Spirituality can become a useless ritual in such cases, something that you can wear on your sleeves when it suits you and you can take off when it does not.

This is just like some of my devotes who wear my mala, the necklace, very proudly when they come in front of me, but take it off as soon as they go out into what they think is the real world. It embarrasses them when people ask what the necklace is about, who this person on the pendent is and so on.

The mala is a protection that I give them with my energy. It charges itself every time you meditate. Even if you do not meditate it works by creating an energy field around you. I tell them to use it like a cell phone when they need my help badly. Many do and have testified to the effect of their free call!

So it is with the copper bracelet that I energize and give people. These are not superstitious talisman but true energy sources that keep you safe. You need to be aware of what these are for and not merely make them another piece of your accessories.

Spirituality becomes engrained when it comes after a struggle, when it is derived from suffering, when it arises from depression. Such spirituality brings new life into you. It infuses bliss into you. It is when you reach the deepest despair that the brightest light shines within; you become enlightened.

That is why many of you who have gone through your acquisitive phase and having discovered that it is path to nowhere turn to seeking. You turn to seeking not because someone has told you, but because you have experienced suffering. This seeking can lead you to enlightenment. This seeking when guided properly can help you find yourself.

Masters are here for a reason. Existence brings in the energy of masters into this planet Earth based on need. Even a dozen masters in this world of many billions can make a change. They can guide the shape and direction of the planet by working on the transformation of individuals.

Now is truly the age of enlightenment. Never in the history of mankind has there been such a marked change; such a marked increase in the awareness of people and in human consciousness, as there is now. You are all indeed fortunate to be living in this period. You will see in your own lifetime how this enhanced consciousness will in turn enhance your life.

Over the last nearly hundred years, there had been remarkable advances in scientific and technological space. This in turn has brought tremendous improvements in one's quality of material life. But in its wake, this material advancement has also brought some terrible aftermaths in personal happiness.

In simple terms, humanity lost touch with Nature.

Such has been the effect of these changes that scientists agree now that there has been a fundamental change in the construction of the human brain and the functioning of the human mind. There has been the emergence of something called the cerebral layer, a layer of mind that processes information in a way quite different from how it was before. At one level, one can be proud of this fact, but at another level, this development has been tragic in building fantasies in us. We no longer live in any kind of reality. Most of what we know is not based on experiences, it is based on what we read, watch and listen to. Movies, television, radio, newspapers and now the Internet create what we perceive as the world we live in. We live in virtual reality.

We believe everything, almost everything that we get from the media.

I was amused highly when I was told by one of disciples recently that book publishers do not allow material from the Internet to be used as sources of information; it is not reliable enough. However, they will gladly accept what is published in magazines, books or newspapers. The guide to truth is that it has been published elsewhere earlier, so that you have a precedence to fall back upon if you are sued!

How can anyone be any surer of authenticity if the source is printed media instead of the Internet? How many people truly believe that newspapers and television anchors tell the truth? They are after money, fame and power, the same manner as anyone else is. Perhaps these people are afraid of the Internet because anyone can access and anything can be published on the net. They do not need publishers.

The truth is that we are inundated with information from all kinds of sources, much of it unreliable and untrue. We have no choice but to accept them, as we have no means of verifying the truth of what is fed to us. We do live in a global village.

While information travels at the speed of light, reality still stays local.

Reality still needs to be experienced.

In the last few years, perhaps decades, there has been a sea of change in the attitude of people challenging the establishment. People do not just accept what they are told. They need experiential proof. They challenge what they are told. This defiance, this attitude of challenging, this attitude of seeking has fundamentally shifted human nature upward spiritually.

Spirituality is not about the veracity of facts. Spirituality is about the verification of truth.

Facts are historical, truth on the other hand is metaphorical. If Jesus said while giving bread to his disciples that they were consuming his body, it was indeed the truth; it certainly was not a fact.

Enlightened masters had no patience for facts. Facts are for logicians. Logicians can never be enlightened. To be enlightened you need to transcend the mind, you need to drop the mind. How can you transcend the mind through the mind?

How will your mind allow you to drop itself? It will scream blue murder. It will want to preserve itself, to survive.

To be enlightened you need to transform. You cannot be enlightened as you are in your present mindset. You need to become a different person. It is difficult to move beyond your personality through your personality. You need help. It is much easier when you have a master.

That is why I am here. My mission is to help transform people. My message is meditation. Meditation is the most powerful tool for transformation in this cyber age. It cuts through the cerebral layer and dissolves all your past conditioning. It helps you to be reborn. It allows you to be reborn with complete faith in yourself without any blind attachment to anyone else living or dead.

This is my mission, this is the mission of my institution – Life Bliss Foundation.

But this transformation has to happen within yourself through your determination. The master can help, but the ultimate master is within you. He is that blissful state within you.

Let you be in eternal bliss, Nithyanandam!

Thank you.