Death: The Ultimate Liberation And A Cause For Celebration🔗

Editor's note: Nithyananda's father, Śrī Nitya Arunācalānanda attained enlightenment and left the body, what we call Mahā samādhi, on 12 November 2006. This is the account of a disciple present on that occasion.

It was the third and final day of the Aṣṭāvakra Gītā discourses in Bengaluru.

The topic that evening was Enlightenment: Have it! Swamiji expounded so authoritatively on the sūtras (aphorisms) of the boy sage, Aṣṭāvakra. The mesmerized audience listened to the flow of words. It was suddenly interrupted by a coughing bout from Swamiji.

He asked for water, drank it, and continued talking.

There was another interruption. Ayya (Secretary to Swamiji, for Indian affairs) came flying onto the stage. He went behind the sofa and whispered something to Him. Swamiji covered the mic with his one hand, listened calmly to Ayya and made a facial gesture that seemed to convey, 'I'll take care' or something to that effect. The talk resumed. Then to the audience's utter consternation, he gestured to Ayya to come onstage again. More whispered conversation followed. There was stillness and finality in Swamiji's body language. Ayya left, the talk continued and progressed to the end. The effect was electrifying. No one left his seat during the discourse. Spontaneous applause followed. Then the long serpentine queue for Swamiji's blessing started.

I sat in the balcony watching the flow of events. Little did I know that one soul had already taken the offer of enlightenment. As the long line of people was shortening, I went down to the entrance to take my allotted place. Just then Ayya came and said, ‘Amma, Swamiji’s father has attained mahāsamādhi (final liberation). All of us are leaving for Tiruvannamalai as soon as Swamiji finishes. Please round up all ācāryas (teachers) and healers and gather them at one place. At no point should your body language reveal what I have just now conveyed to you. Swamiji wants you to remain calm and act with spiritual maturity.’

That set the tone for the unimaginable events that followed. Enlightened beings are compassion incarnate. Swamiji blessed each and everyone in the queue taking as much time as he would in the normal course of events. After blessings, very smoothly Swamiji’s car moved away with His mother beside Him in the center seat and His brothers occupying the rear seat. Mini buses were arranged for ashramites, healers and ācāryas. Barring a few people, most of them did not know where we were going. The ones who didn’t know were delighted by the turn of events. They were traveling out of Bengaluru and would be in Swamiji’s company… that was enough!

When we reached Tiruvannamalai, one of the ashramites stopped the bus, went down and picked up fresh garlands for us to place on the coffin. In the wee hours of the morning of 13ᵗʰ Nov 2006, the bus stopped at the entrance to Rajarajan Street where Swamiji’s maternal parents lived. A passing thought struck me that young Rajasekaran had lived on Rajarajan street and was destined to be a Rajasanyāsi… Raja meaning King - royalty to the manner born. It looked like Existence had planned very meticulously. (Swamiji’s original name was Rajasekaran) The orchestration was truly exquisite!

We got down quietly and in a single file walked solemnly into the house. Swamiji sat in the veranda (porch) with some male relatives. He radiated a serene calmness. The minute He saw us, He remarked about us, ‘For the first time I see these people really serious!’ And then He addressed us, ‘Go inside. Pay respects. Be with my mother. See to it that no one disturbs her. I don’t want anyone wailing and weeping and creating scenes.’

We stepped into the hall and saw a lot of people seated there. To the left of the main doorway was the glass coffin. One after the other, in a silent procession, we placed garlands on the coffin and paid respects. I looked at the face and found it to be utterly calm. It echoed the final relaxation. Somehow, I couldn’t connect with the fact that this inert body was a living person to whom I had spoken just two days earlier in the ashram. I had bid him goodbye and said that we would see each other during Jayanti celebrations, Swamiji’s birthday celebrations in December-January. In his usual manner, he invited me to Tiruvannamalai for the Karthigai Deepam festival... ‘Ellarum vaango’, ‘all of you please come for the festival of lights.’

Yes, everyone came - but not for the festival. Little did we know that we had been invited for a celebration, the likes of which we had never seen in our lives before. I found the atmosphere to be strange. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it suddenly dawned on me that no one was crying! Everyone sat quietly. I had witnessed many deaths in my family. The ambience had always been one of great grief. Wailing, shouting and calling out to the departed is the rule rather than the exception. And this was repeated with the arrival of every new relative.

I had no doubts that Swamiji was the single controlling factor.

We sat around Amma (Swamiji’s mother) who was an inspiration to watch. She sat on the floor, next to the sofa in which Swamiji sat. There was an air of innocence and dignity in her demeanor. She aligned her wishes to whatever her son said. She exhibited a total childlike trust in Him. As she simply and beautifully put it: ‘Swami ennodu irrukumpodu vera enna ma ennakku venum? Avar ellamay patthuparu, ma.’ (When Swamiji Himself is with me, what more can I ask for? He will take care of everything, ma.)

She showed a high level of spiritual maturity that is rare for a person, especially a woman born and brought up in a small, closed society.

I understood why Swamiji had chosen her to be His mother. He had mentioned that India’s energy attracts higher-level beings and acts as the spiritual incubator for them when they descend on planet earth. In a similar way, I felt Amma, due to her extreme innocence and unshakeable spiritual strength was the womb, the incubator that had radiated the innate capacity to receive and nurture an enlightened being's exalted energy.

The whole day was suffused with an air of spiritual fervor. Even as people were trooping in to pay respects, the young ascetics, the brahmacāris of the ashram, looking so majestically resplendent, performed pūjā in Swamiji's presence and with His participation: Guru pūjā, Vraja homa, Nitya kirtans, ārati and other ceremonies, as directed by Swamiji Himself.

Swamiji explained, 'When Ayya came up on stage and informed me that my father was no more, I paused awhile and related to his energy. I clearly saw that before his death, my father had gone into an enlightened state and had stayed there for at least 21 minutes. He had attained mahāsamādhi, the great liberation! Then he had relaxed beautifully into the all-pervading consciousness. I told Ayya to relax and carry on with the necessary arrangements. In those few moments of relating, I did whatever had to be done at the initial stage for the soul to move on. I had to take care of the people who had come for my blessings at the discourse. They too need me.'

Only a person in the Paramahamsa (supreme) state can be so unattachedly compassionate and unconditionally available at all times for those who seek Him, no matter what the situation. In those few moments, the teachings of Aṣṭāvakra - you are by your nature unattached, renounced, liberated; you are the all-pervading, witnessing consciousness - had been expressed through Swamiji's sheer body language.

The profound truths of the scriptures must be lived. Here, before our eyes was a living example. All of us - devotees, disciples, healers and ācāryas - were shown what it means to 'practice what you preach'. Masters do not teach. Their life is their teaching. If you are alert and awake around the master, you can learn within moments what years of poring over great philosophies cannot teach you.

Every now and then, Swamiji would go out, sit in the veranda, watch arrangements being made to receive people and speak with relations and friends. In those moments of reminiscing, he said with great fondness, ‘My father was a V.I.P. (Very Important Person) in his own right in this town. Because of his innate generosity of spirit and his helping nature, he managed to have a great following. He was so considerate to everyone. Even the last moments he spent on planet earth have been done with care and consideration! In the same way that he did not disturb me when I was a mere boy on the spiritual path, so too in death he has chosen to cause me the least disturbance. In my busy schedule, I am relatively free for the next three days. He has chosen to rightly leave his body now! He could have gone when I was in America or during the Ananda Ula tour. What would have happened to all the programs, all the arrangements? Simply a beautiful soul! I have blessed him with the ultimate gift of enlightenment. His energy will never again be converted to matter. He has left his body smoothly, without pain. He is relaxed and relating with me. Amma, nee kavalai padadhey, naa pathikirain. (Amma, you don’t worry. I will take care.)’

So saying, Swamiji stood up, walked to the glass coffin and very lovingly, with a beautiful smile on his face, blessed his father’s body and energy. He would repeat this often, throughout the day.

The gentry of Tiruvannamalai were being exposed to the joyous dignity of death.

Hearing Him talk and watching His utterly relaxed, confident and authoritative body language, I realized we were sitting in a live classroom. He was living the truths that He had spoken of on so many occasions, in all those meditation programs. He showed us the way to receive death, the way to handle the dead and the living. No book can give this understanding, this kind of confidence.

I understood why He was particularly careful to maintaining a deeply joyous atmosphere. Why was He insistent that no one should weep and wail? As far as my understanding goes, when the soul leaves the body it is essential that the atmosphere is light, suffused with spiritual understanding, awareness, and a mood of deep celebration. Then we make it easier for the soul to move on smoothly to the next dimension.

This is the greatest gift of love we can give to anyone. This is the ultimate act of selflessness.

When we cry, when we grieve, we create such a heavy atmosphere that the soul struggles to leave. We cause an obstruction. This is the greatest act of cruelty that we can commit. And all the while, we suffer from the misconception that if we weep, we tell the departed how much we love him.

Actually, if we look deeply and honestly within ourselves, we see that we cry for the loss, the void that the person's death has caused in our life. Because, if we appreciate that death is the climax of life and not the end, we too will celebrate with that understanding. Then where is the room for tears?

When evening, sandhyā kāl, arrived, the ārati – the offering of lit camphor and wicks, was performed to the sound of tinkling bells and the rhythmic clapping of the gathering. Everyone participated with great fervor. I sat next to the coffin. Each time I turned my gaze to my left, I looked directly at the face. I was surprised that at no time did I feel disturbed by this physical proximity to the dead body. In fact, more often than not we forgot that the body was there. Though it was placed in the center of the room, it was not holding centerstage. There was no exhibition of grief or trace of morbidity to keep us focused on the body.

I realized that as Swamiji was constantly keeping the group occupied with some aspect of spirituality, the mind was diverted from its habitual pattern of response to such situations. Our energies, instead of being tight and confined to our boundaries through fear and grief, were expanding and relating to the high level of enlightened energy present in the room. The moment of death can be a process of deep alchemy for the dying and the living. Since this blessed soul had attained samādhi, the energy it radiated, combined with the powerful vibrations of an enlightened master’s presence, had the power to transform all those tuned to it. This was exactly what Swamiji was working on.

He did not want us to miss this huge opportunity that Existence was offering us.

In between all these extraordinary activities, Swamiji kept the normalcy of day-to-day activities going. We went for breakfast, came back, drank coffee served with polite hospitality, and then got into vehicles and performed giri-vala (circumambulating Aruṇācala, the holy hill of Tiruvannamalai). We went for lunch, had a shower; in short, the ordinariness of day-to-day life carried on. This in no way showed disrespect to the departed soul.

On the contrary, it showed an extremely mature understanding that death was one more event in life. It could be as simple as changing our old, worn out clothes for something new. That act of changing is death, that’s all. If, while living, we had learnt the art of changing then we would carry the same attitude with us while dying. If we wish to die well, all we have to do is learn to live well.

Live fully, moment to moment, as if each moment is our last one. Then there is no room for regrets. We will have the spiritual understanding that death is neither frightening nor fascinating, as some naively think. It is simply a fact of life, which creates a great opportunity for the most profound and beneficial inner experiences to happen. It carries with it the potentiality to be the moment of final illumination.

Early next morning, around 5.30 am, we gathered in the main hall. Swamiji asked that the body be given its final bath and draped in kāvi vastra (saffron cloth usually worn by sanyāsis). At that moment I remembered: Once when Swamiji was returning from a tour of South India, his father jokingly told his eldest son, who too had come to visit the ashram, ‘seekaram vaa da... sami varadukulla namba kazhambalam...paatarna nambazhayum samiyara panniduvaru...’ (Come quickly. Let us leave the ashram before Swamiji arrives. Otherwise, if He sees us, He will make us also sanyāsis!) It looked like Existence has a great sense of humor. She had the last laugh. I am sure that Swamiji’s father would have joined in the laughter.

I noticed that there had not been any change in the physical condition of the body. Death had arrived on 12ᵗʰ evening and now it was 14ᵗʰ morning. The body was as intact as it had been on the first day that we had seen it. No doubt it was kept on ice; yet not a single change had happened, considering the low level of sophistication of that glass coffin and the heat of Tiruvannamalai. The face radiated the same sereneness; there was no odor of decay. The use of agarbattis (incense sticks) and room fresheners had stopped long ago.

I mused silently: Was it Swamiji’s energy? Or was it the vibrations of the pūja and ārati performed at regular intervals? Or was it the group energy that was so profoundly calm and elevating? Perhaps it was a direct reflection of the samādhi state into which Śrī Aruṇācalānanda had entered before leaving the body completely. The separated ego with all its sense-residues had been transformed and purified at the moment of the final exit. So there was no odor. Only lightness and the bliss of the liberated soul suffused the air that we were breathing. It could be all these aspects acting together. I honestly didn’t know. This was not time to seek clarifications. That understanding will happen when the need arises, automatically, without any kind of seeking or prompting. And of course, my ego never got tired of musing.

Once the necessary rituals were completed, Swamiji asked everyone who was not a healer or ācārya to pay respects and leave the room. Then, closing the doors and windows firmly, He asked Śrī Nitya Kīrtanānanda to play ānanda darśan music.

The room exploded to the beat of ‘bomma bomma tha thaiya thaiya thaka…’ with everyone singing and clapping. Swamiji danced joyously, throwing tremendous energy all around. There was a great buildup of heat in the closed room. Then, He placed his ājñā cakra (energy center between the eyebrows) on His father’s ājñā cakra. He then uttered the mahāvākya (great declaration): tat tvam asi, tat tvam asi, tat tvam asi, ahaṁ brahmāsmi, aham brahmāsmi, ahaṁ brahmāsmi (Thou art That; I am the ultimate reality). Energy transfer must have surely taken place.

I cannot even begin to understand its meaning. Then, with absolute grace, He removed His turban and put it on His father's head. A rudrākṣa rosary was placed around his neck.

The moments that followed are frozen in time in our memories. Something in me gave way. I felt an ecstatic connectivity.

Śiva was no longer a mere concept for me. He danced before my eyes.

I realized that the updated version of Śiva is Nithyananda. It blew my mind. Something in me died forever, for something else to bloom.

Later, just before the doors were opened to let people in, one healer echoed the feeling in all our hearts when he said, ‘Swamiji, if this is how death is going to be, I am ready to die now!’

The next moments were all about history being created in Tiruvannamalai. For the first time women were allowed to accompany the funeral procession to the cremation area. The bier was lifted onto the flower-bedecked vehicle. With Swamiji leading the way, women sang the beautifully evocative devotional lyrics of the Arunachala Aksharamaṇa Maalai (the soul stirring hymn to Aruṇācala Śiva, composed by the enlightened master Bhagavān Śrī Ramaṇa Maharṣi) accompanying it on its last earthly journey.

The most poignant and unbelieving scene was that of Amma, the wife of the departed soul, walking alongside the vehicle, rhythmically clapping her hands to the beat of the devotional song. I do not think this happens in any strata of society, let alone in a small temple town like Tiruvannamalai. What astonishing courage! What progressive thinking, done not as an act of defiance or with the need to score some socially relevant points, but simply as an expression of implicit trust, inner steel and dignified grace!

When we reached the cremation area, Swamiji informed us that this was the land gifted by Amma’s father to start a Dhyanapeetam Center in Tiruvannamalai. He revealed to the gathering that the first person to attend the Nithyananda Spurana Program and get enlightened before leaving the body was His father. It was only befitting that the body of a realized soul should be cremated here. When the pyre was readied, the mortal remains of Śrī Nitya Aruṇācalānanda Swami were placed on it. The way the body was positioned was symbolic. At one end was the sacred Aruṇācala Hill. At the other end was Swamiji, the enlightened master! The formless and the form on either side.

Can anyone ask for greater protection than this?

As the final moments arrived for the curtain to be drawn on this drama, people were given flowers to offer at the feet of the departed soul one last time. Then, Swamiji informed the gathered crowd that as a sanyāsi who had cut all family ties, He couldn't perform the last rites of his father as a son would traditionally be expected to do. However as a guru, it was His responsibility to conduct the rites of passage for His disciple. Swamiji recalled that when He had asked His father what kind of help he needed, His father had answered simply: ‘Swami irunda podum.’ (If You are there, that is enough.)’ Swamiji told us, ‘At that moment, He became my disciple! That complete, total trust is enough. Nothing else is needed!’

Swamiji also declared that in the future, Nov 12ᵗʰ of every year, the death anniversary of Śrī Nitya Aruṇācalānanda Swami, will be celebrated within the Nithyananda Order as Mahāparinirvāṇa day, the day of enlightened souls, in memory of those who attain enlightenment and leave the body under Swamiji’s grace. He promised that no matter where His disciples died, His presence would be there to perform the last rites. With such an amazing promise thundering in our beings, the last, lingering fear of death seemed to melt away…

This was a promise from none other than Śiva Himself.

As His father’s energy had traveled directly from a conscious state to a superconscious one, without slipping into the unconscious coma state, and had remained in that exalted level for 21 minutes, he had become enlightened. Therefore, he could not be treated in the normal way. Also, since he had been conferred with antima sanyās (final renunciation and enlightenment) the body had to be cremated with honors conferred upon enlightened souls.

It was like a spiritual salute of honor to a departed war hero.

Just before the pyre was lit, Swamiji called His mother and brothers, and gave them each a sandalwood log to be placed on the mortal remains of the energy that had been a husband and father for many years. There was finality to that act. Then with cries of ‘Śrī Nitya Arunācalānanda Swami Ki Jai’ (Hail to Śrī Nitya Arunācalānanda Swami) rending the air, Swamiji performed ārati, lit the funeral pyre and consigned it to flames, all with flowing grace and compassion.

The last cameo shot that I remember is of Swamiji putting His arm around His mother and hugging her to His side, acknowledging her trusting innocence and spiritual strength and courage.

He stood tall with His biological family around Him - son, brother, master, God.

I offer the writing of this whole experience as an act of deep gratitude, and as an expression of my love and respect to each and everyone reading this. If anything, it was your deep longing to ‘experience the experience’ that made this sharing possible.

In Nithyananda

MNM