Chapter - 1: Master:🔗

The Master Surgeon

Buddha had said that it is a great gift to be born as a human being; that it is an even greater gift to seek the Truth of one's own inner nature in this human birth. But the greatest gift, Buddha said, was the opportunity to come in contact with an enlightened Master during one's lifetime and to stay with Him.

The Master is available. It is the disciple who hesitates. Caught between the webs of what we wish the world around us to be and the greed to fulfill the unending desires that we have been indulging in since childhood, we forget our inner nature. We forget who we are. We hesitate when the Master calls. We become afraid.

A small story:

There once was a lioness, which was heavily pregnant, out on a hunt. As she chased a herd of sheep she slipped and was injured. As she died she gave birth to a cub. The lioness had died far from her pride, and the cub was all alone and helpless. As it struggled to get up and walk around, some of the sheep that passed by took pity on it and adopted it. The lion cub grew up with the sheep, played with them, drank sheep's milk, fed on grass and other vegetable matter, and even learnt to bleat. He was now no longer a lion but just another sheep in the herd. He was quite happy eating grass and bleating along with the other sheep.

One day a lion attacked the herd of sheep. This lion was shocked to find a lion cub in the herd. He was so shocked that he gave up thoughts of killing any of the sheep. He was curious to know more about the lion cub that had become part of a sheep herd.

The lion came by the next day and waited till the lion cub was at a distance from the herd. He quickly pounced on the cub and took him away carrying him by his throat. The cub nearly died of fear. He could not even bleat, so great was his fear. The lion put him down after a while and told him that he was not a sheep, but was really a lion. The cub had no understanding of what he was being told. To him, reality was that he was a sheep and a lion was a mortal enemy. The cub kept bleating: let me go, let me go. The lion was wise and patient. He took him back to the herd and left him there, the cub still shaking in fright.

The lion came back every day and picked up the cub. Each day he would tell the cub who he really was; that he was a lion and not a sheep. The cub was not convinced; he did not even know what the lion was talking about. Yet by now the cub realized that the lion meant him no harm and allowed himself to be carried by him. Now and then he would get scared and plead with the lion to let him go. He would even run away. Nevertheless, the lion would pick him up and talk to him again about his true nature.

After many such outings, the lion took the cub to a stream one day and made him look at his own reflection in the water. The cub looked into the water. What he saw was a lion staring back at him. Bewildered and terrified, the cub bleated in great fear and ran as fast as his legs would carry him. The lion brought him back gently to the water again and explained to him who he really was; that he was no sheep but a lion. The cub looked into the water again and again. He looked around and saw that there was no one else around him; the reflection was his own. Next, the lion gave him a piece of meat to eat. The cub ate it and took an instant liking to it.

Suddenly the cub realized who he was and let out a roar. At that moment, he became a lion.

Many of us are like the lion cub. We have forgotten who we are. Societal conditioning has robbed us of the truth of our Being, the truth of our own inner nature. We see ourselves as sheep instead of the lions that we are.

When a Master comes by and tells us who we are, rather than being deeply grateful for being given the truth, we bleat in mortal fear and run as fast as we can. He tells us that we are not ordinary human beings looking for spiritual experience, but spiritual beings looking for human experience. However, we are not ready to believe Him. The Master becomes an enemy, not a savior. He indeed becomes the simha swapna, the lion-dream or the nightmare to us. We even think that he is trying to convert us to some exclusive religion! We play hide and seek with Him.

A few of us start realizing a little of what we are and what we can be after a few encounters with Him. We then allow the Master to play with us and start feeling a certain level of comfort. He then behaves like one among us to make us feel more comfortable. Then, one day, when our trust has grown to a steady state, the Master grabs us and shows us who we really are, that He and we are the same.

The Master's play - his lila, is one of infinite compassion. It is the only unconditional love that there is upon this planet. The only purpose of this love is to show us who we really are; to tear the mask of the sheep that we have so far worn and to reveal the lion within us; to make us roar instead of bleat; to de-hypnotize us from the illusions we have lived with so far. The Master leads us into reality, into bliss, into our true nature.

For most of us, this process is a surgery that is painful to our psyche. We would much rather be comfortable with the sheep's form that we are used to, than undergo the surgery and expose ourselves to the unknown dangers of realizing the lion's form that is truly ours. The Master's work is to remove the cancerous tumor of our Being, which is called Ego. It is this ego, the identity that we have built for ourselves based on past experiences that prevents us from realizing that we are lions.

But our mind continuously resists his work, for the surgery on our ego is too much to take. It is like operating to remove our very life-sustaining element. Our mind resists, saying, 'How can I lose my identity?' We say, 'Let us be happy with what we are, how we are. What if the world is an illusion; it is an addictive illusion; we are busy with the silly things we do every day; we cry, we laugh; we are joyful; we are depressed; sheep have their good points; they are cute and lovable; who wants to be a lion anyway; all our friends and family will run away. Who needs to be in bliss? What is bliss anyway?'

To those of us who think like this, the Master then becomes the enemy. We would rather be with the cancer that we know, than with the new Being that we do not know anything about.

Realizing the truth of who we are requires courage. Moving away from societal and religious beliefs and conditioning, takes great courage. To get ourselves de-hypnotized from the bondages that we are so happily ensconced in requires wisdom and determination. To become a lion from being a sheep is a physical transformation and a mental alchemy that requires fixity of purpose that not all of us possess, or even want to possess.

It requires courage to trust the Master. This trust, when it happens, becomes, over time, total acceptance and surrender. Only at this point are we ready to learn the truth about ourselves. Only at this point has real conviction about the truth happened in us.

What we do in our day-to-day life and what our status is in this life have no relevance to the fundamental truth of our own inner nature. The inner natures of a saint and a sinner are the same. Society applies these labels to us at its convenience and comfort. Someone labeled as a sinner has as much potential to realize the truth about himself as someone who considers himself holy.

Valmiki was a renowned saint of ancient India. He is the author of one of the greatest Hindu epics, the Ramayana, which is read and enjoyed not only in India but also in many parts of South and South East Asia.

Valmiki was a robber who became a saint. Narada, a great devotee of Lord Vishnu - the Preserver in the Hindu Trinity of Gods - was a wandering minstrel saint. Narada forever traveled the skies chanting the name of ‘Narayana’ (one of Vishnu’s 1008 names). Once he happened to cross Valmiki’s path, when he was still a dreaded thief. Narada was promptly stopped by Valmiki who demanded money from him. Narada had no money with him. This made Valmiki furious. He threatened Narada that he would kill him if he did not come up with something valuable at once.

Narada had nothing on him except the simple clothes he wore and the single-stringed instrument that he strummed on, as he sang the praises of Lord Vishnu. Narada told him that the only thing valuable he had with him was the mantra ‘Narayana’ that he constantly uttered. Narada offered to teach him this mantra which would lead him to salvation. Narada said, ‘Chant this mantra and when you die, you will not die alone; the Lord will be with you.’

Valmiki was not impressed. He said, 'In any case I shall not die alone. I have my entire family who will readily join me. I live for them. I steal for them. I have no need for your mantra. Unless you come up with something valuable I shall kill you.'

Narada pleaded with him and finally said, 'Please go and ask your family members which one of them will walk with you to the gates of death. If they say, as you believe, that they will accompany you to the gates of death, come back and kill me.'

Valmiki proudly strutted off believing Narada's word that he would not run away. Valmiki went home and asked his son, whom he dearly loved and who loved him in return, 'Son, when death beckons, will you join me?'

The son was shocked. He said, 'No, of course not! You are old and it is time for you to go. I have a life. Don't you think that you should let me be?'

Valmiki was shattered. Yet, without showing any emotion, he approached his wife who he was sure would be with him always, and asked her whether she would accompany him at the time of death. His wife hesitated and told him tenderly, 'Dear, we need one of us to stay to look after our children. If you go and I go with you, who will take care of them?'

Valmiki then approached his old parents and asked them. They too refused to go with him; they wanted to live for some more years.

Valmiki was in tears. He went back to Narada and narrated to him what happened and cried piteously. Narada comforted him and said, 'No one will come with you, nothing will come with you; none of your relatives, none of your possessions. You will go alone when death calls you. The only thing that can go with you is the name of the Lord.' Saying this, he initiated him into the mantra of 'Narayana'.

As soon as Valmiki uttered the word ‘Narayana’, he realized his true Self, and sank into a deep meditative state or samadhi, and stayed on in that samadhi state for hundreds of years. An anthill grew on top of him, and no one knew that there was someone under the anthill. When he finally emerged from the anthill, Valmiki was an enlightened sage. In Sanskrit, Valmiki means ‘one born from an anthill’, and he was called by that name ever since.

Inside each sinner there is a saint waiting to emerge. The work of a Master is to bring the saint out.

It is easy to have a casual relationship with the Master, dropping in whenever it suits you. It is comfortable to come with the pretense that you would spend more time plumbing the depths of your inner Self with the help of the Master at some point in time in the future. You tell yourself that it will all happen when the time is right, without realizing that the right time is now.

People look for many things from a Master. 90% of the people are in search of material benefits from him, in the same way as they are in a temple praying before the idol. In the temple, we all become beggars. In fact, we reduce the deities themselves to a beggar’s status, by bargaining with them and negotiating payments. We promise the deity a percentage of benefits received in return. We say, ‘I need a million dollars and I shall give you 20% in return if you give me a million dollars. If you like, take that 20% up front, and give me only the balance.’

The material benefits may vary from direct financial gains to improvement in health to providing a child to the childless to seeking salvation. We beg the Gods in the temple. We carry with us the same beggar's attitude to the Master also.

In both the cases, when we get what we begged for, we realize too late that what we begged for and were given, are things that we could have done without, which are really not what we want at a deep level, at the level of the Being. But we don't understand why we feel this way; we don't understand why there is no deep satisfaction and we continue begging for other material things. The cycle goes on.

Human beings are not created for material pleasures alone. In all of us is an inbuilt homing device that seeks the original state we all come from. That state is the state of divinity, the state of the universal energy or universal intelligence that maintains order amidst all the chaos that seemingly surrounds us. That is why, however much we may indulge in sensual pleasures, there is no fulfillment; there is always more and more; and yet, the more we indulge the more we need; the less we are content. Indulging in sensual pleasures alone is an addiction; as deeply dissatisfying as any addiction. This deep discontentment within all of us, discontentment with mere sensual and material pleasures, is the seed of spirituality that seeks a higher experience, a more fulfilling experience, a spiritual experience.

Few people approach the Master with a learning perspective, either intellectual or spiritual. In the West, the search for a Master is really a cure for the 'depression of success' born out of a surfeit of material success that becomes an imbalance with one's spiritual needs that lie deep inside. People in the West try to cope with this by constant change; they change cars every year, homes every second year and spouses every third year! Then, they are surprised that they still do not find satisfaction.

In India, people come to a Master out of ‘depression of failure’; they seek mostly in material terms. They are still unfulfilled, not having got what they wanted; so they strive. Depression of failure is easier to resolve than depression of success.

Many of us have an active dissatisfaction with what we find around us, in terms of lack of ethics and morality. This dissatisfaction, this gap between the need for a higher value system and what we find ourselves in, prompts some of us into positive action of one kind or another.

The reference to the value system here is not to religious value systems of ethics and morality, which are created by society. It refers to the inner consciousness of the individual, which is the only solution to all the problems faced in the material world. A clear consciousness in each individual can create a blissful and peaceful planet Earth.

In today’s corporate world, like balloons pressured beyond what they can bear, we can see corporate leaders burst with pressure, damaging themselves and others around them. Yet, there are a few we meet who maintain their balance despite all the pressures. These few are like the proverbial reeds in Tao that bend with the water and get back to position once the pressure of water recedes.

It helps when one has a balanced perspective of one’s own capabilities against what one has been able to achieve; to take from life what it offers rather than keep looking for what we think it should offer.

Whatever success we manage to achieve in life has little to do with our own abilities. There were and are many others who are more intelligent than we are; more decisive, more caring and more dynamic, who somehow did not reach the same levels of material success as we did. On the other hand, we see around us people with lesser intellectual, emotional and spiritual capabilities who are far more successful materially and professionally.

There is a factor that goes beyond one's inherited powers, education, innate capabilities, DNA and whatever else that one can measure oneself with, that contributes to what one achieves in life, both materially and spiritually. Is it karma, fate or destiny, or is it a spiritual quotient that can measure our evolution in spiritual terms? Why am I what I am? Where am I headed? What is my purpose in life? Who am I?

This desire to move beyond and also to understand who we are still drives many of us. It is this creative tension that brings us to a Master. It is this creative tension that draws us again and again to the Master against the resistance of our mind.

Nithyananda is a spiritual Master who is truly irreverent of religious hypocrisy; one who addresses practical issues of how to live one's life day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute and second to second; one who doesn't convince through scriptural or religious sanctioned lore, but through just His presence and His own experience of the Ultimate Truth; one who brings to bear His experiential wisdom that transcends His youthful years; far more importantly, who through His sheer grace and energy brings us warmth and brightness that we have never before experienced.

In front of Him, our questions evaporate. To sit in front of Him in silence is meditation. He says that meeting Him is never an accident. Meeting the Master is the purpose of life while nothing else in life is of any direct purpose.

Most of us think that we have a clear purpose that we believe in, and we lead our lives in line with and in anticipation of achieving that purpose, till time and time again we realize that the purpose is impermanent. It keeps changing. When we achieve that purpose to which we had been willing to dedicate our entire life, we are still unfulfilled. We are discontented. The true nature of a human being is that he or she can never be satisfied with material achievements.

The Self seeks more; it seeks the Master.

Then we meet the Master. Like many of us met Nithyananda. Many of us are those whom He calls ‘professional seekers’, who till we met Him had not found answers to the hundreds of questions that continually addressed the value of our beliefs, knowledge and experience. The questions we had simply disappeared when we met Him. There were doubts and there continue to be doubts, but no questions anymore. They seem to get answered before they arise.

Many of us in professional careers achieved most of what we set out to do materially and then wondered why we wanted all that in the first place. Acquisition brought only a momentary pleasure. As that pleasure waned, we needed to begin the next chase to keep ourselves occupied in the pursuit of what we imagined to be our next port of call of happiness. ‘What next?’ was almost always the question, even before we had had time to absorb and reflect upon what we had achieved and acquired.

Nithyananda lights a lamp within us that dispels the darkness of ignorance, layer upon layer, that we have accumulated through our lives.

The Upanishad says: Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya. It means, 'lead us from darkness to light.' It is with this helpless plea that we come to the Master.

It is His grace that holds our hands as we travel on that path of light.

The Master is a master surgeon. He cuts through the cancers of our ego and falsehood and exposes us mercilessly to the reality of our true nature. The closer we come to Him the hotter it gets!

Nithyananda says,

'When you come to me as a stranger, as a window shopper, I am happy to offer you brain candy, and you can taste the sweetness and go away. When you seek and come near, you become my responsibility. It is my promise to you to show you your true Self. My compassion to my near and dear is tough on them at times!'

The presence of a living Master is the ultimate gift that there is. God to most of us is a concept; for some to ridicule; for many to worship. There is no common understanding of what one needs to do to approach God. Religions, rather religious leaders, who are supposed to guide us to God, are the biggest sinners in this regard. They divide and rule. They fight and destroy. To one, an idol is essential to reach God; to another, idols are improper; to each, his scripture and his brand of God is the only path to salvation.

Although each authentic religion was created with the same idea of realizing God within, over time, this underlying purpose of religion has been forgotten and focus has shifted to the regulatory paths that were devised in each religion to control through fear and greed. People are termed sinners so that they can be subjugated. Fanaticism and terrorism through religion have replaced salvation through it!

The ultimate truth is the same in all religions. Once this truth is realized, the shackles of religion drop away.

With a real Master, inner growth happens in us without any religious compulsions. Neither is there any compulsive binding between the Master and disciple from the Master's side.

Nithyananda says,

‘Go to as many Masters as you wish to, but learn something worthwhile from each of them. Go to as many gardens as you want to, collect the most beautiful flowers from them and make a garland for yourself!

People go to many Masters but the problem is they don’t learn anything from any of them. They are simply window shoppers who come, look in and go away. Or, they come and get caught in the Master’s personality instead of imbibing his teachings, and start creating trouble in society. Or they get frightened by the Master’s tough love and seek another who would be easier on them.

If Jesus Christ and Lord Krishna would meet each other, they would hug each other, as they are both enlightened Masters. However, the sheep that followed Jesus and the cows that followed Krishna would always end up fighting as to whose Master was greater!’ Again, this is fanaticism in the name of Masters instead of in the name of religion; no great difference.

This book is an inspirational account of Nithyananda's life to show the path that he traveled, to kindle in us the desire to seek the true nature of our own inner Self. This book has only one purpose, which is to show us that we are indeed lions, not sheep.

As Nithyananda says time and again:

I am not here to prove I am Divine; I am here to prove you are Divine.

Suka Brahma, the great sage and the young son of Vyasa (the author of the Hindu epic Mahabharata) was teaching many great rishis (sages) far older than himself. He narrated to them the Bhagavatam – the story of the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu and specifically that of His incarnation as Krishna.

At the end of it, moved to tears, one of the assembled rishis fell at Suka Brahma's feet and said passionately, 'Please do not put any of this in writing. Once put into words, the deep truth, the intense beauty, which can never be expressed in words, will be lost. No one will then know what really happened here. No one will ever be able to experience by just reading the words, the energy play that happened here during the narration, the spirit behind the words, and the experience of our souls in listening to you. The facts will completely belittle the truth and energy in the whole thing.'

Suka said, 'I agree with you; but we need to write all this down, so that future generations may become inspired by just reading it. These words will be a great source of inspiration and a driving force to every soul that reads it. It will drive them to experience the truth behind the words; that is enough.'

The reason why we have written an account of our Master’s life is the same. It is true that the truth, the experiential truth, cannot be captured in words. Yet this experiential truth, however inadequately expressed, can inspire millions.

Facts are chronological details as found in historical accounts. The West has always been interested in facts; in chronology; in history; in that which can be verified through some means. Western science needs to prove things with the intellect; it has to prove things with logic in order to present it to the world. The East is more focused on truth.

Truth is metaphorical, not factual; it transcends time and space; it cannot be proved by straight logic. If logic can prove the truth, then logic has to be greater than the truth, which it can never be! This biography offers both the truth and the facts to the best extent possible.

Ramayana is the well-known Hindu epic that Valmiki wrote about the great King Rama, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu. In this story, the demon king Ravana kidnaps Rama’s wife Sita. Rama while on his pursuit of Ravana seeks the help of the monkeys who lived in the forest kingdom of Kishkinda. This kingdom was ruled by the monkey brothers Vali and Sugriva, assisted by the redoubtable Hanuman, who is worshipped as the monkey god all over India.

When Valmiki described Kishkinda in Ramayana, he provided a certain number for the monkey population. If literally taken, the number Valmiki provided might not at all match the size of Kishkinda as he had described it. Kishkinda could not have held that many millions of monkeys. When Valmiki referred to such a number, it was in a puranic sense of the truth, a metaphorical representation of the truth. Valmiki was conveying the power of the monkeys through the number, not the exact number of monkeys.

Valmiki's visualization was truth-oriented. His focus was on the truth, rather than the factual representation.

Science would like everything verified and quantified. This does not mean that what science has not verified and quantified is not true. The law of gravity has operated ever since creation; it has been in existence since Existence; otherwise the Sun and the planets would not move as they have done always. Yet, Newton 'discovered' gravity only a few centuries ago, and society and religion, till then unaware of this 'discovery' accepted it as a scientific fact. The earth has always been round; that has been the truth; yet this truth was bitterly contested and finally agreed upon only in the last millennium.

Science is limited in perception. It is like trying to explore a dense and dark forest with a small lamp. The lamp illumines the path a few feet ahead and science comes up with one theory based on what it sees for those few feet. Next, they move ahead with the light and see a few more feet. What they see now is different from what they saw earlier. So they come up with a new theory and discard the one that they had proposed earlier. This is how science operates. Imagine how it would be if the whole forest was visible in one flash of lightning! This is how enlightened Masters see the whole thing, the whole truth. This is the difference between science and mysticism.

For instance, when an enlightened Master is asked how old he is, his chronological, factually correct answer would be far different from the truth of his timeless existence. People over centuries have suffered many misgivings because the truth they saw within their beings did not match with the truth as accepted by society and organized religion.

In this book, an attempt has been made to bring both chronological and historical facts together with the existential truth. Facts are limited by the 120-degree vision that we are normally capable of. Truth is a spiritual 360-degree vision that only enlightened Masters have. This book presents an enlightened Master's 360-degree vision, which we should strive to perceive with as little distortion as possible. This book is factually factual, and truthfully truthful. It is a meeting of the Eastern system of mysticism and the western system of logic.

Facts and truth do not always go together; facts are one-dimensional, relating only to time, whereas truth spans space and time; it is multidimensional.

In Nithyananda - Eternal Bliss, truth and facts merge.