Nithyananda, the man behind the scandal

Paramahamsa Nithyananda or Swami Nithyananda was born in Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu in the year 1978 as Rajasekaran. The boy who showed a strong spiritual inclination right from the beginning turned into a high caliber spiritual guru when he recognised that his purpose in life was to help every man unleash the potential laden inside him.

He also believes strongly in healing the sick. Therefore his identity culminates into a statement he often quoted as saying - "Healing is only my visiting card, my mission is to awaken the divinity that lies latent in every man."

While the children his age played with each other, young Rajasekaran apparently played with idols of gods, laughed with them, shared his stories with them and even argued with them.

At the very young age of 12, he is believed to have had his first experience of enlightenment.

Even though he enrolled himself in a polytechnic college to study engineering, he could not complete it as his spiritual inclination pulled him.

At the age of 17, he left to follow his calling. He began travelling to various mutts, ashrams, holy shrines across India. He met Sadhus, yogis, studied Vedas and scriptures and meditated extensively.

He claims that he experienced death in Kasi, after which he feared death no more. From then Rajasekaran became Nithyananda.

Following this, travelled across South India and discovered his healing touch when he was asked to help a lung cancer patient.

He settled at an ashram Dhyanapeetam in Bidadi in Karnataka.

Besides this, there are two programmes in the name if Swami Nithyananda - Ananda Spurana Program (ASP) in India and Life Bliss Program (LBP) abroad.

These programmes aim at unleashing the latent potential in a Human Being.

These are perfectly good examples to susbstantiate Swami Nithyananda's mission statement, which is "Be Blissful", as the 'Ananda' in the programme as well as in the second half of his name means 'Bliss' while 'Spurana' means 'blooming' or 'flowering'.

On the whole, Nithyananda believes in helping the every man go through the process of 'blooming of bliss'.

However, all this enlightenment and the image that the spiritual leader conjured over the years came crashing down when Swami Nithyananda was pinned right in the middle of a sex scandal.

In Mar 2010, a Tamil News Channel Sun TV released a video of the Swamiji's sexcapades with a Tamil actress.

This led to his followers questioning the credibility of the man and inevitably sullied the religious leader's image forever.

OneIndia News