Nithya Chaithanya Yathi (1924-1999) was a philosopher, psychologist, author and
poet. His writings have made him one of the world’s leading exponents of Advaita
Vedanta, including how it dovetails with modern scientific discoveries.
Guru Nithya is the third great teacher in the lineage of Narayana Guru. Narayana
Guru was a revolutionary seer and contemplative who also fought against the caste
and gender prejudices paralyzing nineteenth century India. His disciple Nataraja
Guru was a brilliant philosopher who developed a structural interpretation of his
guru’s mystical teaching and began the Narayana Gurukula, the wisdom school for
the dissemination of Narayana Guru’s philosophy. Guru Nithya succeeded him as
head of the Narayana Gurukula after a long apprenticeship. Together these three
have brought a scientific understanding to bear on India’s treasury of wisdom.
Nithya was born Jayachandarn Panicker, in the matriarchal compound of Vakayar
,near Konni, Kerala, South India, as the first son to Vamakshi Amma and her
husband , the poet Raghavan Panicker. As a youth, Nithya left home and wandered
India for eight years as a mendicant, meeting and studying with Sufi, Jain and
Buddhist teachers, as well as Mahatma Gandhi and Hindu masters such as Ramana
Maharshi and Nityananda. After attaining his master’s degree in social psychology
at Bombay University, he continued his spiritual search in earnest. Among other
posts, he served as director of the Indian Foundation for Psychic Research in New
Delhi in the mid-1960s, charged with investigating the claims of yogis and fakirs.
In 1951 he accepted Nataraja Guru as his spiritual preceptor, and after Nataraja
Guru died in 1973, he became the Guru of the Narayana Gurukula. Throughout his
life he has been instrumental in sustaining Narayana Guru’s legacy as the
emancipator of women and eradicator of caste distinctions, as well as interpreting
his unsurpassed mystical vision for the modern seeker of truth. He traveled
throughout the world as a teacher, with a special flair for the meaning of the
Bhagavad Gita and the Bible, and continued to welcome seekers of truth to his
retreat at the Fernhill Gurukula, near Ooty, until his death in 1999.