Jai Nityanand!
Bhagwan Nityananda was one of the greatest Indian saints of the last century.
Nityananda, whose name means "bliss of the eternal," settled permanently in 1930 in Ganeshpuri. Since the 1920s until his mahasamadhi in 1961, he was surrounded by an ever-increasing number of disciples and devotees.
Nityananda received people into a small room lit by a few bare electric light bulbs. He would sit motionless, eyes unblinking wide open. People from all over India and later on Westerners came to have his darshan. Darshan is a profound and mysterious blessing which gives to the visitor an experience of his own true Self. This contact with the great Self is more or less lasting depending on one's capacity to sustain this experience.
Bhagwan Nityananda was a perfect renunciant. He never explicitly identified himself with a particular spiritual practice or tradition. In fact, he rarely spoke at all. The thousands of people who came to see him did so because they experienced with him the miracle of their own blissful and pure consciousness. Such a holy person capable of giving this experience is a true Guru, a Sadguru. Even just by remembering Him wholeheartedly, one experiences one's own Self, blissful, eternal and all pervasive.
Nityananda's teaching is simple but very profound. Like the ancient sages of many traditions, he taught that erasing one's limited sense of self allows one to rest on our own true blissful and conscious Being, our true Self, our perfect Awareness, which lies beyond sensory experience.
To have a constant experience of this state is the purpose of sadhana, spiritual practice. Sadhana can be successful only with the guidance of a true Guru, a Sadguru.