Who Master Dhyan Vimal is
He was born in Malaysia in 1964 and grew up in Mersing, on the east coast of Johor. He still describes himself the way he began.
“I am just this, I am a boy from a fishing village. That is all I am. But something happened to this boy from the fishing village, a transformation happened.”
Living in Transformation
At about eight he came home upset because boys at school were bullying him. His father, still working, asked what he had been doing about it.
“And for the first time it struck me that there was something I could do about it.”
Science of Transformation
At about fifteen, a Persian woman who had moved in next door told him the best part of him was his skin color. In his family, darker skin had been the less valued.
“Up to that point that view of another of me was the only view I had over me.”
Living in Transformation
He says the first touch of what he calls the more came early, and that it came fully after years of sitting.
“At six I had that touch of that more, something beyond, something nameless.”
Science of Transformation
“When for the first time Master touched it; all my life, there were glimpses but when I really encountered it, it felt like ‘ten thousand suns’, like everything exploded.”
Science of Transformation
He began teaching meditation in Kuala Lumpur in the early 1990s. His first workbook dates from 1993. His first book, To the Mind That Is Silent, was launched in Chennai in 2003. He has since taught retreats and courses in Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Canada, the United States, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, and leads yaatras, journeys to the temples and Siddhar shrines of Tamil Nadu. In 2016 he created the Dhyan Vimal Institute for Higher Learning, which now carries his courses. His humanitarian work runs through Friends to Mankind, based in Canada. He also paints, photographs, and made a film, Temuan Takdir (2016).
Andrew Fayad, who writes this site, studies with him. More on that.
What he keeps coming back to
These are threads that run through his courses, each in his own sentences. They are a way in, not a summary of his work.
Present, or absent
He draws a line between being present in our own lives and being absent from them. In his account, most of us were raised to be what others need, and that is where the absence starts.
“Most of the meaninglessness of life actually happens because you are absent. When you are present, life is full of meaning.”
Science of Transformation
“What we know we are is nothing but what we are to fit into our family. What we are is that which fits into our society. What we are is that which fits into another.”
Science of Transformation
More than the label
He calls this being unreduced. A label, or a fact about us, can be true and still not be all of us.
“I can be what they say I am, but I acknowledge that’s not all I am, I am something more. The more doesn’t make me greater than you, it just does not make me the less that they have made me.”
Science of Transformation
“Yes, that happened to me, but it didn’t make me, I am the one who experienced it.”
Science of Transformation
I am, you are
People in his courses put their hands together to one another. He says why.
“I put my hands together and acknowledge that you are, because in acknowledging you are, I acknowledge I am; then I am and you are too. For the first time, the state of ‘I am’ exists.”
Science of Transformation
Order first, and meditation follows
He rarely calls the practice meditation. Order, for him, is the A-B-C: I am A to myself, the other is B, and C is the space between us.
“Order is I am here, the other is, that is the A-B-C.”
Science of Transformation
“Meditation cannot be done, it is a by-product of when one is in order.”
Science of Transformation
“I don’t want to call this a meditation because you have much mind about what meditation is. We call it collecting ourselves.”
Science of Transformation
Self-remembrance
Simirthi is his word for it. He sets it out in eighteen stages, sat with about twenty minutes at a time, and calls it the foundation the rest is built on.
“The word Simirthi simply means self-remembrance. Self-remembrance simply indicates I am present, I am paying attention to me, I am here now.”
Simirthi
“We were raised to pay attention to how people look at us, very rarely to how we look at ourself.”
Simirthi
“It is almost like you go to the gym and you work out, it has no religion, no idea.”
Simirthi
Transformation, not change
Change, in his use of the words, rearranges what is there. Transformation is what is there becoming something more.
“Transformation, first must be grasped - it is not alteration or modification, it is almost from what is to what can be. Like if you plant a seed, the right word to use is, it transforms to a tree.”
Living in Transformation
“Change is a lie, change is rooted in the desire to escape the demand of transformation.”
Living in Transformation
Love that doesn’t enslave
“If love enslaves you, it is not love, it is just hate painted pink.”
Science of Transformation
“The words - you should love yourself, never resonated with me. I don’t know how to love myself, but I can hold myself with great care.”
Living in Transformation
Celebration before, not after
We usually celebrate once something has happened. He turns that round.
“It is always a victory march, not a march to victory.”
Science of Transformation
“The celebration is not after, the celebration is before.”
Science of Transformation
Sannyas without leaving the world
In the old tradition, sannyas meant leaving the world behind. He keeps the word and changes what it asks.
“The word renunciation simply means - I give up everything that demands me to be absent for I need to be present.”
Science of Transformation
“Now we forge a new way - I will not give me up, but I’ll not drop out of the world either.”
Science of Transformation
“In my view, at least an hour a day, you must have a moment of sannyas.”
Science of Transformation
Enlightenment through living
“For the longest time the teaching of enlightenment has been a tool to escape living, and I am here to make a correction to that. Only through living, enlightenment can be touched, because in living, I birth me.”
Science of Transformation
“You see I am not initiating you into enlightenment, I’m initiating you into living absolutely without lack, with absolute fulfilment.”
Science of Transformation
Truth can’t be borrowed
He asks people not to take his word for it, his own included.
“Remember this, the greatest danger is people just take someone’s word for it. Truth cannot be borrowed.”
Science of Transformation
“You see, following blindly will not do, simply listening even to me will not do unless you take what I say and study it for yourself and explore it, only then it becomes something that is yours.”
Living in Transformation
Whose want is it?
He doesn’t ask people to drop their wants. He asks where they came from.
“A want is a sacred thing.”
Living in Transformation
“Again, I am not saying right or wrong. Is your want yours?”
Living in Transformation
His masters
He holds the masters on this site as his own: Osho and J. Krishnamurti, and with them Rumi, Lao Tzu, Gurdjieff and Ramana Maharshi. He quotes them often, along with the Buddha and the Tamil Siddhars. In his telling, each describes the same state in their own way.
“Krishnamurti will say, simply observing the observer; I am. Osho would say, being a witness. Gurdjieff would say, birthing the true state of ‘I am’. Ramana would say, the real ‘I’, the real self. Everyone has a way of describing this, everyone has a way of arriving here.”
Simirthi
He remembers the joined hands from Osho.
“One of the most beautiful gestures is when two hands are put together and people look at each other. I used to see Osho do that to all the disciples.”
Science of Transformation
He recites the Tamil Siddhar Kudambai in Tamil and gives the meaning in English. Of the verse about the tortoise:
“He says, like the tortoise, if you withdraw all the five senses, and if you dwell as a mute, you are enlightened, you are enlightened.”
Science of Transformation
Where the research meets his observation
Some of what he describes is also studied in psychology. None of that research was about his work, and we found no trial of his methods. Where the two meet, we say how strong the research is.
“Now feel the sensation in the body, feel the impact of the other, feel how quickly with one glance, one approval, one disapproval you will abort you.”
Science of Transformation
In a 2012 field study, a stranger walked past people on a university campus and looked at them as though they were air: eyes passing over, no contact. Asked a moment later, those people said they felt more disconnected than people the stranger had looked at directly. It was a short report with a single question, but it sits inside a large body of research on being ignored and left out, which the Psychology Library rates as strong.
He also speaks of the work of the psychiatrist Dr. Riyadh Al-Baldawi on the childhood schema, the pattern a childhood leaves in an adult, and of the move from that pattern to “I am”.
“The transition is what a lot of the doctors and psychiatrists like Dr. Baldawi work on.”
Science of Transformation
Schema therapy, developed by Jeffrey Young, maps those patterns and how adults cope with them. The Psychology Library rates the research on early maladaptive schemas as moderate. Dr. Al-Baldawi’s book with Master Dhyan Vimal’s commentary is on our Recommended reading page.
In the Psychology Library: Ostracism, Early maladaptive schemas, Self-concept clarity
Where to study his work
His courses are taught through the Dhyan Vimal Institute for Higher Learning, created in 2016 as a held space for the learning that transformation and awakening ask. It has free video, audio and reading libraries, self-study courses such as the 90-Day Challenge and the Four Sadhanas, and guided courses including the Creation Program, the 6 Rites, the DV Nirvan Method and Monk Training.
His own site, dhyanvimal.com, shows his life in photographs and lists his books. Some of them are also on our Recommended reading page. The DV Ashram is his community, and Friends to Mankind his humanitarian work.
How we quote him
His talks are recorded, and his Institute publishes transcripts of his courses. We quote from Science of Transformation (also taught as the Month of Celebration), Simirthi, and Living in Transformation. Every line on this page is a whole sentence, matched to the transcript word for word, with the course named. The publisher notes that the written text may differ slightly from the video, since small changes were made for reading. Sessions that exist only as machine transcription are left out.
Because his words are recorded and published by his own Institute, this page gives his words as they stand, without a section on lines shared under his name.
A question to carry
Where was I absent today?
Questions
Who is Master Dhyan Vimal?
A living master with over 5,000 talks and courses on the study of human growth and transformation. His courses are taught through the Dhyan Vimal Institute for Higher Learning, and he holds Osho, J. Krishnamurti and the other masters on this site as his own.
What is Simirthi?
His word for self-remembrance: being present, paying attention to oneself, here now. He sets it out in eighteen stages, the first six as the foundation, each sat with for about twenty minutes.
What is the Dhyan Vimal Institute for Higher Learning?
The Institute that carries his courses, created in 2016. It offers free video, audio and reading libraries, self-study courses and guided courses, at dhyanvimalinstitute.com.
What does Master Dhyan Vimal mean by “the more”?
That what we are now, and what others say we are, is not all we can be. He separates it from ego: “When I say be more, I am not talking about an ego, I am saying being unreduced.”
Is his work religious?
He says it is not. He compares the practice to working out at a gym, and in Science of Transformation says: “I am speaking to you not on a spiritual terms, I am speaking to you on a living reality term.”
Who are Master Dhyan Vimal’s masters?
He holds the masters on this site as his own: Osho and J. Krishnamurti, and with them Rumi, Lao Tzu, Gurdjieff and Ramana Maharshi. He also quotes the Buddha and the Tamil Siddhars, among them Kudambai.
Sources. Master Dhyan Vimal, Science of Transformation, course transcript (Zazen Design & Production, 2026).
Master Dhyan Vimal, Simirthi, course transcript (Zazen Design & Production, 2026).
Master Dhyan Vimal, Living in Transformation, Certification Course, course transcripts (Zazen Design & Production, 2026).
Master Dhyan Vimal’s site: The Scholar, The Guru, The Humanitarian, The Modern Man, Books.
Dhyan Vimal Institute for Higher Learning. Friends to Mankind. DV Ashram.
Wesselmann, Cardoso, Slater and Williams (2012), “To be looked at as though air: civil attention matters”, Psychological Science 23, 166 to 168. Paper.
Young, Klosko and Weishaar (2003), Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide (Guilford Press).
This page is our reading of the sources above. It will change when they, or our readers, show us something we missed.