Priya Nath ultimately found an eye surgeon in Delhi in whom he thought he could repose his confidence. The man was a certain Dr. Grover, a double FRCS from England. Priya Nath had spoken several times to him on the phone and he had been able to convince Priya Nath that he would perform as good an eye operation upon Shri Nathji as if it were done in London itself. The man would spend hours talking to Priya Nath on the phone seeking to convince him.
Shri Nathji had often said about Priya Nath:
“Priyaji, main to seedhaa thaa hee magar aap to mujh se bhee zyaadaa seedhe hain! Har ek par vishvaas kar lete hain!
“Priyaji I was innocent, but you are even more innocent than me. You trust everyone!”
The eye surgeon said he would perform the operation in Shri Nathji’s house. And so Priya Nath cleaned the house as best as he could, despite the fact that it was overburdened with books and papers that gave rise to cockroaches and mice; and water from the roof of Shri Nathji’s bedroom leaked onto the wall, leaving a patch there. Priya Nath tried to give the house as much of a hospital atmosphere as he could.
On November 15, 1975, the doctor arrived with his team and prepared Shri Nathji for the operation. Priya Nath remained inside the room. The man asked Shri Nathji whether he would like a sedative injection and Shri Nathji refused. He applied an anaesthetic injection to the eyeball. It was apparent that the injection was painful. Later Shri Nathji was to tell Priya Nath that the anaesthetic had not worked and that he had felt the pain of the eye operation throughout!
As Shri Nathji would frequently quote his verse on the cataract within the heart of man:
Chashme baatin men diyaa nashtar nigaahe tez kaa
Kat gayaa vo range maihsoosaat kufr angez kaa
The sharp knife of His sight fell upon the eyes within,
And cut out the multi-coloured world of atheism!
Perhaps, Shri Nathji was removing the cataract of the eyes of agnosticism. During the time he was being operated upon, the words: I AM SHIVA! I AM SHANKAR! had continued to echo within him.
As the doctor was stitching the eye after the operation, he coughed violently a number of times. Priya Nath was afraid the doctor’s coughing may have disturbed his stitching, but he vehemently denied it.
The doctor showed the cataract lens he had removed from Shri Nathji’s left eye to Priya Nath. The cataract in Shri Nathji’s eye was of a strange orange colour. The doctor called it a degenerate lens, a most peculiar one in medical science. It was the colour of Shri Nathji’s turban. Even as light flooded into Shri Nathji’s eye, a greater awakening seemed to dawn upon the country.
The doctor said to Shri Nathji: Maharaj, you have been an ideal patient!
Shri Nathji complained to Priya Nath of severe pain in the eye all night. When the doctor came the next day, he found the eye red and swollen. However, he set it aside as a normal reaction. But the redness and swelling persisted. Priya Nath noticed that the brown iris of the eye appeared to be sticking to one side of the cornea of the eye. He pointed this out to the doctor who said it was normal, and would become all right by itself. Shri Nathji could see only very hazily and was barely able to make out the figures in the room, or even count his fingers. The doctor gave him a number nine for the spectacles, but the spectacles did not fit nor give him much vision.