Shree Swamiji Resources

Introduction to Swami Prakashanand Saraswati

His Divinity Swami Prakashanand Saraswati, lovingly called Shree Swamiji by his devotees, was born in January, 1929, in a religious and respectable brahmin family of Ayodhya.

Keeping his devotional feelings deep in his heart, Swamiji continued his formal studies. At the age of twenty-one, in 1950, he entered the renounced order of sannyas. Seeing his esteem of renunciation and deep feeling of God-consciousness, in 1952, the Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Joshimath, one of the most renowned religious thrones of India, offered that Swamiji be the successor. He politely refused, saying that he had given his life for the service of Radha Rani so he could not live forever in Allahabad. His final desire was to go to Vrindaban.

Following the strict discipline of sannyas, he lived in the Himalayas (Joshimath, Badrinath, Rishikesh, Haridwar, etc.), forests of Amarkantak, near the Narbada River, Allahabad and Kashi for about four years. Later, he went to Vrindaban and then to Barsana where he spent over 18 years in loving devotion to Radha Krishn in the deep woodlands of Braj. The Divine Will of Shree Radha inspired him to come back into the world and help the souls looking for God realization. With Shree Radha's Grace, he started giving discourses on divine-love-consciousness. In 1971 he decided to spread the message of Radha Rani in an organized way. He founded the International Society of Divine Love in 1975 in India. Since then Swamiji has traveled around the world many times. In 1978 he formed the Society in New Zealand and in 1981 in the US.

Swamiji's state of "conscious ecstasy" is quite evident. In 1976 when he was touring England, a leading physicist of London, C. Maxwell Cade, writer of The Awakened Mind, witnessed the ecstatic state of Swamiji in the first meeting. Dr. Cade was doing psycho-biological research for the past eight years on meditation and the altered states of the consciousness of the mind. He writes, "Those who have close contact with His Divinity know that he remains continually in his Divine-Love transcendence. This corresponds to what Carl Jung termed 'the Transcendent Function.'" Further, he expresses his amazement and says that he "had not seen anyone who could equal Swamiji's feat of touching a number of subjects on the head and immediately raising their pattern of consciousness by two levels, from the ordinary waking state into the advanced fifth state. In at least one of these subjects, the higher state persisted for three days and was an unforgettable experience."

Swamiji is humble and forgiving. Although he teaches devotion to Radha Krishn, he has regard for all the religions and all the saints who have shown the true path to God.

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