Swami Prakashanand Saraswati was of the lineage of the great Vashnavite sage of West Bengal Shree

Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1485-1553). Followers of Vaishnavism, as well as other schools of Hinduism,
understand that a great Guru can teach disciples even after the guru is no longer in a physical body.
Communication between the visible and invisible is taken for granted and is an essential factor in many types of
Hinduism. Chaitanya is assumed to be in charge of his lineage even today. Swami Prakashanand Saraswati
described:
"Our tradition of raganuga bhakti is eternal. It comes from the Vedas. Around 3,202bc Krishn Himself
descended on the earth planet in His Divine form and Ved Vyas re-established the same knowledge through
the Bhagwatam which continues until today. Five hundred years ago, the descension of Radha in the form of
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu further revealed, rejuvenated and established this form of devotion which became the
guideline for the devotees of today. This tradition is called achintya bhedabhed vad."

Apart from a life oriented on either sense gratification or the practice of yogic and psychic disciplines
(considered to be merely the exploration of the inner world of maya), Swami Prakashanand Saraswati taught
the path of God's love and the development of an affinity toward, and personal feeling of love for Godhead
Personality. This devotional approach is explained in the vedas, upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and the multi-
volume Srimad Bhagavatam. It is centered upon the remembrance of Krishna and chanting his name while
devotionally offering one's emotional feeling to Him.

History

Swami Prakashanand Saraswati was born in a respectable brahmin family in 1929 in Ayodhya, India. His early
life was fraught with intense religious feelings, and as a youth he became a reclusive mystic so that he might
find God. He completed his studies and at age of 21, renounced the world and took the order of sanyas. In
1952, he was offered to become the Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath but he declined, because,
according to Swami Prakshanand Saraswati, he "was drawn towards the love of Radha Krishna".

He spent the next 20 years as a wandering ascetic in the Himalayas and in the forests of central India, ending
in Braj. Following the strict discipline of sannyas, he first 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 the deep woodlands
of Braj. In 1975, he emerged from his solitary life, and on the instructions of his Spiritual Master, Jagadguru
Shree Kripaluji Maharaj, he began his mission of teaching the path of raganuga bhakti. He founded the
International Society of Divine Love in India in 1975. The society was established in New Zealand in 1978.
Later on he traveled to America and founded an ashram for his devotees and disciples. By 1981 Swami
Prakashanand Saraswati, who had begun to be thought of as a distinguished sage and a saint, conceived of
creating a global mission. He established religious centers in India, England, Ireland, Singapore, New Zealand,
and Australia and has written 10 books on Hinduism.

Writings and Awards

Swami Prakashanand Saraswati has written over 9 books on various aspects of Hindu ethics, scriptures and
practices.

In 1999 he wrote a "monumental dissertation" on the history of Indian civilization and religion. The eight-
hundred-page tome is entitled The True History and the Religion of India. The book has received laudatory
comments from prominent Hindu academics and leaders in the United States and India. It was released by The
Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting Shri Ramesh Bais. The encyclopedia won an award at the
World Religious Parliament in New Delhi in 1999. In 2001, the book was published by Motilal Banarsidass. It
has subsequently been published by Macmillan Publishers.

A simplified and abridged version of the book for college students, entitled Amazing Facts about Hinduism, was
released at the Global Dharma Conference in 2003. He was awarded the title of "Dharm Chakravarti" in India
for his efforts in "reestablishing authentic Hinduism".

Research with Maxwell Cade

Swami Prakashanand Saraswati's state of "conscious ecstasy" was studied by Dr. Maxwell Cade in 1970s.

Dr. Cade, a leading physicist of London, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, had been doing psycho-
biological research during the 1970s on meditation and the altered states of the consciousness of the mind.

Maxwell Cade co-developed the "Mind Mirror", a portable EEG machine that could monitor
the alpha, beta, delta and theta rhythms from each brain hemisphere simultaneously. In the 1970's, a number
of eastern religious teachers expressed an interest in participating in Cade's research, and agreed to have their
brain rhythms measured. In 1976 when he was touring England, Swami Prakashanand Saraswati requested to
participate in Dr. Cade's research. Dr. Cade and his team found patterns they had not seen before. Cade
concluded that the Swamis' spiritual training conferred unusual powers of healing and perception.

Dr. Cade spent two weeks with Saraswati to measure Saraswati's brainwaves, and he always seemed to be in
this "Awakened Mind" pattern. Furthermore, he measured brainwave patterns, only previously measured in a
few rare individuals, that Cade characterizes as the "State beyond the Awakened Mind". Cade commented: ". .
. he has attained to that level of consciousness at which he is in the higher reaches of meditation and in
everyday waking consciousness at the same time". On one occasion, Cade says that Saraswati "produced the
most beautiful fifth-state pattern on the Mind Mirror for more than an hour while engaging in an intense debate
with Professor John Hasted, a noted physicist". Saraswati wanted to test out the effects of his new form of
meditation called the "Divine Love Meditation." He had Cade test subjects while listening to a tape consisting of
chanting and they measured the effects. According to Cade, both experienced and non-meditators were able to
produce a form of "Awakened Mind" pattern while listening to these tapes.

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, Cade writes
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." Cade's wife reportedly had an "unforgettable experience" from meeting Swami
Prakashanand Saraswati and participating in the study. Maxwell Cade characterized it as "an experience of
great impact". It was, he wrote later: ". . . a perfect opportunity to study his remarkable EEG patterns under
varying circumstances, to discuss the application of scientific methods to the study of meditation, and to learn
about Divine Love Meditation at the feet of this great Master".

Cade published his research in his "landmark book", "The Awakened Mind". Cade's research with Swami
Prakashanand Saraswati has also been discussed in several other publications including by Hill (1979), Inglis &
West (1983) and Treece (1989).