About the author
Swami Amar Jyoti was born on May 6, 1928 in a small town in northwestern India near the Indus River. Much beloved by family and teachers, He shocked everyone by leaving home a few months before college graduation, saying, “I would like to read an open book of the world for my education.” At the age of nineteen, without money or any particular destination, He took the first train He found, eventually arriving in Calcutta. It was 1948 and thousands of refugees from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) were pouring into West Bengal each day. Living on a railway platform near the border of India and Bangladesh, He soon headed the entire volunteer corps there, working tirelessly twenty hours or more each day. After about ten months, the flood of refugees subsided and He returned to Calcutta. There a government officer who had witnessed His work at the border offered Him a high government position for rehabilitation of refugees, but He turned it down.
He lived in Calcutta and later on the outskirts of the city in a quiet ashram. It was during this time that visions began awakening in Him. He began to meditate, do yoga and attended puja (traditional worship) at a nearby temple. In a short while He “knew” His life work. As He described it, He picked up there from where He had left off in the last birth. Very soon He traveled to Himalaya where He lived in silence and meditation for ten years, one-pointed on the goal of Liberation. Many places of pilgrimage were visited during those years, walking on foot many miles each day. But a small cave at Gangotri, the temple village near the source of the Ganga River, was the place of His greatest spiritual disciplines, awakenings and, finally, Illumination.
In 1958 He took Vidyut Sannyas initiation (lit: “lightning”—a form of monasticism that is Self-initiated) at the holy site of Badrinath of Himalaya, taking the name Swami Amar Jyoti (Swami—Knower of the Self; Amar Jyoti—Immortal Light). Later He descended into the plains of India for His God-given mission to the world. The first ashram Gurudeva founded was Jyoti Ashram, under Ananda Niketan Trust, located in Pune, Maharashtra, India.
In 1961 Gurudeva accepted an offer by a devotee to visit the United States. Again He traveled unknown, though soon attracting many who had never seen such a holy man. Eventually He was persuaded by the sincerity of American disciples to establish Sacred Mountain Ashram in 1974 followed in 1975 by Desert Ashram, both ashrams a part of Truth Consciousness, a nonprofit organization that serves as a vehicle for Gurudeva’s work in the United States.
The spiritual awakening on earth that Gurudeva reveals is the glorious destiny of mankind, once freed from our limited identity of self. Lovingly and ceaselessly He continues to uplift and purify each of us for this awakening, for His way is the ancient relationship of the Guru to the disciple, the candle lit directly from the burning flame of Truth. Prabhushri constantly reminds us that we are at a breakthrough into a new age where religions will be transformed into direct awakening and communion with our Highest Source.
After four decades of continually traveling, giving Satsang and Retreats, establishing ashrams and guiding innumerable souls to higher consciousness, Gurudeva took Mahasamadhi—conscious release of the mortal body—on June 13, 2001 in Louisville, Colorado. According to His wishes His Asti Kalash (urn containing Sacred Remains) was brought back to Jyoti Ashram by disciples from India. Within a year a Samadhi Sthal in the form of a pure white marble pyramid was created for permanent consecration. Two years later, in May 2005, His white marble lifesize murti (sacred Image) was dedicated in this same Samadhi Sthal. Gurudeva’s “biography in His own words,” Immortal Light: The Blissful Life and Wisdom of Swami Amar Jyoti, was published in June 2004 and is available through the ashrams and at truthconsciousness.org.