The Goddess and the Guru

Nearly 40 years ago, a series of intense spiritual visions led one of India’s top nuclear physicists — until then a religious skeptic and man of science — to walk away from his post at the heart of the country’s missile-defense complex. Retreating into the remote jungles of eastern India, he discovered a centuries-old Tantric mother goddess shrine and embarked on a life-altering quest to revive and expand it — eventually attracting tens of thousands of followers from across India and around the globe.

The Goddess and the Guru chronicles the astonishing, inspiring and yet deeply human life of Dr. Nishtala Prahlada Sastry (1934–2015), later best known as Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswati, or simply “Guruji.” In the tradition of Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, The Goddess and the Guru is part biography, part spiritual guidebook — but geared toward a new generation of seekers.

Drawing upon reams of original documents and years of candid, in-depth interviews with Amritananda and his family, friends, colleagues, disciples and closest associates, as well as scholars of Indian religion, history and archaeology, The Goddess and the Guru offers unprecedented insight into the making of a modern-day spiritual master Grounded in the ancient Sri Vidya school of Tantric Hinduism — the world’s oldest surviving and most sophisticated school of goddess worship, with roots tapping back to prehistoric India — Amritananda’s work reveals powerful teachings that were, for millennia, passed only in secrecy, from guru to disciple.

This edition is a black-and-white, digitally printed edition of the book made affordable to readers outside the United States. If you are seeking the book with the full-color inserts and two-color text, please buy the U.S. edition ISBN (978-0-9979466-0-4).