The Gurus

Who are the two gurus in my book?

They are Prakashanand Saraswati and Kripalu Maharaj (aka Ram Tripathi).

They are two men from India who started an organization in the 1950s. Their origins are mostly a mystery, but I’ve dug up some relevant early-day’s background on them. I’ve also found that many of their claims in their biographies are bogus. My book exposes the true history of these two con men and their 60-year-long spiritual con game.

The first guru I met is Prakashanand Saraswati, an 82-year-old Hindu man who came to the U.S. for the first time in the early 1980s. He eventually collected a couple hundred followers, three with very deep pockets. In 1990, his organization, then called the International Society for Divine Love (ISDL), bought 200 acres of Texas Hill Country land for $800,000. With his followers’ money, he built an impressive temple that has attracted Hindus from around Texas and the U.S. That is, until he was arrested for 20 counts of indecency with children in 2008. He was convicted on all counts in March 2011 – but then ran away and is presumed to be hiding in Mexico with two of his accomplices, an Indian woman in her 50s named Vishwambhari and a Western woman in her 50s named Allison (aka Chittra). My book follows Prakash’s years as a fake guru, running his U.S. ashram, and his arrest, trial, conviction, and flight from justice.

The second guru is Prakash’s guru – Kripalu Maharaj, whose real name is Ram Tripathi. This man is an accused rapist both of children and a young adult woman in Trinidad. Since his arrest in Trinidad in May 2007, many people have come out to tell the truth about his past, which is filled with sex abuse of female devotees and their daughters. Prakash introduced Kripalu to his followers in 1999, after not talking about him for almost one decade. Kripalu is the leader of the pack — with a following of several thousand people in India. This man professes to be many, many things — including the incarnation of the highest form of God, Radha Krishna. He also claims to be a “jagadguru,” but no one else has ever agreed to his self-claimed title.

You will see in my book that if he’s a god, it’s a god from the underworld. His list of crimes include swindling followers of their life savings, having copious amounts of sex with his women devotees, and raping the female children of his followers.

These two are not good men — and should be avoided at all costs.