Sathya Sai Baba was an Indian guru and philanthropist. At the age of fourteen, he claimed that he was the reincarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba, and left his home to accept his devotees.
Sri Mātā Amritānandamayī, often known as Amma ("Mother"), is an Indian Hindu spiritual leader, guru and humanitarian, who is revered as 'the hugging saint' by her followers. She is the chancellor of multi-campus research university Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati was a renunciate monk of the Hindu Saraswati order of sannyasa. He was also known as Pujya Swamiji and was a traditional teacher of Advaita Vedanta. He was the founder of the Arsha Vidya Gurukulams in Pennsylvania, USA; Rishikesh, Uttarakhand and Coimbatore Tamil Nadu, India. He was also the spiritual Guru of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan,, for his service to the nation in the field of spiritualism in 2016.
Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati, born Balakrishna Menon; 8 May 1916 – 3 August 1993, was a Hindu spiritual leader and a teacher. In 1951, he founded Chinmaya Mission, a worldwide nonprofit organisation, in order to spread the knowledge of Advaita Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and other ancient Hindu scriptures. Through the Mission, Chinmayananda spearheaded a global Hindu spiritual and cultural renaissance that popularised these spiritual texts and values, teaching them in English all across India and abroad.
An ashram is a spiritual hermitage or a monastery in Indian religions.
Siddha Yoga is a spiritual path founded by Swami Muktananda (1908–1982). According to its literature, the Siddha Yoga tradition is "based mainly on eastern philosophies" and "draws many of its teachings from the Indian yogic texts of Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism, the Bhagavad Gita and the poet-saints." The present head of Siddha Yoga is Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.
Sivananda Saraswati was a yoga guru, a Hindu spiritual teacher, and a proponent of Vedanta. Sivananda was born in Pattamadai, in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, and was named Kuppuswami. He studied medicine and served in British Malaya as a physician for several years before taking up monasticism.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, born Malti Shetty on 24 June 1955, is the guru or spiritual head of the Siddha Yoga path, with ashrams in India at Ganeshpuri and the Western world, with the headquarters of the SYDA foundation in Fallsburg, New York.
The Aghori are a monastic order of ascetic Shaivite sadhus based in Uttar Pradesh, India. They are the only surviving sect derived from the Kāpālika tradition, a Tantric, non-Puranic form of Shaivism which originated in Medieval India between the 7th and 8th century CE. Similarly to their predecessors, Aghoris usually engage in post-mortem rituals, often dwell in charnel grounds, smear cremation ashes on their bodies, and use bones from human corpses for crafting kapāla and jewellery. They also practice post-mortem cannibalism, eating flesh from foraged human corpses, including those taken from cremation ghats.
Skanda Vale is a non-denominational spiritual centre and monastery located in Carmarthenshire, Wales, near the village of Llanpumsaint. Founded in 1973 by Guru Sri Subramanium, the monastery is inhabited and run by the Community of the Many Names of God, which also runs Somaskanda Ashram in Switzerland. Skanda Vale promotes a practical spirituality centred on devotion and selfless service.
Sadhguru is the founder and head of the Isha Foundation, based in Coimbatore, India. The foundation, established in 1992, operates an ashram and yoga centre that carries out educational and spiritual activities. Sadhguru has been teaching yoga since 1982. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy and Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny, and a frequent speaker at international forums.
Karunakara Guru, also known as Navajyothi Sree Karunakara Guru, was an Indian Guru, and the founder of Santhigiri Ashram in Pothencode, Kerala, India.
Abhishiktananda, born Henri Le Saux, was a French-born Indian monk. He moved to India in 1948 in search of a more radical form of spiritual life, adopted sannyasa in accordance with Indian tradition and became one of the pioneers of Hindu-Christian dialogue. Multiple contacts with prominent saints such as Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Gnanananda Giri and Sri H.W.L. Poonja, led him to profound advaitic experience as well as to final recognition of the truth of advaita during the last years of his life.
Guru is a 1997 Indian Malayalam-language fantasy drama film directed by Rajiv Anchal and written by C. G. Rajendra Babu from a story by Rajeev. Mohanlal plays the lead role, while Suresh Gopi, Madhupal, Sithara, Kaveri, Sreelakshmi, Nedumudi Venu and Sreenivasan appears in supporting roles, and Nassar in a cameo appearance.
Parnasala is a monument in the shape of a full bloomed lotus in white marble, located at Santhigiri Ashram, 21 km from Kerala's capital Thiruvananthapuram. The monument is at the final resting place of Navajyothisree Karunakara Guru (1927–99), the founder of Santhigiri Ashram.
Swami Nigamananda Paramahansa was an Indian yogi, guru and mystic in Eastern India. He is associated with the Shakta tradition and a spiritual master of vedanta, tantra, yoga and prema or bhakti. His followers referred him as Thakura.
Prakashanand Saraswati or Swamiji is a convicted child molester and Hindu monk from Ayodhya, India. Previously, he founded the Hindu new religious movement "International Society of Divine Love" and Radha Madhav Dham temple in the United States. In 2011, a jury found Swami Prakashanand Saraswati guilty on 20 counts of indecency with a child. He is still a fugitive and appeared on the Fox TV show America's Most Wanted.
Aghor Yoga is a spiritual tradition that originated in Northern India around the 11th Century C.E. The word Aghor literally means "that which is not difficult or terrible"; according to its adherents, Aghor is a simple and natural state of consciousness, in which there is no experience of fear, hatred, disgust or discrimination. Accordingly, believers contend that any time that humans experience a state of discrimination, we limit our wholeness and fall prey to disruptive emotions such as anger, fear, jealousy, greed, and lust. The practices of Aghor Yoga today reflect reforms made in the 1960s, shifting the focus of Aghor to seeking a balanced life of selfless service and personal practice. Baba Bhagwan Ramji encouraged the practitioners of Aghor to follow the vamachara by embracing socially stigmatized and neglected people, such as street children and people with leprosy and other "untouchable" diseases. Today, the followers of Aghoreshwar Bhagwan Ramji have established a large network of schools, orphanages, medical clinics, or other social service projects.
Satsang is a philanthropic organization founded by Sree Sree Thakur Anukulchandra. It is one of the major spiritual and cultural movements in India started in the early 20th century. Satsang was originally registered in Pabna in 1925 as a public charitable institution. However, after the Independence and partition of India, it was again registered in 1951 in the Indian Union under the Societies Registration act of 1860.
Swami Gururethnam also known as Swami Gururethnam Jnana Thapaswi is an Indian spiritual leader and General Secretary of Thiruvananthapuram Shantigiri Ashram founded by Karunakara Guru.
