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Anandamayi Ma

Anandamoyi Ma (sometimes spelt Anandamoyi Ma), is one of the greatest female saints, or yoginis - perhaps the greatest - that ever lived. She travelled all over India, and huge crowds travelled to see this woman in mystic commune with God.  read more »

Autobiography of a Yogi

Autobiography of a Yogi was written in 1946 by Paramhansa Yogananda, an Indian spiritual teacher who had by then been teaching in the West for over twenty years. To this day it has remained one of the foremost accounts of Indian spirituality available to Westerners, and has inspired millions of people in their quest for the higher goals of life.  read more »

How the Buddha obtained enlightenment

The person that is revered by millions of people today as the Buddha, the Enlightened One, actually started life as a young prince named Siddartha around 450 BC.  read more »

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda is most remembered for his passionate plea for tolerance and understanding at the inaugural World Parliament of Religions that was held in Chicago in 1893; that speech and his subsequent lecture tours in America and England were a landmark event in the introduction of Eastern philosophy to the citizens of the West.

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The life of Ramana Maharshi

Sri Ramana Maharshi was known as the sage of Arunachala, after the great hill where he spent the vast majority of his time on earth. At the age of 17 he was struck with the sudden sense that he was going to die - this sparked off a remarkable experience where he turned within to ask what it is that actually dies, and found that it is only the body that dies, but there is something there that cannot be touched by death. He became more and more indifferent to the outside world after this experience, and shortly after, he left his parents home and set off on a journey that would eventually lead him to Arunachala.  read more »

Finding your meditation teacher

In today's consumer-oriented society, we all spend enormous amounts of time choosing between different things to buy, comparing one thing to another before making the final purchase. But it rarely - if ever - happens that one actually 'chooses' his spiritual teacher in this way. What actually happens is that people find that their inner being is drawn to a particular teacher or his philosophy, and they somehow sense that this is the teacher for them, without the need to compare against any other teachers out there.  read more »

Spiritual Masters and their students: examples from the past 150 years.

Before the late 19th century, accounts of the Master-disciple relationship were largely second-hand oral accounts which were later written down. In the last fifty years we are lucky that many first-hand accounts of such a relationship were written down and recorded for posterity; they communicate a sense of immediacy that makes the reader feel that he or she himself is experiencing those events at first hand.  read more »

Paramhansa Yogananda - a short biography

Paramhansa Yogananda was the second great teacher after Swami Vivekananda to bring the light of Indian spirituality to the West. In addition, his Autobiography of a Yogi is one of the most widely-read accounts of Eastern philosophy and wisdom and has inspired countless people to the possibility of the inner life.  read more »

Sri Ramakrishna

Often there is disagreement on whether a spiritual Master has really attained the sublime heights his disciples claim him to have, especially of the recent teachers who have been on earth in the last two hundred years or so. However, the name of Sri Ramakrishna is one that evokes universal esteem as one of the greatest spiritual Masters India has ever produced.

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How a meditation teacher shares his inner wealth

As the West became more and more in contact with the philosophy and culture of the East, there has developed a certain fascination with Eastern meditation masters, and today they are often portrayed on films and tv spouting timely words of wisdom at opportune times. However, these portrayals sometimes obscure the true nature and purpose of a meditation teacher, which is to show the student the vast realm of possibility that exists beyond the confines of the daily working-eating-sleeping grind.  read more »