Buddhist/Hindu
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Deepak Chopra (c. 1989)
Deepak Chopra is an author, public speaker, and alternative medicine advocate. Over the course of several decades, he has moved from a career in conventional medicine to a prominent role in the global wellness industry. His books, public appearances, and centers for health and well-being have made him one of the most widely recognized figures Continue reading
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Cao Dai (1926)
Cao Dai is a Vietnamese monotheistic and syncretic religion that officially began in Southern Vietnam in 1926. It is formally known as the “Great Way of the Third Time of Redemption,” a name that reflects its mission of unifying all spiritual paths into a single faith. Its theology, called “The Third Great Universal Religious Amnesty,” Continue reading
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Buddhafield (c. 1980)
Jaime Gomez, later known by a variety of names including Michel, Andreas, The Teacher, and Reyji, was born in Venezuela to a wealthy rancher. He eventually moved to the United States hoping to become an actor and professional dancer. He secured a non-speaking role in the 1968 film “Rosemary’s Baby” and performed with the Oakland Continue reading
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Brahma Kumaris (1936)
The Brahma Kumaris — the “Daughters of Brahma” — is a spiritual movement that began in the 1930s in Hyderabad, a section of British India that is now part of Pakistan. Its founder, Lekhraj Khubchand Kirpalani, also known as Om Baba, was a wealthy jeweler who, in 1935, gave up his business after claiming to Continue reading
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Bikram Yoga (c. 1971)
Bikram Yoga is a system of hot yoga introduced by Bikram Choudhury in the United States in the early 1970s. Classes typically take place in a yoga studio with the temperature set to 105° F (41° C) with a humidity of 40%, which is said to emulate the climate of India. The rooms are usually Continue reading
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Bhakti Marga (2005)
Mahadeosingh Komalram was born into a Hindu Brahmin family in Mauritius in 1978. He later claimed to have experienced an apparition of a holy man who he identified as his personal guru at the age of five. At 14, he is said to have entered a state of samadhi, a state of profound meditative union Continue reading
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Aumism (1969)
Gilbert Bourdin was born in Martinique in 1923 and spent his early career in the French Civil Service. His early life is otherwise mostly obscure. When he was 33, he moved to France and studied law, economics, and politics. He also developed an interest in esoteric studies and got involved with several Rosicrucian and Martinist Continue reading
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Aum Shinrikyo/Aleph (1984)
Aum Shinrikyo, renamed “Aleph” in 2000, is best known for orchestrating the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, which resulted in 13 deaths and thousands of injuries. The sect’s theology is an amalgam of Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu elements with millenarian overtones and the expectation of an impending apocalypse. Chizuo Matsumoto Continue reading
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Assembly of Man (1928)
Franklin Wolff was raised as a Methodist in California but abandoned Christianity in his youth as he began to explore philosophy. He studied mathematics at Stanford and Harvard, and briefly taught at Harvard before giving up on academia to focus on his own philosophical explorations. In 1920, he married Sarah Merrell Briggs and they combined Continue reading
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Asaram (c. 1970)
Asumal Thaumal Harpalani was born in British India in 1941 in a town that was located in Pakistan after the partition of 1947. After partition, his family migrated to Ahmedabad, India, where his father opened a coal and wood business. Harpalani dropped out of school in third grade and briefly managed the family business after Continue reading
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Arya Samaj (1875)
The Arya Samaj is a Hindu modernization and reform movement founded in 1875 by Dayananda Saraswati, and it was the first significant Hindu organization to actively seek converts to Hinduism. Saraswati, born Mool Shankar Tiwari, was born in 1824 into a Brahmin family. At age eight, he was initiated into religious study in the Saivite Continue reading
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Art of Living Foundation (1981)
Ravi Shankar was born in Tamil Nadu, India, in 1956 and became a student of Hindu Vedic philosophy at a young age. After completing college, he became involved with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation movement, first travelling with the Maharishi and then setting out on his own to establish TM training centers. In 1981, after Continue reading
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Ancient Teachings of the Masters (1983)
After stints in Scientology, the Self-Revelation Church of Absolute Monism, and several other groups, Paul Twitchell founded Eckankar in 1965. He claimed to be the 971st in the line of ECK Masters, the spiritual leader of Eckankar. Twitchell adapted many Sanskrit words into English in his teachings, and it is believed that “Eckankar” is a Continue reading
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Ānanda Mārga (1955)
Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar was born in West Bengal in 1921 and studied at the University of Calcutta. He completed basic science studied but was forced to leave college to support his family after his father died, and worked as an accountant for the Indian railways system until the mid-1950s. But his chief interest was in Continue reading
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Ananda Church of Self-Realization (1968)
James Donald Walters was born in Romania to American parents in 1926. When he was in college, he read Autobiography of a Yogi by the Hindu monk Paramahansa Yogananda, which had recently been published. Walters made his way to the headquarters of Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) in California and took vows of discipleship. Walters moved Continue reading
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Agni Yoga (1920)
Agni Yoga is a spiritual system with roots in Hinduism and Theosophy that was created by Nicholas and Helena Roerich in the early 20th century and that continues to have practitioners today. Though Nicholas Roerich was the public face of Agni Yoga, many of its ideas came primarily from Helena, who influenced her husband’s spiritual Continue reading
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Adidam (1972)
Franklin Albert Jones was born into a middle-class household in Queens, New York, in 1939. In his youth, he considered becoming a minister in the Lutheran church in which he was raised, and studied philosophy at Columbia University. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree, he did graduate work in English literature at Stanford, studying under novelist Continue reading
Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religious Movements 