Mystics

15 Aug 1872

Sri Aurobindo

Poet, nationalist and philosopher who moved from revolutionary politics to a yoga of his own devising, spending the second half of his life in Pondicherry writing The Life Divine and Savitri. Educated entirely in England until the age of twenty-one.

Xno birth time

30 Dec 1879

Ramana Maharshi

Advaita teacher who, at sixteen, underwent a spontaneous confrontation with death that he described as dissolving the sense of being a separate person. He left for Arunachala and stayed the rest of his life, teaching mostly in silence and answering questions with the single instruction to ask who is asking.

Xno birth time

5 Jan 1893

Paramahansa Yogananda

Monk who moved to the United States in 1920 and spent three decades teaching Kriyā Yoga there. His Autobiography of a Yogi, published in 1946, remains the book through which most Western readers first meet Indian spiritual practice.

Xno birth time