Early Western devotees of Ramana Maharshi 1940 to 1950

Series: Westerners in India. The following is an expanded and more compressive article that is sourced from Ashrams of India Volume 2. In 1911, Frank Humphreys, a policeman stationed in India, became the first Westerner to discover Sri Ramana. He wrote articles about him which were first published in The International Psychic Gazette in 1913. Sri Ramana only became relatively …

Read more

Early Western devotees of Ramana Maharshi 1911 to 1939

Series: Westerners in India. The following is an expanded and more compressive article that is sourced from Ashrams of India Volume 2. In 1911, Frank Humphreys, a policeman stationed in India, became the first Westerner to discover Sri Ramana. He wrote articles about him which were first published in The International Psychic Gazette in 1913. Sri Ramana only became relatively …

Read more

Early Western devotees of Sathya Sai Baba from the 1970s to the 1980s

Series: Westerners in India. Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s (1926 – 2011) early Western devotees and visitors to the ashram from the 1930s onwards… From The Hagiographer and the Avatar (2021) by Antonio Rigopoulos “Foreign interest in the guru of Puttaparthi grew rapidly, especially during the period 1965-1975. Through their testimony and books, a few select Westerners, primarily from …

Read more

Early Western devotees of Sathya Sai Baba from the 1930s to the 1960s

Series: Westerners in India. Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s (1926 – 2011) early Western devotees and visitors to the ashram from the 1930s onwards… From The Hagiographer and the Avatar (2021) by Antonio Rigopoulos “Foreign interest in the guru of Puttaparthi grew rapidly, especially during the period 1965-1975. Through their testimony and books, a few select Westerners, primarily from …

Read more

Jesus Lived in India: Suzanne Olsson

Suzanne Marie Olsson is an American author best known for investigating the bloodline and alleged tomb of Jesus in India. She wrote ‘Jesus in Kashmir, The Lost Tomb’ , research of the RozaBal in Srinagar, Kashmir alleged to contain the remains of Jesus, a claim first made widely known in the book titled ‘Book of Balauhar and Budasaf, the Ikmaj-ud-Din’, authored by …

Read more

Somerset Maugham’s Swami

From the New York Times, A letter from India by David Shaftel. Books about Westerners seeking enlightenment in India seem to be everywhere these days, including in India itself. In Mumbai, Elizabeth Gilbert’s juggernaut of a memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love,” is prominently displayed in street corner bookstalls and hotel bookstores. Bootlegged copies are hawked to …

Read more

6 Important Lessons From the Ashram

By Roger Gabriel, April 20 2017. The word ashram comes from the Sanskrit word, Srama, which means “religious exertion.” However, in more recent times the term “ashram” is used to describe any facility used by a spiritual community. They can vary in size from a small hermitage housing just a few people to multiple building complexes …

Read more

Duchess Simonetta Colonna di Cesaro and Swami Chidananda

Simonetta travelled in India during the 1960s and 1970s, where she established a colony for the care of lepers as well as a craft training program. Duchess Simonetta Colonna di Cesaro was born in Rome in 1922. Descended from Russian aristocracy, the daughter of intellectual & politically inclined Giovanni Duke of Cesaro,’ she grew up in a sophisticated environment, and …

Read more

Website developed by Intrepid Sparks