Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru once wrote, "It is extraordinary that a person who spent 14 years of his life cut off from India became a brilliant champion of Indian nationalism based on the philosophic and spiritual background of Indian thought." And this is exactly what it is. It was Aurobindo who influenced Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose to take the initiative of dedicating himself to the Indian National Movement full-time. Bose writes "The illustrious example of Aurobindo looms large bef...

"Bend it like Baba Ramdev", "The Breathing Baba", "The Man who Revolves his Stomach," "The Indian Yogi who Winks, "The Funny Indian Yogi" … are just a bunch of the many names he has been tagged with. We have had yoga masters and yoga maestros for centuries. Baba Ramdev will forever be known as the man who showed solutions, do-able solutions, to chronic ailments of people in the bedrooms of their own homes. "Till the last breath, a man must never give up. With willpower and pureness, he sho...

That morning, like every other day, he woke up, had his breakfast, got dressed up for work and left. But that evening, instead of returning home, he boarded a train to take him away from all his daily certainties—the people he loved and from the wealth he owned. Leaving behind a million-dollar business, his favourite Porsche, this chess champion, and sought-after motivational speaker, with no warning and no intimation to his family, simply walked away from it all at the age of 21. Did he k...

"Ultimately, life is neither suffering nor bliss, it is what you make out of it." Sadhguru sets us free with this empowering thought. He says all human experiences are generated from within and if we learn to live consciously we can define and mould our lives towards happiness. And he has been teaching exactly that, conscious living to the world with Yoga, as a contemporary science. Therefore his teachings of human wellbeing comes with a dash of modern scientific explanation in a very insi...

"...you realise that all along there was something tremendous within you, and you did not know it." Perhaps one of the ways to describe Paramahansa Yogananda is that he was an Indian monk who gifted Kriya Yoga to the world. There are other great things about him: that he was among the first monks to settle in the US, that he was among the first yogis who were sent by his guru Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, to spread the teaching of yoga to the west, that he strove hard to balance between Wester...

"The new man will be a mystic, a poet, a scientist, all together. He will not look at life through old rotten divisions. He will be a mystic, because he will feel the presence of god. He will be a poet, because he will celebrate the presence of god. And he will be a scientist, because he will search into this presence through scientific methodology. When a man is all these three together, the man is whole." Osho, or Bhagwan has been described by the Sunday Times in London as one of the "10...

"Life on this planet, every single living being is leading towards happiness. Happiness for themselves, for their loved ones and for everything around them. But the most interesting thing about happiness is when a member of your family is unhappy. If a family member is unhappy the neighbourhood is unhappy. If the neighbourhood is unhappy, the city, the state, the country is unhappy and the chain goes on. So, how is it possible for an individual to be happy?" The person saying these simple ...

"The kingdom of heaven is like electricity. You don't see it. It is within you." Veda Vyasa, Valmiki, Patanjali, and Ramana had one thing in common. Other than the fact that they were learned men from India, the other thing that bound them all was the word 'Maharishi'. Maharishi, a title bestowed upon by some of the greatest sages from ancient India, was also given to one more learned but more contemporary of Indian sages. It was a tiny little man who took the west by storm and impressed t...

"Truth is a pathless land. Truth, being limitless cannot be organised, nor should any organisation be formed to lead people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief. I have now decided to disband - The Order of the Star, as I happen to be its head. You can form other organisations and expect someone else. With that, I am not concerned, nor with creating new cages, new decorations for those cages. My only concern is...

"More important than what is behind you and what is ahead of you is what is In you. Seek it. Centered in it, act and live." Swami Chinmayananda reintroduced the world to Adi Shankaracharya's work, an Indian philosopher born in 700 AD who strengthened the roots of Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism. In his 42 years of work in this space, Swami Chinmayananda left a permanent mark in the hearts of people and his service inspired millions of people all over the world.