« Back to subject directoryContemporary Spiritual Teachers

While this diminutive woman draped in a white sari might appear to belong to an era long past, she is the inspiration and spiritual guide to many of the world's leading business visionaries, such as Brian Bacon, Tex Gunning, Charles Handy, Peter Senge, David Cooperrider, Rita Cleary, and others.

The author of The Headless Way points to eleven exits from the prison of the unenlightened state.

This former professor of environmental studies takes high-powered business consultants on vision quests, leading them far into the wilderness in order to connect with the unity we share with each other and with the planet that sustains us. He has been a guide to Brian Arthur, Joseph Jaworski, Otto Scharmer, Peter Senge, and others.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi · Jan Chozen Bays Roshi · Sheikh Tosun Bayrak · Father Basil Pennington · David Frawley

Are we savvy and self-aware postmoderns too hip and too independent to need a guru? Can we re-vision the student-teacher relationship for the twenty-first century? WIE takes a close look at one new approach to this controversial topic.

How can the changeless realization of enlightenment help humanity cope with our world of accelerating change? Twelve contemporary spiritual teachers bring timeless wisdom to bear on this twenty-first-century dilemma.

Join Stacey, WIE's newest correspondent (and loosest cannon), to find out just what makes the neo-advaita world tick!

A freewheeling tour through the fascinating life and work of one of the twentieth century's greatest evolutionary pioneers.

“I have such passion about what could be done!” A fiery Brooklyn-born guru and AIDS activist speaks out on suffering, detachment, and what it means to truly care.

“Spirituality is the seed, and social action is the fruit born of it,” writes Indian spiritual master and social activist Vimala Thakar in a compelling essay exploring the true meaning of wholeness.

One of the founding fathers of American Buddhism speaks about why he never became a monk, and insists that transcendence of the world is strictly an inner matter.

In this captivating interview, one of the contemporary spiritual world's newest stars speaks about the inward stillness he's discovered and what it really means to “transcend the world.”

Known around the world as a radiant embodiment of unconditional love, Ammachi literally hugs everyone who comes to see her. But her disciples also know her to be a fierce and demanding guru. This captivating interview with one of India's greatest contemporary saints asks: What is compassion in the face of the ego?

In this groundbreaking interview—his first since being asked to step down as the director and spiritual teacher of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health five years ago—a world-renowned yogi speaks candidly with Andrew Cohen about yoga, purification and the dynamics of trust in the student/teacher relationship.

Has the traditional goal of ego death been replaced by the need to “accept ourselves as we are”? Four spiritual teachers comment on the popular new paradigm of self-acceptance on the path to liberation.

Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo—the first Western woman to be recognized as a reincarnated Tibetan tulku—speaks candidly about gender and enlightenment, her relationship with her students and being a female teacher in a male-dominated tradition.

“Who would you rather live with-an enlightened person who acted crazy or a crazy person who acted enlightened?” A former champion gymnast and author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior and Everyday Enlightenment insists that in real spirituality, actions speak louder than words.

“When I see my opponents fly through the air and fall at my feet without conscious effort on my part, I realize that I am a partaker of something greater than I can comprehend.” A poet, spiritual teacher and black-belt master of the Bushido way describes the astonishing effects of profound Self-realization on the human capacity for mental and physical mastery.

“The one who was here is gone—someone else has come.” WIE introduces a little-known Indian farmer whose extraordinary experiences transformed him into a fully realized sage.

A mindbending conversation with a former president of the Bank of India now considered by many to be the successor of the great Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

“Not every man can take on five women and talk about love, life, God, truth and death and keep everything in order. Only a tantric master can do that.”

David Bohm, renowned theoretical physicist and close associate of the great spiritual visionary J. Krishnamurti, is remembered by his friend, colleague, and biographer David Peat.

An inquiry into the relationship between love and discrimination.

Meeting the authors of The Guru Papers

Who—or what—will guide humanity safely to the promised golden age? An entertaining and scholarly treatise on visions of the apocalypse, the future salvation of the world, and the messianic dreams of the twenty-first century. Featuring interviews with self-proclaimed messiahs, millennial scholars, religious experts, Indian avatars, and more...