Annie Besant, Contribution, Theosophical Society, Home Rule Movement, Legacy

Five people (Madame Blavatsky, Annie Besant, C. W. Leadbeater, H. Olcott, and A. P. Sinnett) wrote most of what we know to date of the etheric web, auras, magnetism, chakras, spiritualism, psychic perception, and reincarnation. These people took the ancient wisdom of the Hindus and translated them into a language Westerners could understand.

I especially enjoyed the work of Sir John Woodroffe (1865–1936), a.k.a. “Arthur Avalon,” who—while prominently serving as Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court in British India—spent his private hours explaining, defending and ultimately practicing in the then widely reviled Hindu religious schools of Shaiva and Shakta Tantrism.

Swāmī Muktānanda (“Bābā”) probably did more than anyone else in the 20th century to make the teachings of Śaiva Tantra known in the West,

Sarvodaya combines Buddhist principles of right livelihood, right action, right understanding, and compassion and has organized citizens in one-third of that nation’s villages to dig wells, build schools, meditate, and collaborate as a form of spiritual practice.