Who is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar ?

The Art of Liv­ing yoga lin­eage can be traced through Mahar­ishi to the Swami Brah­mananda Saraswati (also known as Rama­murti S. Mishra) and Swami Krish­nanand Saraswati,  accord­ing to the lin­eages in Kathy Phillips’s The Spirit of Yoga. Deepak Chopra, the best-​​selling author of self-​​help books, is also this same branch of the yogic tradition.The Art of Liv­ing Foun­da­tion has an offi­cial biog­ra­phy of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s life, and it seems to be the one repeated in other media. He was born in 1956, and soon showed his spir­i­tual bent, recit­ing Hindi scrip­ture by heart at an early age. Early in his spir­i­tual matu­rity, he also served the Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion(TM) guru and mys­tic Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi as a fairly senior and trusted lieu­tenant. He served as apun­dit or reciter of Vedic scrip­tures in the TM cer­e­monies. He was largely respon­si­ble for spread­ing the Maharishi’s gospel and activ­ity to South Africa and other parts of the globe. He struck out on his own in 1982.

Sri Sri is an hon­orific term that was added to his name after the Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar com­plained that con­fu­sion was aris­ing about who was who. “Sri” means respected one. One “Sri” (pro­nounced shree) is a term of respect sim­i­lar to “mis­ter” and the use of two is anal­o­gous to “the rev­erend.” Yoga Jour­nal‘s Emperor of Air con­tains the best non-​​official bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion on Sri Sri that I have found on the Internet.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar does not want his admir­ers or oth­ers to refer to him as a swami, which refers to the mem­ber of an ascetic or monas­tic order, much like a Catholic monk. His fol­low­ers address him as His Holi­ness, and more affec­tion­ately as gurudev(great teacher) or guruji (respect­ful, affec­tionare way of address­ing a teacher).

India Yogi’s Indian Saints, Mys­tics, Philoso­phers and Gurus includes a short bib. Sri Sri and AOL are a potent force in India. As often hap­pens in the devel­op­ing world, as the move­ment has increased its inter­na­tional pres­ence, it has res­onated more in India.