Ten who lived it

Held that evolution is not finished: consciousness is still climbing, and a human being can consciously take part in the climb.

Ran an ashram of thousands for fifty years and insisted that work, done in the right spirit, is a faster path than meditation.

Practised Tantra, Vaishnavism, Advaita, Islam and Christianity in turn, and reported reaching the same Reality by each road.

Taught almost nothing in words and everything by relation: mother to every being, without exception and without condition.

If the Self in every being is divine, it must show in how you treat a labourer. Otherwise it is talk.

Sixty-eight years as pontiff, walked the length of India on foot, and taught the whole of dharma in the plainest Tamil.

Died at thirty-eight, poor and mostly unread; his poems are now sung by every Tamil child and were the first literary works nationalised in India.

Left no doctrine, no book and no method — only a blanket, a Hanuman temple, and the instruction to love everyone, serve everyone, remember God.

Lived sixty years in a ruined mosque he named after Krishna's city, kept a fire always burning, and asked visitors for two coins: faith and patience.

Author of Autobiography of a Yogi, the book that introduced more Westerners to Indian spirituality than any other.