Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, also known as Sri Chinmoy, was born in India in 1931. He joined the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at the age of eleven and spent the next twenty years learning the practices of meditation and spiritualism. He moved to New York City in 1964 after receiving a "divine message" to help people in spiritual matters. He toured the world, giving concerts and talks on spiritual matters, and opened his own spiritual centers. He met many celebrities, including Princess Diana, the Pope, various political figures, and professional athletes. He was lauded as a wonderful person full of peace and hope, and many were devastated when he died from a heart attack in 2007. Of course, people like to remember only the good things about people they like and dismiss all accusations against them. This man ran a cult. He made sexual advances toward the women in his cult, despite them being married to other people. He orchestrated marriages. He named people's children. He did not approve of secular education or mingling with "outsiders" and required obedience and devotion to himself and his teachings. He banned dancing, eating meat, pets, and dating.

The author of this book was a former member of this cult. She outlines her experiences as a child who was named by this "guru" and the devotion of her parents to him. She makes a strong case for this religious group being a cult, and I am inclined to believe that it was certainly a cult. The author does mention that many of the members have a different experience of this group than she did, as she was close to the "guru" and inside the inner circle. The group had several institutions around the world and the further you get from the center of influence, the less likely you are to see the cultish characteristics. I appreciated that she made that disclaimer, because people do have different experiences and perceptions of things. I thought this book was interesting, and I did like learning about the author's experiences. I had never heard of this person before, despite his famous friends and all of these tours he did. He was very active during the time when I was in middle and high school, dying the year after I graduated, but I never recall seeing anything about him in the media. I learned a lot about this guy from this book. I have the Audible version, and I listened to it yesterday at work. It was about 6 hours of listening time. The physical copy is less than 300 pages, if you are interested in that version.