The biker-mystic

He was born Jagadish "Jaggi" Vasudev on 3 September 1957 in Mysore, by his account an ordinary, motorcycle-loving young man until a moment of overwhelming spiritual experience on a hill in his twenties redirected his life. In 1992 he founded the Isha Foundation, and in 1994 established the Isha Yoga Center near Coimbatore, at the foot of the Velliangiri hills, which has grown into a sprawling campus and the base of a worldwide operation.

The brand

What sets Sadhguru apart from the gurus of the past is the medium. He is a creature of the stage and the screen — fluent, quotable, relentlessly available on YouTube and at packed arena events from London to Los Angeles. His flagship programme, Inner Engineering, has run for hundreds of thousands of participants, and his book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy became a New York Times bestseller. In 2017 he consecrated the Adiyogi, a 112-foot bust of Shiva recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's largest, now a pilgrimage and tourist landmark in its own right.

Beyond the ashram

He has pushed well past meditation into mass environmental campaigning: Rally for Rivers (2017), Cauvery Calling (2019) and the Journey to Save Soil (a 2022 motorcycle expedition across Europe and Asia), and he addressed the UN's desertification convention that year. In 2017 the Government of India awarded him the Padma Vibhushan, the country's second-highest civilian honour. His diaspora following — Indian-origin professionals across the West especially — is enormous.

The criticism

A profile that only catalogued the reach would not be honest. Sadhguru has been widely criticised for promoting pseudoscientific claims — among them his advocacy of mercury in traditional practice, despite its toxicity and international restrictions, and assertions about "solidifying" mercury that scientists have publicly rejected. Environmentalists have accused some of his river and soil campaigns of "greenwashing" — long on spectacle, they argue, and short on measurable ecological result. The Isha Foundation has also faced scrutiny over land use and forest clearances near its Coimbatore campus.

None of that has dented the devotion of his followers, and supporters counter that the campaigns have genuinely raised public awareness. But the gap between the adulation and the criticism is itself part of the modern guru story — a story in which reach, branding and controversy travel together.

The present-tense guru

Sadhguru is, more than anything, proof of how the role has changed. The masters of the last century crossed oceans by ship and built institutions that outlived them. Today's guru crosses them at the speed of a video upload, addressing millions at once. Whether that makes the message deeper or thinner is exactly the debate this series will keep returning to.

---

Next in the series: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and the breath-based empire of the Art of Living.

Sources: Wikipedia: Jaggi Vasudev · Isha Foundation.