Watkins Review - Top 100 Spiritual Leaders

[Balder]

 

I saw this issue of the Watkins Review linked on a recent blog by Diane Hamilton, and wanted to share it here.  The Watkins Review has come out with a list of the 100 most influential living spiritual teachers or figures.  Ken Wilber made number nine on the list, just beaten out by Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey!

What were their criteria?  From their website:

1) The person has to be alive
2) The person has to have made a unique and spiritual contribution on a global scale
3) The person is frequently googled, appears in Nielsen Data, and highlighted throughout the blogosphere

Read the list and check out the issue here.

(I wasn't familiar with the Watkins Review, but it looks like it's a magazine put out by a metaphysical bookseller, Watkins Books, so it looks like their list includes only those likely to show up on New Age or quasi-New Age radar).

[Edward theurj Berge]

Some of your list Balder also speak to me, at least partially: Wilber, Levin, Loy, Epstein, Schumacher, Varela, Kornfield, Watts, Bortoft. I guess I'd also have to include my former occult mentors (all dead) like Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, Paul Foster Case, Dion Fortune, Samuel Mathers, Arthur Edward Waite, William Wynn Wescott, John Dee, Eliphas Levi, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Iamblilcus, Charles Leadbeater, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Simon Magus, Pico della Mirandola, Plotinus, Henry Cornelius Agrippa. And last but probably most important, though not a "person" but rather archetypes (prototypes), The Tarot. Hey, if corporations can be people why not images?

[xibalba]

and:

Michel de Notre-dame or Nostradamus, Manly.P.Hall, Cagliostro, Comte de St Germain, Franz Mesmer, Christian Rosencreutz, lautréamont, Horbigger, André Breton, Rainhold Ebertin, Sepharial, St Martin, Jacques de Mollay, Paracelsus, Albert Magus, Abulafia, Ibn Marwan, Moses de Leon, Swedenborg, Rasputin, Gurdieff, Rabelais, pedro el santero, baron Samedi, fra Grandier, Goshalak, Devadatta.

[Davidu]

Hi Bruce,

How about Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche ... ?

[Balder]

Of course!  Tarthang Tulku is number 3 on my list (with the first three ordered chronologically in terms of their influence on me)  :-)

[xibalba]

my fave is still Jiddu krishnamurti

[Mary W.]

Hey, folks: isn't including dead people cheating? The original Watkins list specifies LIVING spiritual leaders...

So for my list I've included, in no particular order, people who are still living and who self-identify in some fashion as spiritual or religious, with an emphasis on those I have met face-to-face or whose talks, rituals, or teachings I've attended in person. (Those in parenthesis are teachers whose works/actions have influenced me but whom I've never met):  Thomas Keating, Cynthia Bourgeault, Richard Rohr, Agbonkhianmeghe Orabator, Justin Langille, Barbara Quinn, Meg Funk, Sudhamani aka "Amma," Thich Nhat Hanh, Helen Prejean, Jim Wallis, James Martin, Richard Groves, Catholic Workers, Rami Shapiro, Michael Lerner, Michael Dowd, Jack Jezreel, Jane Via, (Karen Armstrong), (Luisah Teisch), (Ken Wilber), (Brian Swimme), (Stephen Colbert), (Beatrice Bruteau), (Joan Chittister), (Cornel West), (David Richo).

 

[Mary W.]

M'kay, a few more: Michael Moore. Maya Angelou. (Desmond Tutu). (Janelle Monae).     :)

[Edward theurj Berge]

If they have to be alive and classified under what we might term religious or spiritual then John Caputo is #1 for me, with David Loy and Stephen Batchelor close behind, then David Michael Levin and Mark Epstein. Notice they're all at least nominally Buddhist except the Catholic Caputo, and I need to find more exemplars of Caputo's kind in Christianity. (Oh yes, Catherine Keller.) And of course Michael Lerner of Judaism.