Amrit Desai
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Amrit Desai is a guru and yoga master. He runs the Amrit Yoga Center in Salt Springs, Florida in the Ocala National Forest.
Yogi Desai was born in the village of Halol in India. From the age of 15, his guru was Swami Kripalvananda.
In 1966, Yogi Desai founded the Yoga Society of Pennsylvania, a nonprofit organization providing yoga classes and training for yoga teachers. The name of the Society was later changed to Kripalu Yoga Fellowship, the nonprofit and charitable organization that now operates the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Ray Kurzweil shared this experience with Desai:
- "I am reminded of a comment made by the Buddhist teacher Guru Amrit Desai, when he looked out of his car window and saw that he was in the midst of a gang of Hell's Angels. After studying them in great detail for a long while, he finally exclaimed, "They really love their motorcycles." There was no disdain in this observation. Guru Desai was truly moved by the purity of their love for the beauty and power of something that was outside themselves."[citation needed]
In 1999, Desai was sued by fourteen of his followers who had lived at his 350 acre ranch when it was discovered that he had been earning huge sums and had numerous sexual relations in violation of his own teachings.
Dushkin v. Desai, --F.Supp.2d-- (1998 WL 54072, D. Mass.)