Many Westerners first became aware of Eastern spirituality in the 1960s. Transcendental meditation came to our shores and was prescribed by a peaceful Indian man with a never-ending smile, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. At about the same time, Swami A. C. Prabhupada went to New York to begin the Hare Krishna movement. Grounded in the Hindu devotional tradition of bhakti that dated to the Vedas, “Krishna consciousness” would soon attract tens of thousands of devotees across the United States and on several continents. But would either of these figures have grabbed our attention quite as much without the spiritual curiosity of The Beatles?