Shaivism/Tantra/Nath New movements Kashmir Shaivism Gaudapada Adi Shankara Advaita-Yoga Nath Kashmir Shaivism Neo-Vedanta Inchegeri Sampradaya Contemporary Shaivism/Tantra/Nath Neo-Advaita Hinduism Buddhism Modern Advaita Vedanta Neo-Vedanta Hariwansh Lal Poonja (/ˈpʊndʒə/; born 13 October 1910 (or later) in Punjab, British India – 6 September 1997 in Lucknow, India) was an Indian sage.

At the age of eight, he claimed he had experienced an unusual state of consciousness: The experience was so overwhelming it had effectively paralysed my ability to respond to any external stimuli.

He asked Ramana for help and was told that this was not a problem, that all his practice had carried him to this moment and it could be left behind now because it had served its purpose.

[web 4] At the end of 1968 Poonja met in Rishikesh Geneviève de Coux (born 1947), — later known as Ganga Mira — a young Belgian seeker, who became his disciple and with whom he would form a new family, after the ancient Vedic polygamic tradition.

Some well-known students of his and later self-appointed gurus of Neo-Advaita included Eli Jaxon-Bear, Gangaji, Mooji, and Andrew Cohen, who later distanced himself from Poonja.

[2] David Godman, a devotee of Ramana Maharshi, moved to Lucknow in 1992 to spend time around Poonja and stayed until 1997.

Like Sri Ramana, he taught self-enquiry, which involved locating a person's sense of "I" and focusing on and investigating this directly.

"[4] For Poonja, ethical standards were based on a dualistic understanding of reality and the notion of an individual agent, and therefore were not indicative of "nondual enlightenment:[4] "For Poonja, the goal was the realisation of the self; the illusory realm of relative reality was ultimately irrelevant.