[2][3] He wrote books on the subjects of Kundalini Shakti, Vedanta, and Kashmir Shaivism, including a spiritual autobiography entitled The Play of Consciousness.

Swami Muktananda was born in 1908 near Mangalore in Madras Presidency, British India, to a wealthy family.

[9] Muktananda established Gurudev Siddha Peeth as a public trust in India to administer his work there.

He founded the SYDA Foundation in the United States to administer the global work of Siddha Yoga meditation.

"[13] According to Lola Williamson, Muktananda was known as a "shaktipat guru because kundalini awakening occurred so readily in his presence".

[17] In Gurus of Modern Yoga, Andrea Jain, in her chapter on Muktananda, quotes an anonymous source, who describes his moment of shaktipat, when he was 19 years old, conferred by Muktananda with a wand of peacock feathers in 1975: I almost jumped when the peacock feathers, firmly but with a soft weightiness, hit me repeatedly on my head, and then gently brushed my face as [Muktananda] [...] powerfully pressed one of his fingers into my forehead at a spot located just between my eyebrows [...] I'm honestly somewhat reluctant to write about what happened next because I know that whatever I say will inevitably diminish it, will make it sound as if it were just another "powerful experience."

"[18]Sarah Caldwell, in an essay in the academic journal Nova Religio (2001), argued that Muktananda was both an enlightened spiritual teacher and a practitioner of Shakta Tantrism, but also "engaged in actions that were not ethical, legal or liberatory with many disciples.

"[19] According to Lola Williamson, "Muktananda stressed the value of celibacy for making progress on the spiritual path, but he almost certainly violated his own rules.

"[20] Author Andrea Jain asserts "Muktananda engaged in secret sexual rituals with several of his young female disciples—some of whom were teenagers—that were meant to transmit sakti to the tantric hero.

"[19][21] In 1981, Stan Trout, a swami for Siddha Yoga, wrote an open letter in which he referred to a number of stories of Muktananda engaging in sexual activities with young women, and threats and harassment in order to force people to "stop talking about your escapades with young girls in your bedroom.

"[20][22] In 1983 William Rodarmor printed several allegations in CoEvolution Quarterly from anonymous female devotees that Muktananda regularly had sex with them and raped them.