Was Carlos Santana in a cult?

Far Out Magazine/November 22, 2025

By Andrew Clayman

“I got slapped with reality,” a 32-year-old Carlos Santana told Rolling Stone in 1980. Ironically, he wasn’t referring to the moment he broke ties with the controversial Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy; that would come a year later. Instead, the ever-mystical guitar god was recalling where his head was back in the early 1970s, at the height of his success, and why he turned to Chinmoy in the first place.

“All of us in the first band were fried,” Santana said. “Plenty of albums in my house, drugs, food, flesh, and all of those kinds of things, but I felt such an emptiness.”

Initially inspired by the spiritual journey John Coltrane had undertaken at a similar point in his career, Santana was ultimately sidetracked into a very specific sect of mysticism—one man’s interpretation, in fact.

Sri Chinmoy, whose high-profile followers in the mid-1970s also included the jazz musician John McLaughlin (who formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra during his period as an acolyte), R&B singer Roberta Flack, and E Street Band saxman Clarence Clemons, had an enormous impact not just on Santana’s spiritual outlook, but on his music, as well. 

Santana began using the name Chinmoy had bestowed upon him, “Devadip,” as part of his public identity, and he split up his time between recording more traditionally palatable rock with his band and decidedly more experimental jazz-fusion on solo records like Caravanserai and Borboletta. He wasn’t hesitant to admit which projects mattered more to him either. “Santana is my nose,” he said. “Devadip is my heart.”

Santana and his then-wife Deborah were part of Chinmoy’s community for roughly a decade, regarding him as their guru and feeling seemingly unfazed by growing criticisms from the outside world, some of which accused the internationally influential Chinmoy of running a cult.

When Carlos finally opted to walk away from Chinmoy in the early 1980s, it wasn’t necessarily because of any serious offences by the guru himself, but more of a disenchantment with some of the leader’s more unusual points of emphasis in his teachings.

“There was always this competition in how much we could do to prove our devotion,” a now 52-year-old Santana told Rolling Stone in 2000, looking back on the alleged cult, or at least borderline cultish group. “Who could sleep the least and still function? Because you were working so hard, how many miles could you run? I once ran a 47-mile race. It wasn’t enough just to run a marathon.”

The harsh, militaristic expectations didn’t seem in tune with the all-loving teachings of a guru, nor did Chinmoy’s judgmental comments about tennis legend Billie Jean King’s sexual orientation, which Santana overheard just before deciding to extricate himself from the community.

“This guy’s supposed to be spiritual after all these years; mind your own spiritual business and leave her alone,” Santana said.

Long after Santana took his own path, controversy only continued to grow around Chinmoy. In the 2000s, former members began sharing the predictable stories of Chinmoy using his power to engage in sexual misconduct, and a 2009 memoir by former follower Jayanti Tamm, published two years after Chinmoy’s death, further painted him as a strict cult leader who forbade those in his inner circle from dating or interacting with outsiders.

Chinmoy was also known to carry a grudge, as Santana learned firsthand when he chose to leave: “He told all my friends not to call me ever again, because I was to drown in the dark sea of ignorance for leaving him.”

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