Mooji / Anthony Paul Moo-Young

Anthony Paul Moo-Young was born in 1954 in Port Antonio, Jamaica, emigrated to London as a teenager, and worked as a street artist and tile-setter before encountering H.W.L. Poonja ('Papaji', 1910–1997) in Lucknow, India in the early 1990s. Mooji claims that Papaji recognised him as a direct dharma-heir during his Lucknow visits — a claim Papaji-lineage peers including Gangaji (Toni Roberson Smith) and Eli Jaxon-Bear have publicly disputed. Mooji began teaching publicly in London in the late 1990s; the YouTube channel founded in the 2010s grew to ~700,000 subscribers and became the primary recruitment funnel.

The Monte Sahaja compound was founded in 2014 in Mértola, southern Portugal — a 250-hectare property that Mooji describes as 'the soul's home' and that ex-members describe as a residential community where disciples surrender outside contact, income, and personal autonomy in exchange for proximity to the teacher. The 2018 investigation series by Be Scofield (independent journalist specialising in spiritual-abuse coverage) documented: (1) severance from non-Mooji family enforced via shunning of departing members; (2) communal-property surrender at Monte Sahaja, with disciples turning over savings and inheritances; (3) financial extraction via mandatory 'seva' (volunteer labour) in lieu of paid staff; and (4) psychological coercion of female disciples including documented testimonies of unwanted sexual approaches by senior 'Sangha' members.

Mooji and the Mooji Foundation deny the allegations and continue to operate Monte Sahaja, the YouTube channel, and the global satsang-touring schedule. The Papaji-lineage public distancing — Gangaji's 2018 statement and Eli Jaxon-Bear's published criticisms — is significant context: Papaji explicitly told disciples in his last decade not to claim formal lineage transmission, making any 'Papaji's chosen successor' claim contestable. The neo-Advaita genre overall (including Adyashanti, Rupert Spira, Francis Lucille, and others) is generally low-control; Mooji's compound-residential structure and the Be Scofield findings put him at the higher-control end of the neo-Advaita spectrum.

The Be Scofield investigation series (published on Be Scofield's website and as long-form Medium pieces 2018–2020), the Vice 2019 follow-up, the German Spiegel 2020 coverage of European Mooji disciples, and the ongoing r/exMooji subreddit ex-member peer community provide the canonical journalistic and survivor record. ICSA Today archived a 2019 case study.