We're delighted to share our dbut list of the 100 most spiritually influential living people. Yes, we've taken up the not so simple task of naming the most popular authors and spiritual teachers, whose contribution in spirituality and spreading awareness is affecting us all.

We live in an age of lists - from groceries and obituaries to Facebook friends, resume facts, lists of city capitals and lottery numbers. Of course, lists that classify the past, are easier to compile than lists that attempt to predict the future. With the holy grail of sorting algorithms, the world is sure to be your oyster.

Lists help us organize, explore and perceive our environments. But are so many lists really necessary?

It is very much in vogue to publish lists of people: Time Magazine publishes an annual list of the 100 people who most influence the world; Forbes publishes several lists including a Celebrity 100 list, the World's 100 Most Powerful Women, and a list of 1000 Billionaires; Art Review's Power 100 is an annual list of the world's 100 most powerful collectors, artists, gallerists, etc

The lists of lists of people just keep going and going.

However, the Watkins Review believes that an important list has been long overdue, and we are delighted to share with you our list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. Lists of influential people contribute to the discourse and issues that each person represents, and the Watkins Review hopes that our list will nurture the debates surrounding contemporary spirituality.

There are several factors that were taken into account when compiling the list. Listed below are the main three:

1) The person has to be alive
2) The person has to have made a unique and spiritual contribution on a global scale
3) The person is frequently googled, appears in Nielsen Data, and highlighted in throughout the blogosphere

It's interesting to think about the amount of times that a person is googled; in a sense, being googled is a form of digital voting, and illustrates just how often someone is being sought out.

LIST AT A GLANCE:

1. Eckhart Tolle
2. Dalai Lama
3. Dr Wayne W. Dyer
4. Thich Nhat Hanh
5. Deepak Chopra
6. Louise L. Hay
7. Paulo Coelho
8. Oprah Winfrey
9. Ken Wilber
10. Rhonda Byrne
11. James Redfield
12. Neale Donald Walsch
13. Doreen Virtue
14. Alejandro Jodorowsky
15. Richard Bach
16. Alex Grey
17. Byron Katie
18. Masaru Emoto
19. Nelson Mandela
20. Bernie Siegel
21. Caroline Myss
22. Brian Weiss
23. Mantak Chia
24. John Gray
25. Gregg Braden
26. Stephen R. Covey
27. Marianne Williamson
28. Desmond Tutu
29. Mata Amritanandamayi
30. Philip Berg
31. Ervin Laszlo
32. Andrew Harvey
33. Don Miguel Ruiz
34. Joseph Alois Ratzinger
35. Krishna Das
36. Drunvalo Melchizedek
37. Sai Baba
38. Jack Kornfield
39. Pema Chdrn
40. T.K.V. Desikachar
41. Esther & Jerry Hicks
42. Dan Brown
43. Z'ev Ben Shimon Halevi
44. Diana Cooper
45. Ram Dass
46. Andrew Weil
47. Satya Narayan Goenka
48. Jon Kabat-Zinn
49. Alan Moore
50. Dan Millman
51. Bruce Lipton
52. Peter Kingsley
53. Karen Armstrong
54. Judy Hall
55. Colin Wilson
56. Joscelyn Godwin
57. James Lovelock
58. Satish Kumar
59. Shakti Gawain
60. Elaine Pagels
61. Kyozan Joshu Sasaki
62. Gary Zukav
63. Erich von Dniken
64. David Deida
65. Oberto Airaudi 'Falcon'
66. Stuart Wilde
67. John Bradshaw
68. Jeff Foster
69. Patrick Holford
70. Andrew Cohen
71. Vladimir Megre
72. Thomas Cleary
73. Daniel Pinchbeck
74. Jonathan Goldman
75. Sonia Choquette
76. Seyyed Hossein Nasr
77. Mother Meera
78. Barefoot Doctor
79. Richard Bandler
80. Robert Bly
81. Adyashanti
82. Sogyal Rinpoche
83. Li Hongzhi
84. Sri Bhagavan
85. Rupert Sheldrake
86. John & Caitln Matthews
87. Chogyal Namkhai Norbu
88. Kenneth Grant*
89. Stanislav Grof
90. James Hillman
91. Clarissa Pinkola Ests
92. Stephen Levine
93. Candace Pert
94. Barbara Ann Brennan
95. Coleman Barks
96. Robert Thurman
97. B.K.S Iyengar
98. William Bloom
99. Lynne McTaggart
100. Marion Woodman

Interesting statistics:
Male: 76%
Female: 24%
Median age: 67 years
The oldest: 104 years, Kyozan Joshu Sasaki
The youngest: 30 years, Jeff Foster

*88. Kenneth Grant passed away on January 15th, 2011. His extraordinary influence will continue to be felt.