Michael Bernard Beckwith

Michael Bernard Beckwith was born in 1956 in Los Angeles, California. He studied pre-med at the University of Southern California but left the medical path after an awakening experience he has described in multiple interviews as a direct encounter with the field of consciousness underlying all physical life. He trained in Religious Science under the descendants of Ernest Holmes (the same lineage that produced Joseph Murphy) and founded Agape International Spiritual Center in 1986 — initially as a small meditation group in a Santa Monica living room.

Over the next four decades Agape grew into one of the largest independent spiritual communities in the United States, with weekly Sunday services drawing thousands in person and hundreds of thousands online. Beckwith’s sermons combine Religious Science/New Thought teaching with insights from Buddhism, Sufism, Advaita Vedanta, and Christian mysticism. His Life Visioning Process — a structured spiritual-discernment meditation — has been taught worldwide and forms the basis of his most widely-known book.

Beckwith was featured as one of the core teachers in Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (2006), which brought him into the global mainstream. He has appeared on Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday multiple times and addressed the United Nations, the African Union, and multiple Parliament of the World’s Religions gatherings. He is married to Rickie Byars Beckwith, a musician and longtime collaborator.