Rabbi Gabriel Cousens M.D., M.D.(H), D.D. (Doctor of Divinity), Diplomate of American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, Diplomate Ayurveda, mystic visionary, physician of the soul, holistic physician, psychiatrist, family therapist, and founder of the Holistic Liberation Way and the Tree of Life Foundation, is a leading author, spiritual master, expert in raw and living foods and vegan nutrition, and a researcher on naturally healing diabetes, and depression. As well as a spiritual ecology leader, who began living fully off the grid in 1976.

Gabriel is considered a master of kundalini energetics and meditation. He is also an eleven year Spirit Dancer (traditional Ghost Dancer) and a sweat lodge (inipi) leader, and a four year Native American Sundancer and Eagledancer. He has been adopted into the Lakota Tribe Horn Chip Clan and given the name Yellow Horse.

Gabriel Cousens, M.D., has been involved in humanitarian work since 1963, when he began working with black gangs on the south side of Chicago. From there, he developed a published school health program which was established in half of the schools in Central Harlem – where he lived and worked for 3 years while attending Columbia medical school. Presently, he has 26 community-based diabetes prevention and organic-vegan farming programs in 13 countries. He is a co-founder of West African Resource Development Services (WARES) and “Alianza de Corazon” – a group of humanitarian organizations in Mexico. In 2013, he received the Cesar Chavez Award for his work with migrant farm workers.

Gabriel functions as a holistic physician, one of the main live-food and vegan medical experts in the world, and according to the New York Times: “the fasting guru and detoxification expert”. Dr. Cousens is the author of 13 books, starting with his classic book, Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet, published in 1986. Other popular book titles include Conscious Eating, Conscious Parenting, and Torah as a Guide to Enlightenment. His latest book Into the Nothing is a spiritual autobiography. Gabriel is an internationally celebrated spiritual master bridging cultures and ethnic groups, as well as teaching in 42 countries. He is an Essene rabbi and founder of the Essene Order of Light. 

Gabriel’s spiritual path began in 1943 at the age of one, when he faced near death from military TB. This was prior to the introduction of antibiotics for T.B.  At the age of 8, he began having explicit visions of white-robed ancients in a desert setting. Neither he nor his parents understood these visions. At the age of 16, his older brother was killed in a car accident. This event served as a spiritual wake-up call. Gabriel spent hours in silence in his brother’s room for several years. During this time, he spontaneously began to meditate, and he created a heart-lung machine that won the Illinois state science fair. His father died when he was 21, and his mother died when he was 33. Although he had been searching for the meaning of death since his near death at age one, he had not found a teacher to illuminate the mystery of death for him, until meeting Swami Muktananda.

When Gabriel received Shaktipat initiation from Swami Muktananda in 1975, he received a direct aperception of the truth, and he fully realized: “…There is no death for the Self; only the body dies”. After 7 years of an intense spiritual lifestyle of meditating 6 hours a day and chanting for 4.5 hours per day, he was acknowledged by Swami Prakaskananda as being liberated in 1981. Shortly thereafter, Swami Muktananda acknowledged Gabriel’s liberation prior to leaving his physical body. In 1983, at the end of a 40-day fast and three days of unbroken nothing awareness, a small voice (Bat Kol) broke the eternal silence with a whispered message (chasmal); he was now to serve his people of birth, of which he has 37 Levite genes in the great Torah way.

As a result of that Divine direction, Gabriel entered into a study of the Torah, mystical Kabbalistic and Essene aspects of Judaism to realize the truth as bitul hayesh, in which the personal I disappears, leaving only Hashem (God); all else being the dance of the illusionary matrix. In 2008, Rabbi Gershon Winkler initiated Gabriel as Rabbi into a lineage that may be traced back to the Ba’al Shem Tov, the Maggid of Mezrich, and Rabbi Elimelek.

These Kabbalistic/Essene/Judaic, Yogic, and Native American aspects of Self-Liberation have brought Gabriel to a unique, authentic, ecumenical, unified worldview. Presently, he serves as the Rabbi for the Etz Chaim shul; “Rabbi at large”; and an Essene Rabbi bringing Jewish (B’nei Israel) and non-Jewish (B’nei Noach) peoples into unity for the healing of the planet.  Rabbi Cousens has been an ordained Essene teacher since 1989 and founded the Essene Order of Light in 1993. As the founder and president of the Tree of Life Foundation, he and his wife Shanti, an Essene Priestess, train Essene priests and priestesses. (The Essenes are a meeting of the Jewish-Kabbalistic and the early Christian traditions, also known respectively as B’nei Israel and B’nei Noah.) The foundation helps to coordinate international humanitarian programs benefiting indigenous and disadvantaged families, children, and cultures through holistic education in the context of a spiritual ecological framework. Dr. Cousens has combined these three traditions into a way of living which he calls the Holistic Liberation Way. He teaches an everyday spiritual lifestyle based on the Six Foundations and Sevenfold Peace that supports the liberation process.

Woven into this is his work as a physician leading the planet in living plant source vegan nutrition and the development of healing approaches for healing type 2 diabetes (There Is A Cure For Diabetes) and depression naturally (Depression Free for Life). As a family therapist and psychiatrist, he teaches a sacred relations course with his wife Shanti. He leads spiritual fasting retreats, teaches conscious eating courses, and has developed a Western Jnana Yoga program called Zero Point. He co-created the Kundalini Crises Clinic in 1976 with Dr. Lee Sanella and is a vehicle for Shaktipat transmission at the direction and empowerment of Swami Muktananda. He is considered a master of kundalini as well as a teacher of meditation, prayer, jnana, bhakti, karma, and mantra yogas. Gabriel has been a student of hatha yoga since 1975 and teaching meditation since 1973.

As a part of his world service, Dr. Cousens functions as a live-food vegan peace worker reactivating the prophetic teachings of Genesis 1:29 for the healing of individuals and the planet. As a husband, father, and grandfather, he supports families on the spiritual path. In summation, Gabriel is a world spiritual master and an inspiration to thousands for the paradigm of whole person health and liberation.

Gabriel is married to Shanti Golds Cousens. He has two children and three grandchildren. He presently lives in Israel.

As a spiritual evolutionary visionary, he has committed his life to the world service of elevating planetary consciousness and of establishing these healing and transformational programs on an international basis so that he, and everyone who chooses to help, can participate in the healing and transformation of the individual and the world.