Harvey was born in Coimbatore, India in 1952 where he lived until he was nine years old. He was educated at English boarding schools and then Oxford University, where he later taught Shakespeare and French literature until 1977. He wrote his dissertation on madness in Shakespeare and Erasmus.

At 21, Harvey become a Fellow of All Souls College (University of Oxford).

By 1977 Andrew Harvey had become disillusioned with life at Oxford and returned to his native India, where a series of mystical experiences initiated his spiritual journey. Over the next thirty years he plunged into different mystical traditions to learn their secrets and practices. In 1978 he met a succession of Indian saints and sages and began his study and practice of Hinduism. In 1983, in Ladakh, he met a Tibetan adept, Thuksey Rinpoche, and undertook with him the Mahayana Buddhist bodhisattva vows; later, in 1990, he would collaborate with Sogyal Rinpoche and Patrick Gaffney in the writing of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. In 1984, Harvey began a ten year-long exploration and explication of Rumi and Sufi mysticism in Paris with a group of French Sufis and under the guidance of Eva De Vitray-Meyerovitch, the translator of Rumi into French. In 1992, he met Father Bede Griffiths in his ashram in south India near where Harvey had been born. It was this meeting that helped him synthesize the whole of his mystical explorations and reconcile Eastern with Western mysticism.

While in India, Harvey encountered Mother Meera, who became his guru and the subject of his book Hidden Journey. His memoir The Sun At Midnight describes their subsequent break and his disillusionment with gurus.

For the last 30 years, Andrew has travelled widely, living in India, London, Paris, New York and San Francisco, studying, teaching at university level, and in seminars and workshops. A prolific writer, Harvey has authored or co-authored over 30 books. His focus since 2005 has been the advocacy of what he terms "Sacred Activism."

Mr Harvey is the founder and director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, which trains leaders and social justice advocates.

Andrew Harvey is openly gay.

Harvey is a scholar of mystic traditions. He envisions true spirituality to be the divinization of earthly life through spiritual practice. These practices can take many forms and can be taken from religious traditions.Harvey sees six poets and religious figures as having universal appeal:

*Buddha as portrayed in the Dhammapada

*Jesus as portrayed in the Gospel of Thomas

*Rumi, a 13th century Sufi poet. (Controversially, Harvey sees Rumi and Shams-i-Tabrizi as homosexual lovers.)

*Kabir, a 15th century Indian poet

*Ramakrishna, a 19th century Hindu sadhu

*Aurobindo, a 20th century Hindu philosopher-sage

Harvey also emphasizes the divine feminine, as expressed for example in the Virgin Mary, Kali, and Mother Earth.

Since 2005, Andrew Harvey's work has focused on teaching Sacred Activism around the globe. Harvey describes sacred activism as "the product of the union of a profound spiritual and mystical knowledge, understanding, and compassion, peace and energy, with focused, wise, radical action in the world."