(Melissah Yang/Neon Tommy)

At the Ananda Kriyayoga Ashram in Pune - about a four hour's drive southeast of Mumbai - I was in meditations lead by the center's spiritual directors, Tushti and Surrendra. I dined with Prisha and attended a lecture by Shivani. 

These four Americans all joined the Ananda movement at different times, and as part of their "following the path," they traded their birth name for a Hindu-inspired one.

And why?

"In my generation, many people were named Shirley," said Shivani, explaning that the late Shirley Temple - with her tap dancing and curly hair - had captured the imagination of postwar parents. Birth names, Shivani implied, are arbitrary, and even a little frivolous.

"We have no say in it," Shivani added. "And the identity we have around it, we might want to supersede."

Supersede, forget or erase altogether? Shivani asserted that forgetting the past isn't possible - but the new name "expresses or embodies a higher vibration," which in turn captures the essence of one's "higher self." 

Selection of new names fell on the shoulders of the founder of the Ananda movement who died last April, Swami Kriyananda (born J. Donald Walters). 

Throughout our three days at the ashram, I increasingly found the whole process of dropping one's birth name a conscious effort to flee from the past. It didn't help that many devotees admitted their strained relationships with parents and family.

To be fair, the notion of non-traditional names in the Ananda movement wasn't a shock: at a weekly Ananda-run meditation back in Los Angeles, I'd met devotees like Naryan, Dharmadevi and Clarity. 

And the whole process of shedding one's given name for a chosen one is common to many traditions: at confirmation, Catholics choose a new name (mine is Andrew). Monks and ordained religious adopt a new moniker. One of my high school teachers whom I knew as Michael is now Father Kevin.

But my skeptic's mind couldn't help but dismiss it all as self-delusion masked as self-awareness, coupled with a dose of exoticism of Hinduism. I wonder, does inward devotion require this outward, external rebranding of oneself to be valid or secure? 

Require, no. But it seems to help: those in the Ananda movement told me their adopted name aids their self-realization, helping them become kinder, wiser and happier. My fixation on delusion ultimately says more about my cynicism than this spiritual movement's practices. Clearly, there are worse reasons to change one's name.

Reach Staff Reporter Matt Hamilton here. Follow him on Twitter @mattHjourno.