John Gray (born December 28, 1951) is an American relationship counselor, lecturer and author. In 1969, he began a nine-year association with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before beginning his career as an author and personal relationship counselor. In 1992 he published the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which became a long-term best seller and formed the central theme of all his subsequent books and career activities. His books have sold millions of copies. Early life and education Gray was born in Houston, Texas, in 1951 to a father who was an oil executive and a mother who worked at a spiritual bookshop, and grew up with five brothers. His parents were both Christians and taught him Yoga and took him to visit Indian Saint Yogananda during his childhood. The Autobiography of A Yogi inspired him greatly later in life. He received a bachelor's and master's degree in the Science of Creative Intelligence, though sources vary on whether these degrees were received from either the non-accredited Maharishi European Research University (MERU) in Switzerland or the accredited Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. Gray received an unaccredited (but state-approved) PhD in 1982 from Columbia Pacific University (CPU), a now-defunct institution located in San Rafael, California, upon completion of a correspondence course and an honorary doctorate from Governors State University in Illinois after he delivered their commencement address in 2002. Career In 1969, Gray attended a Transcendental Meditation lecture, later becoming a celibate and personal assistant to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for nine years. Gray writes a USA-syndicated column with 30 million readers that appears in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, New York Daily News, New York Newsday, The Denver Post, and the San Antonio Express-News. Internationally, Gray's columns have appeared in publications in England, Canada, Mexico, Korea, Latin American and the South Pacific. Gray is a family therapist and a member of the American Counseling Association and the International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors. Publication In 1992, Gray published his book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which has sold more than 15 million copies and, according to a CNN report, it was the "highest ranked work of non-fiction" of the 1990s. The book became a "popular paradigm" for problems in relationships based on the different tendencies in each gender and led to infomercials, audiotapes and videotapes, a CD-ROM (the first from HarperReference), weekend seminars, theme vacations, a one-man