Mr. Cumming was born in New York City.  He grew up on the Upper West Side and received his B.A. from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  Mr. Cumming was the articles editor of Penn's prestigious Journal of International Law, and he won an award for his contribution to that leading journal.  He graduated from Penn Law School magna cum laude, ranking in the top three percent of his class, and he later clerked at the federal district court and at the federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  The latter court is often described as the second most important court in the United States.  Mr. Cumming is currently employed as a senior research attorney at the California Supreme Court.

Mr. Cumming's religion scholarship began informally in 1981, when he became attracted to the philosophy of Kashmiri Shaivism.  His innate intellectual curiosity motivated him to pursue a disciplined course of independent study in the field of religion while simultaneously excelling in his professional career as an appellate lawyer.  In the 1990s, Mr. Cumming pursued a more formal program of study under the guidance of Swami Paramatmananda Puri, covering the classics of Vedanta, and focusing in particular on the Mahabharata and the Srimad Bhagavatam.  At the same time, he continued his informal studies in the area of Christian mysticism.

In 2000, Mr. Cumming returned to the study of Kashmiri Shaivism, which led him to explore analogous esoteric traditions in Islam and the West.  He taught himself to read Hebrew and completed a comprehensive study of Jewish magic and mysticism, including such classics as the multi-volume Zohar, Sha'are Orah ("Gates of Light"), Reshit Chochmah ("Beginning of Wisdom"), Toledot Adam ("Generations of Adam"), the texts of Lurianic Kabbalah and Sabbateanism, the Tanya, and the writings of Nachman of Breslov.  He also read the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, using the esoteric hermeneutical methods described in the Sifra di-Tzni'uta and the Idra Rabbah to unlock the incontrovertible hidden meanings of the Torah.

Most recently, Mr. Cumming has begun an in-depth study of Sanskrit in order to approach Hindu classical texts with the same hermeneutical subtlety that he found so rewarding in his study of Hebrew scripture.

Mr. Cumming has traveled extensively in India and spent significant periods of time pursuing informal studies in that country.  He is the father of two boys and lives with them and his wife in Berkeley, California.