Acharya David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri)

Vamadeva received a Pandit award as part of a special Brahmacharya Vishvanathji yearly award in Mumbai in 1994. His role as a pandit and Vedic teacher (Vedacharya) has been honored by many groups in India, where he has frequently lectured and taught. These include Swaminarayan (BAPS), Arsha Vidya Gurukulam (Swami Dayananda), and the Chinmaya Mission (Swami Mitrananda).  Such a traditional title as a Pandit and Vedacharya implies having written and taught on the four Vedas and Upanishads, which Vamadeva has done in his many Vedic books that include many original translations from the Sanskrit, particularly from the most ancient Rigveda itself, over the last thirty five years.

Acharya Frawley’s work in India was honored in the book The Mind of the Guru, Conversations with Spiritual Masters (Viking, India, 2003) by Rajiv Mehrotra of the Dalai Lama Foundation, Delhi, India, which featured twenty modern teachers, mainly from India, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama. In India in Sept. 0f 2012, as ‘Vedacharya Vamadeva Shastri’, he was made one of the patrons of the Dharma-Dhamma conference hosted by the government of Madhya Pradesh in India for the starting of a new Buddhist university at Sanchi. He was one of the two speakers for the closing plenary session. He has been asked to be a visiting professor to  Sanchi university as well, particularly for its department of Vedic studies.

Vamadeva works with Deepak Chopra and has been a faculty member of the Chopra Wellness Center in San Diego since its inception nearly twenty years ago, doing regular programs with them. Note picture of Vamadeva, Deepak Chopra and Yogini Shambhavi to the left. He has helped with their Ayurvedic programs and their mantra and meditation programs. Vamadeva is now one of the main master educators and advisors for the Chopra Center University.

Vamadeva has also worked closely with the California College of Ayurveda (CCA), founded by his former student Marc Halpern, with whom he helped establish the school about twenty years ago. Vamadeva has been a teacher for the Kripalu school of Yoga and Ayurveda, since its beginning. He is one of the four members of the advisory board for the National Ayurvedic Medical Association (NAMA), as well as being an advisor the Ayurvedic Practitioner’s Association of North America (AAPNA), and the California Association of Ayurvedic Medicine (CAAM). His work aims at improving the range of Ayurvedic education. He received a lifetime achievement award from the National Ayurvedic Medical Association in Nov. 2002. Recently (2013) Vamadeva  has become an Academy Advisor for Kerala Ayurveda, one of the largest Ayurvedic and most innovative companies and educational centers, and will help with their work in India and in the West. He visits their Ayurveda Gram center in Bangalore on a regular basis and contributes to their publications.

Vamadeva’s Ayurvedic teachings are represented by a number of associated groups throughout the world, who use it as part of their own trainings. Aldo Lubrano has developed a Spanish version of his teachings, used as part of classroom training in Mexico as well as distance learning throughout the Spanish speaking world.. The Vedic Center, Ruegen, Germany (Maxim and Sergej Kuschpel) has developed German and Russian course versions, which are now developing classroom instruction as well. His work in Brazil is represented by Dr. Jose Rugue and his Sudha Dharma Mandala, who offers extensive training in Yoga and Ayurveda, including classroom and clinical instruction. His work was previously represented in Europe by the European Institute of Vedic Studies under Atreya Smith.Vamadeva’s Soma in Yoga and Ayurveda (2012) is his longest and most detailed book on Ayurveda in some years and opens up a wide field of new applications, as well as deeper Yoga practices, including new secrets of Ayurvedic herbs.

Vamadeva has worked with herbal medicine in several traditions, going back many years to a study of western herbalism when he was around the age of twenty. He has a good knowledge of local herbs throughout the western United States. He studied Chinese herbal medicine for a number of years, including in China itself (1987). In 1988, for his herbal studies he  received what was then called an OMD degree (not a license to practice but an educational attainment) from the International Institute of Chinese Medicine, where he taught from 1984-1990.Vamadeva has encouraged dialogue between Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, and as a dialogue that can include Tibetan medicine that contains aspects of both systems. Vamadeva was a board member of the American Herbalist Guild (AHG) in 1993-1994, the largest herbalist association in the United States. He continues to research the herbal aspect of healing, and has studied the herbs and plants of India as well, particularly in the Himalayas. He  brings an herbal perspective into his work, including aromatherapy, encouraging herbs as the medicine of nature.

Vamadeva has been a devotee of Ramana Maharshi, the great sage of South India, since 1970. He  carries on the work of Ganapati Muni, one of Maharshi’s chief disciples, whose teachings he received through K. Natesan of the Ramanashram in 1991. He was in regular contact with Natesan up to his passing in 2009 at the age of 96, photo below. Natesan carried both the legacy of Ramana Maharshi and Kavyakantha Ganapati Muni, a great modern Sanskrit writer and a great Raja Yogi as well.

Ganapati Muni’s work that he has taken up includes both the Vedas and Tantra, as well as Ayurveda and Jyotish. Natesan has brought out the Muni’s Sanskrit work in eleven volumes. Vamadeva continues to study and translate the Muni’s great stotras and sutras and add the Muni’s insights into his writings. His study of Vedantic meditation methods, particularly the practice of Self-inquiry as taught by Ramana Maharshi, is the subject of his book, Vedantic Meditation: Lighting the Flame of Awareness (2000).

Vamadeva’s study of Ganapati Muni’s work was the basis of his book Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses (1994), which relates to the deeper aspects of Tantric spiritual and mantric practices. The Muni’s work is also part of his recent, Inner Tantric Yoga: Working with the Universal Shakti (2008).

Vamadeva has spoken before the main Ramana Maharshi centers (Ramana Kendras) in India and has written for the Mountain Path, the ashram’s main publication and an important resource  on the direct path of Self-Inquiry.

Since 1994 he has been in contact with the noted South Indian guru, Sivananda Murthy of Andhra Pradesh (Vishakhpatnam), who is also of Ramana’s line and a great yogi as well, with connections to Trailinga Swami. He has worked with Sivananda Murty on the study of the Upanishads.

Vamadeva wrote the foreword to Sadguru Sivananda Murty’s Katha Yoga, a deep yogic tudy of the Katha Upanishad. Sivananda Murty provided an introduction Vamadeva’s book Universal Hinduism. Vamadeva considers Sadguru Sivananda Murty to be one of the most important living spiritual masters in India today. Sadguru is the head of a Sivadvaita-Shaktivasishta order.

On the Vedantic side, Vamadeva has been associated with Swami Dayananda of Arsha Vidya Gurukulam (picture lower left) and has spoken at his centers and worked with him in various conferences and programs. He considers Swamiji to be the most important teacher of Vedanta in the world today and recommends all his students to study with him. Vamadeva regards Vedanta as the mind and soul of Yoga and Ayurveda and  aims at promoting Vedanta once more along with Yoga.

Vamadeva has been connected to the work of Paramahansa Yogananda the the Kriya Yoga movement, since he first took the SRF lessons in 1970, and has closely studied the teachings of Yogananda’s guru, Sri Yukteswar. SRF has published his articles and referred to his books in a number of their publications. His quote on Yogananda has recently appeared in the new edition of Autobiography of a Yogi. He also corresponded with Anandamayi Ma for several years and remains a devotee of hers as well.

Spreading Vedic Astrology

Vamadeva began studying Vedic astrology (Jyotish) as part of his Vedic research in the early seventies and brought out a course in the subject in 1985. He continues to use Vedic astrology, particularly in the context of Yoga and Ayurveda, for a deeper understanding of Vedic wisdom.

Vamadeva wrote Astrology of the Seers (1990), one of the first books on Vedic astrology published in the West. This was followed by Ayurvedic Astrology (2005), which pioneers the field of ‘Ayurvedic Astrology’. In 1997, he brought out the book the Oracle of Rama (1997), an important Hindu oracle, which in 2005 has been made into a beautiful set of cards through Mandala Press.

In 1992 Vamadeva helped convene the first major American Conference on Vedic Astrology, which led to the founding of the American Council of Vedic Astrology (ACVA) the following year 1993. He became the first president of the organization for  ten years (1993-2003), working with Dennis Harness as the executive vice-president. He later became a board member of the American College of Vedic Astrology from 2003-2011, and after 2011, of the Council of Vedic Astrology. He was a patron/founder of the British Association of Vedic Astrology (BAVA).

Vamadeva’s main Vedic astrology teacher was Dr. B.V. Raman (1916-1998), regarded by many as the greatest Vedic astrologer of modern India and founder of the Astrological Magazine. He has also been associated with Gayatri Vasudev, K.S. Charak, R. Santhanam, K.N. Rao and Bepin Behari. He works closely with Chakrapani Ullal, and considers Chakrapani to be his main teacher after Dr. Raman.

Vamadeva was one of the first Americans to receive Jyotish Kovid title from the Indian Council of Astrological Sciences (ICAS, 1993), the largest Vedic astrology association in the world, followed by the title Jyotish Vachaspati in 1996, and Jyotish Medha Prajna in 2012. He has researched medical astrology and psychology and astrology, as well as the historical origins of Vedic astrology, bringing out ancient Vedic material on the Nakshatras. In Oct. of 2010, he was one of the main guests for the World Council on Mundane Astrology convened by Sri Sadguru Sivananda Murty in Vishakhapatnam, India.

After seeing how the spiritual meaning of the Vedas had been misinterpreted by modern scholars, Vamadeva could easily see how the historical side of the Vedas had similarly been distorted. This led him to a revision of ancient history. His work revising the history of ancient India has brought him into contact with major archeologists and historians. He has has many published books on the Vedas and Ancient India. Note his picture with Pramukh Swami of the Swaminarayan order. His Hidden Horizons: Unearthing Ten Thousand Years of Indian Culture (2007) is a special publication of the Swaminarayan Order (BAPS).

His book on ancient India, Gods, Sages and Kings (1991) was one of the first to propose a new model of history for ancient India. A shorter version of this material Myth of the Aryan Invasion (Voice of India 1994, 2001) has been a popular book on the subject.

Along with Georg Feuerstein and Subhash Kak, he wrote In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (1995) and along with N.S. Rajaram, Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization (1994). His Rig Veda and the History of India (2001) takes this work further, setting forth a reconstruction of the history of ancient India in a Vedic light. Quotes from Frawley’s books on ancient India and an interview with him were featured in Grahman Hancock’s Underworld, Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age book and television series.

Vamadeva has written  several books on contemporary issues in India, particularly the challenges to dharmic and yogic culture posed by modern civilization. He views Hinduism in the light of its origins as ‘Sanatana Dharma’, the Universal or Eternal Tradition that is relevant to all human beings.

His books on Sanatana Dharma began with From the River of Heaven: Hindu and Vedic Knowledge for the Modern Age (1991). Additional titles addressing more contemporary issues published through Voice of India in Delhi include Arise Arjuna (1995), Awaken Bharata (1998), and How I Became a Hindu: My Discovery of Vedic Dharma (2000), countering common stereotypes. His  book Hinduism: the Eternal Tradition (1995) has been used by ashrams and temples. His Universal Hinduism: Towards a New Vision of Sanatana Dharma (2010) shows its global relevance.

Acharya Frawley’s main teacher of Hindu Dharma was Ram Swarup of Delhi (1921-1998), photo to the upper left, whom Hinduism Today called the most important modern writer on Hinduism, with whom he was associated with from 1992. Ram Swarup wrote the foreword to Vamadeva’s Awaken Bharata. Vamadeva wrote the forewords for Ram Swarup’s collected works, including, On Hinduism; Meditations, Gods, Yogas; and the Word as Revelation: Names of Gods, and other volumes of his collected works.