Dr. David Frawley is one of the few Westerners ever recognized in India as a Vedacharya or teacher of the ancient wisdom. In 1991 under the auspices of the great Indian teacher, Avadhuta Shastri, he was named Vamadeva Shastri, after the great Vedic Rishi Vamadeva. In 1995 he was given the title of Pandit along with the Brahmachari Vishwanathji award in Mumbai for his knowledge of the Vedic teaching. Over the years Vamadeva has received many awards and honors for his work from throughout India.

"The Hindu mind represents humanity's oldest and most continuous stream of conscious intelligence on the planet. Hindu sages, seers, saints, yogis and jnanis have maintained an unbroken current of awareness linking humanity with the Divine since the dawn of history, and as carried over from earlier cycles of civilization in previous humanities unknown to our present spiritually limited culture."

Vamadeva (Dr. Frawley) is a unusual western born knowledge-holder in the Vedic tradition. He carries many special Vedic ways of knowledge (vidyas), which he passes on to students in India and in the West. His vast knowledge is rooted in intuitive and past life influences, as it is more than could be gained in a single life experience, though he has studied many traditional texts and with many teachers.

In India, Vamadeva is recognized not only as a Vedacharya (Vedic teacher), but also as a Vaidya (Ayurvedic doctor), Jyotishi (Vedic astrologer), Puranic (Vedic historian) and Yogi, a rare feat for an American born in Wisconsin. He is now a visiting professor for the Vivekananda Yoga Kendra in Bangalore, India, a government approved deemed university for yogic and Vedic studies and also a teacher with the Sringeri Shankaracharya Math, the most central of the traditional Vedantic centers in India.

In India, his translations and interpretations of the ancient Vedic teachings have been given the highest acclaim in both spiritual and scholarly circles. In America he is well known as a teacher and practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine and of Vedic astrology (Jyotish) and has done pioneering work on both these subjects in the West. In Sept. 2000, he was regarded as one of the 25 most influential Yoga teachers in America by the magazine Yoga Journal.

It is very difficult to get authentic knowledge about Vedic teachings and its related traditions of Yoga, Tantra, Vedanta, Ayurveda and Vedic Astrology. Yoga is often reduced to mere asana or yogic postures. Tantra has become little more than sex. Vedanta has often been reduced to a mere conceptual philosophy or an Advaitic pop psychology. Academic presentations of these subjects, not being done by practitioners, remain caught in semantics and theoretical issues.

Vamadeva (Dr. Frawley) presents authentic Vedic knowledge in the Western world and in a lucid presentation recognized by the tradition itself. He has worked extensively teaching, writing, lecturing, conducting research and helping establish schools and associations in related Vedic fields over the last thirty years. He has studied and traveled widely gathering knowledge, working with various Vedic teachers and groups in a non-sectarian manner.

Vamadeva sees his role as helping to revive Vedic knowledge in an interdisciplinary approach for the planetary age. He sees himself as a teacher and translator to help empower people to use Vedic systems to enhance their lives and aid in their own Self-realization. He sees Vedic wisdom as a tool for liberation of the spirit, not as a dogma to bind people or to take power over them. Vedic knowledge is a means of communing with the conscious universe and learning to embody it in our own life and perception.