Jagad Guru Chris Butler - practical wisdom

Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa is a highly respected yoga guru (teacher) coming in a long line of authentic spiritual masters in the ancient Vedic tradition known as Vaishnavism. He is the founder of the Science of Identity Foundation and has expertly taught students all over the world in the science of yoga. Many disciples and students of Siddhaswarupananda around the world are doing their best to make these teachings and practices available to people in their neighborhoods and communities. As stated by the organization's founder, Siddhaswarupananda: "The goal is to give yoga to as many people as possible. In order to achieve this, the work must be decentralized. There cannot be just one teacher or guru—there must be many. It is the responsibility of each person who learns the science of yoga, which is the science of identity, to pass that on to others.".

As a long-time proponent of nonsectarianism, Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda has worked in union with other Vaishnava acharyas (teachers/gurus), including Puri Maharaj, Paramadvaiti Maharaj, Tripurari Maharaj, Tirtha Maharaj, etc., to establish the World Vaishnava Association, an umbrella organization composed of more than 30 different Vaishnava missions around the world.

Vaishnavas recognize that despite the various ways and methods that different acharyas teach, the apex of perfect yoga, and the ultimate goal of the human form of life, is the achievement of pure spiritual love (bhakti). Yoga can be simply compared to a ladder. The lowest rung is yoga asanas and the highest rung–the culmination and definition of yoga-is perfect spiritual love.

Jagad Guru's Historical Spiritual Lineage

Siddhaswarupananda comes from the line of yoga spiritual masters known as the Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Sampradaya. This spiritual lineage includes the great sage Srila Vyasadeva, who compiled and wrote down the Vedas some 5000 years ago.

Another yoga luminary in this line was Madhvacharya (1238–1317 AD), who was famous for his opposition to and refutation of the advaitavada teachings of Shankaracharya (788-820 AD) as well as other impersonalist (Mayavadi) schools of thought.

Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534 AD) is acknowledged as the foremost proponent of bhakti yoga in more recent history, both within the Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Sampradaya and within the subcontinent of India.

Sri Chaitanya, while profoundly humble, displayed an unparalleled intellect and was accepted as the greatest scholar of His time, gathering about Him a number of extraordinary and highly scholarly disciples. Among them were Sri Ramananda Raya, who was the governor of Madras, and the brothers Rupa Goswami and Sanatan Goswami, who were ministers of the Bengal government under the Muslim regime of Nawab Hussain Shah.

Under the direction of Sri Chaitanya, His followers have given mankind the priceless gift of an enormous library of extraordinary yoga spiritual literature unmatched in the history of the world. It is only within recent decades that these works on Gaudiya Vaishnava yoga by the followers of Sri Chaitanya have risen in prominence and appreciation by scholars in many academic institutions in Europe and America, including Oxford and Harvard.

In more recent times, a number of prominent spiritual teachers appeared within the Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Sampradaya. Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur (1838–1914), renowned as a great yogi, devotee and Vedic scholar, was a high court judge and assistant to the governor of Orissa province under the British Raj. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati (1874–1937) was one of the great Vedic scholars of modern India, and his most famous disciple, Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad (1896–1977), propagated Vaishnavism widely in the Western world. Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda is the humble disciple of this greatest of scholars and devotee in modern times.