Dr. Satyanārāyaṇa Dāsa, born on 9 June 1954, is a leading Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava scholar and practitioner. He is the President of the Haridas Goshala in Vṛndāvana and carries forward the cow service so dear to his guru, Śrī Haridāsa Śāstrī Mahārāja.
He holds a PhD in Sanskrit from Agra University, a degree in Indian law, a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and an M.Tech in Industrial Engineering. In 2012 he received an award from the President of India for his scholarship. Read more on Wikipedia.
Early life and spiritual path
Babaji grew up in a village near Faridabad, Haryana. After working for a software company in Miami, he came back to India to study Sanskrit. In Vṛndāvana he met Śrī Haridāsa Śāstrī Mahārāja and studied under him the whole range of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava literature and the six systems of Indian philosophy, especially Nyāya.
He received dīkṣā and bābājī-veṣa from his guru in the line of Śrī Gadādhara Paṇḍita. It was from Maharaj ji that his love for go-sevā came.
Books and teaching
Babaji has written more than twenty books, including translations and commentaries of Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī’s Ṣaṭ Sandarbhas; his doctoral research was on the Bhakti Sandarbha. He has lectured at Heidelberg, Tübingen, Zürich, Rutgers, Mississippi State and the University of Florida, and teaches at the Hindu University of America. His online courses are at learning.jiva.org.
Jiva Vedic Psychology
From the wisdom of the scriptures he has developed Jiva Vedic Psychology, and has trained psychotherapists in the US and taught in Poland, Lithuania, France and Japan.
Jiva Institute
Founded in 1992 under Maharaj ji’s guidance, the Jiva Institute has three divisions: education, health and culture. Scholars from around the world come to study Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava literature with Babaji and use its library. Since 2016 he has taught a five-year course on the Indian schools of philosophy. The institute also runs a Sanskrit school affiliated with Sampurnanand Sanskrit University, Benares, with a branch at Rādhā-kuṇḍa.