Who is Puripada?
The "poison CD" refuted in the article "A Reply to the Poison CD" is narrated
by Geoffrey Guiliano also known as Puripada. In case our readers are wondering who
Puripada is, the following is an extract from his web page.
Naturally, CHAKRA cannot verify any of the information here, especially his claims to be
an internationally best-selling author, the leader of thousands, and a self-realized soul:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SELF-REALIZED SPIRITUAL MASTER,
HIS HOLINESS JAGANNATHA DASA PURIPADA ON TOUR OF AMERICA
The spiritual advisor and leader of over many thousands of people in Northern India, His
Holiness Jagannatha Dasa Puripada, has come to America to teach the
five-thousand-year-old, non-sectarian, Vedic meditational technique of Bhakti, or
Devotional Yoga, throughout North America.
Surprisingly, His Holiness is not Indian, but a forty-four-year-old American. Srila
Puripada was trained exclusively in the Bhakti School with special emphasis on the
experience of Sri Paramatma, or the Lord Within the Heart of each and every living entity.
This is achieved through a highly individualized program of both passive and active
meditation via the authorized introduction of a Sanskrit mantra to the perspective
student.
Srila Puripada has maunfactured or invented nothing of his own, but rather, strickly
adheres to the ancient, time tested, practical, accessable, philospical imperatives of
various Vedic scriptures such as the Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhagavad-gita, Puranas and
Upanishads. Thus, the philosophy advanced by His Holiness is completely authentic, pure
and transcendental, untouched by anyone's temporal ego, personal agenda or limited ideas.
The meditational technique and natural lifestyle lovingly taught by Srila Puripada is
quickly and easily implemented allowing the student to fully experience the complete
reality of living unfettered by the often oppressive constraints of the body, mind,
intelligence and false ego. 
Here is the freedom to be who we really are! It is a chance to actualize and experience
the unlimited, undivided, unfathomable, omniscient, omnipresent, Ocean of Pure Self that
floats just below the surface of our busy, work-a-day, often stressful, everyday lives.
"I have not so much come to teach as to awaken the deep love and devotion sleeping
inside you all," says Srila Puripada. "Through Bhakti one can easily come to the
platform of Pure Self wherein all life is ever increasing Sat, Chit, Ananda, or Eternity,
Knowledge and Bliss. That is your birthright, not the seamy ocean of birth and death we
foolishly cling to life after life."
Srila Jagannatha Dasa Puripada was born in Rochester, New York on September 11, 1953. As a
child of five he experienced many spontaneous spiritual episodes centered around the
realization of the reality of God and the process of transmigration, (or reincarnation) of
the individualized soul. Thereafter, he endured an indescribable series of mind numbing,
often frightening, out-of-body experiences which left him feeling incredibly isolated and
insecure. At the age of twelve he wandered into a Tampa, Florida bookstore and picked up a
copy of Richard Hittleman's Guide to Yoga Meditation. While only an introductory treatise
on the philosophy of yoga the young man was suitably impressed and thereafter went through
literally dozens of other works on the philosphy of various yogic schools.
At fifteen he began to seriously study the tenets of Bhakti Yoga as taught by His Divine
Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the foremost exponent of the science of
self-realization in the Western world. Four years later he traveled to London to
personally study with his spiritual master after having spent some time as a bramachari
(celibate student) in a Florida ashram.
By the time he was twenty-one Srila Puripada was ready to make a major commitment to his
practice and thus traveled alone to India living in the beautiful villiage of Mala just
outside Rishikesh, Uttar Pradesh in the foothills of the Himalayas. He stayed there for
three years coming back to the US for only brief visits. He then returned to his adopted
homeland where he eventually experienced the exalted state of Nirva Kalpa Samadi followed
by pure Krsna Prema, the highest consciousness attainable by an ordinary living entity.
Thereafter, the way was made clear for him to return to the West to freely dessiminate
this imperishable science of self-realization to anyone who would hear. Srila Puripada
struggled with the immensity of his realizations finally deciding to quietly continue his
spiritual practice thereby giving his young family a chance to grow unencumbered by the
demands of public life.
Quite by accident, along the way, His Holiness became an internationally best selling
author of over fifty books, CDs, videos and cassettes, all on the secular world of popular
music and culture. At the age of forty, however, Srila Puripada began to wind down his
various business activities in order to fullfil the prophecy of his time in India and the
expressed wish of his spiritual master that he teach the inspirational tenets of Bhakti in
the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition throughout North America.
CHAKRA 21-May-98 |