Enigmas In Astrology

K.N. Rao (Kotamraju Narayana Rao) retired from the Indian Audit and Accounts Service as Director General in November 1990. He is the second of the four sons of the famous journalist of the pre-independence era, K. Rama Rao, the founder editor of the National Herald and, editor of more than thirty journals in his long journalistic career. Rao was initiated into astrology by his late mother, K.Saraswani Devi, at the age of twelve in 1943. He regards her as the best astrologer he has known in two areas, marriage and children and prashna (horary).

Rao was a lecturer in English before joining the government service through an all-India competition in 1957. He joined the Indian Audit and Accounts Service from which he retired as Director General in November 1990. More interested in games and sports than in astrology in his youth, Rao won brilliancy prizes in chess competitions and two state championships in bridge competitions. He played ten other games which is why in his astrological writings also there are references to games often.

During his service career, he was the planner, organizer and teacher of three international courses on Audit of Receipts as a joint director once and director twice. His interactions with foreigners have been both on professional and astrological levels for more than two decades which is why he has, as an astrologer, a large international network of friends. He went on doing all his fundamental researches in astrology during his service career because of which he went on collecting horoscopes systematically in thousands. He has in his possession more than 50,000 horoscopes with ten important events of each individual noted with him. It is perhaps, the largest individual collection of horoscopes any astrologer in the world has.

The strain of doing astrology as a mission, not charging any fee, except on foreign tours almost made him give up astrology many times. But in December 1981 he was forced out of his shell to participate in a three-day seminar on astrology in Delhi. After this ground breaking speech, there has been a persistent demand for his astrological articles. From then onwards he has been sharing with his readers his original researches for which he has won worldwide praise.

Between 1993 and 1995, Rao has visited the USA on five lecture tours. He was the Chief Guest at the Second Conference of the American Council of Vedic Astrology in 1993. He was requested to be present in the Third Conference also In 1994 on the opening day because of the crowds he would draw. His name was advertised till November 1995 also for the Fourth Conference though he had made it clear that he would not be available anymore for the American conferences.

Since June 1998 he has visited Moscow five times where he taught astrology through interpreters. It was a great success every time as reported by the Russian sponsors part of those reported is produced here.

As a result of his academic approach, he has now more than a thousand students in India and more than five hundred in the USA and Russia. He is the Director of Astrology Courses in the Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, New Delhi. The teachers on the :eaching faculty of the astrology course in the Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan have, like him, never charged any fees for teaching which they do it in an honorary capacity. What Impelled Rao to do it is well explained in his own horoscope where the lagna and the 10th lords get combined in the lagna, with an exalted Jupiter in 10th house. All this was foreseen by his Jyotish Guru, Yogi Bhaskarananda of Gujarat whom Rao describes as the last of the Rishi astrologers in the purest classical mould. He had told him that he would have to visit many foreign countries to give to Hindu Astology the honour, recognition and dignity which it did not have till then. An American summed up the impact of the first ever foreign visit of Rao to the USA in 1993 as, “Vedic astrology before Rao and after Rao”.

what different yogis have said about astrology as a Vedanga which he must not give up has been quoted in his book, Yogis, Destiny and the Wheel of Time. Astrology Is ill-reputed as a profession because of its mercenary and exploitative nature. Rao’s desire never to turn into a professional astrologer, has won him thousands of admirers and also some enemies from the community of professional astrologers who felt threatened, when around him there grew up a fine team of more than two hundred academic astrologers like him, for whom astrology is not a source of living, but a super science to delve into the meaning and purpose of human life, which is what astrology, as Vedanga, should and has to be.

Both his mantra guru, Swami Paramananda Saraswati, and his jyotish guru, Yogi Bhaskarananda taught him some secrets of spiritual astrology which are not given usually in any book of astrology. Rao has revealed some of these secrets in his book, Yogis, Destiny and the Wheel of Time. Among Rao’s recent fundamental and most original researches are his two books Predtcting through Jaimini’s Chrira Dasha and Predicting through Karakamsha and Mandook Dasha. It has been possible for him to produce such researches because he was told by his jyotish guru that what was in parampara (tradition) was much more than what was contained in books of astrology which are translated literally and are without ifiustrations generally. His own mother, who was his first jyotish guru, knew many such traditional secrets, parts of which Rao has revealed in his three books, Ups and Downs in Careers, Astrology; Destiny and the Wheel of Time and Planets and Children.

It was the mantra guru of Rao, Swami Paramananda Saraswati, who first asked Rao not to give up astrology as it had to be an integral part of his sadhana. Later a great yogi, Swami Moorkhan.ndji, prophesied in 1982 that he would be the architect of a great astrological renaissance. Whether that is already fulfilled or not can be gauged from the impressive list of his research published.

This book has been written to draw the attention of astrologers to some enigmas in Jyotisha, which should not be overlooked if an element of subtlety is to enter many of the predictions we give to people who consult us.

Written and kept in manuscript form for a book by me for a long time, some of the papers included in this book appeared in print in the Journal of Astrology which, being a quarterly and with rich reading material of one hundred pages in English and nearly thirty in Hindi, is actually a series of booklets of astrology.

The papers are well researched and illustrative. The purpose is to see where others see negativity, the positive angle also. The reverse of it, where one almost begins to see superstitiously only the positive points, the concealed inherent negativity should not be lost sight of.

Some of the topics discussed in the book are:
Gajakesari Yoga
Gajakesari Yoga done mechanically, astrology is more of a asaster than a boon for a majority of astrologers. In the books of Jyotisha written by many writers, including Dr. Raman many iecies ago, a lopsided view of Yogas has been taken. The commonest and the most misapplied yoga is the Gajakesarl Yoga which is seen in the horoscopes of nearly one-third human beings. This yoga which is said to increase the span of life of a human being, give him fame and an idealism not to be seen in others has been always interpreted loosely. It is necessary a fuller view, when this Yoga is only protective, it being a good Yoga but weekely and when strongly. Then the full benefits of this Yoga are available only under certain conditions. Jupiter-Venus or Venus-Jupiter periods
or Venus-Jupiter periods are rather enigmatic. I had read a good article on this some years ago by a writer who I thought should have written more elaborately. I have been watching this period in many horoscopes with some trepidation because while expects these periods of two benefices to be generally good to excellent, it has been seen invariably that a family tragedy does take place.

Saturn-Rahu and Rahu-Saturn periods
These are periods of absolute disaster in some cases or even in a majority of them. Some exceptions are there to find out which one has to go deeper in one’s analysis.

Mission of one’s life
Mission of one’s life, a question frequently asked by those in the New Age Movement is whether one is born with a mission and what it is. The plain and obvious answer is that those who are born with a mission will be guided by God to fulfil it without anyone having to tell them. A very vast majority of us are not born with a mission but should take to spiritual life seriously to free oneself from the shackles of Maya.

The purpose of writing this book will have been served if it stimulates thinking on sounder and more scientific lines, which the generations of astrologers earlier to my generation paid very little attention to. Dr. Raman died on 20 December 1998 after starting a writer career in 1936 and has no research at all to his credit. In our times, as the Gregorian twentieth century is closing, we have wild guesses, which are mistaken for researches. There is however, a small group of serious minded researchers in the younger generation, which is bound to improve upon what we, and my generation has produced in astrological writing.