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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.
He was initiated into
astrology by his late mother, K. Saraswati 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).
He 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 perhaps has.
The strain of doing
astrology as a mission, not charging any fee, 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. As a result of his
academic approach, he has now more than a thousand students in India
and more than two hundred in the USA.
He was instrumental in
starting the Vedic Astrology course in the Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan,
New Delhi and is the Advisor and senior teacher of Astrology Courses.
He is also responsible for the BJP Govt. introducing Vedic astrology
as a study course in the Indian universities.
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 the
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 astrology 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.
His 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 his recent
fundamental and most original researches are his two books
"Predicting through Jaimini's Chara 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 illustrations 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
Moorkhanandji, 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 researches
published in his writings.
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