The Dawning of Wisdom: Essays on Walking the Path

by Raghavan N. Iyer

The spiritually penetrating essays in this volume were written for the expressed purpose of shedding the pristine light of universal Theosophy on the path of spiritual self-regeneration in the service of humanity.The Theosophical philosophy is predicated on the ageless truth that divine wisdom exists, and that wise beings exist who dynamically embody it in world history; that sages and seers still grace the globe and continually oversee the spiritual, mental and physical evolution of man and nature. The secret Society of Sages that guides human progress periodically sends forth one of their own to sound afresh the Divine Philosophy and exemplify the spiritual life in all its richness and mystery. Such an enlightened spiritual teacher articulates eternal but forgotten truths in ingenious ways, adopting modes that inspire the mind, release soul perception, and cut through the miasma of an age.The wide-ranging articles in this volume span the spectrum of human thought from the metaphysical to the mystical, the ethical to the psychological, the spiritual to the material. They reveal the fundamental basis of religion, philosophy and science. The assimilation of these essays turns us back upon ourselves and releases that laser-like insight that allows us to increasingly discern the true, the good, and the beautiful in all religious teachings, philosophical musings, and scientific discoveries. When carefully meditated upon and skillfully applied to the realm of self-chosen duties, they purify the mind, cleanse the heart, and uplift the human condition.

344 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 2006

About the author

Raghavan Narasimhan Iyer was born in Madras, India on March 10, 1930, the son of Narasimhan Iyer and Lakshmi Iyer. He was educated at the Universities of Bombay and Oxford. At Bombay he received first class honors in Economics and won a variety of commendations and prizes, including the Chancellor's Medal. At the age of 18 he became the youngest lecturer in the University of Bombay, at Elphinstone College. After being awarded his master's degree in Advanced Economics in Bombay, he was sent as the sole Rhodes Scholar for India for 1950 to Magdalen College, Oxford. He secured First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and later received the D. Phil. Degree in moral and political philosophy. While a student at Oxford, he was elected President of the Oxford Union, the Voltaire Society, the Oxford Majlis, the Oxford University Peace Association, the Oxford Social Studies Association and several other societies.

On returning to India, he served as Director of the Indian Institute of World Culture and as Associate Editor of the Aryan Path. He then served as Chief Research Officer for the Head of the Planning Commission of the Indian Government, and helped to elaborate the theory of democratic planning.

In 1956 he returned to Oxford, where he taught Moral and Political Philosophy for eight years. He was Fellow and Lecturer in Politics at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, and Visiting Professor at the Universities of Oslo, Ghana and Chicago. He also lectured at the College of Europe in Belgium, the Erasmus Seminar in Holland, and at Harvard, Bowdoin, Berkeley, U.C.L.A., Rand Corporation and the California Institute of Technology. He was actively associated with the world federalist movement in Europe, participated in many television and radio programmes of the B.B.C. and lectured at various international conferences in Sweden, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia and Japan.

He settled permanently in Santa Barbara in 1965, where he was a Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara until his retirement in 1986. He became a Consultant to the Fund for the Republic, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Academy of World Studies and the Management Development Institute of the State of California. From 1971 to 1982 he was a member of the Club of Rome, and from 1978 to 1988 he was a member of the Reform Club in London. In the Spring of 1985 he was Alton Brooks Visiting Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California. He was also a member of the American Society for Legal and Political Philosophy, the International Society for Gandhian Studies and the International Society for Neo-Platonic Studies.

In 1988 he visited the Martin Luther King Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia, met Dr. Broadus Butler and Bishop Featherstone, and intoned the Gayatri mantram for the sake of all souls. In New Orleans he paid tribute to the memory of Louis Armstrong, the herald of 'the American Century'. In Savannah, Georgia he entered into a deep midnight meditation at the Pulaski monument by the sea, invoking myriad stars in accordance with ancient custom, on behalf of the disinherited billions upon this earth.

After five and one-half decades of service to the Theosophical Movement and to the emerging City of Man, Sri Raghavan Iyer passed away on June 20, 1995 in Santa Barbara, California. His profound insights into the spiritual promise and therapeutic trials of contemporary man, his radical proposals for creative modes of individual and collective growth, and his deep devotion to a new and more vibrant world culture will continue to resonate to myriad, receptive souls for generations and centuries to come.