On 14th Dec 2024 - Guruji Shri K.N. Rao, a legendary figure in Vedic astrology, receives the prestigious award 'Jyotish Vibhushan' Lifetime Achievement Award from the American College of Vedic Astrology (ACVA). He has dedicated his life to advancing the practice and teaching of astrology. As the founder and advisor of the Institute of Astrology, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, his unparalleled contributions have redefined the field. Celebrate this monumental achievement with us!"
About Shri K.N.Rao ji :
Shri K.N.Shri Rao ji (Kotamraju Narayana Rao) retired from the Indian Audit and counts 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.
Shri Rao ji was initiated into astrology by his late mother, K. Saraswani Devi ji, 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).
Shri Rao ji 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.
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, Shri Rao ji 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 has now more than a thousand students in India and more than two hundred in the USA.
He is the Advisor of Astrology Courses in the Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, New Delhi. What impelled Shri Rao ji 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 Shri Rao ji describes as the last of the Rishi astrologers in the purest classical mold. 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 Shri Rao ji to the USA in 1993 as, “Vedic astrology before Shri Rao ji and after Shri Rao ji”.
Shri Rao ji'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.
Not merely is Shri Rao ji a highly successful teacher but is the teacher of teachers besides being a very rational and scientific astrologer who wants sanity and modernization to a science which otherwise will remain archaic and look like the vestigal remnant of a dogma and not the super science it really is. Single handedly, Shri Rao ji has written numerous books on Vedic astrology some of which have even been translated in Russian and Japanese and also encouraged and produced more writers and researchers.
00:00:00 About Shri Rao ji by Professor Juliana Swanson
00:06:40 About the Award "Jyotish Vibushan" by Professor Charlotte Benson
00:10:46 Few words by Ms.Shobha Mohan
00:12:15 About Shri Rao ji by Ms. Christina Collens
00:13:00 About Shri Rao ji by Astrologer Paul Manley
00:18:09 About Shri Rao ji by Astrologer Marc Boney
00:19:27 About Shri Rao ji by Astrologer David Frawley
00:26:51 About Shri Rao ji by Dennis Harness
00:31:13 Award presentation to Shri Rao ji
00:33:13 Shri Rao ji speaks
00:39:55 About Shri Rao ji by Astrologer Marc Boney