Professor Raghavan N. Iyer was an internationally known philosopher and political theorist who devoted his life to the intellectual and spiritual uplift of human society. The only Rhodes Scholar from India in 1950 to Oxford, he secured First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and later earned a D. Phil. Degree in moral and political philosophy. For eight years, he was Fellow and Lecturer in Politics at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, then Visiting Professor at the Universities of Oslo, Ghana and Chicago, and 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 professor of political philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara for 21 years.
His books include Utilitarianism and All That, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (three volumes), The Glass Curtain Between Asia and Europe, Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man, and The Jewel in the Lotus (as editor), and co-authored, with Nandini Iyer, The Descent of the Gods: The Mystical Writings of G.W. Russell-A.E. His books were initially published by Oxford University Press, subsequently by Concord Grove Press (Santa Barbara, CA) and Theosophy Trust Books, and remain available.
During the last years of his life, Prof. Iyer edited these three volumes of The Gupta Vidya, which are a compilation of his writings appearing over 14 years in the journal Hermes, a monthly Theosophical publication. Prof. Iyer saw humanity as socially, politically and spiritually evolving within the turbulent and radically changing world of the 20th and 21st centuries. His message is that a renewed humankind is now emerging, and the contents of these volumes address the causes of the global situation, the nature of this evolution, and the manner in which individuals can participate fully in this collective transformation.
Thus, Prof. Iyer's writings are analytical, visionary, and eminently practical.
