Mahatma Gandhi and Buddha's Path to Enlightenment

by Raghavan N. Iyer, The Theosophy Trust (Editor)

As the quotation near the front of this book makes clear, Mahatma Gandhi conducted a good deal of his adult life – his "experiments with truth" – very much in the tradition and the manner of Gautama Buddha. Gandhi took the foundation of Buddha's revelation – his First Noble Truth, that life is fraught with pain and suffering, from birth to death – and turned it inward in a unique and deeply creative manner. In his article, The Gandhian Bridge Between Heaven and Earth (in Hermes, January 1988) Prof. Iyer makes clear what should be an obvious connection to the student of Gandhi's life and thought, but is – remarkably – hardly noticed by many chroniclers of Gandhi. Even to the diligent student of Gandhi, this connection is difficult to grasp, as it is frequently understood only in an external sense. One can readily grasp that life brings suffering to every incarnated being, but it requires a profound revolution in consciousness to understand the necessity to actively choose suffering as a means of self-purification and the means by which an "enemy" might be purged of enmity, opposition, and violence. In these essays, Prof. Iyer returns again and again to a central theme found in many of his writings, that the recognition of those Beings who have far transcended the neophyte stages of Buddhi Yoga is a powerful purifier for the minds and hearts of the neophyte, that there are men and women who are perfected in the power of Buddhi Yoga, ceaselessly ideating and meditating, yoked to the good of the whole of Humanity. These beings comprise the sacred Fraternity of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, who exemplify above all else perfection in mental devotion and skill in action. The sacrificial work of these beings makes it possible for those caught in the realm of Samsara to purify themselves. Like the Himalayas, they are immovable in relation to their devotion to the Self of All.

336 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 25, 2014

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.