Rama Prasad

Rama Prasad was an Indian Theosophist and Sanskrit scholar. He had a Master of Arts degree and was a pleader (attorney) from Meerut. He was President of the Meerut Theosophical Society and was listed as a member of the Advisory Council to the Theosophical Congress held at the World's Parliament of Religions in 1893.

Colonel Olcott mentioned visiting Rama Prasad in 1883: "From Delhi the programme took me to Meerut, the home of that gifted young Hindu lawyer, Rama Prasad, whose work on Nature's Finer Forces made him known, some years later, to the whole Theosophical reading public, the world over."

"The Finer Forces of Nature"

• "Nature's Finer Forces" in 9 parts, The Theosophist, 1887-1889

much read and quoted - influential

In the Book of Rules I advice students to get certain works, as I shall have to refer to and quote from them repeatedly. I reiterate the advice and ask them to turn to The Theosophist [Vol. IX] of November, 1887. On page 98 they will find the beginning of an excellent article by Mr. Rama Prasad on "Nature's Finer Forces."* The value of this work is not so much in its literary merit, though it gained its author the gold medal of The Theosophist - as in its exposition of tenets hitherto concealed in a rare and ancient Sanskrit work on Occultism. But Mr. Rama Prasad is not an Occultist, only an excellent Sanskrit scholar, a university graduate and a man of remarkable intelligence. His Essays are almost entirely based on Tantra works, which, if read indiscriminately by a tyro in Occultism, will lead to the practice of most unmitigated Black Magic. Now, since the difference of primary importance between Black and White Magic is simply the object with which it is practiced, and that of secondary importance, the nature of the agents and ingredients used for the production of phenomenal results, the line of demarcation between the two is very, very thin. The danger is lessened only by the fact that every occult book, so called, is occult only in a certain sense; that is, the text is occult merely by reason of its blinds. The symbolism has to be thoroughly understood before the reader can get at the correct sense of the teaching. Moreover, it is never complete, its several portions each being under a different title and each containing a portion of some other work; so that without a key to these no such work divulges the whole truth. Even the famous Saivagama, on which "Nature's Finer Forces" is based, "is nowhere to be found in complete form," as the author tells us. Thus, like all others, it treats of only five Tattvas instead of the seven in esoteric teachings.

• The reference to "Nature's Finer Forces" which follow have respect to the eight articles which appeared in the pages of The Theosophist [Vol. IX, November, 1887; February, May, June, August, 1888; Vol. X, October, November 1888; March 1889], and not to the fifteen essays and the translation of a chapter of the Saivagama, which are contained in the book called Nature's Finer Forces. The Saivagama in its details is purely Tantric, and nothing but harm can result from any practical following of its precepts. I would most strongly dissuade a member of the E.S. from attempting any of these Hatha-Yoga practices, for he will either ruin himself entirely, or throw himself so far back that it will be almost impossible to regain the lost ground in this incarnation. The translation referred to has been considerably expurgated, and even now is hardly fit for publication. It recommends Black Magic of the worst kind, and is the very antipodes of spiritual Raja-Yoga. Beware, I say.

In Israel Regardie‘s The Golden Dawn, there is a paper entitled “The Tattwas of the Eastern School.” It was addressed to the members of the Philosophus Grade of the Order by Frater De Profundis ad Lucem (Latin for “From the depths to the light,” the motto of Frederick Leigh Gardner, 1857–1930). It was dated August, 1894. This document was withdrawn from circulation within the branch of the Golden Dawn into which Regardie had been initiated (the Stella Matutina), but continued to be given to members of the American branch of the Order, as well as to those who remained loyal to co-founder Macgregor Mathers after the Order’s schism in the early 1900s.

There are some other instructions on using the Tattwas and the changing energies of the Tattwas (traditionally known as the Tattwic or Tattvic Tides, although that expression was not used in this document) in The Golden Dawn, but this paper is the most elaborate discussion of the subject. Regardie called the Tattwas an “alien system” and stated he believed the concepts didn’t mix well with the Western systems that are combined within the Golden Dawn. The concepts and practices surrounding the Tattwas come from ancient India.

Regardie writes that this paper is simply a summary of the book Nature’s Finer Forces written by Rama Prasad and published by the Theosophical Society. This would be rather breathtaking as this paper is dated the same year that Prasad’s book was published (although parts of it were published earlier). That means within a few months the leaders of the Golden Dawn took material none of them had ever seen or heard of before and incorporated it into their system. If true, it would be interesting to find out why they felt it was as important as the Tarot, the Kabalah, Enochian magick, and other systems. Regardie decided to include it in his book because, “it was considered highly important by some of the early Order Adepti.”

Regardie suggests that the reason it was withdrawn from his branch of the Order was that the author, F. L. Gardner, didn’t give credit to its source. I find that highly unlikely that Gardner, an upcoming author and antiquarian book dealer, would do that. Further, I have a second edition of Prasad’s book, and there is so much that Gardner doesn’t cover in his paper that it is hardly a summary at all! In fact, a great deal of this paper has little or nothing to do with Prasad’s book. It seems more like Gardner took some concepts he didn’t understand and tried to make it fit within the Golden Dawn tradition. It also makes me wonder whether Regardie ever took the time to actually read Prasad’s book.

Regardie must have considered the Golden Dawn’s interpretations of the Tattwas important even if they were “alien.” The occultist Gareth Knight was kind enough to give me the complete set of the Tattwas Regardie had hand made for himself.

Several members of the Golden Dawn back in the early days of the Order were also members of the Theosophical Society, which was and is H.P. Blavatsky’s Western school that teaches mostly Eastern philosophy. The base knowledge of the Tattwas was primarily derived from the Theosophists who derived their knowledge of the Tattwas primarily from Rama Prasad. This Indian guru is the author of the acclaimed work titled “Nature’s Finder Forces,” a book on the subject of the Tattwas which was written as a result of much interest of his previous essays published in The Theosophist.

Another example of RP's influence:

Writing in the up-and-coming Metaphysical Magazine, Detroit lawyer Hamilton Gay Howard informed readers, and it had also been "taught for hundreds of years in the School of Adepts, at Thebes, which Lord Bulwer Lytton is said to have attended for three and a half years - half the course." "The whole course, requiring great self-denial and continued physical trials was taken," he believed, "by the late Madame Blavatsky, and by Colonel Olcott, of Massachusetts, the advanced free-thinker and theosophist." Howard especially wanted to underscore his conviction that the "wisdom of the East" needed to be noticed, and so he excerpted a piece from a newspaper that he identified only as the Pittsburg Dispatch. Inviting readers into a newand for them exotic-world, its unnamed author boasted of having before him "an English translation of a very old tantric work from the original Sanscrit, by the Hindu pandit, Rama Prasad," a work that contained "the ancient Hindu philosophyas regards the finer forces of nature." In its pages the author found, with evident enthusiasm, references and explanations for "such things as the interstellar ether; its general properties and subdivisions; the laws of vibration; the circulation of the blood and of the nervous fluid; the nervous centres and the general anatomy of the body; the rationale of psychometry and of occult phenomena, and a good many other things of which modern science as yet knows little or nothing." 1

What neither Howard nor the Dispatch writer apparently knew was that Rama Prasad's book had originally appeared as a series of articles in the Indian-based periodical The Theosophist, which had been launched in Bombay by none other than Helena Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott in 1879. Prasad himself was a decidedly Westernized Hindu and a Theosophist, a man who moved in a discourse community that had heavily invested in reinscribing the traditional lore of India in the scientific terms of the modern, British-inspired West. For Prasad and those who followed him, yogic pranayama had become the "science of breath." In the lengthy exposition that preceded Prasad's translation of the short text from the Sanskrit, he in fact took on the famed German scholar Max Muller for reading the Chandogya Upanishad as in places "more or less fanciful."

By contrast, in Prasad's account, none of the Upanishads could be "very intelligible" without knowing something of "the ancient Science of Breath," which was "said to be the secret doctrine of all secret doctrines" and "the key of all that is taught in the Upanishads." Prasad's allusion was a double entendre. First, the Indian Theosophist had affirmed that traditional Indian religious thought was scientific, and he had rendered the Sanskrit title of the work he had translated as "The Science of Breath and the Philosophy of the Tattvas." The "Tattvas" of his title -literally "thatnesses" - were, in the classical dualistic Samkyha philosophy of India, the twenty-five principles constitutive of the material universe. In Prasad's usage, however-influenced probably by Helena Blavatsky's invocation of the "Great Breath" in her 1888, The Secret Doctrine - they referred specifically to the "five modifications of the Great Breath." 2 Thus Prasad's allusion to the "secret doctrine of all secret doctrines" pointed to Blavatsky's book and, so, to Theosophy.

Other writings

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists 77 articles by or about Rama Prasad. He wrote mostly for The Theosophist and Lucifer, but some articles were reprinted in Le Lotus Bleu and The American Theosophist. Several are reprints or book reviews, but he seems to have been actively writing from 1884-1908. Serialized writings include:

• "The Prophecy of the Bhagavata as to the Future Rulers of India" in 2 parts, The Theosophist, 1890.
• "Karma and Reincarnation as Applied to Man" in 5 parts, Lucifer, 1891-1892.
• "Astrology" in 5 parts, The Theosophist, 1891.
• "Wisdom of the Upanishads" in 7 parts, The Theosophist, 1893.
• "The Sankhya Yoga" in 3 parts, The Theosophist, 1894.
• "Thoughts on the Bhagavad Gita" in 4 parts, The Theosophist, 1895-1900.
• "The Problems of Vedanta" in 2 parts, The Theosophist, 1899.
• "Self-Culture of the Yoga of Patanjali" in 15 parts, The Theosophist, 1906-1907.
• "The Date of the Bhagavad Gita" in 3 parts, The Theosophist, 1908.

Books include:

• The Science of Breath & the Philosophy of the Tatwas. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1890. This was a compilation and expansion of "Nature's Finer Forces" and other writings. The Preface signed by the author is dated November 5, 1889, in Meerut, India. Available at RainbowBody.com and Scribd.com. Another edition, revised by G. R. S. Mead, was published in 1894 and is available at Hermetics.org. A third edition was released in 1933 by Theosophical Publishing House.