The UTC Chapter of Psi Chi National Honor Society announces a lecture by Dr. K. Ramakrishna Rao who will speak on Tuesday, October 2, at 2 p.m. in the University Center auditorium. The UTC community is invited.
Rao is currently chairman of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, an autonomous organization fully funded by the government of India.
He will be speaking on “Yoga Psychology.” Yoga, one of the six principal systems of classical Indian thought, offers a widely popular set of practices and a less known theory of mind, body and consciousness. Based on Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutras and drawing from related writings of other classical thinkers, notably Sankara, Rao will explore the postulates and principles of Indian psychology that may be seen as providing an alternative psychological model, complementing the currently dominant neurocentric psychology studied and practiced in the West.
Rao is the founding president of the Institute for Human Science and Service. He studied at Andhra University and received doctoral degrees in philosophy and psychology. He attended the University of Chicago as the Smith-Mundt Fulbright Scholar and was a fellow of the Rockfeller Foundation. He later conducted research at Duke University.
Rao’s academic appointments include professor and head of the Department of Psychology and Parapsychology, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, and director, Institute for Parapsychology, Durham, North Carolina. He has served as Vice-Chancellor, Andhra University; Advisor on Higher Education, Government of Andhra Pradesh; Chairman, Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education; and Vice-Chairman, Andhra Pradesh State Planning Board. Rao has taught at Andhra University, California Institute of Human Science, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He has served as the editor of the Journal of Parapsychology and the Journal of Indian Psychology and he has published over 100 research papers and 12 books, the most recent being Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (McFarland, 2002). Rao is also chair of the Center for Study of Science and Religion from the Metanexus Institute.
