Entering The Universe of Vedic Astrology

Donald Walters first stumbled across the Book of Bhrigu in November 1959, when Raja Mrigendra Singh invited him to visit an astrologer in the tiny Punjabi town of Barnala. The local astrologer owned a book written by a sage named Bhrigu thousands of years ago, copied and recopied on palm leaves over the generations, in which was inscribed the destiny of every human being who ever lived, Singh insisted. Walters, a devoted disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda (one of the first Hindus to bring yoga to the West), had learned to appreciate the wisdom of India's mystical traditions, but this claim pushed his credulity to the limits. Nevertheless the next day he climbed into the Raja's car for the sixty mile drive to Barnala. In an unassuming home on Gaushala road Walters met Pandit Bhagat Ram, keeper of the Book of Bhrigu. The book, it turned out, was a huge mass of rectangular leaves on which North Indian style horoscopes and their delineations had been painstakingly printed by hand. Stacks of pages were pressed between wooden boards and carefully wrapped in cloth. Humble and sincere, the pandit disappeared into his "library," emerging two minutes later with the appropriate horoscope for Walters. The brittle ancient leaf described Walters' "previous incarnation" in Persia, as well as his present life as "a teacher lecturing on spirituality in a foreign country." Oddly, it explicitly stated that his name was "Kriyananda"--a rare name in India. Stunned, Walters passed the leaf to his friends in the room, asking them to check the Sanskrit. They confirmed that the pandit had read the page correctly. Walters, whose monastic name, given by his guru Yogananda, was Swami Kriyananda, and whose lifework was teaching meditation in America, wandered out of the house in a daze. A few months later Walters was back. This time he was prepared to conduct some serious research. Pandit Bhagat brought out a second reading in which Bhrigu began by stating he would not review Walters' past birth since that had already been covered in the previous reading. This time Bhrigu claimed his client's name was "James" (Walters' baptismal name) and that he had been born in "Rumanake" (a misspelling--Walters was actually born in Rumania) but was presently living in "Amerika." Was it conceivable that Pandit Bhagat had somehow researched Walters' life and produced a fraudulent reading? Walters had to know. He obtained permission to take the palm leaf with him to Delhi, where several scholars independently verified the Sanskrit translation. At the Indian National Archives, laboratory technicians certified that the page had been written over a century previously (the last time the Book of Bhrigu was recopied). In the reading Bhrigu offered several specific astrological predictions for Donald Walters, most of which have come to pass in the years since 1959. In addition Bhrigu offered some startling information about Walters' family members; facts which Walters was able to substantiate when he returned to the U.S. The ancient sage also counseled Walters on several important issues--the very concerns Walters had been wrestling with the day he consulted Bhrigu. This sounds like science fiction doesn't it? An astrologer giving accurate readings for clients who will come to him more than a thousand years after his death? You and I are rational people; we know the Book of Bhrigu couldn't possibly actually exist. Yet any one of us can take the bus to Barnala in the Punjab--and there it is. I know Donald Walters personally and I sit here with a photocopy of his palm leaf reading before me, which with my fledgling Sanskrit I can transliterate for you. Yes, Bhrigu spelled the name of Walters' adopted country "Amerika" even though America did not come into existence for over a thousand years after the prediction was written! As my husband, a physics major and veteran traveler to South Asia, is want to say, "Don't think of India as another country. Think of it as another planet." In India, everything is different, even the laws of physics. Things that should happen, don't. Things that can't happen, do." I'm not so sure the laws of physics are different in India, but the understanding of those laws is definitely different. Perhaps that's the reason things which seem miraculous to our Western minds are taken completely for granted in a culture where hundreds of thousands of yogis and yoginis cultivate higher states of awareness and gods and goddesses regularly "appear" to sincere devotees. I first went to India not to study Vedic astrology but to learn about India's ancient Goddess lineages and meet the great Hindu women saints. But when I made a disparaging remark about astrology to a tantric yogi teaching me about the Goddess, he looked at me in astonishment. "How can you understand Tantra unless you know astrology?" he demanded. He told me the following story about his own guru's encounter with the Book of Bhrigu. This yogi's spiritual master was an extremely advanced but little known saint from North India. While passing through the Punjab he decided to test the local Bhrigu pandit. Disguising himself as an Indian businessman, he stopped by the Bhrigu library. The pandit there disappeared into his stacks to find the appropriate reading for the incognito mystic. Moments later he came running out, the horoscope he had just read clutched in his hand, and threw himself to the floor in full prostration before the saint. "Either you are an enlightened master," he cried, "or all my work here is meaningless!" A Shaivite scholar I studied with confirmed that his own Bhrigu reading had discussed his past and future incarnations, and had gone on to correctly describe his caste and unorthodox lifestyle in this birth, along with offering miscellaneous correct details like the names of his wife and three children! This was from an astrology reading that had been prepared for him centuries before he was born! How can this be possible? Actually as we take a closer look at Vedic astrology, at least some of the mystery begins to peel away. First, not only Bhrigu but many other major sages of the Vedic tradition founded schools of astrology. There are over 150 predictive texts like the Book of Bhrigu scattered all over India. They are called Nadi Granthas which literally means that knowledge which "unties knots in the flow of destiny." These voluminous texts were probably not prepared by a single sage himself or herself, but by the seer's many students who apprenticed in that tradition centuries ago. Evidently, part of their training as jyotishis (Vedic astrologers) was to prepare predictions specific to particular sites in particular centuries when future generations of "clients" would come to consult their literature! In reality there are not actually readings for every human being, but rather a limited number of delineations for particular souls "destined" to receive a reading. Therefore not everyone who consults the Book of Bhrigu or any of its numerous counterparts will find a mind shattering reading waiting there for them. I also hasten to add that although the delineations are often amazingly accurate, they are not infallible. Whether this reflects a break down in the principles of Vedic predictive astrology, the free will of a client acting to "break" from the destiny foreseen by sages like Bhrigu, or the relative competence or incompetence of the particular student preparing the reading, I cannot say. Incidently, if you are wondering how a medieval jyotishi could come up with the names of a future client and his family members, in Vedic astrology certain Sanskrit syllables are associated with particular planetary configurations. Therefore a random mix of "planetary syllables" that would have been meaningless to the jyotishi at the time, such as "Amerika," might nevertheless have been "spelled out" by planetary placements during a reading done centuries ago. Astrology in India I should also add that the Nadi Granthas are only one small branch of the enormous, prolific tree of Vedic astrology. The vast majority of jyotishis work with other aspects of the tradition, including natal chart reading. Typically a rasi or birth horoscope is drawn up by hand, along with its 15 primary harmonic charts and tables delineating planetary strengths, in order to give what the Indians consider a complete reading; the amount of math this entails staggers the mind. I well remember the first time it struck me how seriously people in South Asia take these readings. I was backpacking through India, going through all the trials and tribulations visitors from the West are initiated into in that magical land: struggling with the monkeys who were trying to tear my underwear off the clothesline on the roof of my Benares hotel, feeling the heat of incredulous stares as I unwittingly clambored aboard the all male rather than the all female compartment of a Madras train, and constantly swallowing massive doses of urgently needed anti-diarrheals. One day I happened to turn to the "personals" column in a Delhi newspaper. "Engineeer seeks light complexioned bride. Send horoscope." "Doctor looking for wife. Biodata required." I thought of men sidling up to women in American bars and asking, "Hey, what's your sign?" In India that question is taken very seriously. One of the most common jobs jyotishis are called upon to do is compatibility checking since in India it is the Hindu parents' responsibility to have the horoscope of their son or daughter's prospective mate thoroughly scrutinized before marriage arrangements are finalized. If the couple's charts are seriously incompatible, the proposed union is cancelled. This aspect of astrology is so deeply embedded in Hindu culture that even professional Indians abroad, such as the software engineers my husband works with in Silicon Valley, defer to the jyotishi's judgment in selecting a marriage partner. (If this seems improbable to you, consider that often these individuals have not yet met the husband or wife their parents have selected for them back in India. Under these circumstances, an astrological pre-screening may not be such a bad idea!) Jyotishis are frequently employed to determine auspicious dates for religious rites, and for the inauguration of enterprises such as the opening of a new business. There is one very famous, and rather sad, example of what can happen when this process goes awry. In the wake of Mahatma Gandhi's successful effort to nonviolently claim independence for his people, the British were shamed into offering freedom to their Indian subjects. Highly esteemed astrologers were instantly consulted to select the best possible time of day for the birth of the new nation. The jyotishis gazed at their planetary tables in dismay: August 14, 1947, the date for Indian independence set by the British, was a disaster by astrological standards. The Indians tried to have the date changed; the British (in perhaps their last act of tyranny on the subcontinent) refused to consider another day. In desperation, Jawaharlal Nehru (India's first prime minister) and the Constituent Assembly stalled the independence proceedings all afternoon, then all evening, finally signing the papers in the middle of the night as the Moon moved into the auspicious constellation Cancer and Taurus began rising over the eastern horizon. This was a good but by no means ideal time to found a nation, but the Indians were trying to make the best of a bad planetary configuration. The bad unfortunately was quite bad, and India took birth in bloodly confrontation between Hindu and Muslim extremists. Perhaps if the British had had more respect for India's ancient science of timing, the creation of the country might have occurred when the stars were more peacefully disposed. Horary astrology is also big business in India. A client comes to a jyotishi with a question. "I lost my expensive silver bangle. Where is it?" "My two brothers fight constantly. What can be done?" "Will I make a profit from this business arrangement?" "Can my business partner be trusted?" "My mother-in-law is extremely ill. Will she recover?" The jyotishi casts a chart for the moment the client posed the question, and reads the possibilities inherent in that moment of time. "Venus is pre-eminent in the chart; you will find your jewelry. Check again the southeastern portion of your house." "Jupiter (older brother) and Mars (younger brother) adversely aspect one another. There will be no peace between your brothers." "Jupiter is crossing the Ascendant. This business venture will be very profitable for you. However the Moon's north node is in the 12th house. Take care you do not squander your earnings." I've spent much of my life in American academia. In the United States one of the ways we signal that we are members of the intellectual elite is by sneering at "pseudo sciences" like astrology. The atmosphere of hostility is so pervasive that although hundreds of ancient Greek, Latin and Persian astrological texts survive, these books' inestimable value to our understanding of ancient thought notwithstanding, no reputable scholar would go near them. The stigma of any association with astrology, no matter how remote, was too great. (Fortunately, in the 1990's the astrological community itself banded together to have these texts translated, producing a revolution in contemporary understanding of Greek astronomy.) The level of prejudice is truly astonishing: while the "scientific" works of Isaac Newton are all available to students of the history of science today, his far more voluminous works on astrology and the occult have yet to see print. Yet how much light these materials would throw on the thought processes of this 17th century English genius! In India, however, astrology is a hallowed part of the indigenous religious tradition, and orthodox brahmins are required to learn basic astrological principles. Courses in astrological science are taught in some universities. Thoroughly Westernized Indians have learned to sneer, but the people in the street are less interested in what's "scientific" than in what actually works. India's leading astrologers conduct lively debates on the future of the country and its numerous celebrities in newspapers and popular magazines; these articles are followed with great relish by large segments of the population. One of the greatest modern jyotishis, K.N. Rao, became a national celebrity when he correctly predicted Indira Gandhi's demise. People check the papers daily for their horoscopes, though in India you don't look up which of the twelve solar signs your Sun was in when you were born, but which of the 27 Moon signs you were born under. I found India thoroughly refreshing in many ways. It is the one culture on earth where worship of the Goddess has continued unabated on a massive scale since prehistory. It is also one culture where astrology has always played and continues to play a significant role in people's lives. It is a fascinating--and for a Westerner, unprecedented- experience to immerse oneself in a living astrological tradition millennia old.