What is Jyotish? - an update to S1Ep1 "What is Vedic Astrology?"

What is Jyotish? - an update to S1Ep1 "What is Vedic Astrology?"

[00:00:00] Sachin Sharma: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Vedic Astrology Podcast. My name is Fiona Marques. Today I have the joy of exploring "What is Vedic Astrology?" Or actually what is Jyotish. And in some ways what is in a name, what is the importance of the words that we give to describe the practice that we're engaged in.

[00:00:26] Fiona Marques: And to join me, guide me in this conversation is my friend and colleague, Sachin Sharma. Sachin, it's lovely to have you back on the podcast. Welcome.

[00:00:36] Sachin Sharma: Thank you for having me. Always a pleasure to be here and discuss Jyotish with you.

[00:00:43] Fiona Marques: Sachin has just launched a project called "The Jyotish Project". And the first video is available now on YouTube. And one of the things that it brings to our awareness is the power of the words that we use to describe something. We all know that in some ways, one of the amazing capabilities of human beings is their ability to label things. It allows us to gather and interact with a huge amount of knowledge and information. 

So on one level, it's a great gift, but on another level, naming and labeling things is a great gift as well. Is a skill of the ego, isn't it? It's a way for the ego to bring the glory of consciousness into something smaller and less glorious, but that can be managed and analyzed and broken down and built up.

It turns it into a concept rather than an experience. So when you began this Jyotish project, Sachin, what is it that you learned as you went about asking yourself, "What is Jyotish?" And beginning with that, very beginning. Why is it called that? What's the power of the words that we use to describe this practice?

[00:02:01] Sachin Sharma: Jyotish is generally translated as Vedic Astrology. And then when I started studying about 10 years ago when someone asked me, what are you studying? Or even if I would look at it myself, I would just say I'm studying Astrology or Vedic Astrology in particular. And then slowly and steadily it starts becoming clear that 

Astrology has its own underlying philosophy, its own background.

And there are different kinds of Astrologies in the world. And then there is Jyotish. 

Jyotish is fundamentally different. It is not derived from any of the other Astrologies. Its understanding is completely different. So there was always this idea for me, that, all kinds of Astrologies are fundamentally talking about the same thing. And I study comparative religion to create that unifying vision of things. 

And I slowly realized that this is not true though. Because when you speak to an Astrologer in the West or anywhere in the world, even the East, an Astrologer who's trained in more Western kinds of ideas, Hellenistic Astrology or different Astrologies like Mayan Astrology. The, philosophization process during the analysis is different than it is with the Jyotishi. Because Jyotishi is using things like karma, so causation, which comes from Satkaryavad, which is a choice and consequence paradigm: the chain of causation, which comes from Samkhya philosophy.

So Jyotish is using the nine Grahas the word Graha itself means something. The word Jyotish itself means something. The word Jyoti is very important. Extremely important. It's a lot of scriptural information. A lot of just data literature is given just on the word jyotish, when you start opening up the Upanishads, the metaphysics of light, the meditation and Jyoti dynamics with during meditations, stages of meditations.

So Jyotish is talking about something other than just astral phenomenon that affects lives on earth. 

Now, maybe Western Astrology at some point thousands of years ago was about this same thing, but at the moment, objectively, it's not. We all know that. But Jyotish still is. So even when you go to India and you speak to a Jyotishi, they touch upon some very profound things. In their own way in the way they have philosophized and whatever feels comfortable to them if they're a Vaishnava that is they worship Vishnu or if they're into Shaktism or Shaivism if they're into Shiva bhakti, they'll have their own methods of speaking of the same laws of the Universe and fundamental principles and how they make sense of Jyotish.

The Jyotish is very different than all the other Astrologies of the world. And it's quite rich, symbolically very rich. We don't just have one name for the Grahas, for example, we have thousands of names for the Grahas. And every name tells us about a quality of the Graha.

[00:05:47] Fiona Marques: So one of the things that it comes up for me when you're speaking like that is that sometimes the labels we give to things can be, for example, the label of the colonizers, right? When people arrive and they see a particular practice or they see an object that reminds them of something that they already know something about in order to label that and have a category for it and understand it, it's easy from the outside to point at that and say, "Oh, that looks like Astrology. We have Astrology. So this must be the Indian version of Astrology". And there are so many examples of things like that, aren't there? Where the people whose language, so English has become a bit of a universal language, will put a label because it reminds them of something that they already know something about. But obviously that can really restrict our understanding of what that thing is, because just by putting the label on we put a boundary around what that means because of what that label already means in our own language.

[00:06:50] Sachin Sharma: That's, one way to conceptualize it make sense of this. Fundamentally that's how it works, but colonization that is taking your culture and exporting it.It gives you a certain lens that you look at things from. It's goes both ways. That's one way to look at it, definitely. 

But generally speaking, my take would be that it's not so much about they saw it as the Indian Astrology, because there are even Jyotishis in Indiawho call Jyotish "Hindu Astrology".

One would say because they've been colonized and that's why they're influenced in that way. Which may or may not be true because there are many complex factors. So this is one ideology to look at it from the colonization theory and how it influences the psyche and the social structure, and then it affects different disciplines and how it all gets distorted. Because definitely there's Professor David Pingree, who did a lot of disservice to Jyotish in some sense.

He was doing his best and the scholarly work that we have on Jyotish is mostly his. It's David Pingree and his students and one of his Japanese students, I'm forgetting his name also did a lot of disservice. 

So their main claim was that all of Jyotish basically comes from the Greeks. And the fundamental role of Jyotish is timekeeping, calendar making, ritualistic worship of the deities and things like that, right? 

But then we have had Jyotishis who are not about that. We have Jyotishis who do that, who are into Karmakand, who are into rituals and stuff. And Professor K. N. Rao is very openly, very against these kinds of practices. He has been very vocal about it. There's channel that has posted some interviews with him and he has been very vocal there about these things. It definitely distorts it, but it's both. It's a mixed bag.

[00:09:06] Fiona Marques: We need to re educate people in some ways about what Jyotish can do for you. It's not just fortune telling. It's not just which deity should I please? It's not about how to fulfill my desires through magical means.

[00:09:23] Sachin Sharma: But it's about analysis of the self. It's about analysis of your structure. Coming to an awareness of how your design is. What are you going to experience? What are you experiencing? How to manage that? How to ground yourself in Yoga or Ayurveda or different kinds of studies metaphysics different kinds of Dharmashastras, if you'd call it or whatever you want to call it from the East, even the West.

So what I did in the video is that I just took the word Jyotish and just kept contemplating it. Because I've been studying it for 10 years, as I said, and I haven't been able to figure out. Initially, it was like, I'm studying Astrology. I'm studying Vedic Astrology. Then I was like, but what are we doing? If it because there's a sutra in Parashara Hora, which is Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, which says "Sarvātmā ca divānātho manaḥ kumudabāndhavaḥ. Sattvaṁ kujo budhaiḥ prokto budho vāṇīpradāyakaḥ". 

In this sutra, they're giving us what every Graha is, within our experience, and "Sarvātmā ca divānātho" , that is, "divanāt", that is the Sun, maker of the day, is the soul of all. And our soul is one way to put it, you can open up the word Atman itself and see, look into it more deeply. It's etymology and how it's understood by different schools of thought. 

And there we immediately realize that Sun, the center of the Solar System, is the light radiating outward and holding the structure itself. awareness or attention or consciousness is the basis of reality. Because we could think that material world or nature is the basis of reality. We could think that we need a brain structure or something physical, that is one of the Grahas, one of the indriyas, that, that's where we're getting consciousness from. But it is consciousness around which all the Grahas are moving. 

Attention that is flowing outwards into the structure. So when you look at the stars, you look at the Grahas that is, light. That light is not coming from the Graha. That is the borrowed light of the Sun. It's because Sun is radiating outwardly, paying attention to these Grahas that they are lit. That they have light. Without that attention that a Sun is paying to these Grahas will not only be dark, but they'll just scatter away. There's no structure, there's no system, and there is no illumination of these objects. Sun is the center which upholds the whole structure.

[00:12:11] Fiona Marques: The maker of the day divānātho so they're not using the word Surya here, which is usually common word for Sun. They're not using any other word commonly used for Sun. There are many words, divānātho , which is the maker of the day. Divā - Nāth the Lord, the ruler, the maker, the Nāth of the Divā, Divā meaning day. 

[00:12:33] Sachin Sharma: Night is usually seen as sleep and Divā is seen as awakening, up, that you're up in the morning. So that's the natural cycle. So it's like the one who creates awareness the Lord of Divā is the attention that is being paid to everything. And it doesn't use the word Atman, it uses the word Sarva. It could have just said ātmā ca divānātho. Sanskrit is such a carefully constructed language, and sutras and karakas are so carefully constructed, they don't want to waste words. They want to say as much as they can before it's written on to some palm leaf or wherever they recorded these. Traditions weren't just orally handed down as people believe. I completely disagree with that as controversial as that it may be. But it was definitely written down in different ways. It just couldn't survive the tides of time.

 Sarvātmā ca divānātho, then it says manaḥ kumudabāndhavaḥ, which says manah, which is manas, is Moon, is kumudbāndavah, which is kumud is lotus, and bāndavah means the friend of the Lotus. So Moon is seen as the friend of the Lotus. So it's getting this soft energy and usually mind is seen as something bad, right? Manas is translated as ego commonly. It is not the ego. Manas is just Manas. Atman can be seen as soul, but it's not. Atman is Atman. One of the translations for Atman is that which remains when nothing is. Indivisible. So the word atom comes from atomos in Latin, which means indivisible. That which cannot be further divided.

So one of the points that I make in the video is that when nothing can be experienced, nothing can be experienced. That which experiences the nothing is the Atman. That which finally remains when nothing can remain. Even an experience of the other cannot be. There's only that presence. It's not reflecting, it's just is. It's not looking into a mirror. The mirror is unified with the onlooker. The one reflecting into the mirror. 

Then it says Sattvaṁ kujo. It says Mars, Kuja. Kuja means born of the Earth, the son of the Earth. Sattvaṁ, which is again a very complicated word to figure out because Sattvaṁ can be confused with the Gunas, that is, Sattva, Tamas, Rajas, but it's not.

 Sattvaṁ also means character, the capacity to hold, protect truth. That's what Sattvaṁ means: to stand your ground for the sake of truth. protects the goodness or the truth that has to stand its ground so that the Sun is not invaded, the kingdom of the Sun doesn't get invaded. So that's Mars's job.

So it's and then it says, budho vāṇīpradāyakaḥ. So it says that Mercury is the giver of Vani. Now Vani can be seen as speech. But it's not just speech as verbal speech. It's also the capacity to verbalize internally, right? So before you've actually said something, you've internally constructed, made sense of words.

So Mercury is that which constructs language. Now, how you philosophize that language, what's your level of depth that you've used to unlock through those concepts, through those linguistic tools depends on your Jupiter. That's the philosophy. That's the next sutra, which is Jnana Sukhado, which for guru for Jupiter. So for Jupiter, it says the one that gives joy, Sukh giving, Sukh and Gyan. That's the next part. 

Mercury is not Gyan. It's information. It's, structuring stuff for us. It's for example, I don't know, In a dog's consciousness, a table is not something that it can sit on and work. But for human beings, a table is called a table and it's used to have a conversation with someone or sit around, have dinner around. In a dog's consciousness, a table is something else. A table is where other people eat and where people give some food to me every now and then from. That's Mercury, how we are organizing reality, how we are structuring reality. The more languages we know, the more bridges we can make, the more access we have to different Manas, different kinds of people, different kinds of cultures different Atmans.

So Mercury, that's where it's the word Mercury. That's where Latin is very profound. If someone wants to unlock Western kinds of astrologies. Latin is the depth where Astrology starts making sense because the word mercury, merc, that trade, that is mercantile mercury, is also the bridge, the messenger of gods, as they say.

It's also, that's where the idea of the varni, the conveyor of speech that connects things, makes sense of things. When Mercury is disturbed, one sensemaking capacities are disturbed. One can be overwhelmed with information if Mercury is disturbed. So that's the basic idea around the sutra. 

But the core is Sarvātmā. That the Atman is the Jyoti at the center. It's the Jyoti and Jyotisha, that's the Atman. So Jyotisha can also be called as Atmasha or Atma Siddhanta, Surya Siddhanta, which is one of the books that talks about astronomy. 

Jyoti is also referred to as the light of the Atman in texts such as Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. So there are Upanishads that have told about Jyoti as an inner light of consciousness that's making experience possible.

So purpose of Jyotish is revealed as that attention that is holding up the structure that's giving us the experience of reality. To understand that experience of reality, to study the structure of one's experience of reality, one's filter through which the actual objective reality is coming through, that's Jyotish.

[00:19:45] Fiona Marques: It's so beautiful. There's just so much richness in this word, Jyotish.

[00:19:51] Sachin Sharma: It's absolutely mind blowing.

[00:19:54] Fiona Marques: It changes the frequency of the conversation.

[00:19:57] Sachin Sharma: Yeah. And

[00:19:58] Fiona Marques: So let's talk a little bit about the macro, the micro, the outer, the inner.

 There's an idea of Parātman and Antarātman. 

[00:20:09] Sachin Sharma: That is Parātmanan can be seen as attention flowing outwards and spreading out into our nervous system into the karmendriyas and indriyas and gyanendriyas and karmendriyas, that is our physical senses, into this sort of machine that is the body.

So the attention and we can, when we do things like body scan and stuff, or I can pay attention to my feet and then I can pay attention to my hand and then I can pay attention to my shoulder. That attention, that power of attention is the Atman, but it's spread outwards and it's, all the phenomenon it's, is arising to it and it's identifying itself with the phenomenon.

This phenomenon that it's identified with is created within the Manas. Manas is the content creator of our being. It's also the satellite. One of the translations for Manas is imagination. So it creates images, conjures up images and phenomenon and all kinds of things.

When it's totally silent, it becomes an extremely receptive bowl of water within which the light of consciousness can reflect. But generally it's not. So it's fluctuating. One of the sutras in Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra is that Moon is ever fluctuating. It's love sick. It's longing for connection. The connection can be outwardly connection or the connection is actually the divine connection. So bhakti related connect devotional energy.

So Moon hasto attach to something and derive some sort of feeling of not feel alone. It needs a source of light. Moon longs for Sun's light in a way. 

The sensory currents are flowing outwards. Now, what we do in yoga, we first repair and silence, calm down the body, and then we relax our nervous system. And then we withdraw our sensory currents into sort of different parts of our body, according to some traditions at different practices. And it's quite a vast field. But ultimately you bring it between your eyes andyour body becomes numb. And you crystallize your consciousness. You ignite the Jyoti. That's what Jyoti meditation is.

[00:22:36] Sachin Sharma: So first you create a continuous flow of concentration practices which are external practices, mantra, japa or different things that you just repeat, and you just want to silence the mind and maintain one, one state. Just read, pay attention to things. Then withdraw and calm your mind, your intellect, your emotions, your nervous system, all the buzzing and humming in the entire body mind, calm it down to a point that everything gets withdrawn between your eyes. 

And then you manifest the Sunlight. Which is the actual person that we are, which is a human being. And then there's different stages and processes. I'm not qualified to neither talk about it. I'm not just, I'm just not qualified for that. I can theoretically explain some stuff, but there's, it's too vast and deep, 

So Atman is an object. and it is a subject both. So Atman, when it's deluded, when it's flowing outwards, it's also influencing the Grahas. It's agitating the Grahas. It is a Kshobhita Avastha in Lajjitaadi Avasthas. It's causing all kinds of things because it's deluded, it's moving outwards and it's totally identified, given in to Moon.

And whatever's happening to the Moon and whatever Moon asks the Atman of, it's just flowing outside. 

But it's also in a more evolved state, it's always there as a silent silence in the background, the moment, all the humming and the buzzing stops, there's a presence to like, who we just are, no matter what happens to us.

So it's both. It's also an object which influences and causes. It can Debilitate. It can Exalt it's in different signs. It can find itself in different states. 

The point is that Sun is also influencing the structure and influenced by the structure while it's also upholding the structure.

[00:24:42] Fiona Marques: The word for planet, what a Westerner thinks of planet in Astrology, the word in Sanskrit is Graha, which takes on a meaning in this conversation about structure. That the Grahas are both pulling at the Sun and being pulled out by the Sun.

[00:24:58] Sachin Sharma: Exactly. Yes. So Sun influences and gets influenced. The process is to liberate itself from the psychodrama of one's being. That's what liberation is. And then we had touched upon this in the previous conversation we had that this is what we're trying to liberate ourselves from. This is the moksha that we want.

We want to realize a state of our actual state where we train ourselves to not just stay in that state for a few fractions of seconds or a few days, but to embody and practice the skill to live in that state constantly. And then it doesn't matter whether you live on earth in this body or somewhere else.

We want to practice cultivating that state. And that state is different stages of Samadhi. And there's a lot of theory and a lot of actual masters who speak of this and they are the competent qualified ones, not a Jyotishi. For the Jyotishi's work lies in providinga psychoanalytic tool. That this is what's happening. Just locate the soul in this dark darkness of the space that we, where we found ourselves. That's the process of the job. That's the work. That's the help that a Jyotishi can give.

That you've just appeared and things are just happening that the certain urges, certain unconscious moments happen. There are certain spooky coincidences happening in your life and all this stuff is happening and there's all these ideas around fate, fortune, and now. Helping the person make sense of these things about their body, their mind, their relationship to life, what the design is, what are their fundamental proclivities. So it's like a study of their genes, what they're carrying from the past, from their ancestors or from wherever they've come. 

So these are some philosophical presuppositions. So these are just assumed things when we're dealing with Jyotish. Now, we assume these things and the practice of Jyotish and the realizations thereafter would ground them into a fact as you practice Jyotish yoga and all of these things. 

First, you take them at the face value. Okay, fine. I existed before this body mind. Let's practice this thing and just walk with the theory. And then as dots start connecting, asone cultivates their consciousness, develops a skill to meditate, and as one moves forward, then it starts unlocking and when that's the moments when you're like, "Huh, okay, now now that makes more sense and more sense". Until one day ultimately it makes way too much sense for one to have any doubts. That's how Jyotish can ground us. 

So we are taking a philosophy that is speaking about the Atman at the top. At the pinnacle, which seems like a very impractical matter, which is like, "Oh, if I'm a soul, I'm consciousness and I'm stuck on Earth and this body and all of these things are happening, okay, fine, Jyotish is so deep, but how is it practically grounded? Like how can it help me in my relationship? How can it help me in my navigating my purpose or career in life? How can it help me with my physical health?" 

So that's where you understand the structure within which Sun is stuck. So we are wanting to study the Parātman, how the attention is flowing outwards, and this is how you're locked in by time. That's when Sun and Moon are there, and the five Grahas are there. But then that's when Rahu and Ketu come into picture. Jyotish is applied Samkhya in a way. That's where Jyotish takes the matters of Samkhya and take it down to why you're experienced the objective Samkhya in this subjective manner. That's Rahu Ketu, that's the knot of the serpent of time, that's the knot, that's, those are the destined positions. That's what's locking up the Sun and Moon in this structure. That's why even when you meditate, there's some things that still happen. It'll always be a matter of dialogue and analysis. It has to be assessed. There's no one rule or one kind of okay, everyone is like this. It depends from birth chart to birth chart. So then you can use the structure like, okay, in relationships, this iswhat's happening and we can have a discussion about it. And these are the unconscious tendencies that one has.

[00:29:38] Sachin Sharma: It's the perfect tool to study the unconscious. The nature, which is unconscious. The automatisms that we are carrying within our being that just occur all by themselves. 

And Jung understood this, Carl Gustav Jung, the professor, the teacher, the theorists who spoke a lot about unconscious, was an astrologer. And he derived a lot of, and create a lot of his theories from Astrology. And he understood that Jyotish is touching upon these kinds of things.

And so we take something so metaphysical and subtle and seemingly impractical, because metaphysics is usually disregarded for being too impractical. And it's lost its ground for many decades in the middle, in the eighties, nineties, where metaphysics was just seen as armchair philosophy, it has no meaning purpose as such. We just, we need more analytical philosophy, more critical thinking and more ethics and stuff like that. But Jyotish is what takes those subtler ideas about nature, consciousness and time and make them relevant to our subjective experience in life that is, okay, fine. In your Venus a Mahadasha, Venus cycle, Saturn Dasha, where is it placed? What element is this? What kind of things that it activates? What comes up for you? Why you're experiencing what you're experiencing? What kind of therapies would be helpful for Rahu kind of experiences? Exposure therapy works really well. For Mercury issues maybe one needs 

 talk therapy because Mercury helps Saturn a lot. And Saturn is a lot of our burdens that we carry. But that is also the capacity to bear the burdens. So the word Dukkha can mean sorrow, but it can also mean bearing. Just bearing, that's one of another meanings of the word Dukkha. This was told to me by a Sanskrit professor very learned Nyaya philosopher in India. So Saturn is both, it's the pain and the capacity to bear the pain. So we're taking such metaphysics, we're taking such high stuff of underlying subtle of things that we can't see the cause for fully, but we can see the effects. That's what Samkhya says that Prakriti is very difficult to understand it's because it's very subtle, but it could, it can be understood by understanding the causes. That's Samkhya tells us. It's Prakriti being the birth chart and all the things in nature, the little box within which our soul is, Sun is running around in circles and bouncing around the box.

Understanding that structure can first give us a sense of relief that, "Okay, at least I know. What's coming up in some sense, who I am and how I can navigate, how maybe I can change some things, how I can put in extreme amounts of efforts. Maybe I can have some ideas around divine intervention comes into play.It gets very grounded while it's very high at the same time. And so the roots go deep down and the shoots go all the way to the highest places. 

So that's when we contextualize and define Jyotish and contemplate the word Jyotish in that way, then it completely refurbishes the whole idea, the whole nature, scope, purpose, the implications, the applications of Jyotish. Now psychoanalysis, psychotherapy can use Jyotish so much. Then it also tells us that a Jyotishi must learn about all the connected disciplines, as I said, that Jyotish is part of a larger discipline of yoga, Ayurveda, Samkhya and Jyotish. And they've been being studied in isolated fashion. And in the modern world where we like to study disciplines in an isolated fashion, take a reductionist disconnected approach, the sociologists are not connected with the psychologists of the psychoanalytic community. Or the psychotherapists are not into nutrition and diet and all those kinds of studies. Now researchers are coming that the gut and brains are connected. Psychosomatic theories are coming. So they're coming together. So that's how it is like Jyotish and Ayurveda, Samkhya, yoga, these four, I feel, and one could even throw in Vastu. But these four, I think, are Jyotish, Yoga, Samkhya, and Ayurveda. These four are just one discipline.

 It just makes so much sense that It's Samkhya Jyotish. One way to call Jyotish is Vedic Astrology, which is perfectly fine because Vedic can mean the Vedic texts, but Vedic can also mean knowledge. Knowledge Astrology. Thus, the ology of astral phenomenon, the ology of light that gives us knowledge. Okay. So that's one way to look at Jyotish. Another way to look at it is a Samkhya, which is enumeration, the rational approach to enumerate the metaphysical structure of reality, Jyotish. And grounded into time and Jyoti, Atman. So taking the metaphysics, grounding into time and how your consciousness Jyoti, Atman is experiencing it. Purush Jyoti Atman. They're all synonymous in my world. 

[00:35:25] Fiona Marques: It makes me think of the way that the West fell in love with yoga. You were mentioning these four disciplines and how in the West for a long time, we thought of yoga as the practice of asanas. That yoga means that thing that you do when you go to a class and people help you put your body in various positions. That's what yoga is. And accidentally, the eight limbs of yoga didn't penetrate as deeply as the put on leggings and go to a class. And Vedic Astrology is a little bit like that as well. That it's a word that can encompass everything. But ends up could be just the study of the techniques in the way that yoga becomes just a study of the poses. Vedic Astrology can be detached from all of that metaphysical stuff that you're speaking about and just be, oh, your planet's in this position, or it's so many aspect points from this position. What your Jyotish project is inviting us is to see the beautiful, as you said, the deep roots and the tall shoots that are all connected in this profound practice. Jyotish.

[00:36:29] Sachin Sharma: Exactly. And deep and practical, not just deep and confusing. Complex, deep, real and practical, logical. Dialogue approach. I want to take a dialogic approach. A logical approach. We want to critically think together, work it out. It's a system that we're all figuring out, working it out, study it together, understand it. 

And yes, the emphasis, as you said, about yoga has been on asanas. Which is good. Why not? And in India, emphasis has been on pranayama. There are people who are just doing pranayama all day, every day, and they feel that pranayama is the way to self realization. Then there are people who are, who don't do pranayama. They don't do asana. They don't do dharana, dhyana, samadhi. They don't do anything else. They just do yamas and niyamas.

They have taken one austerity to an extreme. It can be related to not eating, it can be related to just standing all day, not sleeping. It has always been this way. It's not that the modern Western world. I've been frustrated with the condition of just focus on asana and then be a yoga and face yoga. And the word yoga has been distorted all the way so badly. That's an issue. 

But then kudos to those who have been practicing asan and just focusing on physical health and then that asana practice has connected them to Ayurveda. So now they're taking care of their bodies and they've unlocked parts of their bodies and it's helping them with their psychosomatic stuff. So that's brilliant. And that can be a beginning stage to getting into more concentrated states. So they're improving the lifestyle through just focusing on Asana and we're all in different levels of understanding. So it's absolutely profound, absolutely brilliant. Some people just have been focusing on Pranayama and then slowly they also practice for Asana and then they start meditating a little bit and they just leave all the and this focus on Dharana Dhyana and then Samadhi happens and there are stages of Samadhi and then there's a whole new journey to be involved in. So it's it's brilliant. I think it's amazing. We are figuring this stuff out. 

And The Jyotish Project, one of the core purposes is to repeatedly look at Jyotish from different angles, understand the philosophy of why should we study it? What are we studying? How to study it?

The study itself requires a focused approach a focused study, a prolonged focused study, a careful study. To study through YouTube videos where you're just looking for small tidbits techniques is one of the things that have done a lot of damage to Jyotish. And that is how a lot of subjects are studied these days, not just Jyotish, but when it comes to subtle arts it's important that it's grasped the right way. It's contemplated enough under a proper competent teacher and the teacher should be tested thoroughly by the student and the student should be tested thoroughly by the teacher. And once the trust is established and the respect, mutual respect is established. Then one can involve themselves into a deeper, a prolonged study of understanding the deeper parts and becoming maybe a Jyotishi or just studying it for self practice. 

So getting an objective take requires a lot of practice. Looking at hundreds of charts with a teacher, studying in a group, taking care of it through different angles. Understanding the underlying philosophy. So

[00:40:19] Fiona Marques: look at the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra itself. You can just write Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Volume 1 PDF. And I think Internet Archive has a free resource and you can find it there. 

[00:40:32] Sachin Sharma: But to learn Jyotish, pick up the text and try to read the first sutra, second sutra, third sutra. And just start there. Find a teacher and study with them, make as many mistakes as you want without harming other people, of course, as much as you can.

And that trial and error phase, that's the Mercurial exploration, the Geminian phase of figuring it out is where you'll come to clarity as what's the next step.

 Predicting the future cannot help you. It will not protect you from natural forces of these Grahas and all of these things. Yoga is the solution. So yoga is "Okay, take care of these eight things. And this is a comprehensive list that will take care of all the natural disasters that await for you because how the reality is structured, how our Solar System is structured".

Ayurveda says, "Okay, let's ground this further into our body. Let's start with just eating right. Let's, how about we start there that you don't drink coffee at four, five coffees in a day. Let's start there. Let's take care of your Pitta. Let's take care of your Vata. Let's take care of your Kapha". One of my Ayurveda teachers used to say "Ayurveda is the science of common sense. The medicine of common sense. If you apply your common sense, Ayurveda is just such basic common sense". 

That dialogue has to happen and that's the purpose of the Jyotish project.

[00:42:22] Fiona Marques: Wonderful, Sachin. And how can people become involved? Where should they go?

[00:42:28] Sachin Sharma: You can come on the YouTube channel, please. And watch the first video and and subscribe and click on the bell notification so that you get notified when I post the next video. Comment. Ask questions. Have conversations if you have any doubts. And you can also visit my website, www. searchinsachin. com and then there you can engage directly with me over the email. Or if you want one of those Jyotish services, Astrology services, then you can access those we can have a session. 

 Sachin, it is wonderful to have you back on the Vedic Astrology Podcast. This is a conversation that Sachin and I have been having since we met each other, probably, and I'm very excited to have you back again as the channel builds and the conversation becomes more connected and more rich.

[00:43:23] Fiona Marques: I'm already looking forward to the next time that you are able to come and join us and speak about Jyotish and the true purpose, the true potential, the gift that is being offered to us. We really benefit from your contemplation and your courage to share that out there on YouTube.

So thank you so much, Sachin, and look forward to seeing you next time.

[00:43:47] Sachin Sharma: Thank you so much. So much. Thank you.

[00:43:51] Fiona Marques: Okay. Thanks everyone. Thanks for being here. And we look forward to being with you next time. We're on the Vedic Astrology Podcast. Bye. Bye everyone.

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