My Path To Jyotish

How a saint's promise, love, marriage, accidents, and surgeries led me to abandon my successful career to practice Vedic astrology

If you know me personally, or have read any of my previous articles, you might know that the Vedic spiritual traditions of India have been the main focus of my life for three decades. The spiritual path is central for my wife, Carrie, as well. But Jyotish (Vedic astrology) was not a significant part of my life until 2022. Why? It wasn’t that I didn’t believe it worked. Having been blessed with a rich inner spiritual life and experience of the worlds beyond the physical, I need not wonder whether unseen, forces influence us. And for centuries Jyotish has been a core facet of life in India, the nation whose ancient methods enabled my experience.

But Jyotish isn’t really necessary, I thought. Karma is karma. What will happen will happen, despite how we try to avoid it. I did not want to get mired in the weeds of moon phases, transits, and the destiny encoded in my chart. We can transcend duality, and none of it matters.

So when my wife and I were planning our wedding in 2019, consulting a Jyotishi (Vedic Astrologer) to select an auspicious day for the ceremony, as they do in India, never crossed our minds. I plan to write an article soon exploring the timing of our wedding—which turned out to be a beautiful event despite three people falling and two ambulance visits—using Muhurta (Vedic electional astrology). But first some context. As you will see, there is a pattern of accidents that came into our lives once we met.

Our wedding day was beautiful—probably the single happiest day of my life—and among the top ten most meaningful, along with the day I met my wife, the day I proposed, and the day I met my spiritual master, Swami Chandrashekharanand Saraswati of Rishikesh, India. Affectionately and respectfully known as Swamiji by his small number of pupils (numbering only in the hundreds and with whom he worked one-on-one), he was an enlightened Indian sage and holder of a more than 500 year-old lineage endowed with the knowledge of Kundalini Vidya, the ancient science of how spirituality develops in individuals. He would guide me out of the darkness and into the light, against unfavorable odds, over the course of the next two decades. The wedding itself was the fulfillment of a promise he made to me more than a decade prior:

“If you are patient, one day a beautiful girl will come to you.”

Carrie and I met in 2016 on a pilgrimage to India to honor Swamiji and visit his Jal Samadhi, the watery resting place of his physical remains. The day of his MahaSamadhi—the death of his mortal body and liberation of his immortal soul—had occurred in the months prior. Though normally in India bodies of the deceased are cremated, those of saints are preserved according to their wishes so that their Shakti (spiritual power) may emit from their physical remains and benefit all who are still living; Swamiji was honored as a saint by his community of Swamis, and his body ceremonially submerged in a special spot in the Ganga (Ganges river).

Carrie lived in North Carolina, where she had a stable, comfortable job with a short commute, and owned a house nestled within the trees of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She could open the gate of the corrugated iron fence enclosing her backyard and step with Brinkley, her loyal K-9 companion, directly onto trails extending further into the Blue Ridge Parkway than she could ever walk—a dream setup for a woman who had run marathons and finds her greatest peace in nature.

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I owned a modest home, and had just left my eleven-year software engineering job to earn a master’s degree in software engineering. I planned to re-enter the workforce afterwards with renewed focus and an expanded array of opportunities. When I had met Swamiji in the late 1990s, perhaps like many who enter spiritual life, I wanted to be a monk or a healer. But Swamiji advised me on the importance of establishing my physical life through education and career; it is the foundation upon which spiritual life can develop. He advised that later, once well established and in my forties, I could study the esoteric subjects such as Jyotish and Ayurveda.

Having dedicated years to developing a career as a jazz musician—and nearly completing my undergraduate degree in music composition—the idea of a conventional career came as a shock to my young and idealistic mind. I would soon learn that establishing a stable physical life was especially important for me given my past-life history (which I learned of through Swamiji and my own inner intuitive experience), in which I had humiliatingly failed to do so, resulting in a personal disaster that hampered me in this life, requiring great effort, perseverance, and the help of a special, skilled spiritual master to rectify. So since the late 1990s I had lived much like a reclusive monk—with a limited social life and all my spare time focused on developing my spiritual life—although with one foot firmly in the material world through my career, which commenced in 2004 after completing my computer engineering undergraduate degree. Few knew about my spiritual focus, and I rarely mentioned it.

As you might imagine, if we wanted to be together, Carrie and I had quite a conundrum. One of us would have to sell our house, leave our job, and move across the country. But quite effortlessly—it seems now in retrospect—we worked it out. Tech jobs are plentiful in the Bay Area, but not so much in the mountains of North Carolina. But with her work experience in finance, Carrie could easily find a job in the Bay Area. She accepted my marriage proposal under the stars on her back deck, put her house on the market, resigned from her job, and scheduled her move to California where we’d live together in my adequate but much smaller townhome in the bustling city.

She’s probably the most courageous person I know, and her sacrifice moved me, leaving a mark on my heart that I’ll carry far beyond my grave.

Miraculously, things were going very smoothly, so far. Until a few weeks before her planned move. I received Carrie’s call in the late morning one Saturday. Conscious and semi-coherent, but obviously dazed, she told me she was in a hospital in Asheville. She had been in a car accident. She had been hit head-on in her 1990s Honda Civic by a man who, while texting in his SUV at 35 mph, had crossed the double yellow line on a two-lane mountain road. He hardly suffered a scratch. She was unconscious when the medics found her, but came to when they called out to her. Although severely concussed and cut on her head and legs, she walked with the medics to the ambulance. She had somehow survived. When she regained her awareness in the hospital, she didn’t know where she was, what had happened, or how she got there. But she remembered that she was engaged to be married. She told the nurses she needed to call her fiancé.

I packed my remote work gear for an extended trip and flew to North Carolina to be with her. In the coming months, she would recover fully, and we would complete the sale of her home, pack her belongings onto a moving truck, and fly together to California. Neither of us will ever forget leaving Asheville, driving down the mountains at dusk to Raleigh in my rented monster truck (an uncanny, unplanned substitute for the car I had requested), the full moon as our guide. It was Swamiji’s birthday.

We’re just about at the end of a much abridged version of this story, perhaps enough to provide some context for what I intend to say in this article about how Jyotish came into my life.

Mars is the planet of courage.

Not surprisingly, Carrie has a very strong Mars in her chart—the strongest planet as measured by Shad Bala, the mathematical model that combines six categories of metrics into a single number indicative of the planet’s strength in the chart.

But with courage, comes risk. And with risk accidents. And sometimes an accident can come even without risk, as it did for Carrie while cautiously driving within the speed limit on a mountain road. Accidents can result in surgeries.

All of these are properties of Mars.

Within a year after our wedding, Carrie suffered a serious knee injury while skiing in Lake Tahoe with me, an event that likely never would have taken place had we better understood Jyotish, and Carrie’s chart in particular. It required five surgeries over several years to fix. I think she’d now describe it as an 80-90% functional knee. She can go on semi-regular walks, and sometimes long ones, but not nearly as often as before due to the pain.

Now let’s dig into Jyotish.

While it didn’t occur to me to consult a Jyotishi to determine an auspicious day for our wedding (more on that in my next article), in 2022 Carrie decided to consult one to see if her chart could shed some light on her recent accidents. It was a natural next step as both of our worldviews include the unseen world and there seemed to be a connection between our engagement and Carrie’s hospital visits. To Carrie’s relief, the Jyotish session confirmed a connection, and it also indicated that her husband should study Jyotish; the Jyotishi had discovered this while studying my chart, trying to understand the connection between me, Carrie, and her accidents.

Funny. I had already felt the calling a few months prior, reading my first Jyotish book, and was beginning to ramp up my studies into a rigorous, focused endeavor.

But the chart explained her accidents perfectly, which I could soon understand after a bit more study:

• Mars, the planet of risks and accidents, rules Carrie’s house of marriage (7th).

• Mars resides in Carrie’s 8th house (accidents) with Ketu, who acts like Mars, worsening the situation.

• Mars also rules her 2nd house.

  • The 2nd and 7th houses, in all charts, are maraka (death-inflicting) houses—the ruler of which creates death-like (physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual) experiences in life.

If you’re a Jyotishi, you already know Carrie has Libra rising, because it is the only rising sign for which Mars rules both maraka houses (for all other rising signs except Aries, two different planets rule each of the maraka houses).

Now for a little bit of Jyotish theory.

Numerous rules, first illuminated by the ancient sages of India, were passed down orally over generations and have more recently been compiled into scripture. The skilled Jyotishi applies these rules, not blindly, but supported through reasoning, intuitive understanding, and experience. Here are a few of those especially relevant for this discussion.

• Each planet has a natural state.

  • Either benefic (helpful) or malefic (problematic).

  • This is fixed; the same in all charts.

• Each planet also has a functional state.

  • This is variable per chart, based on the rising sign (sign in the 1st house), which determines which signs are in each of the houses.

  • Knowing which sign is in each house, we apply these fixed rules:

    • Mars rules Aries and Scorpio

    • Venus rules Taurus and Libra

    • Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo

    • The Moon rules Cancer

    • The Sun rules Leo

    • Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Pisces

    • Saturn rules Capricorn and Aquarius

With these in mind, and knowing the name and order of the signs (same as Western astrology) we can see that the second house from Libra (7th sign) contains Scorpio (8th sign) and the 7th house from Libra is Aries, (1st sign).

In Jyotish, when we count from one house to another, we always include the house we are counting from.

We use the natural and functional states as two (of many) factors to determine how a planet is going to behave in a person’s life—whether it will be more beneficial or problematic.

We keep in mind that the planets carry out their sacred duty of dispensing karma. So it isn’t that a malefic planet is full of malice towards anyone personally. Our karma is a result of our own past actions, and we experience it so we can grow spiritually, progressing beyond the endless cycle of rebirth and duality to ultimate Oneness with the Absolute Reality, Pure Consciousness.

Mars is a natural malefic, though he does have many positive qualities: he provides motivation, courage, protection for self and others, and strength. But his fiery, destructive qualities earn him the natural malefic classification, along with the other natural malefics: Saturn, Rahu, the Sun, Ketu, and the waning (or dark) Moon. Jupiter and Venus, the waxing (or light) Moon, and Mercury are all naturally benefic, although Mercury— somewhat of a chameleon—is strongly influenced by the planets he associates with most strongly.

A little bit more theory.

• The 1st, 5th and 9th houses are called trikonas, and are naturally auspicious.

  • Planets that rule them are functionally benefic.

• The 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th houses are called kendras, and are the cornerstones of life.

  • Planets that rule them are neutral.

    • Classical rules specify that natural benefics ruling them are functionally malefic and natural malefics ruling them are functionally benefic, but this may not always be the case.

• The 3rd, 6th, and 11th houses are called upachayas, and improve over time.

  • Planets that rule them are functionally malefic.

• The 6th, 8th, and 12th houses are called dusthanas (evil). They bring difficulty.

• The rulers of the 2nd, 8th and 12th houses are neutral, but tilt benefic or malefic based on their placement and associations.

• The 8th is the most difficult house, and it is best not to have any planets in it.

Applying these rules, Mars is technically neutral. But his rulership of both maraka houses, strength, and placement in the 8th house of Carrie’s chart gives him extra potency to activate difficult karma through sudden negative events, accidents, and surgeries. A more thorough analysis of her chart, studied along with more information about her—beyond the scope of this article—will show the ways in which Mars acts positively as well, instilling courage, drive, and strength.

Some of this might sound heavy, or like a recipe for doom, but there are many other factors in a chart, some of which can be as strongly protective as Mars can be problematic. Divine grace isn’t always easy to see in a chart, and the positive, protective, life-altering effects of sadhana (spiritual practice), sraddha (faith), and bhakti (devotion to the Divine) are immeasurable, and can lighten the heaviest of loads. In the words of Sri Ramakrishna, one of the greatest Indian saints of modern times:

“Karma is like a disease. It must be worked out, but the suffering is greatly mitigated by devotion to God. If it is written in one’s destiny that he will lose a leg, a devotee might just scratch it with a thorn instead.”

And to round out the story a bit, Carrie and I are well. She has faced considerable challenges this last decade, but is thriving in life and successful in her career. I tell her often how happy I am to have her, and that I am perhaps the happiest man alive.

If I’ve succeeded in connecting this story and some Jyotish principles, applied through Carrie’s experience and her chart, you may be able to see how the gravity of our experience drove me to reconsider how Jyotish can fit into my life. I still believe Jyotish is not necessary, and that what will happen will happen; karma is karma. But it is my karma to understand Jyotish as a tool, which I can apply to better understand myself, the purpose of my incarnation on this earth, and the path forward.

Don’t we all need all the help we can get?

Wise Jyotishis have said that what is seen in the chart is some percentage karma and some percentage free-will. Let’s say it’s 70-30, or maybe 80-20, or 90-10. We don’t know for sure. But we do have free-will, and our decisions affect our future.

Late last year, my software engineering job at a medical device startup, and in many ways my favorite of any I’ve had, evaporated. The third round of layoffs in a few years finally caught me. No surprise, as I had only joined the company three years prior, and frankly, I was surprised and grateful I had stayed on through the last two rounds. Since I’d been through this before—it is par for the course in the tech world—I commenced my usual job search process, and started interviewing at several companies. Even though the job market was a bit tougher at the time, I expected I could achieve gainful employment in fairly short order. It is not unusual for an engineer like me, skilled in my craft of embedded software development for medical devices (a somewhat uncommon and desirable skillset), well-credentialed, well-connected, and in my prime, to receive multiple offers.

But this time, when I interviewed, or thought of going to work for a new company, I just couldn’t see or feel it. Despite how I had loved the work for the last twenty years, the word “empty” doesn’t even describe how I felt at the thought of taking another engineering job.

A few nights later I dreamt I was swimming in a race. I felt great, and was swimming with vigor and at the front of the pack as the race closed. I had never felt that way in previous swimming or race dreams. When I explained it to Carrie, she understood it immediately.

“You finished strong”. She said to me.

My career was over. It took a few weeks and rounds of interviews to come to terms with it, but with gratitude to all those with whom I’ve worked in the industry, I finally did. I canceled all my interviews—some very promising, commutable, and with trusted colleagues on the inside helping vouch for me, a clear advantage. I knew inwardly, feeling the support and encouragement of my spiritual lineage, I was now to devote my full capacity to Jyotish, offering consultations to anyone who so desired. Within a few weeks I had clients. And so was born my new career, in which I hope to be of service to anyone who wishes to benefit from the power of Jyotish and my personal spiritual experience.