The Spiritual Foundations of Vedic Astrology:

As all these ancient civilizations were deeply spiritual and ‘Divinity-centered’, in so far as their overall approach to life was concerned; their astrology too when it came into existence, had to be necessarily cast in the self-same mould of such a deeply spiritual and ‘God-centered’ vision of life. ‘God-centered’ in the present context, need not be understood in the literal sense of implying a ‘monotheistic’ conception of God – for this was far from the conception of the Vedic Rishis. Their world-view was rather ‘Devatas-centered’, but with the presence of Divinity [Isvara]- at the very heart of every aspect of nature, as well as in the very bosom of man’s consciousness. [ See Sec. 5 of Part I]

Their conception of Divinity may only be taken to point to an intuitive realization of the undeniable presence of an all-powerful Spiritual Being; who though lying completely outside the realm of human thought and feeling, could nonetheless be approached and worshipped in diverse ways – in tune with the temperamental disposition of individuals – for the alleviation of their misfortunes & sufferings.

In contrast to such a truly religious & Divinity-centered approach to life, there emerged on the world horizon, the new phenomenon of the world-wide Westernization, by a new avatar of the Western Civilization, which had turned secular and gone in for the apotheosis of Science & Technology, in lieu of a humble & religious approach to life, which had characterised Western society in the previous ages. The world-wide emergence of this secular version of Western society, came to have far reaching consequences for all the civilizations of the world, including the Hindu civilization of this period. The repercussions of such a Westernising influence on the spiritual ethos of the Hindu civilization is here brought home to us, by the British Historian Arnold J. Toynbee [ 8 ]. The passage clarifies a number of issues and helps us to understand the cultural quandary in which English-educated Hindus worldwide find themselves:

“Moreover the difference in ethos between the Hindu Weltanschauung and the Western Weltanschauung in the Late Modern version in which this first began to make an impression on Hindu souls was no mere diversity; it was an outright antithesis; for by the turn of the 17th and the 18th centuries of the CE, the Modern West, as we have seen, had fabricated a secular version of its cultural heritage from which Religion was eliminated in order to give primacy to Technology, whereas the Hindu Society, like its Indic predecessor, was and remained religious to the core – so much so, indeed, as to be open to the charge of ‘religiosity’ if, as that pejorative word implies, there can in truth be such a thing as an excessive concentration of psychic energy on a spiritual activity which is Man’s most important pursuit.”

– Arnold J. Toynbee [8] [See also Sec. 8 of Part VI]