Shift in the Purusharthas-A Challenge for the Emerging Global Avatar of Vedic Astrology

Vedic astrology, belonging as it did to the spiritual ethos of the Vedic peoples, had used a number of spiritual-insights, spiritual styles of thinking & perception & Spiritual-Remedial Measures, all of which belonged only to the matrix of the Vedic society [See Secs. 2 & 3. of Part III] and this is bound to appear rather strange and archaic to our modern scientific sensibilities. To overcome this seemingly difficult spiritual as well as cultural-barrier, the new ‘global avatar’ of Vedic astrology will have to learn to speak in a modern language, intelligible to people, unfamiliar with the spiritual ethos of the Hindus. But the question remains, whether this is an achievable task at all?

At first sight we will naturally have our doubts whether the globalisation of Vedic astrology should be achieved at all by relinquishing the spiritual ethos of Vedic astrology, which has always been its very soul & inner life? We may even hold this globalisation to be an impossible achievement, without its votaries from non-Vedic cultures making a serious effort to imbibe the spiritual foundations underlying Sanatana Dharma as well as Vedic astrology. In fact, even if globalisation is to be achieved in a wise way by Vedic astrology ‘walking only on the middle path’; this must still entail two simultaneous reciprocal gestures, by both Vedic astrology as well as by Western society – involving nothing less than a symbiotic giving & taking.

In such a symbiosis between Vedic astrology on the one hand & its savants and votaries from non-Vedic cultures on the other; Vedic astrology, touched by the difficulties and aspirations of its new savants and votaries – who are on the other side of the cultural barrier – must make every effort to bring home its truths; partly by ‘raising the spiritual consciousness’ of these new savants and votaries and thereby aligning them with the Vedic spiritual ethos and also partly by making a serious effort to explain its truths in modern metaphors and in ‘the new styles of thinking’, intelligible to people accustomed to a Scientific world-view.

In Vedic astrology, taking this bold initiative and ‘wishing to walk on the middle-path’, it should not commit that fatal error of omitting ‘Divinity’ and the reality of ‘consciousness’ from its own soul and attempt to clothe itself in the respectable ‘secular-attire’ of the Sciences just to make itself more palatable to a civilization which has gone in for ‘the apotheosis of Science and Technology’- casting out ‘God’ in the course of this whole unspiritual process of ‘ Scientific & Technological progress’.

Fortunately for us as things stand, there is ample evidence that though Vedic astrology in its new still emerging global avatar has boldly taken the initiative in both these directions in a sure footed way, it has not committed that fatal mistake of compromising its spiritual integrity in the process of reaching out to a universal audience, who are not deeply familiar with its age-old spiritual ethos.

So far as the new Western Vedic astrologers and votaries are concerned, they must utilise their gifts of passion & analytical prowess to go seriously & deeply into the Vedic spiritual ethos, which is at the very heart of Vedic astrology. The use of technology by the new Western savants and votaries, for developing excellent Vedic astrology software programmes, has been such a welcome blessing to all Vedic astrologers world-wide, since this has completely eliminated the drudgery & the laborious calculations, which had engaged the precious time & attention of Vedic astrologers in times past. Thus there is indeed good evidence for an ongoing process of a symbiotic exchange between Vedic astrology in its ‘Indian form’ and its new savants and votaries from the West.

There has been a second signal contribution, which has taken the form of a slow feed-back from the West towards India – as modified Vedic astrological sutras, which are applicable to modern societies, patterned after the Western model and therefore profoundly engrossed in the mundane spheres of Artha & Kama. Beneficial though this reciprocal impact from the West on the state of Vedic astrology in India has been; in the author’s perception, the profound contribution of reformulating Vedic astrology with a strong emphasis on the spheres of Artha & Kama, should have come from the West – but as this did not happen – it was destined to be developed indigenously by a very gifted contemporary Indian Vedic astrologer, Prof. Vinod Kumar Choudhry, the founder of the Systems Approach to Vedic astrology. [ 7, 12, 13, 16 ]

In fact, if we were to look at the development of the milestone events in Vedic astrology, strangely we will find in this a testimony & a grim reminder to us-to what an appalling extent a traditional Hindu society, which originally had a healthy & happy bias towards Dharma & Moksha, succumbed to the pressure of Westernization & transformed itself, in the image of its Western role-model – becoming in this process, one engrossed in the mundane spheres of Artha & Kama.

It is for this very reason that only a Vedic astrologer, living & working on Indian soil, and at the same time thoroughly soaked in the Hindu spiritual ethos, in his day-to-day life, was the one destined to make the contribution of boldly revising traditional Vedic astrology, so as to make it now perfectly tally with the mundane spheres of Artha & Kama, in which modern man world-wide has come to be engrossed in this present materialistic age.

Thus, Prof.V.K. Choudhry remarks in one of his important works [ 7, Pg26 ] :

“Therefore, the classical principles of astrology as given to us by Maharshi Parasara in Dwapara Yuga are not applicable verbatim to human beings in KaliYuga. While status, wealth and married-life were considered to be obstructions in the way of spiritual attainments in Treta and Dwapara Yugas, it is not so for human beings in Kali Yuga.” [See also Sec. 3 of Part V, which follows]