Vedic astrology is known as Jyotish in Sanskrit and is composed of two root words: jyotir (light) and isha (soul consciousness, divine consciousness, or inner consciousness). Jyotish, therefore, is the study of the light of our consciousness. It addresses the layer of our being where karma resides. Karma is a fundamental pillar of the Vedic knowledge system that teaches that every action you take will have some consequence and that current consequences result from past actions. In pop-culture terms, “What goes around comes around.”
Vedic Astrology Interprets Karma
By Vish Chatterji
In science, this correlates to Newton’s third law of motion, which states that “every action must have an equal and opposite reaction,” a fundamental underpinning of our physical universe. The Vedic system furthers this concept into the subtle and causal universe—in other words, into the realm of consciousness.
Karma teaches that every action you take in your life is accounted for and eventually gets paid back.
This was humorously illustrated in the TV series The Good Place, where Ted Danson shows recently deceased souls entering the Good Place an electronic balance sheet of every deed they have ever done during their life—good ones in green and bad ones in red—to determine what happens next. In Vedic mythology, the celestial accountant is Chitragupta, who greets you at the pearly gates with a file in hand containing your karmic balance sheet and, based on this, determines where you go next.
Therefore, the Vedic purpose of life is to balance out your karmic debts by making good choices and taking good actions aligned with your soul. Any bad actions or misaligned choices add to your debt, while good actions and soul-aligned choices improve your karmic credits—all of the spiritual texts and practices of the Vedic tradition center on approaches to improve your karma. Vedic astrology specifically centers on understanding what karma is and less-painful ways to pay off its balance. Every circumstance you face in life can be an opportunity to pay back karmic debts in a more pleasant way. As an analogy, when you finish a meal at a restaurant, there are many ways to pay for this meal. Cash, check, credit card, washing dishes, or getting arrested for theft if you dine and dash. I prefer the credit card myself.
But of course, then I must pay the bill when it eventually comes in the mail, or else there will be a hit to my credit score.
The rub, though, is that you must be aware that you had the meal. In the case of long-forgotten meals from previous lifetimes, a Vedic astrologer is able to identify and recommend simpler ways to pay back those past debts that are coming due in this life. Karma is essentially actions and choices (across lifetimes) that eventually precipitate circumstances (in a specific lifetime), which then provide the opportunity for further choices and actions.
You thus have the ultimate choice—and ultimate responsibility—to manage your karma and its consequences.
Karma and Vedic astrology are inextricably linked because Vedic astrology is fundamentally an analysis of our individual karma coupled with a system of tools to manage it. The system teaches that every soul has a closet full of karma that they are burdened with after many, many choices and actions over many, many lifetimes. However, in this single lifetime, we only bring a carry-on bag of karma to work through—just enough that we can still fit it in the overhead bin. We are given multiple lifetimes to work out all our karma, like a karmic debt payment plan. Otherwise, it would be too overwhelming. Some hardy souls, however, must pay off multiple karmic debts in one lifetime. If you face many challenges in life, given that your soul takes on only what it can handle, you can find comfort in the fact that you are likely an evolved soul.
The Vedic astrologer casts a diagram (horoscope) of the sky at the moment a human takes their first breath. This diagram of the planets and stars in space is said to be a reflection of the soul that has attached to that budding body and mind, incarnated into human form. By analyzing this birth chart, the Vedic astrologer assesses that one carry-on bag of karma that the person will bear through life and determines when various items from that bag will be pulled out because it doesn’t all happen at once. Jyotish is designed to help you understand what events will arise and when and how they will influence your personality, your appearance, your mind, your environment, your choices, your relationships, and the consequences you will face (good and bad) due to that carry-on bag of karma.
This then brings us back to yoga, one of the most potent remedial measures, which sure connects to Jyotish. Yoga consists of practices that take us beyond the subtle body into the realm of the causal body, or deeper soul consciousness. We can address and balance karma at the root level through yoga and make more soul-aligned choices. As many serious yogis will tell you, their life, mindset, physical being, relationships, choices, and consciousness shift through their yogic practices.
These three systems—Ayurveda, Jyotish, and yoga—elegantly integrate to tackle the three key layers of our being, and they are like the three legs of a stool that support who we are. In ancient times, this integration was well understood; however, we’ve lost sense of that integration with our modern penchant for compartmentalizing knowledge into discrete boxes. Yoga has been reduced to a stretching exercise.
Ayurveda is just emerging and lacks the credibility of extensive research and sophisticated marketing that Western medicine enjoys. Jyotish is barely known in modern Western culture, dismissed in favor of its Western counterpart. But just as you might contrast gymnastics and yoga (physical stretching versus an integrated mind-body-soul karma-balancing practice), you could contrast Western astrology, a casual, pop-culture psychology system, with Jyotish, an integrated mind-body-soul understanding of your life.
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About the Author
Vish Chatterji is a celebrated Vedic astrologer, yogi, and business coach. He makes the ancient wisdom of India accessible and actionable for modern seekers, helping them find balance and success through true self-understanding. He is the author of The Business Casual Yogi: Take Charge of Your Body, Mind & Career.
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