AV + Sudarshan Chakra Dasha — PVNR's D24 1987 Academic Success

Shastra and Intuition

Said at the close of the father example, leading into the next topic.

• Some people know only the rasi chart and Vimshottari mahadasha–antardasha and still tell you exactly what will happen. They are using intuition.
• So are we, with all these techniques. Some questions need little of it: "When did I get married?" with strong indications in one year is objective. But the same combination can mean several things, and in most cases intuition is used.
• Learning more shastra does not make intuition irrelevant. It makes us rely more on shastra and less on intuition.

"Always there is a role of intuition, a vital role. If intuition is wrong, you are wrong, irrespective of how much shastra you know."

Sincerity as Foundation of Good Predictions

The Question

A student had asked some weeks earlier: what can we do to make good predictions and improve intuition? And: what do you do?

PVNR first said why the question is fair. Good predictions encourage you to learn more. That ego must eventually be shed, but in the beginning some ego is probably necessary — one who is ready for moksha needs no astrology or mantras; at that level they are obstacles. And apart from ego, the purpose of learning shastra is to help people.

He knows no thumb rule, mantra or procedure that gives intuition. What he can tell is what matters if you want vak bala and want to be useful to whoever comes to you.

Sincerity

"If you are really sincere, if you desire to help somebody with your heart, God will help the person that you want to help."

• Sincerity counts irrespective of how many pujas and mantras you do.
• You may not have time for everybody. If you decide to help someone, do it sincerely. The only desire: whatever God wants to tell this person, "O God, please use me in that process."
• "When I sincerely wanted to help somebody, whatever I told them came true."

No ego, no showing off

• Wanting to prove something — to someone who says SJC people learn complicated nonsense, or to prove your mettle — is "usually a recipe for disaster". It may work in the short run. In the long run God teaches a big lesson.
• A prediction made to impress, say about an election: "If God really likes you, he will not help you. He will make all your show-off predictions go wrong."
• Be honest. You need not tell anyone you are a great astrologer. Humility and sincerity are the most important things.

Yama and niyama; food

• Which rules — that is for you and your spiritual guru. But everyone should have some.
• The standard ones: stay away from meat, alcohol, smoking and such habits. Eat sattvic food, relatively bland.
• "You are what you eat. Your intuition comes from your brain. Your brain is formed by what you eat."
• A student objected that he knows sattvic people who eat meat. PVNR: you cannot judge another person's guna from external behaviour — you know perhaps half of your own inner nature. Exceptions exist, from strong past karma. In general the rule helps.
• Vegetarian is not the same as sattvic: very hot curries and pickles are not much different from meat.
• A student added brahmacharya and control of kama, krodha, lobha and the rest. PVNR: that was the next point.

The Six Enemies (Shadripu)

Overcome them at the mano-vak-kaya level, not only in action:

• Someone praises another astrologer's prediction and I say "actually I also made the same prediction" — my speech shows the jealousy.
• I say nothing but for a millisecond think "I am also good" — it is still there.
• The work is at the level of the instincts that control the mind. It is not done in one life.

"Overcoming these six ripus is the main thing of human existence."

• One who overcomes them is almost ready for moksha.
• Why start now: if you do not try, it never happens — it is postponed by another ten lives. And you may already have done nine; this may be the tenth.

How: our indriyas are focused outward. We keep analyzing other people — what did he mean, what was his motivation. The spiritually advanced have them turned inward. When you catch yourself analyzing someone else, curb it and ask: why am I thinking like this, what is my motivation? Even actions that seem noble have some negative motive behind them. Recognizing it is the first step. You will make the resolve and break it many times. Keep making it.

When the shadripus are overcome, satya becomes firm in you. Vak bala and vak siddhi follow.

Daily discipline

• A student had asked in the previous class how to break the granthis. There are many methods — Hatha Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jnana Yoga. Behind every one of them, a purity of one's whole existence is expected. Whatever the path: sincerity, humility, the desire to overcome the shadripus, and some fixed principles.
• Get up every morning and do some puja. Gayatri 108 or 216 times, or 21, or 3. Lakshmi Ashtakam every Friday. Krishna Ashtakam every morning. Pick a procedure and keep to it. That discipline is yama and niyama.
• Have good thoughts. When a bad thought comes, analyze it.
• Result: satya bala inside you grows, you predict better and — more important — you help people in need.

Gayatri and the Jyotir-Brahma mantra

• The mantra given by Vishvamitra in the Rig Veda is "Tat Savitur Varenyam…". People add Om, and "Om Bhur Bhuvah Svah", in front.
• Longer version: Om Bhuh, Om Bhuvah, Om Svah, Om Mahah, Om Janah, Om Tapah, Om Satyam, then the mantra — all seven lokas.
• Bhur, Bhuvar and Svar lokas are material universes; he related them to the Muladhara, Svadhisthana and Manipura chakras. Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya lokas do not exist materially. Explore the whole universe and you will not find them.
• For naivedyam in puja use the three-loka form: you are dealing with material things. For spiritual sadhana the seven-loka form is more auspicious.
• The mantra for Jyotish — "Om Shreem Jyotir Brahmaya Namah", as far as the recording allows — is very powerful, more so after Gayatri in the seven-loka form.
• Gayatri 11 times, then this mantra 11 times, daily. If not 108 then 11, 21 or 3: "It's better than zero."
• It helps you understand the Jyotir-Brahma and makes astrological knowledge sharper.

Ashtakavarga + SC Dasha — PVNR's Framework

Parashara's Statement

All Parashara said is: use Ashtakavarga with Sudarshana Chakra Dasha and you can make daily predictions very well. He did not say how. What follows is PVNR's interpretation — and less clearly grounded in Parashara than the rest of what he taught on SC Dasha.

Why AV belongs with the dasha pravesha chart

• Parashara gives, from each reference, the positions that are auspicious and inauspicious for a planet.
• If the Sun is in Capricorn, why care whether Pisces or Aquarius is good for the Sun? So he must be correlating the natal chart with some other time.
• People usually take that to mean transits. But Parashara said explicitly that AV goes with SC Dasha, and SC Dasha is judged from how the planets stand at the beginning of the year.
• So: the natal AV is used to see how the planets are placed in the dasha pravesha chakra. "This is basically a gochara frozen at a particular point of time and revealed during the next one year."

Which AV for which level

The natal chart controls the whole life; the year chart controls that year; the month chart controls that month. And so on down the levels.

What a score means

A student asked what "Jupiter has 6 in Gemini" means — six planets benefic from Jupiter, or Jupiter benefic from six?

• Jupiter is auspicious in Gemini with respect to 6 of the 8 references. (Eight references, not eight planets — lagna is one of them.)
• It is a strength of placement: how well the others cooperate with the activities of that planet. It is a different strength from the others a student brought up, which PVNR set aside as not well understood.
• Scale: 4 is average. 5–8 good. 3 and below, below average.
• Saturn and Mars score low almost everywhere — no 6s and 7s. For them 3 is acceptable, about average. Take the average for that planet, not the global one.
• Rahu and Ketu have no Ashtakavarga. Some people use the lagna's for them.
• Whether you are working from Lagna, Chandra or Surya chakra is irrelevant to this step. It only tells which planets are well placed that year to push their natal agenda. Combine it with the yogas and with the count of well-placed planets from each of the three.

Parashara vs. Varahamihira AV Tables

There is a contradiction between Parashara and Varahamihira for a few positions, in the Ashtakavargas of the Moon and Venus among others. Many follow Varahamihira — Dr. B.V. Raman did.

PVNR's reasoning for following Parashara:

• Varahamihira only names the good houses, in verse. Swap one house-word for another of the same metrical length and the verse still scans. A corruption like that can be carried for centuries.
• Parashara, who never wastes a word, gives for each reference four things: the count of auspicious houses, the count of inauspicious houses, the list of auspicious houses, the list of inauspicious houses — "as if you could not infer" one from the other.
• That is a checksum, as in telecommunications. "He built an error-resilient technology into the Ashtakavarga teaching." He did it for no other teaching.
• At the start of the chapter Parashara says that people of Kali Yuga cannot balance complicated factors, and with thumb rules and Ashtakavarga they can make decent predictions. The redundancy protects that knowledge from Kali Yuga's corruptions.
• Corruption is still possible — someone would have to alter four places consistently.
• Kalyanavarma and Mantreshvara (Phaladeepika) agree with Varahamihira. That means nothing: a wrong teaching repeats down a lineage. Varahamihira may well have known the correct thing and his text been corrupted.

PVNR uses Parashara, and said so at the end of the chapter in his book. Jagannatha Hora defaults to Parashara. Expect differences from the tables in some books, especially for the Moon and Venus.

Example Chart 2 — PVNR's D24, 1987 Academic Success

D24 Natal Chart (PVNR)

• Lagna Gemini. Mercury, lagna lord, in the 5th (Libra).
• Arudha lagna is Aquarius. The 5th from AL — people's perception of ability — is Gemini. A5, tangible achievements, is also in Gemini. Gemini is Mercury's sign, so Mercury is the planet for academic achievement here.
• Sun: 3rd lord in the 6th (Scorpio).
• Jupiter: 7th and 10th lord in the 10th (Pisces), which is the 2nd from AL.

1987–1988 SC Dasha Entry Chart in D24

A year of academic achievement. The class had earlier counted well-placed planets in this chart; now the Bhinna AV of the natal D-24 is applied to where each planet stands in D-24 at the start of the year.

Jupiter, Sun and Mercury dominate the year. Whatever agenda they have in the natal chart is furthered.

What each one's agenda is

• Mercury — lagna lord in the 5th, lord of the 5th from AL and of the sign holding A5. Recognition of ability, name and fame, accumulating new knowledge. "Even if all other planets are weak, his strength can give it." From AL he is the 5th lord in the 9th: he protects the image and makes people think of achievement. Rule PVNR drew for himself: a year that opens with Mercury in Pisces in D-24 is a good year. Virgo is also good.
• Sun — 3rd lord in the 6th: initiative used to overcome obstacles, do better than rivals, do well in competition.
• Jupiter — 7th lord: more desires to learn, new relationships and partnerships in learning. 10th lord in the 10th: work in society and being known in society for learning. In the 2nd from AL: "The 2nd house from arudha lagna is the food of the image. Any benefic there will feed the image." The image, as far as learning goes, is fattened.

Lagna lord and 10th lord both very strong: a year of fame and of doing well in competitive exams.

Sarvashtakavarga from the progressed Surya lagna

SAV gives the strength of houses. Take the progressed Surya lagna — what the world does to me. In 1987–88 it is Aries. Read the SAV scores of the signs as houses from Aries:

• 5th house — the strongest. Abilities and their recognition.
• 3rd house — next. Determination, repetition.
• 12th house — third, with a score of 33. Giving, and compromise.

The 12th house in D-24

A student asked about the 12th. PVNR: it is not necessarily teaching — but he did teach, fellow students.

• With knowledge, unlike money, the 12th is not loss. "It's not like I had some knowledge — oh, I forgot it at somebody's house."
• It is the house of letting go, giving, and compromise.
• Compromise: he knew computer science was the number-one branch and would have taken it with a high enough rank. He got a lower rank, missed it at Madras, and did electronics. He decided: I want IIT, so I will learn this.
• Giving: he was known from the beginning for teaching fellow students. Before exams they took his notes and came to his room, and he would recapitulate everything. He loved teaching from childhood — in third or fourth class he taught his brother and sister what they would learn three or four years later.
• What a person gives in knowledge has a tangible side that people can talk about — a lot of knowledge, secret knowledge, traditional knowledge. See that from the upapada in D-24. (Is giving knowledge a matter of D-24 or D-10? Both.)

D10–D24 Cross-Linking — Jupiter as Teaching Planet

A student asked about the interest in speaking and teaching. Is it knowledge or karma? "It is a mixture of both." In the chart of learning it is the karma house; in the chart of karma it is the houses of knowledge. If the two are connected, the result blends the two charts.

D-24 (the knowledge environment): the 10th house is the work done relating to learning. It is ruled by Jupiter, who sits in it.

D-10 (actual work, career): the same Jupiter is the 4th lord in the 5th. 4th = learning. 5th = ability, scholarship. So Jupiterian knowledge and ability come to the fore in his work.

The link: one planet governs the karma of the learning chart and the learning of the karma chart. So: Jupiterian work relating to knowledge, in society. Jupiter is the teacher — teaching of some knowledge.

"When you see that a particular thing can be seen from two different divisional charts, you can combine them. Find one house in one chart and another house in the other, and then see the common influences."

Jupiter retrograde

• A retrograde planet shows strong desires carried from earlier lives — something deep-rooted.
• Jupiter is debilitated in D-10 (Capricorn, with Ketu), but vakri. So the debility "is not really an issue. He gives results as if he was exalted in the 5th house." Read it as exalted Jupiter with Ketu in the 5th.
• Without the retrogression the link would still give Jupiterian work relating to learning. The retrogression adds the strong desire.

Homework Assigned (Class Exercise)

Each student takes one event from his own chart and applies SC Dasha with everything done so far:

1. From Lagna, Moon and Sun, look at the dasha sign and count the plus and minus scores.
2. Then a general, subjective judgment of the yogas from each.
3. See whether the event makes sense, and what Surya lagna, Chandra lagna and Lagna each show.
4. Bhinna AV of the important planets, and Sarvashtakavarga to see which house dominates.

Write it down — "there should be a tangible manifestation of your work" — and send it to the class group. Zero tolerance for not doing it.