BPHS Ch.33 v32-38: Malefic in 3rd from Karkamsa=Brave, Benefic=Timid; 4th=Property Attitude (Moon/Venus=Palatial, Saturn/Rahu=Modest, Mars/Ketu=High-Tech, Jupiter=Natural, Sun=Simple); 5th: Mars/Rahu=TB/Dangerous Disease, Ketu=Grahani, Rahu/Gulika=Poison/Black Magic; Mercury in 5th = PARAMAHAMSA (Childlike Purity+No Enemies+Total Adaptability)

Verse 32 — 3rd from Karakamsa: Brave or Timid

Verse: "Svāṁśāt tṛtīyage pāpe jātaḥ śūraḥ pratāpavān; tasmin śubhagrahe jātaḥ kātaro nātra saṁśayaḥ."

• Malefic in the 3rd from Karakamsa: the native is śūra and pratāpavān — brave, bold, engaged in brave acts.
• Benefic in the 3rd from Karakamsa: the native is kātara — timid. He takes a step back and is cautious. "Nātra saṁśayaḥ" — no doubt about it.
• PVNR reads śubha and pāpa here as functional benefic and malefic (by lordship from lagna), not natural.

Which chart?

A student asks whether this is seen in the rāśi chart. No — the verse says "svāṁśa", the aṁśa. Parāśara does not say whose aṁśa, so it applies in every divisional chart where bravery and timidity mean something:

• D-10: bold on the professional front, takes initiative.
• D-20: does sādhana with intensity and courage — told to sit the whole night in a cremation ground with a mantra, he goes and does it.
• D-4: bold in the pursuit of fortune — going abroad, buying and selling land, accumulating property.

Why functional nature decides

• The 3rd house is initiative, the spirit of getting things done, determination.
• Functional benefics from lagna want the body to be well. They do not care whether the person is wealthy or does great things. They keep him out of the path of risk.
• Functional malefics show the opposite: the 6th lord shows fighting, the 3rd lord shows jumping into things, taking things head-on.
• Karakamsa is the sense of "this is I" — more than the body. The 3rd from it is the instinct of jumping into things from the standpoint of that "I".
• When that house is tied to the malefics from lagna, the urge to get things done does not hesitate to put the person physically at risk. With a benefic there he holds back: "Why do this? It may be risky. Let me take it easy."

PVNR's own D-20

• Atmakaraka Moon is in Cancer in D-20. The 3rd from it is Virgo, holding debilitated Venus, Sun and Mars.
• By natural nature that is close to three malefics: Sun and Mars are malefics and the one benefic, Venus, is debilitated. Read that way he should be reckless in sādhana.
• By functional nature: Venus is lagna lord (benefic), Sun is 4th lord (benefic or neutral), Mars is 7th and 12th lord (neutral). One benefic and two neutrals.
• The fact: he is cautious in choosing a sādhana. "Why do I need to do that? Let me study a little." Others read of a rite in an Aghora book and go to the cremation ground to do it.
• Once he has decided, he is persistent — he can sit 15 hours meditating. The timidity is in deciding what to take up.

"The way I look at it, I am basically like a timid person when it comes to spiritual progress."

He asks the students to apply the verse to their own D-10, D-20 and D-24.

---

4th from Karakamsa — The House and the Attitude to It

Chart: D-4, the chart of house, property, real estate, fortune, where one resides. Find the Atmakaraka in D-4 and take the 4th from it.

Moon or Venus — palaces

• The verse says "candra-śukra-yutekṣite" without "and" or "or". PVNR takes it conservatively as either Moon or Venus, joining or aspecting.
• Moon and Venus are the kārakas of happiness and of bounty in fortune. Moon with Venus is a dhana yoga.
• But Karakamsa does not show what you have. It shows your definition of who you are.

"The properties of the person are a part of one's definition of 'this is who I am'."

• Someone without the combination may own palaces and not care. The one with it is proud of the palace and attached to it.

Saturn or Rahu — stone house

• Read it as an ordinary house — a mud house, a hut, nothing special.
• If Saturn aspects and Venus also aspects, weigh them: whoever has the stronger aspect dominates.

Mars or Ketu — brick house

• "Aiṣṭika" comes from "iṣṭa", from the root yaj (the root of yajña) — something made by burning. Bricks are clay that has been burnt.
• Mars and Ketu show fire, and fire is also transformation and engineering. They are the planets of engineering.
• Today: synthetic materials, special glass made by a special process, high-tech buildings. "I have a nice house made with nice technology."
• Mixtures are possible — high-tech and luxurious together when Venus joins.

Jupiter — wooden house

• Do not take it literally. Most houses in America are made of wood; that does not put Jupiter in everyone's 4th from Karakamsa.
• Jupiter shows what is natural, with little modification or technology. The hermitages of the ṛṣis were wood and palm and coconut leaves.
• Wood that has been seasoned, weather-proofed and clad in siding is Mars and Ketu, or in a high-end house Moon and Venus — not Jupiter.
• Green technology also falls under Jupiter.
• Why Jupiter: he owns Pisces, the sign of ṛṣis, wisdom and contentment (the 12th), and Sagittarius, dharma. He is the most sāttvic planet. He blends in with nature instead of changing it. (A student suggests Pisces is forest. No — Pisces, if anything, is large bodies of water.)

Sun — grass house

• Grass and leaves again mean simple and natural. Sun is also a planet of dharma and is the giver of life.
• You cannot build a house of grass now; in old days one could make a parṇaśālā of tall grass and leaves. Read it as simple and green.

Moon again — the open place

• Parāśara gives Moon a second, opposite result so that the student starts thinking about what else each planet can give. The results listed are possibilities, not the full list.
• "Candre tv anāvṛte deśe patnī-yogaḥ" — he lives with his wife in an open, uncovered place.

"The point is not that he lives in open space. The point is even in open space, he will be happy."

• A strong, unafflicted Moon tied to the 4th from Karakamsa gives a person without complaints. Someone in a two-million-dollar house can still complain that the swimming-pool temperature is not right.
• A student asks why the wife is mentioned. A sannyāsī can sleep on the street easily. With a wife and children there is a compelling reason to have a proper set-up. So the verse means: even when it is hard to be content, he finds a way.
• Venus, the secondary kāraka of happiness, works the same way. If Moon is the Atmakaraka, he himself aspects the 4th from him with a 75% aspect.
• Modifiers: is that Moon afflicted, with Rahu, debilitated, exalted? Which house does he own from lagna — functional benefic or malefic?

It is the attitude, not the building

"When you are looking at the 4th house from Karakamsa, you are talking about the attitude of the person. You are not talking about the actual things on the ground, even though they may correspond also sometimes."

• A person with Jupiter there may own a luxurious house. In his mind it makes no difference whether he is in 3,000 square feet or in one small room.
• With Jupiter or Sun his needs are simple and he thinks of his responsibility to the world.

---

5th from Karakamsa — Disease, Poison, Paramahamsa

Chart: D-30, the chart of the evil that happens to you and the suffering you must go through.

Why the 5th and not the 6th

• A student asks why disease is read from the 5th. The 6th is not disease itself. It is what you fight, and your ability to fight.
• The 5th is the 12th from the 6th: loss of the fight, inability to fight, giving up.
• The 5th is also pūrva-puṇya. Afflicted, it shows a past sin coming back as misfortune — disease is one form.
• The same house also gives the opposite: you do not have to fight because you carry a blessing. So the 5th from Karakamsa shows sins and their suffering on one side and blessings on the other.

Mars and Rahu — kṣaya-roga (tuberculosis)

• Verse: Mars and Rahu in the 5th from Karakamsa give tuberculosis. If the Moon aspects them, it is certain.
• Why: Rahu shows depletion and foreign bodies — bacteria, viruses. Mars with Rahu is a sarpa combination, an evil one. Together they show dangerous foreign bodies in the body.
• TB is one example only. There is no combination for AIDS in the text; the same one can give it. Parasites too.
• Either planet, not both. The next lines speak of Mars aspecting and Ketu aspecting as separate cases. Mars cannot aspect a house he already sits in with Rahu. So PVNR concludes the verse means Mars or Rahu in the 5th from Karakamsa — either malefic is enough to give some suffering.

Why the Moon makes it certain

• PVNR puts it to the class: if a strong Moon, say the lagna lord, aspects, should that ensure the disease or reduce it? It should reduce it.
• So the verse must mean a weak or afflicted Moon, though Parāśara does not say so.
• Moon is the mind and the vital force, prāṇa. A weak Moon tied to Mars and Rahu shows weak prāṇa added to bad prārabdha.
• The planets are in the 12th from the house of fighting, counted from Karakamsa, the level of the soul. At that level the attitude is "let us give up". The Moon shows the mind going along with it.

A student raises Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who had cancer and did not fight it. PVNR's answer:

• His illness drew Vivekananda and the other disciples to stay with him for the last year and a half or two. They nursed him by day and meditated round a fire through the night, under his direct supervision.
• That built the brotherhood which, under Vivekananda's leadership, later became the Ramakrishna Mission.
• For a fully realised saint whatever happens is a play, whether it looks good or bad. It may still show in the chart, and the chart to check is D-30.

Mars alone — boils

• If Mars aspects the 5th from Karakamsa, the trouble is not foreign bodies but big boils and diseases of excess heat in the body.
• Who can show viruses and bacteria: Rahu alone, Ketu, Mars with Ketu, Mars with Rahu, Saturn with Rahu, Saturn with Ketu. Mars alone is unlikely to.

Ketu — grahaṇī and water-borne disease

• Verse: "Ketu-dṛṣṭe" — grahaṇī and jala-roga.
• Open question. Parāśara gives special aspects for Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Rahu and none for Ketu. Does Ketu have the plain 7th aspect? One possibility is that all the aspects in these verses are rāśi dṛṣṭi. Another: Ketu's desire is to make the person desireless, so he too has a desire and a 7th aspect. PVNR says he has no well-formed opinion and leaves it as a question. Ketu simply occupying the house applies in any case.
• Grahaṇī is dysentery — loose motions, blood, a violent disease that leaves one very weak.
• Jala-roga could be read as edema, water collecting in the body. PVNR rejects that for Ketu: water belongs to Moon, Venus, or Jupiter as the kapha planet. Ketu is small bodies, foreign bodies, fire, acute suffering.
• So he reads it as water-borne disease: cholera, bacteria, viruses or amoebas taken in with impure water.
• A student suggests the link is Ketu's co-lordship of Scorpio, a water sign and one of the most evil signs. PVNR: "That's a very good point." In general Rahu and Ketu show what comes from outside and enters the body — parasites, amoeba, bacteria, virus, fungus.

Rahu or Gulika — black magic and poison

• Verse: with Rahu or Gulika there, danger from kṣudra (evil procedures, abhichāra, black magic) or from viṣa, poison.
• Poison can be a deadly poison or plain food poisoning — any undesirable substance getting into the body.

"When you say poison, don't just think of it as things that are labeled as poison, like cyanide or snake poison. Things that are not good for your body, but you ended up taking — they are also poison."

• His example: a man who fell into depression and was put on anti-depressants for five months. They wrecked his digestion and made him angry, and did not lift the depression. PVNR made him an Ayurvedic preparation, starting with detoxification, and he recovered in four months. PVNR counts those drugs as poison.
• His Ayurvedic reasoning: depression is usually a vāta condition (fear, anxiety), but there are pitta depressions (anger, frustration) and kapha ones (laziness). A drug that raises pitta may help the vāta patients of a trial and make a pitta patient violent or suicidal.
• Other modern poisons: plastic from containers heated in a microwave, thermocol cups and plates, cement and asbestos dust, what coal miners inhale, a chemical in imported silk that damaged the sight of weavers, radioactive exposure, pesticides.

Mercury — Paramahamsa

• Verse: "Budhe paramahaṁso vā laguḍī vā prajāyate" — with Mercury there, a Paramahamsa, or a laguḍī, one who carries a staff — an ascetic.
• Haṁsa is the swan, the mystical being that separates milk from water. Every person has milk and water in him — strengths and weaknesses. A Paramahamsa makes you reject the water and leaves pure milk. Whatever he touches turns to gold, like the philosopher's stone.
• Example: Vivekananda came to Ramakrishna intelligent, rational and truthful, but sceptical and hot-blooded — he stopped speaking to a brother disciple for months over idol worship. Ramakrishna removed the water.
• In old days nobody called himself Paramahamsa. Others gave the name after seeing what the person could do. Recent examples: Ramakrishna and Yogananda.

Why Mercury? PVNR asks the class. A natural benefic in the 5th gives a blessing, and Jupiter there can also make a saint. Why Mercury for a Paramahamsa?

• Students answer: the analytical mind. PVNR rejects it. Ramakrishna was hardly analytical — "I know nothing. Whatever Kali tells me, I am telling you." Bringing out the best in a person does not need analysis.
• First point, from a student: childlike. A Paramahamsa is simple, pure, childlike, and Mercury is the child.
• Second point, PVNR's own: Mercury has no enemies and takes the nature of his company.

"All other planets, they have enemies and friends. Even Jupiter has enemies. His own guru Venus is his enemy. But Mercury — he doesn't really look at anybody as an enemy. When he is with Saturn, he behaves like Saturn. When he is with Jupiter, he behaves like Jupiter."

"If you stand on a high pedestal and say, 'Son, you should do so and so thing,' will the person change? Not really. You have to be with that person, and the person should identify with you."

• Ramakrishna gave up sugar himself before telling a boy to stop eating it (a student supplies the story).
• He taunted one disciple as a coward for tolerating abuse of his guru, and rebuked another, a hot-headed one, for fighting a man on a boat who had abused his guru: "Is that the name you want to bring to your Guru?" Different people, different messages. You cannot hand everyone the same ten commandments.
• Mercury shows one who adapts to whoever he is with and does not differentiate between people.

Classes of beings: a saint can be shown by any strong, unafflicted benefic. A Siddha is probably shown by Venus or Ketu. A Paramahamsa is Mercury. All are good, each in a different way.

The class stops at verse 38. Verse 39 (Sun) is left for the next class.

---

Karakamsa Combinations — Summary Table

---