(This article explores the deep roots of various astrological methods being used currently. Our present life is the sum total of the karmas or the unfinished business from past lives, soul’s longing to evolve through challenges of present life and the possibilities of a blissful divine expression in future. This article describes the reasoning behind the various astrological methods related with the past, present and future and how they should be interrelated to understand the human life in totality.)

As we discussed the process of carrying forward of the past lives by our soul through Mind Body, while the evolution process is carried through our Astral Body, previous article “Astrology: Indicator of Soul’s Journey”, this article will discuss the connection of the life we live with all the previous lives and process of evolution experienced by the soul through various challenges.

You may have this question in your mind, that if we choose out own birth time and hence the horoscope, then we should always be choosing a comfortable life to live which is full of luxuries and comforts and not a life which is difficult and full of crisis. However, we need to understand that we oscillate between easy and difficult life times. As we all know that we evolve only through difficulties. If you go deep in the process of cultivation of your special talents and capabilities, you will realize that all that happened when you were going through extremely difficult and confusing times. In fact, your so called good time was the result of your evolution through your so called bad times. Now the question is, why we always get in touch with our special capabilities only during our tough times. The answer lies in the fact that in our good times, we are purely motivated by our ego or the mind body, which is the collection of our past memories and it can not push us forward, as it is limited by the past knowledge and hence can not keep in touch with our evolution. When we are motivated by our ego, we are just being driven by all the knowledge we have accumulated in past. Let us understand the meaning of crisis in this context. Any turn of event, when we are not able to handle any situation with all our past knowledge, can be termed as crisis. While in the clutches of an immense crisis we feel so helpless, and in such moments we realize the futility of our ego or the mind body, as the present situation is unprecedented and hence can not be solved by our past knowledge. In such a state the ego collapses and we get in touch with our astral body, the pathway to our final destination. Hence in such moments the talents surfaces with the divine blessing, which becomes our tool to move forward in life towards accomplishing various feats.

Hence, when the soul longs to evolve, the astral body takes control and takes a challenging birth. This is why, most of the successful people all over the world have difficult horoscopes. (Please refer to the article “Why Successful people often have difficult horoscopes). But sometimes there is too much past karma to be dealt with, which can suppress the soul and it may not want to move forward on its path, until the past baggage is cleared. This is the case with most of the souls, as soul just want to take a back seat and let the mind body takeover to handle it’s own consequences, and this results in easy lives devoid of much challenges.

In our lives, the events are created by way of both the level of existence: The Astral Body and The Mind Body. The events created by Mind Body are purely the consequences of the past karmas, both good and bad. Nakshatras can be understood as the store house of past karma, which keep resurfacing over the period of time. In my understanding Nakshatra based astrology mostly deals with the past karmas, hence it is very important for the masses. The events which are described by way of all the methods related with Nakshatras such as Vimshottary and other Dasha systems and Krishnamurthy Padhdhati etc. are the consequences of our past karma. These methods do not describe the circumstances or the events created by the longing of the soul or the Astral body, for which one needs to use the methods based on Ascendants, such as Parashara system of twelve houses, Ashtakvarga, various methods based on progression as well as the transits.

So until now, we have seen the events created by accumulated memories and the circumstances created by the soul to fulfill it’s longings. Now, the question arises, if the longing of the soul to evolve has been fulfilled and it has taken the leap it desired, then what is the kind of life one will live. In other words, once one is free from the slavery of the past and have learnt to live moment to moment, than what is the kind of life one will be blessed with. Such a life is blissful and is lived in complete harmony with the cosmic forces. In such life, Soul lives mostly through the Ananda Shareer and derive immense bliss out of it. This life can also be understood as the play of divine through the individual soul. In astrology, such a life can be outlined by way of Navamamsha Horoscope. However, you must note that this horoscope is valid only for those who have learnt to live in bliss and gratitude and they act only in tune with the divine play and not by their ambitions, desires and reactions.

Now, you may have noted that there are different methods to deal with the different existance of the soul by way of various level of bodies. Most of the people live by way of mind body, hence the Nakshatra based methods work very well for them. However, one needs to combine the Ascendant based methods. Even though such combinations do exist, but they may be quite insufficient and may not tell the whole truth. Hence new methods are required to understand the life. It is very rare for people to live in bliss; hence Navamamsha may not attain highly important status in terms of predictions. However, people do receive their destiny by way of this horoscope in their moments of bliss. Such moments can turn out to be the defining moments of their lives and hence Navmansha horoscope attains significance. However, for the people of very high awareness, this horoscope may be the main influence in the shaping up of their lives. However, even such people have the longing of the soul as well as unfinished karmas, hence all the three kind of methods must be combined to understand the true picture.

(This article is an endeavor to understand the functioning of astrology at a deep karmik level. It explores the journey of soul from the death at the previous life to the birth of next one at a specific time, which is derived by the soul’s desire to take birth in the context of that specific planetary magnetic field. It explains the formation of our current personality through the Astral Body and the mechanism of the various events over the total span of life.)

Astrology is a science to understand the motives of the soul in the present incarnation. It also depicts the journey it will pass through in the process of evolution and learning. Hence every soul chooses its moment of birth based of what it intends to go through in present life. In it’s previous birth, when the soul left the body, its unfulfilled aspirations remained accumulated in the form of Manas Shareer (The body of Mana or mind), which is the third body from below in the hierarchy of our seven bodies after the Sthool Shareer (The Physical Body) and Pran Shareer (The body of breathing). The body of mind is like the accumulation of past experiences, memories, aspirations, frustrations, guilt and everything else we go through while living our lives. However, this body has no awareness of the overall journey the soul goes through over innumerable lives during its journey through the vast patch of time. It is the fourth body, the Sakshi Shareer (The Astral Body / The Auric Body or the Body of Witnessing), which is aware of it’s overall journey and the ultimate goal of the soul. Hence, the choices of the time of birth are made by the Astral Body, which is in tune with the further journey soul urges to commence.

At the time of death, soul leaves with the body of mind and the Astral body. It intends to take birth, when it will have the right circumstances to move closer to its ultimate objective of becoming one with Param Atma (The God), and hence the Astral body can gain further strength. It takes birth when the Aura of the body matches with the environmental aura, which is the resultant of the inter relations of the magnetic fields of various planets, constellations and other such cosmic bodies. This aura enters with the first breath inhaled by the child after birth and creates a permanent impression similar to the first rays of light falling upon the exposed photo plate and creating a permanent impression in the form of the picture. Hence the Astral body enters the physical body and it begins on a new journey afresh along with the stored memories of the mind body from all the previous lives and karmas. Hence through the astral body, our physical body connects with the magnetic fields of the various planets and other cosmic bodies. This planetary aura interacts with the mind body or the previous experiences and memories to create our thought patterns and the feelings. This is how our personality is formed, which is defined with the help of the Science of Astrology. Hence it can be said that all the planets, Nakshatras and Zodiacs resides in our own bodies. At the same time, the lord of Jyotish as well as the lord of all the planets, the Shiva, also lives in our body through the higher fifth, sixth and seventh bodies, the bodies of Ananda (Bliss), Chit (Consciousness) and Sat (Truth).

Let us now understand, how Astrology predicts the events by way of planetary movements. The moving planets are constantly creating the impulses based on the interaction of their magnetic fields. This creates the overall aura and is responsible for the mass trends witnessed from time to time. Major events, which impact the large masses, and shape the destiny of various nations and the planet earth, are predicted through such readings. However for individual predictions, one needs to study the impact of this changing planetary aura on the individual personality. The permanent astral pattern within us, which was imbibed at the moment of our first breath, makes us catch only certain planetary impulses and ignore others. This is similar to radio catching only certain sound waves emitted from a particular radio station at a given frequency, while ignoring every other kind of sound. Since all of us have a different astral pattern, the changing planetary positions impact us differently. Such planetary movements create impulses, which create thoughts and feeling by way of interactions with our individual astral pattern. Such thoughts results in action, which creates events after interacting with the actions of others.