Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people and discussions about spiritual topics. I’ve been doing this for, this will be the 10th anniversary in the fall and there are nearly 500 of these and so if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com and look under the past interviews menu where you’ll see all the previous ones categorized and organized in various ways. This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it to any amount, there is a PayPal button on every page of the site and also a page suggesting other ways of doing it without PayPal if you don’t like PayPal. My guest today is an old friend of Irene and mine named Prasannan. We first met Prasannan about 20 years ago at an Amma event in Chicago, I believe, when we first met him and had seen him over the years many times since then and have stayed in touch with him even in between those events all this time for reasons that we’re about to explain in this interview which will be about the Vedic science or discipline of Jyotish which is the Sanskrit word for astrology. Prasannan had a fascination for astronomy from an early age, in fact there’s a picture of him when he was bedroom with all these astronomy posters on the wall and he built his own telescope and spent his teenage years studying the stars and planets. He was the president of the astronomy and photography clubs in high school. He always understood that what we see is only a tiny portion of the totality and obviously that has meaning in various other realms other than astronomy. In 1987 he attended a retreat which resulted in a spiritual awakening leading him to conclude that he had always been on a spiritual path. As a result he adopted a celibate brahmacharya lifestyle. Can you say a word or two about that spiritual awakening before we move on?
Prasannan: Yeah, it was like an intensive retreat for four days. Basically it was like a silent retreat with controlled communication like back-and-forth communication and the purpose of it is just to really to get out of the mind. It worked. The person who designed the technique wasn’t around, but it was like that was being offered.
Rick: So you got out of the mind, what did you actually experience?
Prasannan: Absolute unity with everything, like I’m looking around that I’m seeing only myself and the universe is smiling at me from all directions.
Rick: Nice, sounds good. Okay, so that caused you to shift gears a bit in your life.
Prasannan: Yeah, definitely, big change.
Rick: Alright, so then you went on to study the teachings of Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Ramana Maharshi and Swami Sivananda and then you heard about Mata Amritanandamayi and you met her during her 1990 North American tour.
Prasannan: She came to Vancouver that year.
Rick: Yeah, that was pretty early in the game, she had only been touring for about three years at that point.
Prasannan: Right.
Rick: Yeah, okay, and so at that time you held a senior management position in corporate finance, sounds exciting.
Prasannan: I don’t know about that.
Rick: Okay, I’m reading from your bio obviously but I’m changing the pronouns a little bit as we go. So you had a natural motivation towards engaging in selfless service, seva, and that’s what the word seva means, helping others out of compassion without a conscious thought of receiving personal benefit. You moved to Amma’s ashram, Amritapuri in India in 1992 and on arriving you were placed in charge of the computer room and developed a new accounting system and you trained the brahmacharys, the monks in its use. At the same time a Jyotish software program was acquired which you became responsible for and at Amma’s direction you began the practice of Jyotish which continues to this day and it’s basically your full-time profession, isn’t it?
Prasannan: Yeah, that’s what I do.
Rick: Good. You traveled around the world with Amma which is where we first met you, providing Jyotish interpretations during her programs and at other times conducted sessions in India raising funds for Amma’s charities. After 19 years in India you returned to Canada, established your independent Jyotish practice and after more than two decades of brahmacharya you married Maya, the love of your life. I’ve met Maya, she’s a lovely person. You have consulted with more than you answer questions about all areas of life, material, familial, health, and well-being as well as spiritual. You know Maharishi used to talk about the development of something called Jyotish Mati Pragya that you would get after you did enough Jyotish readings. Can you define what that means, and have you developed any of that?
Prasannan: Yes, so the Jyotir Vidya is like you could say it’s like the deity of Jyotish or the deity of light, Jyotish means light and Jyotish is not just astrology, it’s also astronomy, meteorology, numerology, anything that we use to apprehend the nature of the universe. So the Jyotir Vidya is this you could say like a subtle being that apparently whispers in your ear and tells you things when you’re tuned in and I know this works because there’s been times when someone has come back to me years later and said you know you told me this and this and this would happen exactly like that and it did exactly happen like that and I’m thinking I don’t remember saying that, so like who said that. So there are definitely times, I mean for the most part it’s very much looking at and delineating and reading what’s there in a sense, you know picking out what is relevant but sometimes yeah there’s this other element that supersedes.
Rick: Okay, good. So we’ve given people the indication obviously that Jyotish is Eastern or Vedic astrology. Everybody has heard the word astrology, maybe not everyone listening has heard the idea of Eastern astrology or Jyotish. What’s the difference between Jyotish and Western astrology?
Prasannan: Actually Western astrology is originally comes from the East, it all starts in the East. There is no separate Western astrology that you can date back far enough, to go back far enough in Western astrology it merges with Eastern astrology. So there was a point because for thousands of years, I mean since the time well before Krishna, because in Krishna they talk about in the Mahabharata and in the life of Krishna is talked about certain nakshatras combination stars and the science of Jyotish was already fully established more than 5,000 years ago because it was mentioned in those texts and so the origin of it is really sage Parashara for the most part who is the father of Vedavyasa, maybe people know that Vedavyasa was the codifier of the Vedas and so he was a Rishi You can buy the two-volume set the Parashara Hora Shastra which is basically the bible of Vedic astrology. But in terms of how it’s different, when Western astrology began at the time about 1,500 years ago they diverged from the view of the cosmos as being centered around the stars because if you think about it astrology should have something to do with the stars but actually the astrology practice in West really has more to do with the seasons than the stars. In other words, the seasons means like Aries in Western astrology is just referred to as the beginning of spring, right? So on March 21st Western Aries starts but the actual stars, the constellations that the astronomers are keeping track of are slowly moving over time, so the Sun doesn’t even reach Aries these days till around April 14th. So as a result 80% of the population have a different Sun sign in their Jyotish chart versus their Western chart because we’re looking at the actual stars not the seasons. That’s one big difference, it’s based on the actual stars, the Sidereal zodiac. It also has many other differences, in other words the division of the sky not just into the 12 signs of the zodiac which Western astrology borrowed from Hindu astrology but also the division into the 27 nakshatras. Nakshatra means star and so everyone’s born under a certain star and the star is basically that you’re born under the star where the moon was at the time you’re born. So there’s these finer divisions in this system that make it quite different.
Rick: To my mind all of this begs the question, we need to get into mechanics of a little bit because many people will feel like so what where the stars are, where the planets are, anything else, how could that possibly influence an individual’s life, I mean what sort of influence is that, how is it propagated, and is there any proof for it in terms of anything that’s measurable?
Prasannan: Well, actually it’s not we don’t actually think of the planets as causing anything or directing anything, it’s not like Jupiter’s making something happen literally, but everything is interconnected because the whole universe is like a holograph. So when you look at one part of the system it reflects another part, so there’s a reflection everywhere and what it happens is at the moment of birth there’s a reflection of what the incoming soul is bringing in, it’s reflected in the position of the planets and the stars according to the position at the time of birth. So there’s this idea of synchronicity, synchronicity as without so within, it’s not like one is causing the other, they’re just reflecting each other.
Rick: It’s sort of like a template or something, a configuration that is going to have significance, if you can read that configuration you kind of know how an individual’s life is going to go, but it’s not like that configuration is causing it.
Prasannan: Right, it’s a bit like a roadmap.
Rick: Yeah, okay. So incidentally I should add here that I don’t have a real good, well to put it mildly, I don’t have a good mind for astrology, for Jyotish, it never sticks when I hear something about it, but Irene is very good at it actually and she has been largely responsible for developing most of the questions that I’ll be asking today and she’s sitting right here and might add a few more questions as we go along. So here’s one she wrote out, the birth chart is significant in Jyotish as I understand it and the planets position on a date and time and location when a person is born. So explain how the birth chart forms the basis for everything that gets interpreted for each person throughout their lives and also what defines the moment of birth, the first breath. I was born by caesarean, I don’t know if that has any significance, but it was when I first breathed and why is it so important, the moment of birth.
Prasannan: Well, yeah, so at the moment of birth there is a configuration of the stars, the planets, the heavens, and the angle with which the horizon intersects all of that. So there’s a pattern, it’s basically an astronomical pattern that can be calculated without, you know, it’s a totally scientific thing. But as far as the moment of birth, it’s always been considered to be the first breath. Sometimes in hospitals they write down something different, they might write down the cutting of the cord or they might write down when the head first emerges, but it’s the first breath that counts and it’s because breath is associated with life. Before birth the child is breathing through its mother, through the umbilical cord, and then there’s that expression he breathed his last. So if the end of life is the last breath, that means the beginning of life must be the first breath. It’s simply about breath, independent breath, there’s a physical vehicle and the breath is in when it’s alive and the breath is out when it’s not. So that’s why the breath is so important.
Rick: sometimes when you’re doing somebody’s chart and it doesn’t seem to make sense, like you’re seeing one thing in the chart but another thing in a person’s life, do you expect that the birth time might have been recorded improperly and then you have to somehow figure out what the actual birth time probably was?
Prasannan: Even if a person’s birth time is recorded accurately, I normally check to see if it’s correct. So I’ll ask them a few things like did your father’s father die before you were born? Which would be maybe the case if your time is what you say it is, but if it’s two minutes earlier it could be something different. So we can pretty quickly find out what is going on by checking a few events. Yeah, and when people don’t know their time of birth also then we calculate their time by they can go through make an exhaustive list of life events and we can use that to find the starting point. So when the time of birth is correct everything does fit in life.
Rick: Okay, good. So on your website you say we are born at a particular space time in the universe, when the soul takes birth it descends through the heavens and the atmosphere before reaching the earth, and when I read that it kind of made it sound like souls are going around satellites or something and they come in through the atmosphere. So what are you actually saying there about the soul’s location before birth?
Prasannan: Okay, well maybe that forgive me if that’s perhaps a bit of poetic license there. Actually really what it is is the souls exist in the astral plane. The astral plane is another plane, there’s the physical plane, there’s the astral plane which is also superimposed on the physical plane, there’s also the causal plane which is beyond that. They exist in the astral plane which means they exist right where we are except they’re out of phase with physical reality, so they’re not visible to our senses. Actually they don’t really descend from, it’s poetic.
Rick: Okay, good.
Prasannan: They’re really around, just floating around. But now you see when a soul is kind of becoming in, this is very important because actually we say we don’t have any control over when we’re born, it’s true from the point of view of the incoming soul that is true, but then there’s also this notion of conscious conception, right? Like in India you find that people will visit temple and do prayers and do all their rituals in order to, you know, and pious actions in order to bring in a spiritual soul and it’s said that in that instance the soul that’s destined to be born may be hanging around the parents even long before conception because they’ve already identified, “oh, this is where I’m gonna go, right?” So there’s like this notion that the souls do have like a higher soul is always looking for a higher birth, right? If you want to have a good birth you’re gonna come into the body of a yogini, you know, someone who’s spiritually alive, you know, and whereas souls that are brought in sort of ordinary terms just through, you know, normal human interaction, they’re not gonna have as much freedom, you see, so sometimes the soul may be picked out well before even the conception and sometimes it’s just a last-minute sort of luck of the draw.
Rick: My sister and her husband in particular had vivid experiences of when both of their children kind of came in as it were, you know, it was a real clear experience and so the understanding is here just to reiterate is that, well, for one thing in some cases at least we choose our parents which you know many people say, well, you have no choice over your parents, but actually perhaps you do.
Prasannan: By your actions in the previous life you set up a vibration which draws you into the conditions which are suitable.
Rick: Yeah, and I’ve talked to some people on this show who say that, you know, sometimes we intentionally choose very difficult circumstances because it’s going to teach us certain karmic lessons, like we might be born to alcoholic father, parent who is alcoholic or in poverty or some such thing because those hard knocks are gonna actually work off some karma for us. Do you concur with that?
Prasannan: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that old expression, “sorrow brings you closer to God” is absolutely true and in fact we find that even when people have awakening experience it’s often through some tragedy or loss that those are triggered.
Rick: Just to get back into the mechanics a little bit, does Jyotish jibe with the modern understanding of the solar system or is it based on kind of a more archaic Ptolemaic view? Go ahead and answer that bit.
Prasannan: Well, actually I mean I think Jyotish is based on the exact understanding of the solar system, so it’s completely scientific and has been since day one. Some people you know argue that well because Jyotish is incomplete because it doesn’t include the outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The reason the Rishis didn’t mention them is because they weren’t visible to the naked eye, so people couldn’t see them without a telescope and there were no telescopes in those days, so they weren’t mentioned. But it does say in the scriptures that new planets will be discovered in the future and they should be studied and incorporated. So it’s not like Jyotish is incomplete, it is actually completely complete and in fact I would say it’s always an evolving science.
Rick: That’s good to know. Yeah, that’s a good attitude that it’s evolving, you know that it doesn’t consider itself fixed in stone.
Prasannan: Well, some people consider it fixed in stone but I certainly don’t.
Rick: Do you take the outer planets into consideration in your work?
Prasannan: When we talked about that in the mechanics, like one thing also that Jyotish has which Western astrology doesn’t have is the understanding that there are cycles in life, when each planet is active, when you come under the influence of a certain planet and these cycles last, the cycles are long cycles and the total of all the sort of 120 years cycle means all nine planets take we’re going through this cycle. Now of course the outer planets Uranus, Neptune, Pluto don’t have a cycle, so we don’t have like somebody might be in their Saturn period or their Mercury period but they’re not gonna be in their Pluto period. At the same time, the other way that impact happens is through transits. There’s the cycles and there’s a transit, transit just means where are planets currently. So I’m quite sure that the impact of the transits of the outer planets is significant. I can speak from my own personal experience, when Pluto transited exactly, exactly square to my moon to the degree exactly, that’s when my mother passed and of course moon represents mother, Pluto is in the fourth health from the mother, my mother passed at that time. Neptune was transiting my ascendant exactly to the degree the first time I met Amma and Neptune is about spirituality. So I mean yes, the transits of the outer planets are worth looking at.
Rick: We know now that there are probably trillions of potentially inhabitable planets in the universe. Do you think that Jyotish whatever it might be called in these other places is a universal science and that each solar system if there are intelligent beings there would have its own Jyotish that was modified according to the planetary arrangement in that solar system?
Prasannan: Of course, their Rishis would have investigated, probed and discovered what those vibrations are and given the science of how that could be delineated. Even here like what happens if we go to Mars, they’re talking about going to Mars. So like what if they go to Mars and colonize Mars and then a child is born on Mars? Well, the astrology that will be different, right? Because you won’t have Mars in the chart, you’ll have Earth in the chart, right?
Rick: That’s interesting.
Prasannan: Think about that. We wonder where on Mars exactly what was its ascendant and all that.
Rick: Whenever there’s an eclipse in the world, particularly in the US, I guess it was last summer or the summer before there was a total solar eclipse and it was a big excitement, everybody migrated to the place and stayed out in campers so they could watch it. In Jyotish as I understand it, the Vedic system eclipses are considered to be kind of inauspicious and you don’t want to go out and watch one. What would be the impact of actually being born during one, Sun or Moon?
Prasannan: Well, basically you must understand that eclipses are times when there’s a lot of energy, a lot of power, a lot of Shakti.
Rick: Why?
Prasannan: Because it’s an alignment, right? Because Rahu and Ketu, the eclipsing bodies, are lined up with the Sun and the Moon. Whenever planets line up they become powerful by being joined. So this is a union, it’s like a yoga, it’s a union, it’s a union of energies, so they’re magnified, it’s like a magnified energy.
Rick: That’s even true gravitationally, we can have higher tides when things are lined up.
Prasannan: Of course, the Asian tsunami that affected the ashram in 2004 December, that occurred on the full Moon at sunrise. I mean the earthquake that caused it occurred at the full Moon at sunrise, where Sun and the Moon are basically pulling like a tug of war across the plates of the Earth and that plate in Sumatra collapsed and caused the tsunami which killed thousands of people. So it’s even geologically sound that reasoning, so there’s this power. The question is how is it directed. If someone’s born in an eclipse of the Sun, there’s this tremendous power, if they adopt a spiritual life they can be a real light to the world, they would be like shining, they’d be a shining being, they’d be an example to society. On the other hand, if they’re not focused on spiritual life, especially as they’re growing up, they can become very destructive. In other words, that power can go either way, positive or negative. So they either become a beacon of light to the world or they become like a darkness, so they can go either way. In eclipse of the Moon, if someone is in a spiritual bent, then people born in a lunar eclipse would be sweet and pious and a blessing to the world, their love for divinity, they would be great bhaktis, because there’s this power there, there’s this magnified power of the eclipse. If they’re not on a spiritual path, then they become aloof, withdrawn, kind of lazy, drowsy, so like they’re a little out of touch with reality. In fact, the current president was born during a lunar eclipse.
Rick: Can you think of any other famous examples of people who were born on eclipses?
Prasannan: Well, the Prophet Muhammad is said to have been born on a solar eclipse and whatever one might think, he’s definitely a powerful person, influenced millions of people and still does.
Rick: So we touched a little bit about the fact that the planets don’t deliver karma to us, they are more like a reflection or a pattern of things. You do mention that each planet has a deity and let’s define what a deity is and who or what these deities are that planets have. Just to throw in a few more questions, are they embodied in the planets as our souls are in our bodies? Go ahead with that.
Prasannan: Okay, so the planetary deities, I guess that the deities associated with each planet, they are celestial beings in a sense in terms of their impact in the cosmos, more sort of close to home, you could call them powerful psychic forces that represent different elements of the different devas, so there’s a deity for compassion, there’s a deity for different things, deity for strength, for courage, there’s all these different forms, just aspects of divinity, right? So like the Hindu pantheon, right? But some of them are associated particularly with a planet like Mars is associated with Lord Subramanya, he’s like the god of you know like an Arjuna kind of figure, right? The warrior, right? Sun is Shiva.
Rick: Shiva or Surya?
Prasannan: Well, Shiva ultimately, Surya is an aspect of Shiva. Surya is the Sanskrit word for the Sun.
Rick: Right, alright. Let’s probe into that a little bit more. So we see all these pictures of Subramanyam, Shiva and all the Vedic deities and you’re implying here obviously that they have some reality, they’re not just sort of fictional characters or folklore kind of things, they represent some deep principle as it were or impulse of intelligence.
Prasannan: Yeah, impulses.
Rick: Yeah,that have some kind of a function, a governing function of some sort in creation, is that fair to say?
Prasannan: Yeah, right.
Rick: Would that function be universal or just exclusive to our solar system or what?
Prasannan: I think the qualities are universal but how they’re embodied would be unique to our solar system, in other words the moon embodies certain qualities, some compassion, empathy, Mars embodies certain qualities, Mercury is for communication, so it embodies certain qualities of mental agility, facility. So when we see those planets in the chart we’re looking to see in what state are they. If a person has a well-placed moon they’re going to have a calm disposition, be relaxed, compassionate, content, self-content. If the moon is under negative influences in the chart the person will be more restless, agitated, etc. So it’s by the position of the planets whether they’re well-placed, well-aspected in good houses, etc., that shows how those energies also play out in the person. Now nothing should be seen as cast in cement, everyone can through their own effort, through their own spiritual practice go beyond whatever is shown in the horoscope, we shouldn’t think that we’re just tied to… “That’s it buddy.” Like when you’re in poker, you’re dealt a hand, you don’t have any control over the hand you’re dealt, but how skillfully do you play that card, that’s also how skillfully do you use what you do have, big part of this.
Rick: Yeah, the guy that John Hinckley shot when he was trying to shoot President Reagan used that very metaphor about the hand he’d been dealt and he was doing his best to deal with it. In fact people often use that metaphor. So as we talk along here try to keep in mind people who might have a hard time accepting or believing or understanding this. Let’s kind of flesh it out for them as we go along. I mean because there may be many people listening who are very spiritual people, meditating or whatever they do, who might still think well you know these planets are just hunks of rock circling around the Sun and we’re anthropomorphizing them by attributing all these personal qualities to them and these influences to them. What more can you say to help clarify that for people who might be thinking along those lines?
Prasannan: Again, just to reiterate the planets aren’t actually doing anything, they are just a reflection of what’s in us. So we have these patterns in us because of our background, because of our previous life tendencies, our vasanas, the conditions that we created in a previous life are reflected in our current life, and so the planets also reflect something about that. It’s a reflection, it’s not a cause and effect, it’s a synchronicity, it’s like a synchronicity, a holographic universe where one part reflects the other, when you look at one part you see the other part. So it’s not like Mars is doing anything, on the other hand there’s a very, there’s a giant clockwork in the universe which is like these energies have their time when they come to the surface and then they act and then they compel people to act in a certain way or a certain direction, and if you understand what that energy is then you can channel that in a very productive way.
Rick: One thing that helps me understand this and perhaps others will help others too is just that the universe is not random or accidental or really even inert. The whole thing is just sort of a play of intelligence and if we look closely at anything we can see that intelligence at play, it’s all pervading and just orchestrating everything, so things are not sort of capricious or random or accidental and what you’re saying is that this orderliness or intelligence has actually taken a form that we can observe and understand in the arrangement of the planets just as it has in many other things, the functioning of an atom or of a cell or of anything, we can see that intelligence. This is just one more way of seeing it, its handiwork.
Prasannan: It said that the Creator leaves secrets to the creation all over the place, it’s up to us to discover them, like they’re also in the palm of the hand, a good palmist can just look at the palm and see what’s going on for the person and even the thumb itself can be enough. Numerology plays a role there too, omenology. In India there’s a lot of astrologers who will do a reading based on simply by as they are talking to the person they watch what’s going on around them and like if crow comes from the southwest corner that will mean something, or if a gecko chirps in the northeast corner it means something else, but nature is always speaking, it’s just do we have the ears to hear it.
Rick: Yeah, I remember one of the Carlos Castaneda books, Carlos and Don Juan were talking and the coffee pot started to whistle and Don Juan said, “Oh, the coffee pot agrees.” You know, he saw that it’s significant that it started whistling at that moment. Alright, let’s talk about karma for a while. You talk a lot on your website about karma and obviously the topic of karma is very germane to this whole discussion. So let’s define what karma is first and then we’ll unpack it from there.
Prasannan: Karma is basically in a broad sense and it’s often translated as action. So it’s not when people hear the word karma they think, oh something bad, actually it simply means action, could be good action, could be bad action. It’s also by extension the fruit of action. So as the Bible says, “as you sow so shall you reap.” So if you perform sweet, loving, kind actions, acts of kindness, then you get good karma, you get what’s called punya which is meritous karma. If you do unkind actions then you get what’s called papa, papa means negative karma. Papam, it’s called actually. So karma means action and also the fruit of the action at the same time. So we’ve done many actions, some of them good, some of them not so good, and then by the balance we see where we’re going.
Rick: That again gets us back to the whole intelligence of the universe thing, because it couldn’t just be like billiard balls where you roll a billiard ball, it hits the other billiard balls, the influence of that doesn’t necessarily come back to your hand or something.
Prasannan: Not always immediate.
Rick: Yeah, but with karma we’re talking about things we might have done ten lifetimes ago that could still come back to us or whatever.
Prasannan: Sure, and in fact it’s not just what we’ve done because there’s personal karma for sure, but there’s also familial karma, right, because even the Bible says the sins of the father go to the next seven generations.
Rick: Yeah, I think the Native American said that too.
Prasannan: So this is idea that if your ancestors have done something like say unkind, that karma is also being carried by the souls that are in that line and they have to also work it out. So you’re not working out just personal karma. If someone is suffering they shouldn’t think, oh my God, I must have been really horrible person in my last life, so why I would be suffering? Well, it could be working out some family karma. So like just understand that you’re working out what you’ve been given to work out because you’re able to work it out.
Rick: In a way that doesn’t seem fair, you know, why should I work out my Uncle George’s thing, but on the other hand it does seem fair because it’s like we’re all kind of climbing the mountain together and we’re all roped together and we’re helping each other out of one person struggling a bit, the others help them along.
Prasannan: All rise or all fall together, you know, in the end, in some respect.
Rick: But again to my mind when we talk about karma it brings back to my awareness the notion that it’s an intelligent universe, it’s all pervading intelligence. Because otherwise how could it possibly be calculated, it’s beyond human intellect certainly to calculate all the ramifications of every little action and have them all come back properly.
Prasannan: It’s an incredibly complex and deep thing and people say that astrology isn’t 100% accurate, I would say astrology is 100% accurate but the human mind can only contain so much. So astrologers are not going to see 100% accuracy because they’re just simply not able to access majority of it, but in the end only the Creator will actually know what’s going on, right, in the end.
Rick: Do you think there are kind of like Lords of Karma or we talked about deities earlier, are there sort of subtle beings whose job it is to administer karma or is it more something that’s just intrinsically built into the mechanics of creation that everything is calculated and comes back to what it’s meant to?
Prasannan: Everything gets balanced by the laws of nature essentially. So yeah, we think of it like cause and effect but really again it’s just a synchronicity, everything is synchronized. So the deities are there, anybody can access any of the deities, Amma says that too, right, all the deities are within us.
Rick: Right, they’re not just off on some planet or something there.
Prasannan: Yeah, they’re actually in their principles, their principles, their laws of nature, we can invoke them, we can use them, we can be conscious of them. So the whole point of astrology I think is not to see because it’s not really, I would say astrology is not so much understanding who you are because actually who you are is the divine blissful self beyond all of these things. So it’s actually astrology is defining something about who you think you are, like the version of illusion that we are living under, right, is to get us out of that trap basically, get us out of that illusion. It’s like this, it’s the vehicle for getting out, like a road map. If you get your road map out and you use that road map to drive say to Boston, then you’ll get there pretty quickly because you’ve got a clear path, right, and once you get to Boston you throw away the map, you don’t need it. So it’s like Jyotish is also a map but it’s not the ultimate because the ultimate is to go beyond. Once you’ve reached the destination, the ultimate destination, there’s no need.
Rick: Yeah, and yet even people like Amma consult Jyotishis sometimes for different things. Why would she if there’s no need for Jivanmukti?
Prasannan: Well, she consults because she’s asking about her children who aren’t at the ultimate. She’s asking about one of her followers.
Rick: So Jyotishis would have no usefulness for a liberated being, it would just be for their…
Prasannan: I mean the karma still acts, I mean Amma still has a physical body, it goes through physical things and even in her chart when there’s certain cycles come on, there was that one year where she was wearing the neck brace the whole year, that was clearly 1999 I think it was, there was like something in her chart that was yeah that would be the time, that would be more challenging. So even the physical, anybody, there’s still the physical karma applies to the physical body. She may be completely unaffected by it, beyond it, but still the physical body has to experience the karma of the physical world.
Rick: And so an awakened being might also find it useful for instance for Jyotish to say well this would be a good day to leave for a journey or you know that kind of thing maybe.
Prasannan: Well exactly, I mean in fact Amma often would say no, like she’s going on a tour, she would say no we can’t leave now, it’s like not the right time, and then she’d say okay now we can go, like a couple hours later, it’s like very specific and or you know so it’s like it’s very specific, yeah if you’re tuned in then you would naturally spontaneously act in accordance with harmony, the harmony of nature.
Rick: So would she say those things because some Jyotish told her so or just because her intuition knew it?
Prasannan: She would say those things because of her own intuition telling her and later on I checked the chart and I was, yeah that would make sense.
Rick: It seems to me that some karma is heavy duty, very compelling, you know it’s like coming at you like a Mack truck and others is looser, lighter, would you concur with that?
Prasannan: Yeah, karma is has I would say degrees and it comes down to basically because when we look at the chart we’re looking to see certain indications, certain factors. Now any particular condition may be seen by a variety of different factors, right? But like if for example all the factors for a particular condition are simultaneously in the negative then we’d say that’s pretty heavy karma. In other words, like let’s say there was a case for example let’s say there’s a case of someone who couldn’t have children for whatever reason, okay well the fifth house is the house of children so we’d find that the fifth house might have malefic planets in it, then we’d also find that the fifth ruler is under malefic influence, then we might find also that Jupiter is the general indicator of children is also under malefic influence. So like if all the factors are negative you would call that a confluence of influence, right? So then it still might not be impossible of children but be extremely difficult, like and would only happen through some kind of a miracle, okay? So on the other hand most people don’t have that kind of severity, right? There’s usually a mix of influence, positive and negative. So then it’s a matter of understanding, okay, well if it is difficult but when is the best time and so there is like there’s still going to be opportunities, right? So understanding that, understanding when is, a lot of it this is to do with when is the right time to do something for the best result.
Rick: Can there be things like let’s say you had some karma coming which was going to cause you to have a serious car accident and get injured, but then you engage in spiritual practice or you do other things which kind of diminish the momentum of the karma and instead you stub your toe
Prasannan: or you have a fender bender.
Rick: Instead of a total fender bender or something small.
Prasannan: That’s true, that’s true, because you see when you do positive actions, when you do acts of kindness, when you build up karmic merit, that acts as a sort of a larger protective shield around the person, right? So then the karma, the intensity of the karma, it may still be an accident but it won’t be as severe.
Rick: Yeah, Still I suppose there are some types of karma that are just inevitable, Christ got crucified, Ramana Maharshi got cancer, things like that.
Prasannan: Right, if somehow the weight of the karma may be more than human effort to lift it or it could just be part of the divine plan, it could be necessary for the divine plan, for the as they say greater good.
Irene Archer: And also that build up of positive karma could be from past life.
Rick: She’s saying the build up from positive karma could be.
Prasannan: It’s shown on the chart as the purva punya.
Rick: As a matter of fact in terms of past life, I mean some people are born in very auspicious circumstances, with comfortable homes, with great educational opportunities and all the rest, good health. Other people are born with serious health problems and poverty, yada yada, we all know the story. So I guess we would attribute all that to karma.
Prasannan: Well, if you didn’t believe in reincarnation, you’d have to think the universe is pretty cruel place, because how would that be fair. But if you understand the law of cause and effect, well the souls that are working out, what karma are they working out? They’re working out the actions of the ancestors, their own actions in the past and their ancestors are being worked out.
Rick: It’s interesting how things are kind of lined up in a chain, like if you don’t believe in reincarnation then all kinds of conclusions come out from that.
Prasannan: It becomes impossible.
Rick: It might even be hard to believe that there is any sort of God, however you define it. Well, of course there are a lot of Christians who believe in God but don’t believe in reincarnation, somehow they work that out.
Prasannan: Well the Bible used to have all kinds of references to reincarnation but the early church removed them.
Rick: Council of Nicaea and all that. Okay, before we move on from the top, from this aspect of it, we can keep going, you’ll bring more things in. So on your website you talk about how karma includes acts of commission and omission, in other words things we could have done but didn’t do.
Prasannan: Most people I think understand that if they do something, like let’s say they do something bad and they would understand that there’s a karmic consequence to that or if they do something good there’s a karmic goodness that comes out of that. But there’s also times where there’s something that we could do but we don’t do, in other words let’s say we know something but we don’t act on it, we know something should be done but we don’t act on it, so by not acting we could also be incurring karma.
Rick: Like I don’t know, we have an opportunity to save somebody from drowning or from injury or something like that and we choose not to.
Prasannan: Right, I mean if someone’s an able-bodied swimmer, obviously not someone who is going to drown also, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I always say if someone’s drowning in the pool, you throw them a life ring and pull them to the side, right? If you jump in they could take you down too. So like you want to also be anchored, to help someone you have to also be anchored on the shore yourself somehow.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a good metaphor for being anchored in the self or in pure awareness in order to really be of greatest help to others. So how do we balance acceptance with initiative? You say that if external events of our lives are ruled by past karma, this requires an attitude of acceptance, but then we don’t want to be fatalistic or passive or something. There’s that whole Shakespeare thing of whether it is nobler in the mind to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them and that whole thing. How do we balance that?
Prasannan: Well, I think it’s really the dialogue of fate versus free will that comes up and people have debated as to whether or not things are fated or if we have free will and my conclusion is that both exist, we have fate and we have free will and it’s in proportion and in fact Yogananda’s Guru’s Guru’s reported to have said that when we’re born 75% of our karmas are fixed and 25% is where we have room to grow, where we have free will. That does make sense, a lot of things in our life are fixed like the conditions were born under etc. but then that portion where we can, that 25% is where we can evolve. I believe also that the more the soul evolves, the bigger that 25% can come. In other words, you can increase the 25% and on the other hand if someone doesn’t lead a life according to spiritual principles, they may even lose their 25%, they may be even become less, even more fated. In fact, there’s people who seem to be totally fated because they don’t have any understanding at all about spirituality. So it’s like we were starting with a certain mix of fate and free will and through our own conscious effort we can expand the free will part.
Rick: There’s the forgive them father they know not what they do thing, but on the other hand to whatever extent you do know what you’re doing, you have to exercise that knowledge to the best of your ability and then that sort of moves you in the direction of greater and greater freedom.
Prasannan: Right, yeah.
Rick: I mean to take a practical example, let’s say a person, we all know how many people are getting addicted to opioids these days and you know so at this point if someone says hey I think I’ll try some opioids, probably before they’re addicted they have a lot more choice in the matter than a year later when they’ve gotten really strung out. It’s going to be a lot easier to choose not to do it than it will be if they’ve already been doing it for a year.
Prasannan: Right, of course. Yeah.
Rick: So just a little bit of an example I guess. So now one thing that’s interesting to me on the free will issue is that the more we move toward God or enlightenment or whatever, it seems to me the more it’s the will of God that is actually directing our life, you know not, you know, Thy will be done and in a way that might seem like less freedom because God is kind of taking over the reins or the divine intelligence is calling the shots more and more but actually when the divine intelligence is calling the shots that’s kind of the way we’d like our life to go usually. There’s this funny kind of contradiction between we’re actually getting more free but we’re actually ceding our individual willpower at the same time.
Prasannan: I mean that’s an interesting way of looking at it, that the divine will is actually basically what’s there when the ego gets out of the way.
Rick: Yeah, kind of what I’m saying.
Prasannan: The ego is kind of the problem, but the ego doesn’t really want to get out of the way in a lot of cases and so that’s the battle, that’s the age-old battle, like this illusion of the separate me, that wants to have it my way and then the divine which is saying, “Hey, you know, do what you like,” but what do they say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
Rick: Yeah, there’s some kind of Rumi or Hafiz thing where he talks about how, I forget, you know that thing I’m alluding to where he says, “I think I still have a million moves, but God’s basically already got me.
Prasannan: Checkmated me. The thing is, at that stage the bliss of experience so far outweighs any thought of what might have been had I not gone this way that it becomes a moot point. By external circumstances the person might think, oh, well that person doesn’t have a lot of choice because they’re just in this, you know, they’re in this other place, but you know, like from the point of view of that other place is like they’re in bliss so who cares?
Rick: It’s interesting to ponder though because there are a number of voices that are quite articulate that argue that we don’t have free will, people like Sam Harris and many others, and many people I interact with through BatGap say that, so I’m glad we’re talking about it.
Prasannan: It’s a continuum, it’s not black and white. Nothing is black and white, it’s a continuum. At some places there is no free will, in some places there is, and it’s just understanding the difference, that’s like the serenity prayer.
Rick: Oh yeah, exactly, “the wisdom to know the difference.” To know the difference, yeah.
Rick: Let’s say two people are born at the exact same date, time, and place. Let’s say somebody else was born in the same hospital I was born in, in the next room at the same time.
Prasannan: Same moment, yeah.
Rick: Yet their lives go in quite different directions, they don’t seem to coincide very much, they don’t perfectly match up. Would this be due to genetics and free will or what else might be a factor?
Prasannan: Okay, so there’s lots of cases of twins where they’re born like virtually at the same moment and yet they have very different lives, but there’s also different principles for interpreting twins horoscopes, where you can tell them apart. But in terms of individuals born at the same time, in the same place under largely the same, basically having identical charts as it were, the first principle of Jyotish is to consider the background, the family, the place, the time, where that person’s born, the conditions they’re born into. There was a famous story of one of the kings of England, the son was born. He was going to be the future king of England and just outside the castle walls there was a ordinary commoner born at the same moment. Well, on the day, they both married on the same day, the commoner got his biggest break in his career the day that the king became crowned, their children born on the same day, their wives have the same name, and they died within one day of each other. So there was like interesting, you know, so there is like this potential for the pattern to be quite specific.
Rick: Yeah, interesting, it’s a true story? As far as you know.
Prasannan: I haven’t researched it myself.
Rick: It’s very interesting. It’d be cool to do some studies on Jyotish. I mean you could do, it’d be easy enough to find out when and where.
Prasannan: When you said before about is it scientifically provable, like I want to go back to that point you made about is it scientifically provable, I’ve been actually had this idea for more than 20 years to scientifically prove Jyotish and in fact I wrote a couple of articles for the Journal of Astrology in India. What I did was I found charts which had a particular thing in common, so I would like extract a group of 180 charts and the thing that those charts had in common is they all lost their father at a young age, like before they were adults, or another group of 180 charts where they all had death of a sibling, and I studied those charts in like massive detail to see if there’s patterns that would be appearing there that aren’t in the sort of general population and sure enough there’s lots of things that came out of that. So those researchers were done, they need to be done with bigger numbers and bigger control groups, but basically I’m sure it’s provable scientifically that you could look at a chart and say well if those factors are considered then the probability let’s say of that particular occurrence in the person’s life is going to be much higher than the norm.
Rick: You could also do a study where you get data from hospitals of when people were born at pretty much the same time and then get in touch with those people and see how their lives have been going.
Prasannan: Yeah, they wanted to do a study of that at AIMS.
Rick: AIMS is Amla Hospital in Cochin.
Prasannan: They sent me some data, they actually wanted to look at the charts of people who had like some kind of a condition, let’s say like they wanted more from a practical point of view like we have all these charts of people or people who had amputations or something and they wanted to be able to something in common in their charts. The trouble is that in Kerala most people don’t have accurate birth times at all. So they would give their details but they wouldn’t know their birth time or they would mention their birth star but then when you look up the day that they say they were born that wasn’t even that star, so even their birthday is often not right. So we had lots of trouble trying to get actual data to work with that.
Rick: I should think Indian parents would keep track of that thing because Jyotish is so significant in that culture.
Prasannan: Well, yes and no, because they’re just as likely to pick up a Western astrology book at the bookstore because they have this notion that everything Western is better, and not that much have they embraced their own tradition. Some do, certainly the Brahmins do, but not everybody.
Rick: I see. Anyway, possibilities for research there. As I understand it there’s something called upayas in Jyotish which are remedial measures and these include like pujas, wearing certain gems. Why don’t you talk about that a little bit.
Prasannan: We’re doing a ceremony like a yagya or a puja or a ceremony, again it’s just a way of invoking energy. So let’s say we see something in the chart where there’s a negative influence. Well, if there’s a specific ritual performed it could help alleviate the effects of that condition, but it very much depends on the intention and the consciousness of the person performing it, the pujari. They have to be clear in their own, they have to be clear themselves in order to be able to get that energy to flow. So yes, there can be great benefit from these pujas, yagyas if they’re done with proper intention by people who are in the right space for it. As far as the gemstones, the scriptures actually very specifically state that the planetary energies are most strongly reflected in certain pure substances on earth. So for the Sun it’s the stone ruby, for Jupiter it’s the yellow sapphire, for Saturn it’s the blue sapphire, and so by wearing the stone of that planet you actually increase the quality or energy of that planet for that person. But of course not everyone should wear blue sapphire because for some people Saturn has a very positive role and for some others it’s quite the opposite. So you have to understand for each person which ones they should strengthen and which ones they should avoid. So that’s also part of course what we look at. But if you wear the right stone, it really does dramatically change things. I mean I’ll give you for instance there was this guy Leo rising, so he’s ruled by the Sun and his Sun was debilitated in Libra, so like the worst possible place for the Sun is Libra. This guy came to consult with me every year for years in Germany, he runs a school, he and his wife run a private school and every year he came to consult and every year I told him he should wear a ruby. Well after many years one day he went to the bookstore and picked up a ruby and put it on, he came to back to me two days later and says, you know from the second I put that stone on I felt different, I still feel different. So yes, the right stone in the right place can actually make a huge difference.
Rick: Have you seen examples of let’s say famous people like Elizabeth Taylor or something who have a great big giant diamond but they’re not meant to wear a diamond and you can kind of see how it’s negatively impacting them?
Prasannan: Well actually Princess Di was given a huge blue sapphire which is actually deadly for her and obviously it wasn’t a good thing. Also apparently, this is something I heard, somebody gave Muktananda a huge blue sapphire and he died shortly after and it’s not good in his chart either. So yes, I think the wearing the wrong stone is actually could be seriously damaging.
Rick: So is it that the stone serves as a kind of a receiver as it were, you know like a radio receiver except for radio waves.
Prasannan: a magnifier of certain influences or energies which are…
Rick: Magnify certain energies. Okay, and those energies like radio waves are kind of everywhere anyway but it sort of picks up on them and magnifies them, focuses them.
Prasannan: Yeah, absolutely. Powerful condensed force, the pure stones.
Rick: I’m laughing because I keep having in mind certain people who watch this show who are skeptical about everything and I’m wondering they’re probably gnashing their teeth right now but all I would say is keep an open mind.
Prasannan: I’m just speaking from my experience. I used to do all the shopping for the jewelry for Amma, right? So I spent many, I mean I was in Jaipur three or four times a year testing out stones and I got to be very sensitive to the vibration of the stone. In fact blindfolded I could separate the blue sapphires from the yellow sapphires just by putting them on my hand and then I could separate the heated from the unheated because they all have a different vibration. So if you’re tuned in these things are pretty accessible.
Rick: The average person listening to this show is a spiritual aspirant and I want to talk about the significance of Jyotish for spiritual aspirants but also the average person listening to this show has things, practical things in their lives, you know marriage or buying a house or career issues and things like that. So let’s talk about both the practical and spiritual implications or applications of Jyotish.
Prasannan: Yeah, it’s true, I mean Jyotish actually really excels at timing, like it’s just probably its greatest strength is timing. So the person wants to know is this the right time for me to sell my house or should I wait or is this the right time for me to change jobs or should I wait. Is this the right time to commence something or should I wait. Is it the right thing, is it the right direction, is it the right time? These are like things that come out of the chart. So people use this in order to get clarity, they’re already thinking about something but they’re not sure or they’re facing a decision, I could go here, I could go there, which is the better option. Well, I don’t know, I need another outside opinion. So this is a way of invoking that and spiritually too, people want to know what can they do to advance spiritually, what is the best practice for them. This is like also a common question but most people ask about mundane things first, ask about their family, they ask about their job. I always joke that when Indian families come to consult, all they want to know is when will the daughter be married and when will the son get a good job. It sounds like they’re really concerned about their children but honestly, in Indian culture the daughter is a burden until she’s married, then she’s in another family and the son is going to take care of the parents when they’re old, so they want him to have a good job. It depends, the questions are very much have to do with the background of the person asking too.
Rick: I know in our case you told us a couple of things that panned out, one was regarding the purchase of our, at least a couple, many others, but at least one was regarding the purchase of our house. How did that go Irene?
Prasannan: I’ll give you another example, you sat with me one time, the first time we had a reading was 2001, I just looked it up in my database and I don’t know if it’s the first or the second reading but you talked to me about this little idea you had about starting a little program called BatGap. I didn’t get that idea until about 2009 I must say. Okay, but you did consult with me about it at the time and you’re wondering about when was the good time to launch it.
Prasannan: You actually took note, but no, wait a minute Prasannan. I remember you asked me about BatCap. Maybe I said a spiritual interview show or something, but the name of Buddha at the Gas Pump didn’t come up until 2009.
Prasannan: Yeah, we did discuss it.
Rick: Yeah, I mean I guess you mentioned that I would be doing a different career thing than I had been doing at the time and it would have spiritual orientation to it.
Irene Archer: And we kept wondering, well how is this going to happen?
Prasannan: And who would have thought 500 interviews later?
Rick: Yeah, we probably thought, hmm I’ve already done the spiritual thing for a living, you know teaching meditation, that didn’t pay the bills. So people probably come to you thinking of getting married to one another and you look at both charts and see how compatible they’d be.
Prasannan: That’s a lot of compatibility questions. A lot of people have questions about whether or not the how charts line up and it’s not like everyone’s charts line up beautifully, but the point is it’s good to understand how they line up. In other words, where are the strengths or the weaknesses? If you know there’s weaknesses you can understand that and work around it and accommodate, right? Whereas if you just go in blind then you’re going to be surprised by, well how come this person doesn’t think the way I do.
Rick: Do you actually sometimes say to people who really want to get married to each other, I don’t think that’s such a good idea?
Prasannan: Yeah, that’s happened.
Rick: Then how do they take that?
Prasannan: There was this guy in the ashram who wanted to marry somebody and I told him it was the worst possible combination, just don’t do it, don’t do it. He went ahead and got married, had a daughter, then in the end of course they’re divorced and now she’s like trying to get him for every penny he’s got and using the daughter to manipulate him. Anyway, yeah, it’s a very unhappy situation, it would have been better if he’d listened in the first place. He admitted afterwards he should have listened to me.
Rick: Have you ever been wrong about things like that you’ve told people and it turns out later you realize you were wrong and then you look back at the chart and you think, oh I see how I got that wrong, I missed this or that.
Prasannan: I think nobody is going to be have to go by what is like basically the higher probability, but there’s always like divine grace. I mean someone could have some divine grace happen that wasn’t foreseeable or the other way, someone might look like they’re completely safe and yet some accident happened that I missed maybe because I wasn’t looking for it, wasn’t expecting to see it. It’s like a thousand page book, you still have to open it up at a page and read.
Rick: What about the people, you know a lot of people who listen to the show are really keen on the idea of enlightenment or awakening or realization or however they conceive of it and obviously the other things are important to them too, but that’s really their burning interest in life. How is Jyotish significant or useful for them?
Prasannan: Well, Jyotish can show when are the best periods for intensifying spiritual practice and also which kinds of spiritual practice would be most fruitful at different times, like the kind of spiritual practice that’s good for the person, whether they’re maybe some people are more suited for a path of knowledge or path of devotion or a path of seva or yoga or whatever, these are indicated in the chart and they may also change, right, as the cycles change, there could be a time where the person’s supposed to focus more on seva and then another time where they’re supposed to be more inward, reflective, contemplative, not as much externally engaged, so like timing of that. I mean most people who are on the spiritual path already have some kind of a sense of what that is, but it’s nice to have it just sort of independently confirmed even in the chart.
Rick: Do you think Jyotish could help people choose a particular guru or teacher? Can you like do an individual’s chart and then do the chart of some teacher that he or she wants to go and be with?
Prasannan: I’m often asked that question, like how is that teacher for me or how is that guru for me or do I have karma positive or negative with that particular individual. So yeah, it comes up as a question for sure and I think the chart will also show whether or not the person is meant to be focused more on like external physical relation with the guru or some people’s relation with divinity is not really through the physical form even, they could be just inspired by a picture of Ramana It’s individual.
Rick: So in addition to like the kinds of consultations we’ve been talking about, marriage and spiritual advice and employment things, it seems like as I understand there are other kinds of things you can do, like for instance there’s a thing called astrolocation that would actually help you determine where a good place for you to live would be.
Prasannan: Yeah, the principle there is that the planets exert maximum force when they are doing one of four things, either rising, setting, straight up or straight down. So if we can then look at where on earth those planets are doing that for the individual, we can see where they’re gonna be particularly strong, where they’re gonna have things go easily, other places where they might have more trouble and so astrolocation is really looking at where geographically is not just good for me to say live, locate myself, but also even like knowing where are good places to travel for vacation or which places to avoid. I can’t count the number of times I’ve talked to someone and said, if you go to this country you’ll have your money stolen or you’ll get food poisoning because you’ve got Rahu going right through there. On the other hand you’ll do really well in this other place because you’ve got a Jupiter line or something very good for the person going right through that place. People again…
Rick: There are countries where that’s more likely to happen.
Prasannan: It’s true enough and obviously it has to be practical too, if you have a good line going through the middle of Mongolia you’re probably not gonna move to Mongolia anyway because it would be impractical. Most people have some degree of freedom as to where they could live. I mean even the United States we got what three different time zones plus Hawaii, so if people aren’t good on the East Coast they may be good on the West Coast or vice versa, so they can figure that out, find that out from the chart pretty easily.
Rick: I think we have four time zones, we have Pacific, Mountain, Central and East in the US, probably Canada.
Prasannan: Plus Hawaii.
Rick: Okay, so let’s talk about dasha periods a little bit, tell us what they are and I might have a second question after you tell us what they are.
Prasannan: So the dasha, the way the dasha scheme arises, it gets back to the notion that we’re born under a certain star, right? So you’re born under a certain star and that star that you’re born under has a ruling planet and whichever ruling planet that star has that planet rules your birth, it rules the time that you’re born and because each of these cycles are fixed like the dasha of Mars is always seven years, the dasha of Rahu is always 18 years and then follows 16 years of Jupiter, this is a fixed thing which totals 120 years, right? So it’s 120 years cycle and everyone is somewhere in the starting point depends on your star, where you’re born, what star you’re born under. So for example if someone’s born under a Mars star then they’ll have Mars right at birth but they won’t have all seven years of Mars because when they’re born the moon was part way through that star, so we’re born part way through that seven-year period, right? So they’ll have the remaining portion, after that they’ll have Rahu for 18 years, Jupiter for 16 years, so that’s like you step, it’s like wheel at the moment you’re born and then just follow along the wheel after that. So the dashas are those cycles, right? So people come into different cycles and different cycles have different properties, qualities and of course the planets don’t mean exactly the same thing for every person because depends on where they’re placed in the chart but typically Rahu can be a time of more Rahu which is the north node, right? One of the eclipse points. In Western astrology they call it the ascending node, sometimes called the dragon’s head. So under Rahu for example a person might have an awakening, spiritual experience and awakening but because it came under Rahu it’s very likely to have some kind of twist to it or that the mind is going to creep back in more easily or you know it’s not going to be like complete necessarily. So the kind of experiences one has in different cycles is also determined by like what planet is operating in, how durable that experience will be, right? So these cycles are always unfolding. So like let’s say one is in a cycle but you know like let’s say one’s in a Jupiter cycle which is a 16-year cycle. Well just to know you’re in Jupiter for 16 years doesn’t tell you a lot because that’s a long period of time but then within each cycle there are sub cycles. So within Jupiter there’s Jupiter-Jupiter then Jupiter-Saturn Jupiter with every other planet. Then within Jupiter-Saturn there’s Jupiter-Saturn-Saturn, Jupiter-Saturn-Mercury. It gets down to the fifth level. So basically at the fifth level you’re like practically day by day something is changing. So if you want to really get down to the specifics you can really nail down and that’s how we can find out at the time of birth is accurate because if the time is accurate things fit right down to the subtle level otherwise they don’t.
Rick: Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal when you change mahadashas. Since I married Irene I think I’ve had a couple such changes maybe and it can be quite turbulent as you make these changes and sure enough it sometimes has been for me. No, she didn’t cause it. I probably caused it myself.
Prasannan: No, in fact it is a big deal changing major cycles. Even if you’re changing into a good cycle there’s an energy shift. Something is shifting, the person’s orientation is shifting. In fact one of the things we look at when we look at relation of compatibility like for marriage, one of the red flags let’s say is that in a couple’s future life together there shouldn’t be major cycle changes at the same time, like within the same year. That’s considered going through turbulence at the same time. Like if one is going through turbulence the other one is steady they can support each other through their turbulent times. If they’re both going through turbulence at the same time it’s considered a negative.
Rick: If they are matched up in that way then every time there’s a mahadasha change it’s gonna happen for both of them simultaneously, right?
Prasannan: Only if they’re in the same dasha. So if they’re both changing the Saturn to Mercury at the same time then they’ll always have the cycle change at the same time. But if one is going into Saturn at the same time the other one’s going into Venus then that will coincide but then Saturn and Venus are different lengths so they won’t coincide the next time.
Rick: Irene and I were talking the other day and she said that she heard that if you die let’s say you’re halfway through your Mars mahadasha then when you’re reborn you’re actually going to be at the same point halfway through where you had died, no?
Prasannan: No. There’s no scientific evidence to suggest that or even in the charts where we have the reincarnated person’s chart there are obvious signs that that person’s reincarnation is the one before but that dasha thing doesn’t quite work out. So there must be some intervening time in the loka where something is playing out.
Rick: Here’s a question from a listener, Kranti from Freehold, New Jersey asks, a lottery winner is often decided by a complex algorithm run by a supercomputer. Actually it’s usually decided by those little balls that come down but maybe the generation of lottery numbers he means. If it is true that the winner got it because of his karma it makes me wonder just how complex the karma machinery could be, just by looking at how many things had to be set in place to make this event happen or does it not work that way?
Prasannan: It’s true, it’s very complex and I have been asked before to pick the lottery numbers and I don’t do that. If I could do that I probably wouldn’t even need to do anything. I actually think it’s a misuse of the science, in fact, even if it is possible to do. It gets back to the whole where does Jyotish come from?
Rick: Using Jyotish to pick the lottery, his question is about just the way lottery, the mathematics behind the choosing of lottery numbers or many other complex mathematical things, that there’s a similar mathematics or similarly complex, vastly more complex mathematics behind the karma of lottery.
Prasannan: Yeah, or somebody who’s going to win the lottery that will be in their chart. Yeah. Like they’ll have that influence in their chart to win the lottery. But see, I guess it comes back to that anything can be seen, the question is will it be seen? Will the divine allow it to be seen? That gets back to this because even in astrology you’re playing with forces that are quite subtle and quite powerful and what one astrologer sees another astrologer might not see. And I can give you an example of this, this is a true story from Kerala, there was a couple who went to an astrologer to get their charts matched for marriage and the astrologer looked at the chart and he was just absolutely horrified and he said, no, don’t do it, don’t get married. And then they went away and then they went to his guru and this astrologer’s guru gave the blessing for them to get married. Then two weeks later the astrologer is walking down the street and he saw a funeral procession and on inquiring he found out there were two coffins and it was this couple. So he went to his guru and said, I saw death in the chart and that’s why I told him not to get married. But you told him to get married, so what gives? And the guru said, “They were destined to die anyway, at least let them have two weeks of wedded bliss.”
Rick: That’s interesting.
Prasannan: So it’s like what can be seen, what will be seen.
Rick: So to my understanding not only individuals have Jyotish charts that could be analyzed but countries do and perhaps a lot of other things, companies maybe.
Prasannan: Companies have charts, yeah.
Rick: I mean maybe even towns or families or various configurations of individuals, right?
Prasannan: Yes, that’s right, that’s called mundane astrology.
Rick: Why do they call it mundane?
Prasannan: Well it has to do with the world.
Rick: So the USA then has a Jyotish chart and apparently we’re in a dasha, in a Rahu cycle, right? So Rahu cycle, yes. So how is it that a country has a chart? What is it determined by, like when the Declaration of Independence was signed or something? Yes, on 4th of July PM. I used to have a little bit different time but after 9/11 I corrected it. Based on the event of 9/11 I corrected it to 6: 25 PM and boy does that fit perfectly because in fact on October 19th 1929 they would have entered their Saturn mahadasa. Well Saturn brings like the truth, brings reality. Stock market crashed within two days and the Great Depression ensued.
Rick: So that’s interesting.
Prasannan: It fits that chart.
Rick: So you’ve looked back at historical events.
Prasannan: Yeah, and worked out the exact birth time of the US.
Rick: Yeah, and so now what do you see coming? I mean things are a little crazy right now, does that sort of jibe with the Rahu phase we’re in and what else do you predict?
Prasannan: Yeah, when Rahu is in the 8th house then you, if a person has Rahu in the 8th house in their birth chart then during the time of Rahu they may act sort of irrationally unpredictably. So when it’s in a country’s chart the whole country may be in that sort of unpredictable irrational kind of state. Currently the sub-period is Jupiter and Jupiter’s a highly beneficial force in the US’s chart because the US chart has Sagittarius Ascendant. So Jupiter is the ruler of the charts, it’s highly benign and Jupiter is always expansive. In fact the Jupiter main period was running in the 20s like the roaring 20s, it was this expansive Jupiter. But now it’s the Rahu Jupiter and Rahu Jupiter finishes in November of 2020 and then starts Rahu Saturn. So just in time for the next election, Rahu Saturn starting. Now it’s not the same as Saturn Saturn which was 1929 but it’s definitely significant. So I’m expecting a downturn in the economy somewhat at least on par with 2008 happening in 2020 in the second half, maybe not exactly in November because I think if something big is coming probably there already have been sort of signs of it beforehand by the summer probably. So I think right now it’s Rahu Jupiter for the most part there would be an expansive force. I had predicted in my annual forecast that the downturn there would be a small downturn in October 2018 because it was Rahu Jupiter Saturn at the third level, Saturn always brings a correction but the worst of that was basically over by Christmas and so now it’s basically since Christmas and for the most part will be a positive year. I’m predicting a good year for 2019 overall for the markets even though the world seems to be in a bit of a turmoil but the US economy is still going to look good at least and what happens is when Jupiter is running people have kind of euphoria, they feel optimistic even if all signs say they shouldn’t be, it’s like it’s about mass consciousness and so when that euphoria turns to pessimism like it will when Saturn comes in November the wind goes out of the sails and the market corrects. So if you have stocks sell them before June 2020 would be my advice.
Rick: Do you actually do any stock trading yourself based upon this stuff?
Prasannan: Absolutely. Yeah.
Rick: Hey, you could pick up a sideline as a stock advisor.
Prasannan: Well I do. My clients call me just for that, financial advice, where should I put my money, what currency should I put it in now, you know. My background is finance.
Rick: That’s true. I find it rather discouraging that things are going to get worse or people are going to get pessimistic in November 2020 because I was kind of hoping someone would get elected that would make us more optimistic.
Prasannan: Yeah, well the karma of the country is like some correction has to happen.
Rick: Hasn’t it been happening?
Prasannan: More correction.
Rick: Well, I mean on this theme you successfully predicted the elections of Obama and Trump very early on in their campaigns. From the chart. From their charts and maybe the country’s chart as well. So what else can you predict? Do you have any prognostications about the next presidential election?
Prasannan: Well, I will publish that next year. A little too early for that. But I don’t think we’re going to have a second term for Mr. Trump.
Rick: Okay, that’s good in my opinion. Okay, so I’ve gone through all the questions that I had written down here and so I want to give like either listeners who are sending in questions the opportunity to send in any if they have any. Or Irene to ask any more or you to say anything you want to say that we may not have brought up that you consider important.
Prasannan: Well, we talked a little bit about and I think a lot of your listeners are interested in awakening and we touched briefly on sort of like awakening may occur in different and under different kind of planetary influences and also of course it’s I think well understood that there’s different sort of intensities of awakening. Someone may have an awakening experience and have like a heightened awareness, or they may even like start seeing everything as one, but then the mind might creep back in and so they believe they’re sort of at a place, right? But then there’s still remnants, let’s say remnants of the mind, remnants of the ego that are at play and so it’s like a tricky thing in that whole realm. I don’t claim anything but people make certain claims about their state of awakening or realization and I think a lot of it is a bit of a mind trap, it can be a bit of a mind trap. So I think the more clarity we can have, the more real we can be about it, it is good. If someone’s really beyond, if someone’s really in total wakefulness and they’re beyond and all the vasanas have been burned at the root, which is like the full total awakening, well yeah, those people won’t need to promote themselves because everyone will be coming to them, they’d be like Buddha or Jesus, but somewhere in between the rest of the world finds its place.
Rick: Yeah, well it’s an interesting point, I mean there are all kinds of people who start teaching and sometimes gain big followers.
Prasannan: They may still have ego.
Rick: Oh yeah, well that’s what I’m getting to, that there’s been all sorts of train wrecks where people have gotten very off in their behavior. I’ve had to take down a number of interviews of people who really started going off the rails. So I guess…
Prasannan: I think one of the things is that if people have an awakening experience but then they don’t integrate it properly through sadhana, then it can just become another power trip.
Rick: Yeah, and if they don’t realize that there is integration yet to achieve.
Prasannan: Right, they think they’ve arrived.
Rick: they think they’re finished, it’s beneath them to do sadhana, you know because “Hey, we’re already enlightened, why should we need sadhana,” that kind of stuff. It causes problems.
Prasannan: I think it causes a lot of problems.
Rick: Yeah, and so again how would Jyotish help to circumvent this kind of problem?
Prasannan: Well, I guess it gives you a reality check.
Rick: So you can look at somebody’s chart and say, “well you may not be as enlightened as you think you are buddy.”
Prasannan: Well, I was thinking more in terms of people who are attached to particular teachers, you know like if we looked at their interaction with that teacher’s chart and say like what’s really going on, you know, are you putting your eggs in the wrong basket because you know maybe the person you are idolizing or putting up on pedestal isn’t all there.
Rick: Yeah, and so you would determine that by the juxtaposition of their chart and their teacher’s chart?
Prasannan: Yeah, presumably the teacher’s chart would be available, not all of them are. Some people keep their birth date very secret.
Rick: But if they were available, would you be able to determine with some degree of accuracy whether a teacher
Prasannan: Absolutely
Rick: had really solidly arrived or yet to.
Prasannan: They’re putting on a show, yeah, clear on the chart.
Rick: I mean my philosophy with BatGap is just that everybody’s a work in progress, pretty much everybody.
Prasannan: We all are.
Rick: Yeah, I don’t know if there’s any, and that’s what we used to say, you know, interviews with awakening people but we changed it to awakening people because it seemed that process never ends.
Prasannan: The continuum, yeah, not black and white.
Rick: So Irene sent over a question, maybe we’ve just covered this but in case we haven’t, would such a person as you describe as fully enlightened or in a very high state have that very clearly reflected in their chart?
Prasannan: I would say their chart would show the promise of that, and then how they exhibit to the world would be the proof of it. Because at a certain point the chart really stops acting. I mean yes, there’s still karma at the physical level like we said at the beginning, still karma at the physical but the person’s completely beyond the effect of that in terms of where they’re at, in terms of their consciousness. So there is no one left, there is no ego left in that case, so there’s just clarity, there’s just being and happening. I think when you meet people like that it’s…
Rick: Don’t need a Jyotishi to know someone’s in that state. That’s a line from Dylan in case you don’t know. I “don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Right. He didn’t react, I thought maybe I hadn’t heard the line. Okay, so is there anything else, Irene or Prasannan or anybody, is there anything else you want to cover? Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Irene Archer: Oh yeah, let’s cover his services.
Rick: Anything else you want to say but let’s cover your… We talked a little bit about your services but let’s go through them again just so people have an idea what the options are and whether…
Prasannan: Well, most people consult, the first time they consult most people consult by phone or Skype and that’s just because there’s too much to explain in a written form, so they would have a reading, most people do like a one hour, what we call a one hour full life reading but it’s not like it because people write, say oh should I have an annual reading because it’s near my birthday, it can be whatever. So it can be a combination, the one hour can be a combination of current as well as life patterns. It’s basically the focus is wherever that person is most interested in understanding what’s going on. So a lot of people just have questions about what’s going on or they want to ask about their family members, they want to ask about their children. So fine, you can ask about anybody, it’s not fixed like it’s got to be about just this chart, it can be about people around you. So that’s the reading and then sometimes it arises that people might have a question, they don’t really need a reading but they are just facing a decision like gee now I’ve got this choice, I’m gonna take one of these two jobs which is better. Well, they don’t necessarily need a reading for that, they could just look at it from the point of view in single question by email or muhurta, someone might want to know, okay we’ve decided to get married, we’re gonna get married sometime between say April and June, find us the best date and time for that location for it to happen. That’s what a muhurta is. Or I’ve met someone, I want to know how compatible we are, so the relation compatibility comes in there. So those are the kind of the way it goes, but most people just start out with a conversation and then take it from there.
Rick: Do you ever get bored with this or is it endlessly fascinating for you?
Prasannan: I never get bored with this, it really it’s just the most amazing thing, it’s much better than corporate finance.
Rick: I feel that way about this, I mean sometimes people say, listen there’s been so many hundreds of interviews, it’s really getting boring, but not for me.
Prasannan: It is really endlessly fascinating and everyone is different, everyone is unique in some way. So these things we talk about the principles and the principles are the same, the principle of Saturn, the principle of the planets is the same, but how they manifest is unique in some way for every person in a different way. That’s like the beauty of it, like really a picture of what’s going on.
Rick: I remember Nancy Reagan consulted some astrologer, she got a lot of flak for that, it was like a big brouhaha.
Prasannan: Well it’s a powerful, I mean Vedic astrology is the most, I think most powerful prognostication technique around on the planet. Definitely, there’s ample proof of it. I mean people say where’s the proof? Well, just look at the track record of people who do predict accurately. This can’t all be just coincidence, right? I used to think it was just coincidence because I grew up in a very scientific, rational, logical, Western mindset and when I first heard about astrology, “that’s ridiculous,” but then when I went to India and Amma told me to study it, it was like, wow, it is scientific, this is great, like it’s all based on rules. I mean I’m used to rules, astronomy is all about rules, accounting is all about rules and now we got all these rules of astrology, it’s great. Like bring it on, as always mathematically minded and it is very mathematical. So it’s funny that it’s like seems so different than finance, but actually the guy I studied with in Delhi who I wrote those journal articles for, K.N. Rao, he was the auditor general for India before he retired, so he’s finance guy and then he runs the Bharata Vidya Bhavan, the biggest Jyotish school in the world, on the weekends.
Rick: So you use a computer program to help you calculate the chart, could there be like in your dreams vision a computer program that could go way beyond just the simple calculation of the chart and help you figure out all kinds of stuff that you now have to use your own mind to figure out?
Prasannan: It’s a good question, like the computer programs when they started out we just put basic calculations in and then as the programs got more advanced, they got more and more refined and they brought in more and more things, so there’s more calculations you can see. I think one of the great strengths of computers that would have been impossible before computers I think is the whole idea of birth time rectification, because you know how when you’re in a particular cycle, like when you’re in a cycle and a sub-cycle and a sub-sub-cycle all the way down to the like nth degree, right? So those change if your birth time changes, they all change instantly, right? But modern programs allow you to see what would be the cycle, sub-cycle, sub-cycle, etc. for every single minute, for every single second, just by zooming in and out of a particular window and then you can narrow down and find out what the person’s birth time is. You would never do those calculations if you had to do it by hand, ever, wouldn’t be possible. So it’s been a real blessing, the computer is a real blessing. Well, you still need to apply your intelligence but the facility of doing the calculations is there in the computer. But as far as the interpretation of it, I think it’s, I mean the program I use has canned interpretations which I don’t ever give people because they’re way too general and they don’t really apply because they’re like little pieces of a puzzle but not the big picture, right? So if you look at anyone’s chart, there’s going to be combinations for poverty, there’s going to be combinations for kingship. Well, are they going to be a pauper or a king? Well, you have to look at the thing in synchronicity, you can’t just look at one thing, oh that’s in your chart. Well, maybe there’s things that cancel it, right? So you have to look at the big picture and I don’t know if there’s software, there’s certainly no software yet that can see the big picture and maybe it’s something that’s beyond computer program, maybe not, I mean when AI comes, maybe some AI program will come along to do better than modern Jyotishis in predicting.
Rick: It’s true and it might actually be self-improving as it learns.
Prasannan: It learns, yeah.
Rick: Do you use that software that’s written by the guy in Fairfield?
Prasannan: Prashara’s Light, yeah.
Rick: We walk by his house sometimes.
Prasannan: Say hi to him for me. I’m wondering what should I upgrade to version, I think is a new version, I’m using version 7 still. But you know the reason I’m using that software, I’ll tell you quite honestly, because I had this software that came to the ashram in 1992 in Kerala from a local company in Ernakulam that made this very basic calculation software and then I was touring with Amma in Chicago and in I think it was Chicago program and Michael Bender came by. He knew me, he’d heard of me and he gave me five, remember floppy disks? He gave me five floppy disks with Prashara’s Light on it and I loaded them and I’ve used them ever since and every single chart I’ve ever created since then, since like more than 24 years is in one zip file, one database and they all work on that. He’s upgraded the software course many times since then but the basic charts, I’ve got all those charts saved from like that time onward. So when people consult, I can always pick up their chart from where we left off. I hope you have them backed up as well.
Prasannan: Oh, very well.
Rick: Irene sent over another question, she says accuracy is so important and can greatly vary with different Jyotish consultants, should people not be wary of that?
Prasannan: I think when you go to an astrologer, I mean you’re going to be getting a reading based on their background experience, how much they’ve seen, how much they’ve understood, who their teacher was, you know, so it varies, right? And a lot of the like you said we talked about the scriptures like the scripture of Prashara, right, that even the scripture was initially meant to be only passed down by word of mouth from guru to disciple and then the Sanskrit language was actually codified because the rishis could see that in the future there’d be loss of knowledge, so they wrote things down, before that there was nothing written down in India, so they wrote things down, so we have it written down in Sanskrit but even then they didn’t want it to be abused, so they wrote it down incompletely, so that you would still need a guru to like bring out the meaning, right, because Sanskrit is very subtle language, right, so they wrote it sort of with gaps so that you couldn’t just take it and abuse the knowledge, right? So it’s always meant to be passed on in a sort of a secret way and even now in India there are families who have their little secrets where they pass them on generation to generation, these little tricks, these little techniques that you know aren’t part of the general mainstream pool of knowledge in Jyotish, you know, and they seem to work, I mean these things seem to work in that context. So yeah, accuracy depends on the background, it’s a vast science, nobody has a hundred percent picture of it. You know, I’ve been doing it for 27 years now and I don’t claim to have a hundred percent accurate view of it, but I’ve seen a lot of charts.
Rick: Are there certain things that you don’t feel comfortable telling people, like when they’re gonna get enlightened or when they’re gonna die or something like that?
Prasannan: Those are the two. Enlightenment is not an answerable question because when you’re enlightened there’s no one left to ask will I be enlightened. So the person asking isn’t even around to enjoy their own enlightenment, so what’s the point, like who actually wants to know. And death is just too difficult a topic for people to get their head around, that there could be a moment when you know that’s supposed to happen. I think it does slip out sometimes, like I was doing a reading for somebody whose mother was terminally ill and the doctors gave her six weeks to live and this was in July and I said no, she’s gonna live till sometime in March the following year from the chart. It just came out and she actually died exactly on the day that I had said and the woman came back later and said she was so grateful because all this healing happened because they had time to like really heal old things in the family, everyone came to see her. But normally it’s not a good topic, death and enlightenment.
Rick: I think I have heard you say things like well you’re gonna have a long life, you’ll live into your 90s or whatever, but you wouldn’t say somebody you’re gonna die next Thursday.
Prasannan: I wouldn’t get that, no, definitely not. But the thing is even if someone was gonna die next Thursday I probably wouldn’t see it because I wouldn’t be looking for it.
Rick: Really?
Prasannan: Yeah, it’s not like I guess they jump out if they’re supposed to and if they’re not then they don’t.
Rick: Well, but wait a minute, I mean if something that momentous is gonna come up in a week or two, and you’re doing a reading, wouldn’t any momentous thing in a person’s life, anything really major somehow become
Prasannan: Well there are always these maraka periods, there’s always these maraka periods come from time to time. So maraka period means a period where there’s potential for death, but for that to actually be the one, the time when actually the person does die, all these other factors have to also be there. So if you suspected something you might go and look for all the other factors, but I mean if you talk to a young person you’re not gonna be suspecting that, oh I should look for all these factors, I mean it wouldn’t be on your mind. Yeah. Unless you had some suspicion, I mean if someone is terminally ill then you’d be looking for the factors, but there’d be evidence that it could happen soon, but if there’s no evidence that it could happen soon then you wouldn’t be looking for those combinations either. I mean you would just, nobody can see everything at once. Sure.
Rick: There’s some guy here in town who predicts that Trump is gonna die of a heart attack, he said it’s not a matter if, it’s a matter of when. Do you consider irresponsible to make predictions like that?
Prasannan: I don’t think that’s a good way to use the science. I think that’s wrong.
Rick: Yeah. It almost sounds like somebody who says a thing like that is sort of has a political agenda. That brings up an interesting point too, do you find yourself completely objective or do you ever feel you’re getting swayed a little bit by your own proclivities or opinions about things?
Prasannan: Well if I had my own opinions, 99% of all astrologers did not pick Trump to win the last election. I was unbiased looking at the chart saying well he can’t lose, I mean as much as I may not want to say that, I couldn’t not say that because that’s what the chart said. The country’s in Rahu period, Rahu makes you act irrationally, it makes you go away from the status quo. Well if you compare the two candidates, he’s clearly away from the status quo. Then Clinton’s chart, she was in a period, at the day of the election she was in the worst possible phase, I mean she was in exactly the same kind of negative phase that Tony Blair was in on the day of the Brexit vote, he couldn’t win either. Like if he had consulted, he wouldn’t have had the Brexit vote that day because he just couldn’t win that day. So she couldn’t win, then the country’s going to reject the status quo. Then Trump’s chart was showing he was about to enter his Jupiter period, just like give some kingship. So okay, well there was like so many, I mean how did anybody even think that she could win by honestly looking at the chart, but I think people were swayed by their own personal bias and so therefore didn’t predict.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a good answer, it’s an interesting answer. So you just have to like a doctor or like any other profession, you have to put aside your personal biases.
Prasannan: Tell it like it is, as gently as possible.
Rick: Yeah, well it’s fascinating. How much do you use Jyotish to look at your own life and your wife’s life, do you kind of like check things quite frequently or whatever?
Prasannan: I don’t obsess about my chart, I know what cycle is going on, but it’s like I don’t like check my chart every time I go out to make sure it’s like okay. No, I don’t do that. I know it’s okay somehow, I’m living the chart, I don’t really need it in that sense. If something major is happening then I would of course pay attention to what’s going on in my chart, but like even the fact that we live here now on the West Coast, I mean we were actually looking at houses in Niagara Falls. We actually made a couple offers, we made a couple offers on houses in Niagara Falls and it just never came through and then it just well somehow the universe wanted us to be on the West Coast, so here we are and we’re glad. But I mean if I had been serious about my chart I might have perhaps avoided a couple of years of searching in the wrong place for us, I don’t know. But maybe it’s just something I had to go through.
Rick: Well you’re getting better weather there than you would be in Niagara Falls at the moment.
Prasannan: Before this house came along, so anyway we’re waiting for the right house.
Rick: Great, well thank you Prasannan, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. It’s a bit of a stretch for me to talk about, engage somebody in a conversation about Jyotish.
Prasannan: It’s all good, it’s all one anyway.
Rick: It often sounds like baseball to me, you know like such and such is on first and so and so is on second.
Prasannan: Someone’s on fourth. Whatever that means.
Rick: Anyway I’ve enjoyed it and I’ve learned something I hope that my audience has and you’ll probably get a lot of people getting in touch with you.
Prasannan: It’s been a pleasure.
Rick: Just to wrap it up I’ll be linking to Prasannan’s website and from his page on www.batgap.com and this is an ongoing series. As you know if you’d like to be notified of future ones you can subscribe on YouTube, you could also subscribe to our little email newsletter that we send out whenever a new one is posted, you could do both. If you listen to the podcast it would be great if you were to leave a review on Apple iTunes, preferably a five-star review if you feel motivated to do so, that kind of helps the popularity of it on iTunes. Next week I’ll be speaking with a fellow named Mark Gober about a topic that’s very dear to me, that inspires me and interests me a lot about whether consciousness is fundamental to the universe or merely a product of the brain and he’s written a book all about that which I’ve already read because I couldn’t wait to read it. I think that’s going to be a lively conversation and there are many other interesting ones coming up. There’s a upcoming interviews page on www.batgap.com and if you want to see what’s scheduled just look there, we update that all the time. So thanks for listening or watching and thank you again Prasannan.
Prasannan: Namaste.
Rick: Namaste, it’s been good talking with you. We’ll see you all next week.