Jyotish ( Archived) (14)

Book of Secrets
Deepak Chopra
pp 213-216

Several years ago in a small village outside New Delhi, I was sitting in a small stuffy room with a very old man and a young priest. The priest sat on the floor swaying back and forth as he recited words inked on bark sheets that looked ancient. I listened, having no idea what the priest was intoning. He was from the far south and his language, Tamil, was foreign to me. But I knew he was telling me the story of my life, past and future. I wondered how I got roped into this and began to squirm.

It had taken strong persuasion from an old friend to get me to the small room. It's not just Jyotish, it's muchmore amazing," hecoaxed. Indian astrology is called Jyotish, and it goes back thousands of years. Visiting your family astrologer is common practice everywhere in India, where people plan weddings, birth, and even routine business transactions around their astrological charts (Indira Gandhi was a famous example of someone who followed Jyotish), but modern times havd led to a fading away of tradition. I had chronically avoided any brushes with Jyotish, being a child of modern India and later a working doctor in the West.

But, my friend prevailed, and I had to admit that I was curious about what was going to happen. The young priest, dressed in a wrapped skirt with bare chest and hair shiny with coconut oil--both marks of a southerner--didn't draw up my birth chart. Every chart he needed had already been drawn up hundreds of years ago. In other words, someone sitting under a palm tree many generations ago had taken a strip of bark, known as a Nadi, and inscribed my life on it.
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cont.2

These Nadis are scattered all over India, and it's pure chance to run across one that applies to you. My friend had spent several years tracking down just one for himself; the priest produced a whole sheaf for me, much to my friend's amazed delight. You have to come for the reading, he insisted.

Now the old man sitting across the table was interpreting in Hindi what the priest was chanting. Because of overlapping birth times and the vagaries of the calendar when we are speaking of centuries, Nadis can overlap, and the first few sheets didn't apply to me. But by the third sheet or so, the young priest with the sing-song voice was reading facts that were startlingly precise: my birth date, my parents' names, my own name and my wife's, the number of children we have and where they live now, the day and hor of my father's recent death, his exact name, and my mother's.

At first there seemed to be a glitch: The Nadi gave the wrong first name for my mother, calling her Suchinta, when in fact her name is Pushpa. This mistake bothered me, so I took a break and went to a phone to ask her about it. My mother told me, with great surprise, that in fact her birth name was Suchinta, but since it rhymed with the word for "sad" in Hindi, an uncle suggested that it be changed when she was three years old. I hung up the phone, wondering what this whole experience meant, for the young priest had also read out that relative would intervene to change my mother's name. No one in our family had ever mentioned this incident, so the young priest wasn't indulging in some kind of mind-reading.

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cont.3

For the benefit of skeptics, the young priest had passed nearly his whole life in a temple in South Indiaand didn not speak English or Hindi. Neither he nor the old man knew who I was. Anyway, in this school of Jyotish, the astrologer doesn't take down your birth time and cast a personal chart which he then interprets. Instead, a person walks into a Nadi reader's house, the reader takes a thumbprint, and based on that the matching charts are located (always keeping in mind that the Nadis may be lost or scattered to the winds). The astrologer reads out only what someone else has written down perhaps a thousand years ago. Here's another twist to the mystery. Nadis don't have to cover everyone who will ever live, only those individuals who will one day show up at an astrologer's door to ask for a reading!

In rapt fascination I sat through an hour of more arcane information about a past life I had spent in a South Indian temple, and how my transgressions in that lifetime led to painful problems in this one, and (after a moment's hesitation while the reader asked if I really wanted to know) the day of my own death. Thedate falls reassuringly far in the future, although even more reassuring was the Nadi's promise that my wife and children would lead long lives full of love and accomplishment.

I walked away from the old man and the young priest into the blinding hot Delhi sunshine, almost dizzy from wondering how my life would change with this new knowledge. It wasn't the details of the reading that mattered. I have forgotten nearly all of them, and I rarely think of the incident except when my eye falls on one of the polished bark sheets, now framed and kept in a place of honor in our home. The young priest handed it to me with a shy smile before we parted. The one fact that turned to have a deep impact was the day of my death. As soon as I heard it, I felt both a profound sense of peace and a new sobriety that has been subtly changing my priorities ever since.

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cont.4

Reflecting on everything now, I wish there was another name for astrology, like "nonlocal cognition." Someone who lived centuries ago knew me better than I know myself. He saw me as a pattern in the universe playing itself out, linked to earlier patterns layer upon layer. I felt that with that piece of bark I received firsthand proof that I am not restricted to the body, mind, or experiences I call "me".

If you live at the center of one reality, you begin to witness patterns coming and going. At first, these patterns continue to feel personal. You create the patterns, and that brings a sense of attachment. But artist are famous for not collecting their own works; it is the act of creation itself that brings satisfaction. Once completed, the painting holds no more life; the juice has been squeezed out of it. The same hold true for the patterns we create. Experience loses it juice when you know that you created it.

I have had my reading done and it was accidental that we discovered this . And it is astonishingly true. Especially how they come up with the names of your parents , siblings and other details best known only to close family.

Thanks for posting, Riya!
I thought I'd catch you.

I had a reading done by a Buddhist in Thailand and what I was told also came true.

Dr. Chopra is a very well acclaimed writer and spiritual thinker.

I am peeping in here bwn studying ..

I have read a few articles and excerpts from his books ... he is pretty good.

Were your experiences similar to that of Deepak?
I found this extraordinary.

yes ... i went to a small town in Tamilnadu where the reading was done. It was exactly like he describes.