Starring in life

and Dashas, Gochar and Bhukti, real planets and shadowy ones, Nirayana transits and Navamsa charts. And before you can say Varahamihira or Parashara, I am willing to accept explanations regarding the difference between the seven and a half years of Saturn’s influence and the 12-year cycle of Jupiter.

Firstly, the very idea that there is something more than a tenuous relationship between me and the vast expanses of the solar system provides a sense of comfort. I am after all not an isolated, disconnected individual subject to “the benign indifference of the universe”. Au contraire, my personality and my destiny are linked to heavenly bodies and I am a part of a larger network. There is meaning, coherence and relatedness to my existence on this planet. He or she who subscribes to astrology cannot be a nihilist, cannot be a loner asserting that the world is absurd. Those who are soft on ecology must find astrology comforting. We are tied into the terrestrial gossamer web and also to the web across inter-planetary spaces. In short, you don’t need to read Camus and commit suicide because you are persuaded to believe in the lonely meaninglessness of your life. You can, like the savants of antiquity, assert your linkage with the music of the spheres. Sweet indeed are the unheard sounds!

Astrology, in my opinion is a less expensive and less complicated substitute for psychotherapy. When you are depressed, I can put you on the couch for hours and charge you a bomb or I can prescribe a one-carat amethyst to be worn next to your skin. The likelihood that you would end up being “un-depressed” is about the same. Suggesting that you wear blue on Fridays is certainly cheaper and will have fewer side effects than giving you Prozac! In fact, in traditional societies, the astrologer played the role of what we would today refer to as “a professional counselor”. Today we seek an educational counselor to tell us what courses we should study. We seek a marriage counselor to tell us how to deal with the dubious institution of marriage. We seek vocational counselors to help us choose our profession. The astrologer fulfilled all these roles at lower cost and with less mumbo-jumbo than contemporary experts.

Astrology is particularly good at helping people maintain their sense of self-worth. When you have been beaten for a promotion by your hated rival, when your spouse is two-timing you and you find out, when your child has just failed in the examinations and when the insurance company tells you that you should have known that your auto insurance does not cover damage from falling rocks — in short when things are pretty bad, you have two choices. You can blame yourself. “My boss has contempt for me because I am a no-good performer; my spouse hates me because I am a disgusting partner; I have done a bad job bringing up my child; I am a fool to have bought the wrong insurance policy”. Or you can blame the stars. “This is all due to Saturn’s transit. I will have to go through seven and a half years of hell. This is not my fault at all. This happens to everyone. Once this phase is over, things will be hunky-dory again.” The first approach erodes self-confidence. The second one preserves self-esteem.

I find the “good-times/bad-times” theory particularly attractive because it provides a measure of hope. By definition, bad periods will end. Your boss cannot torture you forever and some day at least one of your children will do well in an exam. This makes it possible to have hope through the most trying of times and cope with the most insidious of “malefic enemies” that are out there to get each one of us. In an interesting way this approach helps prevent over-confidence and foolhardiness also.

When things are going well and you get promoted twice in six months (with your earlier hated boss becoming a servile sidekick) and you have excess of money and so many find you fatally attractive, it is easy for things to go to your head. You now need to be reminded that all this heady success is on account of Jupiter’s transit. So don’t get too cocky. In a couple of years, when Jupiter is no longer ascendant and Mercury is enfeebled it is entirely likely, nay virtually inevitable, that you will have a new boss who will torture you, etc, etc…They say that when conquering generals returned to Rome and they were feted by the crowds, someone whispered in their ears that “all glory is transitory”. I guess astrologers would argue that all glory as well as all misery is transitory.

The question that is often asked is whether astrology is compatible with a modern rational sensibility. I find this particularly humorous. After all, if we can live with electoral psephology, post-modern social psychology, the politics of victimhood and the passing fancies of numerous dietitians and health-gurus, why should astrology which provides so much comfort to people and which above all directly links us to the cosmos, be looked down upon? The ancient Chaldeans had a love for astrology and trust me the ancient Chaldeans knew a thing or two about life, this world and other worlds. They certainly knew much more than today’s TV anchors and self-appointed pundits. As a betting man, I would go with astrology any day!

The writer is chairman and CEO, Mphasis. Write to him at jerryrao@expressindia.com