ACVA Journal 2:1

Page 3

Dr. Dinesh Sharma: Physician and Astrologer

Linda Johnsen
An Ayurvedic physician explains why Vedic astrology forms an integral part
of traditional Indian medical practice.
At least four American Vedic astrologers independently called me to say, Dr. Dinesh Sharma is visiting the San Francisco
Bay Area. Dont miss him! With such hearty recommendations, I immediately phoned to make an appointment.
Nevertheless, I wasnt sure what to expect as I walked into the small room where Dr. Sharma was conducting consultations. I
certainly didnt expect this highly regarded Hindu astrologer to read my pulse! He felt my left wrist, then my right. You have
pressure in the head, he announced. Also menstrual irregularities. My two chief medical problems are migraines and overly
frequent periods.
Next he turned to my Vedic chart. Venus dasa, Rahu bhukti. You should start treatment for the uterine problems
immediately, and follow the regime conscientiously. He doesnt know it, but, without having conducted a single lab test, hes
echoing the advice of my gynecologist, who explained that high estrogen levels place me at increased risk for uterine cancer. But,
while my gynecologist recommended medication, Dr. Sharma prescribes Ayurvedic herbs, drastic changes in diet, a regular
exercise program, and meditation.

Ayurveda and Astrology

Ayurveda and astrology have long been allied in India. Dinesh Sharma almost didnt get to practice either. Sharmas
grandfather was one of the most highly respected pandits in Rishikesh (the City of Saints in northern India); indeed S.
Radhakrishnan, then president of India, and Anandamayi Ma, the great saint, both visited his home. Himself an expert vaidya
(Ayurvedic physician), he wanted Dinesh to learn traditional Indian medicine, but Dineshs father objected. If he studies the
traditional methods, he will not be able to support a family. He must learn the new ways, the British methods. So young Dinesh
was sent off to study the Western medical system instead.
I practiced Western medicine for years, but finally my conscience would not allow me to go on, Dr. Sharma relates. All I
was doing was palliating my patients symptoms while poisoning them with drugs that had many harmful side effects. Sharma
abandoned a successful and lucrative career to learn the traditional ways: Ayurveda, Jyotish and Vastu.
Dr. Sharmas fathers dismal prognosis for the future of Ayurvedic medical practitioners turned out to be dead wrong. As
Westerners increasingly seek out less invasive, alternative forms of healing, Dinesh Sharma finds himself swamped with patients
wherever he travels in Europe and America. He was presently in the U.S. promoting his book, The Divisional Charts: Exploring
the Secrets of Chart Interpretation. This is the first major work in English explaining how to read the vargas or harmonic charts
which form such a critical part of horoscope interpretation in India.

Dr. Dinesh Sharma

I asked Dr. Sharma how he integrated Vedic astrology into his medical practice.
Ayurveda gives importance to understanding the constitution of the person before starting treatment. Only then can you
prescribe the right type of medicine, the right type of lifestyle. There are three ways to understand a persons constitution. The
first is pulse examination. This shows which humour is more predominant. I learned pulse reading from my venerable
grandfather. He was unbelievable. He could feel your pulse and tell you you have such-and-such a problem from such-and-such a
time in this part of your body.

Second comes the physical examination. Certain characteristics are typical of certain constitutions. Vata persons are lean
and thin, anxious and impatient. Pitta persons are hot tempered, and cannot tolerate heat. Kapha people are generally happy but
tend to gain weight. These days we dont find constitutions of one type only because food habits have changed and because of
modern luxuries in life. Previously everyone traveled by foot. Now even if youre going to the post office which is just a half
mile away, you go by car. So constitutions are changing and we find more people of mixed types, not just vata, but vata/pitta, for
example.
In America I have found a maximum number of people with vata or pitta based constitutions. I have rarely found people
with kapha predominance, though theyre very common in India because of the way we Indians eat.
A balanced constitution is very rare. Patanjalis Yoga Sutras lays out a very strict discipline for yogis. So only yogis have
vata, pitta and kapha totally balanced in their bodies. They say in ancient days Indian yogis used to live for hundreds of years.
We still have examples in India, such as Devaraha Baba, who finally passed away about ten, twelve years ago. There are people in
India over 100 years old, who said they had known Baba for 80 years and he hadnt aged at all. People who were close to
Devaraha Baba never saw him
eat or sleep. If you can, by strict internal disciple, balance your humours, then your body can even start taking nourishment from
the atmosphere. Your every organ, your senses, your skin becomes so active that whatsoever you need, your body will absorb
from the atmosphere itself.
I saw him in Vrindavan. He came down from the raised platform he was sitting on to take a dip in the Yamuna River. He
dived in without a diving mask or oxygen. One minute passed, two minutes. After five minutes I said, The old man must have
drowned! Find him!
The people there who knew him said, Dont disturb him. Baba is in samadhi. When he came out of the water, I looked at
my watch: twenty-five minutes had passed. I am witness to that, but if I tell this story in your country no one will believe it.
They say, These Indians, they boast about their yogis and their traditions. But this is an example of balancing the humours.
That type of constitution is very rare, and comes only when you establish complete harmony between your mind and body, and
learn to command your organs.
I was working at the hospital in Hardwar when a yogi came into my room. He said, What you are doing? I said, I am
treating patients. He said, Can you see what is wrong with me? I said, You look quite healthy. He said, Yes I am healthy,
but please double check. He gave me his wrist and I checked his pulse. There was no pulse. He was standing there smiling. I
asked him to lie down and took out my stethoscope. I couldnt find any heartbeat. I said, I should move you to intensive care!
He said, Im just showing you what yoga is. We give suggestions to our organs to stop and take rest.
This yogi offered himself to heart specialists who put him on the ECG machine, and his heart was beating normally. He said,
Okay, now Im stopping my heart, and suddenly it stopped. The doctors became frantic. He told them, Since you are so
worried, I will restart my heart. And he did. He gave other demonstrations, for example, lying on the ground while a 40 ton
truck drove over his chest. It didnt cause him any problem at all. This is what hatha yogis can do.
Even now we have yogis like Devahansa Yogi, whom some of you have met. Hes one of the very few who are keeping the
tradition of the Yoga Sutras alive.
In America Ive met many people who are enthusiastic about their hatha yoga and meditation classes. Youll be amazed to
know in India there are yogis willing to teach for free but nobody goes to them, because everybody is more concerned with
making money. Financial insecurities have taken a big toll on our lives in India. Now these yogis find that everyone is after
money and there are no takers for spiritual knowledge.
But to return to your question. After pulse reading and physical examination, we look at the horoscope. Learning Jyotish
used to be a compulsory part of every Ayurvedic physicians education. We find many references that this medicine should be
given in this nakshatras, this medicine should be prepared in that nakshatra. Ayurvedic books describe medical problems
associated with dasas of different planets.
What happened was when the Moguls came to India, they would take advice from Ayurvedic physicians, but they never
wanted anything to do with astrology because Islam is anti-astrology. They demanded that no Ayurvedic physician should
mention Jyotish. The Ayurvedic books related to astrology were singled out and destroyed. Only the books with pure Ayurveda
in them were allowed. And so a great treasure is gone.
When an Ayurvedic physician looks at a patients horoscope, first he looks at the sign on the ascendent. The signs have been
divided into four categories: fiery, airy, watery and earthy. The fiery signs are pitta, the earth signs are either kapha or mixed.
The airy signs are vata, and the water signs are kapha. Then we find the lord of the ascendant. Rahu, Saturn and Mercury are vata
planets. Sun, Mars and Ketu are pitta planets, and Jupiter, Moon and Venus are kapha planets. Next we see the aspects on the
ascendant. Is the lagna being aspected by a vata or pitta or kapha planet or some combination? Then we examine the aspects on
the lord of the ascendant, and the sign to which the lord of the ascendant has gone. We focus on the ascendant because the first
house is your body.
Next it is necessary to check which dasa the person is in. Is it the dasa of a vata or kapha planet? And the dasa lord is sitting
in which sign? If the lord of the dasa is a vata planet and its sitting in a watery sign, it means a vata/kapha disease may disturb
the person.
We dont go by the theory that the sixth house is this organ, the eighth house is that organ, no. In Ayurveda we go by the
dosas (humours) of the planets. My good friend Dr. K.S. Charak has written a very good book, Subtleties of Medical Astrology,
which is quite profound. But we doctors go by which dosa is going to be aggravated.

We might read the pulse wrong, we might make a mistake when we read the persons constitution by physical appearance
because appearance can be deceptive. Ive seen people who appear very kapha, theyre very fat, but when we study their
constitution we find theyre totally vata because theyre so impatient. Only their bodies have become fat, but their constitution is
still vata. So we look also at the horoscope also and synthesize all three factors to come up with a clear picture of the constitution
of the person.
In Ayurveda the definition of a healthy person is: The humours in the body should be balanced, the digestive fires should be
balanced, the elements of the body (the dhatus: bones, blood, etc.) should be evenly balanced, and the excretory system should
work perfectly. The consciousness, the mind, the senses of perception and senses of action should be in a happy state. Then we
can call a person healthy. It is not that we make a person look very muscular, as it is here in America. Health of mind, health of
body, health of soul, that is the total concept of health in Ayurveda.

Vastu
In addition to being a physician and astrologer, Dr. Sharma is also a noted expert in Vastu. I had only the haziest notion of
what Vastu is, and asked him to explain where this esoteric science fits in with astrology.
Most people have three types of problems, Sharma began. First, the person is running into bad planetary cycles. Second,
the person is running into some physical problems resulting from dosa imbalance. The third is lack of harmony with the
environment. By environment I mean the place where you live and work, where you spend most of your time. If you are
physically healthy, if your planets are also good, but there is an imbalance between you and the environment, which means the
energy is not flowing in a proper direction where you are working or sleeping or talking or eating for most of the day, this will
create a very negative impact. You may go on trying to correct your sense of imbalance by wearing gemstones or eating a
particular diet, but as soon as you come home, slowly the energy field which is not conducive to your body and mind works on
you without your knowing about it. Despite taking a lot of medicine, youre still unhealthy and unhappy, you still feel a loss of
energy in your body.
You must have been hearing a lot about feng shui in this country. Feng shui is in fact Vastu. Indian monks who went to
China to propagate Buddhism took the science of Vastu with them. The Chinese experimented and added a few things and came
out with this beautiful system called feng shui, but the roots of feng shui go back to Vastu in India. Vastu teaches us how to align
ourselves with the subtle energies around us.
As you know, if you have a compass or magnet, it always stays north to south because it aligns with the magnetic lines of the
earths energy field. We cannot see it but there is a constant stream of energy all around us, flowing in a particular direction.
When we erect a structure, we trap a space and the energy within it starts moving in a particular direction. If we build the wrong
type of structure so the natural currents are obstructed, then the people living in that house suffer. We have seen many examples
in India. At a factory designed by a team of modern architects, things went wrong from the first day. The best employees had
been hired, the best equipment was purchased, the best raw material was used, but things were going haywire and people were
getting sick. Vastu consultation was done and the factory building was modified, the placement of furniture and equipment was
rearranged. As soon as this was done, everything started going smoothly. I myself have seen such instances.

Vastu teaches us how to align ourselves

with the subtle energies around us.
Particularly when we find there is some affliction to the fourth house in the Vedic horoscope, we make sure the person is
living in the right type of house. You can certainly move, you can still make changes in your home, but keep in mind the natural
flow of the energy field!
Subtle sciences like Ayurveda, Vastu and astrology complement each other. If you have knowledge of one but not the other,
then you are handicapped. If you have a complete understanding of the person, his planets, his body and his environment, you can
harmonize the planets, the physical constitution, and the atmosphere in which the person lives. This is a complete approach.

Divisional Charts
Dr. Sharmas new book on the Vedic harmonic charts has been receiving rave reviews. I asked him how he came to write on
this subject.
When I started learning Vedic astrology, after going through the preliminaries, the rasi, Moon and bhava charts, and the
navamsa, I found people were talking of vargas (divisional charts) a lot. I wanted to learn more about them. I was quite
impatient, I wanted to learn so much at once. Maharishi Parasara appreciated the vargas and said that to study Jyotish without
learning the shadvargas is a crime. Shad means six. Apart from the rasi chart there are six vargas, the hora (second harmonic),
drekkana (third harmonic), saptamsa (seventh harmonic), navamsa (ninth harmonic), dwadasamsa (twelfth harmonic), and the
trimsamsa (thirtieth harmonic). Theyre necessary for having a complete picture of the chart and the personality traits of the
native.
But there was no book available on the subject in either Hindi or English. I found it strange that everybody talks of the
vargas but there was no book! If Im in India and I cannot find a textbook, what about the people abroad whore also studying
with great enthusiasm? We have told them how important vargas are, and their software programs calculate the vargas for them.
What use is carrying a big computer printout around if you dont know how to read it?
I discussed the problem with my wife, who has a Ph.D. in Sanskrit. She is also a hard working person. I am a very lazy
person! She is vata/pitta and I am totally kapha! So she started compiling material from various classical texts, translating it into
Hindi because her knowledge of English is very limited. In November/December 1995, David Frawley and Jim Kelleher both
came to India and were my guests. I discussed this with them and they both said, There is nothing available on divisional charts.
Please write a book in English! Then my exalted Jupiter period began. Jupiter, the lord of my 9th house (governing publishing),
was poking me again. Plus my wife was on my head all the time. Why dont you do it now? So I took up the project.

What I have presented in my book on divisional charts is purely classical; I would not say it is original research. I have
added Parasara and Varaha Mihiras opinions, as well as a few of my own comments because I found that certain combinations
were applicable thousands of years ago in a different way. Now the interpretation has changed because times have changed. So
there Ive put in some remarks about how we might understand the classical dictums in the context of modern society. Ive
requested my readers to experiment with the information and give me feedback, so I can prepare a
revised edition. We all must participate together.
I firmly believe that whatsoever the past masters of Vedic astrology wrote, they have written after lots of observations. If I
say we need to test it, I mean only we need to see how it works in the Westernized world of today. The book is a humble
presentation of the wonderful wisdom which has been given to us by the past masters, and I have dedicated my book to them only.
We owe them much for the treasures they left us, working in condition with no electricity, no computers, and very limited
resources. They wrote in a different time period, thousands of years ago, a totally different age, so we need to understand their
words in a modern perspective. That much research we have to do. If we understand the teachings of the great masters only, it is
more than enough.
___________
Dr. Dinesh Sharma makes frequent trips to the U.S. and Europe to conduct seminars and see patients. He can be reached at
102, Aamarpali Apartments, 56, I.P. Ext (Patapargang), Delhi - 110092, India.
Phone:
245-5769, e-mail:
dineshks@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in. For information about Dr. Sharmas October 1996 visit to Northern California, contact Bette
Timm at 707/939-8115.
Dr. Sharmas excellent new book, The Divisional Charts, is available from your local Jyotish book supplier, or from 1-800RAJ-YOGA for $18 plus S&H.