Heredity and Karma: What Vedic Astrology Says
The Family Lineage
The Endless Chains and the Astrology of Ancient India
Each of us is born within a family or, in any case, is raised by other Human Beings from whom we receive an inheritance far broader than the merely biological one.
We also grow within an educational environment that is itself shaped by our Karma.
Most People grow up within their family of birth, others within a different family and still others in different circumstances.
Whatever the situation may be, this too is part of the Path.
This is already a first, concise image of what we may call Karma, also within the vision of Ancient Vedic Astrology.
Wherever our growth takes place, we pass through a long phase of absorbing information coming from Life.
First we crawl and then we learn to walk. We put what we encounter into our mouths and, gradually, we learn to eat. We listen to sounds and words until we are able to speak correctly.
The same happens with mental, emotional and relational structures.
This phase of learning generally takes place within the educational environment in which we grew up and can also be seen through the Reading of the Birth Chart or Horoscope.
What We Inherit from Our Parents
You, like anyone else, have absorbed part of your parents’ mental patterns.
You have observed and internalised: the way they reacted to external stimuli, the way they dealt with problems, their relationship with friends and relatives, their relationship with their own parents, the relationships they built, the relationships they were unable to build.
During your development, you created a personal synthesis of all this, in accordance with your character and your predispositions, which are also clearly visible in the Astrological Configuration, that is, in your Birth Chart.
Everything that happens later is a further elaboration of this initial structure.
In essence, you assimilate part of their Path, process it through your own Nature and build a new one from it: your Karma.
The Dasha and the Path of Life
One of the great distinctive features of Vedic Astrology lies in the analytical tools it provides.
Among them is the system of Dasha, through which Life is observed as a sequence of periods governed by different Planets.
Each Planet represents a group of Symbols and Archetypes.
It possesses a general meaning, but it also takes on a specific and personal meaning within the Birth Chart.
Mars, for example, generally represents courage, the Energy that drives us towards action, confrontation and adventure.
That adventure may express itself through a journey, professional advancement, a career in the armed forces or through a spiritual experience, if the entire Astrological Picture leads in that direction.
The same Energy can become a powerful vital Force or take on destructive manifestations. It depends on the position of Mars, its relationships and the overall balance of the Birth Chart.
DNA and Karma in the Horoscope
Part of the Life of our parents, their Actions and their Karma will continue through us, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not.
DNA represents the biological summary of a long history.
But alongside biological inheritance there is also a transmission of behaviours, patterns, reactions, fears, abilities and ways of facing Life. Becoming Conscious of this means beginning to understand the pattern that operates within us, within our parents, within their parents and so on along our family lineage.
And what is processed, or not processed, will then continue through the descendants.
This too can be observed through the tools of Vedic Astrology.
Children Also Show Us Ourselves
When our children perform Actions that we are unable to understand, it may happen that they are showing us a part of our own story that we have not yet recognised. A part of our personal or family past that we have not yet brought into Consciousness.
In these cases, the first reaction should not necessarily be repression.
Before correcting the child’s behaviour, it can be very useful to look for its root within ourselves as well. If something needs to be corrected, it may be necessary to begin precisely there.
This dynamic can be observed through the 7th Divisional Diagram, the Saptamsha, one of the tools used in Jyotisha for the analysis of children.
For an Astrologer, this may be a relatively quick technical process.
For the Person, however, much more Time may be needed to internalise the pattern, process it, mature through it and transform it into a different Action.
Children are also instruments of growth for their parents. Children do not grow alone: we grow together.
Vedic Astrology can considerably accelerate understanding, but there must be within us a genuine need for Truth. Otherwise, we may continue for years in a suffering we do not understand, attributing its cause to society, to others, to our children’s friends, to school, to the entire world or to anything else suggested by our dissatisfaction.
Around the age of forty, one of the stages of Life arrives. Usually, around forty, different questions begin to arise: we look back, we observe the Path we have travelled. We try to understand the dynamics that have accompanied our daily Life and that, in some way, have shaped it.
These questions do not always find an immediate answer. Life places before us a kind of veil, subtle yet extremely strong.
Events seem simply to follow a sequence of causes and effects or, on the contrary, seem to belong to a great chaos whose origin and meaning we are unable to understand.
On the material level, we can often reconstruct a logical sequence.
What requires much deeper work is understanding the subtle part, the Karma and the Message that lies behind events.
This too can be observed in the Astrological Configuration:
When Karma Begins to Knock from Within
At a certain point, our own Karma begins to “knock” from within. Questions, reflections and needs arise that did not exist before. The Path already lived, often unconsciously, begins to ask to be understood so that the next phase of Life may be prepared.
In Jyotisha, this inner impulse can also be observed through the 9th Divisional Diagram, the Navamsha. Our maturity and our capacity to become Conscious will profoundly influence what follows.
If we are ready, we can understand and intervene.
Otherwise, we will experience our Karma as something that simply happens to us and over which there seems to be no possibility of Action.
In my method of analysis, I also use the 27th and 30th Divisional Diagrams to explore these dynamics more deeply.
“He’s Just Like His Father” – “She’s Just Like Her Mother”
When we say of a child, “he’s just like his father” or “she’s just like her mother”, we are often observing something much deeper than a simple resemblance.
That child carries and expresses part of the structure of that parent.
It may be precisely the part that is still unresolved or not understood, and often it will be shown with particular force during adolescence, when vital Energies begin to manifest with greater intensity.
The relationship with parents can be observed in Vedic Astrology through the 12th Divisional Diagram.
Thus a long chain is created: parents → children → grandchildren → descendants.
A chain of experiences, behaviours, Karma and possibilities for transformation, until, somewhere along this succession of links, someone makes a genuine evolutionary leap.
Breaking the Chain
When a Person illuminates a part of their own Consciousness, they are not working only for themselves. They are also acting upon a long chain of experiences that came before them. From this perspective, illuminating one’s own Consciousness means bringing Light also into one’s lineage, ancestry and the history that has brought us to this point.
Human Life is not something simple, but it can become much clearer when there are: the Good Will to grow, the humility to improve oneself, Sincerity towards oneself.
Words that today may even seem obvious are sometimes regarded as naïve or useless.
We live in a society in which the image of the “winner” is very often rewarded: the person who manages to dominate, obtain, accumulate and prevail, regardless of the price that others must pay.
In such a vision of the world, little space remains for Poetry, Love, Beauty and Compassion. They may even be regarded as characteristics of the weak or the naïve, and yet it is precisely from this chaos that People emerge who begin to seek different tools.
Useful Tools for Personal Growth and One’s Path.
Ancient Indian Wisdom, also through Vedic Astrology, can make a great contribution.
What does Universal Consciousness do? Despite everything, flowers continue to bloom. Dawns continue to touch our Hearts.
Universal Consciousness continues to knock at our door with a humility that we still have to learn. And how does Consciousness knock?
By continually showing us the fruit of our choices. By stimulating our maturity through doubts. Through those strange questions that, sooner or later, arise within us during adult Life.
Questions that perhaps our parents, our grandparents and those who came before them were unable to resolve completely and that may continue to appear along the lineage, until someone among the descendants has the capacity and the Will to face them.
The inner Will to grow, the profound need to find Truth and the Search for True Love are fundamental elements for an authentic evolutionary leap.
The Astrology of Ancient India can offer great help along this Path.
Illness returns to the body when the soul is suffering because the suffering of the Soul first, and of the mind afterwards, is the hidden cause of the suffering of the body.
Sama
