Know where you are in time.

Time and the soul

We live in three dimensions of space and move through a fourth, time, which we perceive only in a straight line, one moment after another. The soul is not bound that way. Before birth, it chooses its parents and the life it will live, based on the karmas it has come to fulfil. The sufferings and the joys are both part of that choice.

That share of karma is called prarabdha. The classical texts name three kinds of karma: sanchita, prarabdha and agami. Sanchita is the full store gathered over many lives. Prarabdha is the portion taken from that store for this one life, already set in motion, like an arrow that has left the bow. Agami is future karma. It comes from kriyamana, the karma we do now, through our free will. Some of what we do now bears fruit in this life, and the rest becomes agami and joins the store of sanchita for lives to come. The scope of our free will is smaller than we like to think.

Think of prarabdha as a GPS. Some destinations are locked in. These are dridha karmas, fixed results that will come whatever we do, and the wise course is to meet them with acceptance. Some can be rerouted. These are adridha karmas, softer results that honest effort, prayer and right action can change. Most of life is dridha-adridha, a mix of the two: the destination is set, but the road, the speed and the hardship of the journey are still open. A good reading tells you which is which, so you know where to push and where to surrender.

Once we take birth, we forget all of it. It is a little like the film The Matrix: we live inside the program and cannot see the code. But the code can be read, and it is written in two places. The first is the body itself. Samudrika Shastra, the ancient Indian study of the body’s marks, reads the shape of the face and forehead, the eyes, and above all the hands. Its best-known branch is Hast Rekha Shastra, what the West calls palmistry: the lines of life, head and heart, the mounts below each finger, and the shape of the hand all tell part of the story. The second place is the sky. The birth chart records the heavens as they stood at the moment you arrived. Jyotisha reads that map of time. It shows where you are in your story, which chapter is open now, and what the next one asks of you.