In less than a month now, I’m heading off to Dallas Texas to stay in a cheap motel for fifteen days, without money, because an Indian astrologer told me to.

Am I nuts?
I don’t think so.
But others might not agree.

I’ve posted his prediction on this site before, but if you haven’t seen it, here it is:
The Prediction

Let me give you some background as to how all this came about:

The astrologer is Dr. Bimal Bhatt. He’s a highly successful businessman, operating out of Bombay. He’s a lawyer, has a doctorate in business management, he owns 145 companies and has interests straddling property development, media, finance, and banking With his business partner Pradeep Vakil, they’re now moving into online gambling – a venture which they say will make them “trillions.” And I believe them.

They’ve made their fortune by following their astrological charts. Dr. Bhatt is an accomplished astrologer, having studied Vedic astrology for the past 35 years.

I’ve known these two gentlemen for many years now. I met them through a mutual friend, and when they came to Australia a few years ago to seek out business opportunities, my wife and I hosted them.

They are delightful crazy men.

And even though they’re enormously wealthy, they’re also deeply spiritual men. In India the two are not mutually exclusive.

When I decided to start my intuition film in India, I contacted Bimal to let him know I was coming. He asked for my exact time and place of birth, which I duly provided. He said he was going to do my astrological charts.

I then promptly forgot all about it.

I’ve never taken astrology seriously. I’ve always been bemused by those that do. In the same way I’m bemused by people who buy Lotto tickets. Astrology for me has always been inexorably linked to the backs of newspapers, sitting alongside the comics – or to the kind of dog-eared women’s magazines you find in dental surgeries, providing such broad cheesy generalisations that they lack any semblance of credibility.

Laughable, really. And for the gullible.

So when I met with Bimal in Mumbai, and he said that he’d done my charts and was going to read me out the results the following day, I was singularly unimpressed. But I felt obliged to go, and decided at the last moment to set up the camera, even though I didn’t think I’d get anything of value from the sequence.

The reason that Bimal had asked for the details of my birth so far ahead of my arrival in India was that it takes him a long time to work it all out. I didn’t realise how complex the process is. He’s developed a computer software programme to help with what he calls the “mathematics” of astrology, but even so it still takes time.

So I sat in his office and he delivered me his reading, and it stunned me. Something shifted inside me. For a start, he began by telling me what had happened in the previous fifteen years of my life. All this was in my charts.

He was unerringly accurate. Chillingly so. He told me the kind of stuff that only my wife would know – stuff you’d never unearth with Google, or on Facebook. Very personal things that you’d only know by peering into my heart.

That for me immediately established his credibility. So I was then suddenly anxious about what was in store for me in the future. If he’d nailed my past so accurately, what was lying in wait for me in the next twelve years?

A marriage breakup?
Poverty?
Major health issues or an early death?
A bad review for my next film?

As it turned out, none of the above. On the contrary, it couldn’t have been better –

I would do something that would benefit mankind in a big way.
Fame and immense wealth would come as a result.
I would be treated like a king.
I would be greatly admired and respected, and have no enemies.

Bimal himself was relieved that the news was good. (Not good, great.) Later he told me that mostly he gives out lukewarm or bad news. But these charts were… well… off the charts!

Evidently I’m in the same cosmic realm as Steve Jobs.

The kicker to all this though is that I have to go to where the cosmic rays are most beneficial to me, at the time when they shine their brightest. That’s Dallas Texas, from November 23rd, for a minimum of fifteen days.

Why do I have to stay in a cheap motel, have no money, and eat cheap food? Because as Bimal says, when you have nothing, you gravitate to something.

I’d prefer to see it this way: having nothing makes you more alert. More sensitive to opportunities around you. It heightens your senses. It’s a more primitive state of being. It’s a survival state.

When you’re hungry you seek out food. When you’re cold you seek out warmth. When you’re poor you seek out money, to survive. There’s no room for laziness, or complacency. You have to make things happen. Everything around you is more vivid. More real.

It’s life and death

I’ve since been doing some research into astrology. It’s fascinating.

I’ll give a brief starter here, and do another post later with more info – but basically what I’ve discovered is this: there are two kinds of astrology – Indian or Hindu / Vedic astrology, and Western astrology.

Indian astrology is called Vedic because it’s believed to come from the Rig Veda, said to be the oldest written book on the planet, composed most probably between 1500–1200 BCE. It’s the earliest of the four Hindu religious scriptures known as the Vedas, which form the spiritual and religious underpinnings of Hinduism.

An earlier form of Indian astrology though dates back to roughly 5000 BCE.

How does Vedic astrology differ from Western astrology?

This is where it starts to get complex, and technical. But basically Vedic astrology is based on a “fixed star” zodiac. One’s birth chart is a snap-shot of planets over the place of birth at the exact time of birth.

Western astrology in contrast uses a “moving star” system. It’s based on the movement of the equinoxes, and is constantly moving away from the Vedic fixed star position of the stars. What this means is that if an astrologer does a person’s charts using the Western system, it will be fundamentally different to a chart using the Vedic system.

Which one is better?

Well, the Vedic system has been around a lot longer, and it’s studied in Indian universities as a science. Wealthy folk in India have their doctors, their dentists, and their astrologers. They seek advice from their astrologers when deciding on important business matters, wedding partners and dates, when and where to buy a house, and health issues.

Vedic astrology and Ayurvedic medicine come from the same source of learning, and both are legitimately regarded in India, and elsewhere.

In the next post I’ll go into some detail about Vedic astrology. The more I delve into it, the more I believe there’s some very real substance to it.

I’ll leave you with this: I was on my walk last night, and I was listening to music. On Pandora, up came John Lennon’s Instant Karma. Remember, the Beatles went to the sacred city of Rishikesh in India at the height of their success, and they studied under a revered yogi. The chorus to Instant Karma is:

Well we all shine on,
Like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.
Yes we all shine on,
On and on and on, on and on and on…