JAGAT: Jyotish, Allopathy, Genetics & Ayurveda Together
Jyotish, Allopathy, Genetics and Ayurveda Together
“Jagat” means the whole manifested Universe
This paper is aimed at the center of a convergence of Mathematics, Astronomy, Modern Science, Ayurveda (Body Types), Chemistry, Biology, Allopathic Medicine, Genetics and finally Jyotish or Vedic Astrology. This convergence is the next step in a scientific understanding of life that began with Vedic knowing, moved West and is now returning to Bharat as she resumes her place as a thought leader in the emerging global scientific culture. Ideally, each professor of these sciences is a specialist in some form of knowing and doing. Our goal as truth seekers is to take the best from each. In this case we are discussing the convergence caused by the fact that Ayurveda, Genetics and Jyotish can each predict the Five-element body type of Kapha, Pitta and Vata, and the metabolism and behaviors that come with each. Therefore, in some yet unknown way, all three are directly connected.
It is possible the four words used in the above title have never occurred in an English sentence before now. This paper is about an inevitable meeting between cultures, sciences and world views. It is an introduction to the convergence of four disciplines into a single relationship of inquiry where Modern Allopathic Medicine asks Ayurveda: “Why aren’t you better organized with extensive research behind your premises.” While Ayurveda asks Allopathy: “Why are you more interested in the disease than the patient, can’t you see that each person has a unique body type that must be understood in order to prevent disease and treat the patient?” Then Jyotish reminds Ayurveda and asks Allopathy and Genetics “Do the three of you understand that I can predict the Ayurvedic body type of a person without seeing the patient, simply by knowing the date, time and place of their birth? Then Genetics asks all three: “Did you know that I can predict not only the predisposition for certain diseases and structural characteristics but also the Ayurvedic body type using genetic data?” And if the Vedic astrologer is right, they could even predict the horoscope and the horoscope could predict the genetics.
It is easy to forget in the midst of our consumer driven world of advertising and corporate power, that the search for truth is not a competition. What we call “modern science” has its basis in information, techniques and theory that were learned from other cultures around the world without giving credit or so much as a thank-you. In this ‘taking’, both India and China were the two major contributors. Their sophisticated medical cultures preceded modern times by thousands of years. This paper is mostly focused on the ancient Ayurvedic medical knowledge of India and the way its tridosha or three body types can be seen from several perspectives that are important for human well-being.
At the core of ancient Ayurvedic medicine is an ancient Vedic method of categorizing all organic bodies through a five-element paradigm based on earth, water, fire, air and space. In the world around us, and in the bodies of all organic life, discernable amounts of these five primal elements are present in varying ratios. Because each of these elements show obvious and predictable actions and behaviors, they are very visible and extremely reliable in categorizing the bodies and natures of all beings, substances and environments. In their haste to leave the past behind, modern science has rejected and ignored this long proven five element paradigm of science as if atomic science and the periodic table of elements are in competition with this five-element perception.
The fact is, both methods of observation are examining and categorizing the same realities and differences from different perspectives. The same may also be said of the genetic code that is at the core of each body. From an engineering perspective, each of these platforms of observation is merely a way of describing the patterns that make bodies similar and different. Each is a valid point of view and method of observation. So, if this is true, why not use all three simultaneously and study the inner and cross correlations between them? As you might expect, this integrative view is more likely to happen first in India, where scientists can more easily see the value of both the old and the new paradigms. During the last 200 years an amazing explosion of knowledge and technology has expanded our powers exponentially. But powers must be integrated correctly into the fabric of life, or they can create even bigger problems than the ones they set out to solve.
Since 2002 Indian geneticists have been doing research to see if the five-element body type can be predicted by examining genetic patterns, and it is only a matter of time before they find more of the links between one level of bodily engineering and design and another. In any machine, it would be axiomatic that the nature of molecular bonds in crucial parts would be both provable, perhaps even visible, and related to the overall performance of the device. So, what then of this human body, which is merely a very sophisticated kind of machine.
What is the philosophical perspective?
Seen from the Vedic philosophical perspective, we are immortal beings who are going from one bodily vehicle to the next over a very long period of time. In this process we reincarnate again and again. Our various bodies are vehicles or you could say they are the ‘car’ in re-in-car-nate. The three Abrahamic religions, and the Modern science that arose from them, are only concerned with one life. This is the major difference in world views between East and West. In addition, the Vedic cosmology also sees each Universe as a kind of grand living entity who exists for trillions of years, which acts as a sort of ‘university campus’ for the countless beings to make the slow journey from one species to the next until they are ready to graduate, leave the realms of material matter, and move on to another plane of reality.
To say this even more clearly, according to the Vedas, the atma or immortal self, came to the realm of prakriti -- matter -- long ago. Its journey through all the species has culminated in a series of human births. Humans are designed to become self-aware of this entire process. The Bhagavad Gita says; “the Supreme Being is in the heart of all atmas, each of whom are bound to and attached to various kinds of vehicles (bodies) by the mysterious powers of the energies of matter” (Gita 8:61). The atmas may take many human births before graduating from this embodying process, and in each life the atma is awarded a different type of vehicle which is generated by the results of their previous actions.
But in every case, those bodies are a device with a blueprint (gene code) as well as an obvious vehicle type (five-element body type) and an atomic composition (modern science). Additionally, their moment of rebirth into this material universe (birth time) gives rise to their Vedic horoscope. Whatever can be seen in the gene code must correspond with the visible qualities of the bodily vehicle, and whatever we see as the body type (vehicle) has an equivalent code in the genetic blueprint of atomic composition. This paper is expanding this discussion from Genetics and Ayurveda to also include The Vedic birth chart, as seen by Jyotish, into the equation.
What the geneticist sees:
This research into Genetics and Ayurveda is currently being conducted in India, and so far, it has indeed shown that our genetic patterns have some correlation to our five-element body-type or tridosha. This has given rise to new terms like “Ayurvedic Genomics” or “Ayu-genomics,” a new hybrid of modern science, genetics and Ayurveda that is emerging in an environment of rigorous research. This trend, sometimes called the “Golden Triangle”, is part of a larger trend for all medical research to become a new blend of methods and tools that is sometimes called “Complementary and Integrative Medical Practice.” This is part of a larger trend for scientists to once again be ‘truth seekers’ who are not bound by a single method of inquiry, but are open to many modes and models of provable knowing. And if we add Jyotish into this equation, my proposal is that we should call the combined four sciences the “Golden Cube”.
One of the deepest of secrets of our physical being is our genetic basis and the library of data it contains. This deep science has taken us to the place where our bodily blue-print is kept. Our “gene code” causes “genomic variation.” Ironically, what was ignored at first by Modern science, our visible five element body type, is now being proven to have connections to our proven invisible gene code. We do have a body type and a genotype with all its variations (phenotypes), and we can be categorized in a myriad of ways according to our “discrete phenotypic groupings.” Our genes contain measurable submicroscopic libraries of information that communicate with, create and describe the physical structures that we see as our body. To say this differently, what genetics can now see within us, corresponds directly with what we see when we look in the mirror. Seen from the inside, we are amazingly complex, and yet, precisely arranged to produce the variations in form which we see every day as our recognizable physical structure, appearance, and behavioral tendencies; in other words - our Ayurvedic dosha.
What Ayurvedic Medicine sees:
What is irrefutable in Ayurvedic medicine is the natural and obvious classifications of all bodies of every creature according to how much of the natural five elements their bodies contain. These Pancha Mahabhutas or the five universal elements are all pervasive, easy to recognize as fire, water, air, earth and space - elements that surround us in all we do. They are not only outside of us but inside us as our body. Classifications that are more minute or subtle are not less true because they are finer than the obvious five elements we see. The periodic table of atomic elements is not less useful because it consists of further subdivisions of the five elements. Conversely, the five elements we see in varying proportions in everything around us are not less true or useful because they are not atomic in description.
Modern criticisms of Ayurveda say its medicines have not been produced to uniform standards and with “guaranteed safe” ingredients. Also, they say that methods of body type analysis have not been refined with as much precision as modern physiological and personality measurements. This leaves them subject to the skill and intuition of the practitioner and therefore less precise. With more investment in research, development and oversight in manufacturing, these minor problems are being overcome. It is also true that in plant-based medicines there will be inevitable variations that are greater than in chemical-based pharmaceuticals. Eventually both pharmaceutical and farmaceutical medicines will have their place in prevention and therapy, instead of either being driven just by finances and market competition. After all, the goal of medicine is the well-being of the patient by any reasonable means.
The oldest and most practical model of the physical world is based on the five elements. If I ask you the primary location of fire in the human body, you will certainly say “the belly.” We all feed that fire every day. If I ask what your body primarily excretes, you will answer water and earth. Thus, if a body has more fire, metabolism will increase, which will be the predominant process in that body. To say this simply, imagine there are only 3 primary body types with many variations. We could describe the three in many related ways. Soft, hard or fragile; bull, tiger or antelope; fatty, muscular or skinny; feeling, acting or thinking; endomorphic, mesomorphic, or ectomorphic; round, square or linear; cool, hot, cold; structure, metabolism, movement. I could also have said water/earth, fire, and air/space; or kapha, pitta, and vata. With some careful analysis, we can list the differences between these three body types and their variations which allow us to tell them apart and then predict their behavior, that is to say the performance of their vehicle in various situations. In fact, the climate that surrounds us, the foods we eat, the herbs or medicines we ingest and even the people we live with influence us in predictable ways. It is just as scientific as saying that fire melts ice, or that wind evaporates water. So kapha (water/earth) beings are calm and fatty and stable, while pitta (fire) beings are intense, muscular and forceful, while vata beings are slender, cold and fluctuating. Bull, tiger or antelope.
It is exactly this simplicity and pattern recognition that has allowed genetics to predict whether a body is kapha, pitta or vata, because they are so metabolically and structurally obvious. Interestingly, this also leads us to Jyotish or Vedic Astrology, whose premise is that the current body we are living within was created by our previous actions in lives gone by and is the vehicle to which our current karma (cause & effect) will be delivered. Jyotish explains that the position of the planets in the sky at the moment of birth has encoded within its details the engineering specifications of the body being born at that moment. To test this premise, the Vedic astrologer should be able to predict the kapha, pitta or vata body type solely from the chart, exactly in agreement with an Ayurvedic doctor’s examination and now as seen through the most recent genetic observations and correlations.
What the astrologer sees:
In my professional work, and as a pioneer in Vedic Astrology for over 45 years, this correlation became obvious to me about 30 years ago, and I have continued to research it ever since. At that time there were very few Vedic astrologers in the West, and most of them were preoccupied with making future predictions. My academic background included a degree in Psychology. This made me more inclined to work with Ayurveda and to use the horoscope as a tool of understanding for both the physiology and personality of the client. To me, Vedic astrology was more useful as a method of self-actualization. In the year 2000, I published the first book in English documenting this correlation between the birth chart and body type. The book called “God/Goddess the Astrologer, Soul Karma & Reincarnation, How We Continually Create our Own Destiny” won New Age Book of the Year.
What I discovered over the years, preparing thousands of people’s charts, is that through Jyotish, it is possible to predict a person’s doshic profile simply by using their birth chart. It is simply a “pattern recognition system,” a “blueprint of the body” written in the planetary configurations visible at birth. The Ayurvedic body-type, which is defined at the moment of genetic conception and called by Ayurveda the “prakruti,” is clearly visible and predictable in the Vedic Astrological chart. For the most part, all Ayurvedic doctors are observing the prakruti mixed with the “vikruti” – the more or less distorted body-type which is the result of stress in the womb and day-to-day living.
This means that two forms of empiric observation are available to the Vedic Astrologer which prove this premise: You can know the Ayurvedic constitution from the horoscope without seeing the person, and you can predict key elements of the horoscope simply by observing the person’s body and by asking a few questions about how their body behaves.
For example, do they eat breakfast (pitta) or skip it (kapha), do they have cold extremities (vata) or warm (pitta), are they a deep sleeper (kapha) or insomniac (vata), introverted (vata), extroverted (Pitta), nervous, (vata) and so on. In other words, ayurvedic body-typing works in both directions. If the body was an automobile, then one could predict the blueprint by observing the performance of the car, or predict how the car would drive and function by reading the blueprint (Vedic astrological chart).
For the moment try to view Vedic Astrology as having two departments. The first is a set of tools that allow a very detailed description of the individual. This provides a deep understanding of both their vehicle and personality of the person riding in it. In Modern Psychology and Allopathic medicine, this has come to be described as the mind/body link, a boundary that is often hard to define. So for the moment, think of Vedic Astrology using the birth information to do two separate things. The first is to precisely describe and define the embodied individual without the need to see or know them. The second and more complex is to make accurate future predictions about the delivery of cause and effect using the birth data.
JAGAT: Jyotish, Allopathy, Genetics and Ayurveda Together
Now that scientific studies have proven the correlation between a person’s genetic code and their ayurvedic body type, the only thing that remains is to prove that all three are interconnected in a divine science of cause and effect that reaches from birth-to-birth. The Jyotish birth chart is a provable link to the visible Ayurvedic body type and that will be unprecedented ground-breaking research.
My proposal is an experiment in which 300 subjects are carefully selected. Three groups of one hundred persons each, with the vata, pitta and kapha physiognomy clearly evident. This is necessary so that visually and by all standards of measurement, even a casual observer can point out the heavy, muscular or skinny body type. Once these experimental subjects are chosen, they will be examined by Ayurvedic doctors to establish their primary body type: kapha. pitta or vata dosha. The results should be 90% or better, that the Vaidya will confirm the dosha according to Ayurveda and establish the base line for each of the 3 groups. Next their blood is given to a geneticist who examines it to see if genetics can predict the dosha, and finally the birth data is given to the Jyotishi to see what their analysis is. All three should be able to predict the body type to at least a 70-90% degree of accuracy.
WHY is this Important Research?
“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.” ― Albert Einstein
Now, getting back to the Vedic premise that we are immortal souls (atmas) travelling in a body with a purpose, carrying our bags of karma with us, embedded in our every organ in the form of gene codes, emotions, thoughts, and feelings. How is it that a stranger (the Vedic Astrologer) can predict what you look like, as well as a good portion of your karma – things they shouldn’t know? What is the body, if not the hard drive running software which behaves in predictable ways? Might you behave differently if you knew a storm was heading your way – a storm that comes in the form of disease, personal crisis, and even periods of great joy and personal success? After all, our destiny is only the previous use of free will. Perhaps if we were advised of the specifications of our personal vehicles this lifetime, or that of our children, we would have time to change our diet, lifestyle, thoughts, and behaviors to avoid or mitigate a health or personal crisis. This is far from the realms of the super natural, it simply reveals that some of the ‘unknown’ cause and effect can become known and that it was there for us to see all along. Now if western science is not ready to grasp reincarnation as a premise, this research still would allow us to scientifically validate both Ayurveda and Jyotish as predictable, repeatable and reliable sciences by comparing it to the genetic code.
Everything is connected: JAGAT
The purpose of studying the laws of nature is to utilize our human free will to co-operate with the already existing laws of Nature in order to reduce suffering and build a global culture concerned with the long-term good for all beings. That Modern Science led to the discovery of Genetics is a bit like a gardener discovering the secret microscopic life under the root of a great tree. Ayurveda has been the study of the leaves, branches trunk and fruit as we see and work with them from day to day and have from time immemorial. Jyotish, on the other hand has traced the other root, that of light across time and cosmic energy, back to its source. By so doing Vedic Astrology has created a larger life to life context. A picture of the unfolding of cause and effect over very long periods of cosmic time.
This is JAGAT or the whole universe of interconnected cause and effect in which everything is connected. Thus, the famous saying: “Yatha pinde, tatha Brahmande,” or “as above, so below”. According to this view, everything that exists within us, above us and below us is connected by tendrils of purposeful Divine Intelligence. So, it is that this great coming together of various scientific perspectives could lead us to a world of peace, abundance, health and well-being. We are at a pivotal turning point in history when we are integrating all that has come before into what could be a grand body of Universal knowledge. Along with this new empowerment we need to be ever-mindful of “ahimsa” or “doing the least harm” and “loka samgraha” or “holding the world together”.
Just as the Greek physician Hippocrates advised his students of medicine: “Do no harm and heal yourself first”, so the Vedas say: “satyam eva jayate”, or “one who speaks and lives the truth leads everyone forward to success”. So, let us focus these investigations into the profound secrets of these four sciences upon the intention of making the world a better place for all beings. We say in Vedic Astrology: “Jagat atma Surya, Chandra mamanaso jata”, “The Sun is the soul of the universe and the Moon is its mind.” With the convergence of these four great sciences, we may soon understand ourselves more profoundly than ever before.
The term Ayugenomics® was coined and proposed by B. Patwardhan in 2002.
In 2003, a first paper on the concept was published
The term Ayugenomics® was legally protected by registering it as a Trade Mark with the statutory authorities of the Government of India.
Patwardhan, B., AyuGenomics – integration for customized medi-cine. Indian J. Nat. Prod., 2003
Patwardhan, B., ‘Ayugenomics’ – Trade Mark Number 1127075, Class 5, 9, 16 and 42 dated 19 August 2002, registered with Controller General of Patents Designs and Trademarks, Government of India.
