There is much of interest written of the main plot types in fiction of the West, a subject worthy of a dissertation.

Belying a divisive, atomistic, and surgical mindset towards works of art, academics tell us that four types of conflict occur in fiction:

Conflict is the essence of fiction. It creates plot. The conflicts we encounter can usually be identified as one of four kinds.

Man versus Man: Conflict that pits one person against another.

Man versus Nature: A run-in with the forces of nature. On the one hand, it expresses the insignificance of a single human life in the cosmic scheme of things. On the other hand, it tests the limits of a person’s strength and will to live.

Man versus Society: The values and customs by which everyone else lives are being challenged. The character may come to an untimely end as a result of his or her own convictions. The character may, on the other hand, bring others around to a sympathetic point of view, or it may be decided that society was right after all.

Man versus Self: Internal conflict. Not all conflict involves other people. Sometimes people are their own worst enemies. An internal conflict is a good test of a character’s values. Does he give in to temptation or rise above it? Does he demand the most from himself or settle for something less? Does he even bother to struggle?

The internal conflicts of a character and how they are resolved are good clues to the character’s inner strength. Often, more than one kind of conflict is taking place at the same time. In every case, however, the existence of conflict enhances the reader’s understanding of a character and creates the suspense and interest that make you want to continue reading.

Are not these represented by the four kendra?

First house:  Man versus Self

The first house is the self.

Fourth house: Man versus Nature

The fourth house is the mother, the ground, the home.

Seventh house: Man versus Man

The seventh house is the other in which we must forge relationship.

Tenth house: Man versus Society

The tenth house is how we walk through the world publicly.

The kendra are where conscious action in the chart lay and hence may be where we would expect “conflict” in the native’s life to occur, i.e., where drama is that propels the story line of the person’s life.

This is just another quick post to suggest that so much that occupies Western academe is synthesized in the unification of space-time that is Jyotisha.

I am just an autodidact, a woman with a computer. I am excited however to publish “Twitter Followers Biased to Astrological Charts of Celebrities”.

In doing the work of this paper, it became absolutely obvious to me that this is really Mother Nature’s expression and paper.  I am beyond grateful to touch Her hem. It is all I ever really wanted to do.

I studied math and biology and specialized in computational biology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. As an astrologer, I still feel like a computational biologist.

I would like to do a lot more astrological research and find it hard to do well.

My opinion is that astrology is chock-full of testable hypotheses, even or perhaps especially at the ground level. And the time is now to do this work.

It is my hope that more people will be interested in the rigorous testing of such basic hypotheses after reading this paper.

The group at Journal of Scientific Exploration was great to work with, and I thank Andrew Foss as co-author for being such a gentleman scholar and  brilliant star. I thank you, the reader, for being… here.

P.S. The public abstract in JSE has a misprint of the title. They called it “Twitter Followers Biased to Birth Times of Certain Celebrities”, although the actual paper linked there is titled as it is here.

Much has been written on 108 as a holy number. It may represent:

• the 9 planets times the 12 constellations (9×12)
• the 27 nakshatras with each of their four padas or parts (27×4)
• much other goodness.

The other day another reason came to me.

One is the numerological representation for the Sun.

Eight is the numerological representation for Saturn.

Zero is the same as all, infinity, in a sense, since one divided by each approaches the other (assuming here that zero is being approached from the right, sinceVedic math does not tend to use negative numbers).

So, 108 represents all between Sun and Saturn, which is to say our whole solar system, unifying the domain and range of astrology with one’s body, one’s lineage, the Ganga, and divine geometry.

Jai Guru Dev.

The very Vedas are alive.

Manifold, breathing,and human-like, they have limbs, called vedanga, by which we may know Brahma consciousness.

One of the Vedas’ limbs, the eyes, is Jyotisha, what we call astrology, says the Mundaka Upanisad in Ch. 1. 1.

What could this mean?

I invite you to consider: what are our eyes?

For many people, the first idea about the eyes predates ancient Greek literature: “The eyes are the window to the soul.”

Certainly, the soul can be seen in a chart.

The Bible tells us more, “The light of the body is the eye: If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light,” inMatthew, verses 6.22 – 6.23.

So too, the light of the Vedas is Jyotisha.

In fact, the word Jyotisha in direct translation is “jyoti” plus “isha”, “light” plus “divinity”, the divinity of light.

“If thine eye be single,” that is, if your third eye is strong, the divinity of light of Jyotisha will fill you with great spiritual vision.

Through Jyotisha, we can also materially see factual bits and pieces of ourselves just as we look at parts of ourselves (but never the whole) with our actual eyes.

The viewing of our own chart similarly shines light on certain parts of the microcosm which we ourselves are.

Our eyes also help us see outside of ourselves, radially out into and unifying the vast macrocosm.

Our eyes recognize another, identify another, discern another as a whole, telling us movement and other attributes, beyond touch, sound, taste and smell but informing them.

Seeing is space and fire. All sattva. Pure light.

Albert Einstein once said, “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.”

Jyotisha resolves this separateness, this “optical delusion”, for in Jyotisha, any birth chart includes all things.

In the human eye, the higher dimensional world is flattened onto the surface of the curved retina, where light is converted to electrical impulses.

In a similar way, all reality of a moment and place in space-time is flattened onto the two-dimensional chart, macrocosm within microcosm, containing all people, places, things and their relationships within the image, the crystal, of any living being.

Finally, neurologists tell us that what we see is actually happening within us, within the vast and beautiful circuitry of that very thing which we think of as the essential us, our brains.

So too, full reality as seen in the chart actually happens within the rhyme and rhythm, the name and form, of the Vedas themselves, for Jyotisha is the eyes of the Vedas.

(Also published at COLORAMA.)