Interview with Hart de Fouw

By Bette Timm

Hatha yoga has become part of our popular culture. Yet its inherent wisdom is founded in a much wider body of knowledge now gaining popularity in the West. The Vedas, India’s sacred texts, are the source of yoga, Sanskrit chants (mantras), ayurveda, and Indian astrology, or jyotisha. These subjects are all finding a comfortable home in contemporary culture.

During many weekends in the Temple Room at Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael, California, a lively teacher named Hart deFouw inspires students with Vedic wisdom. He easily flows from deep contemplative discussion to spontaneous humor, irresistibly engaging his audiences.

deFouw is an eloquent standard bearer of this ancient knowledge. Over the past year, he has spearheaded the creation of a non-profit organization devoted to educating the public about Vedic subjects. This organization, the Vedic Vidya Institute, provides an opportunity for students of yoga and related subjects to deepen their understanding and explore the breadth of the Vedas.

To date, deFouw’s courses have primarily focused on jyotisha, but the greater body of the Vedas is ever-present in his mind and readily integrated into all of his teachings. With the founding of the institute, course offerings have now expanded to include philosophy and Sanskrit seminars, as well as palmistry and a broad array of astrology classes.

Many people may wonder what such ancient knowledge has to offer us today. What guidance can it give us? Are jyotisha and its sister subjects useful to a modern person? In a recent conversation with Hart deFouw, writer Bette Timm explored these and other questions.

Bette Timm: How is jyotisha pertinent to today’s society? 

Hart deFouw: Imagine a tape measure that you could use to measure the outline of your life. Along the tape are color-coded segments marked for easy use and understanding, just as a regular measure marks inches and yards. On the measuring tape of jyotisha, however, green shows good times, orange marks mediocre times, and red signals tough times. If we could make use of such a tool, as I think most of us could, then jyotisha has implications for everyone today.

In other words, jyotisha has the same relevance today as it always has. It provides a map or measure for the quality of our lives: past, present, and future. It is one of the core tools in a toolbox that we may use to build maturity.

BT: How does jyotisha fit into the larger whole of the Vedic tradition?

deFouw: Jyotisha is the tape measure in the toolbox of the Vedic tradition. It is an indispensable component of the whole range of tools. Other tools in the toolbox include, for example, ayurveda, yoga, and Sanskrit.

The Vedic tradition informs the user about the tools—how to best apply them in good times, mediocre times, and bad times. While jyotisha specializes in gauging the quality of time for an individual or society, the Vedic tradition teaches us how to use the most appropriate tool to fit the times. Therefore, jyotisha needs the Vedic tradition just as the Vedic tradition needs jyotisha.

BT: So they have an intricate relationship? 

deFouw: Yes. The Vedic tradition is akin to the body as a whole, which is dependent on its individual parts such as the heart, lungs, and brain. Diminish the part, and the whole perishes; diminish the whole, and the parts perish.

In this way, jyotisha becomes an indispensable tool of the Vedic tradition. If jyotisha is missing, the job of elegantly building a mature, fully self-integrated human being is severely hampered. The Vedic tradition is an exquisite system available to us for self-understanding and development, but none of this system’s tools were designed to be used alone. Not even the Vedic philosophy itself can stand alone.

BT: Can you elaborate?

deFouw: Ayurveda has the specialty of human healthcare. Jyotisha has the specialty of gauging the qualities of time. The Vedas instruct the user on how to maintain a prosperous life and how to escape the wheel of karma.

For instance, the Vedic tradition encourages people to use ayurveda to maintain health, or to help fix it when it’s broken. Jyotisha only assesses the qualities of time. It does not shorten or elongate what it measures; it simply measures the qualities of time. As insightful as that timing function is, illness needs other tools from the toolbox to help one use the time that is measured, or to arrange it to accommodate needs and wants. On the one hand, ayurveda needs jyotisha’s ability to gauge time to create a fully formed prognosis. Jyotisha foretells if the patient is heading into a red zone or a green zone of time.

Jyotisha thus becomes an indispensable tool and if it is missing from the toolbox, then the manual in the form of the Vedic tradition won’t enable the user to build the grandest structure with its other tools. The planned structure is, of course, a fully formed human being.

BT: Clearly, you love these subjects. What interests and excites you the most these days?

deFouw: My passion right now is being the program director of the Vedic Vidya Institute where I am helping to develop superb courses for Westerners who want to learn the Vedic tradition. The Vedic Vidya Institute already directs people to excellent jyotisha courses and offers enjoyable Sanskrit courses for beginners. It will unveil a series of lectures on the Yoga Sutras beginning in February 2005.

As stated in the Rig Veda: “The truth is one, the wise speak of it as many.”

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To find out more about Vedic Vidya Institute and Hart deFouw, visit the institute’s Web site, vedicvidyainstitute.com, or Hartdefouw.com, or contact Aletha deFouw at (415) 457-1154.