Karma, Greenlights and Horror-scopes

Sadhguru, an Indian yogi, mystic, and guru of a worldwide spiritual movement. Mathew McConaughey a Hollywood superstar and self-described “anthropologist, folk philosopher and truth-seeking street poet”. Two “godmen” from such different worlds talking about their recent books on McConaughey’s youtube channel was unexpected but fascinating.

Looking through the astrological matrix, a powerful Mars, the planet of audacity, courage, and winning, dominates their Vedic horoscopes. Sadhguru’s Mars in Leo gains tenacity and confidence from the Sun. McConaughey’s exalted Mars in Capricorn gains ambition and focus from Saturn.

Their message­­––we are masters of our destiny.

In his book, Karma: A Yogi’s Guide to Crafting your own Destiny, Sadhguru refers to astrology as “horror-scopes”. He rejects the current practice of Jyotish (Vedic astrology) in India and says being on the spiritual path means, “I am not windblown. I am self-propelled”.

In his book Greenlights, McConaughey writes, “I was done with the excuses that fate allows, I was ready to be the boss of me, the one to blame and acquit, I needed to own that it was my hands on the steering wheel”.

We can expect nothing less from Mars, who is the captain of his ship, the master of his domain, and not afraid to take on any challenge.

Is the winning, courage, and audacity of a powerful Mars in the horoscope in-born, or can it be cultivated? Are we all equally capable of becoming as robust, daring, and adventurous as McConaughey and Sadhguru? Are we bound to our karma or are we free? How much of life is destiny and how much free will? How much nature and how much nurture? These questions haunt everyone, including Vedic astrologers.

The ancient knowledge of Vedic astrology teaches us that we are not slaves to our karma, but neither are we completely free. Below are McConaughey’s dasha planetary seasons inferred from his autobiography, Greenlights, demonstrating the hand of destiny, as well as free will.

November 4, 1969
19:34
Uvalde, TX

June 1996-2003: Exalted Mars dasha in the Ninth House in Capricorn

June 1996, A Time to Kill, becomes a box office hit. McConaughey, an obscure young actor from a small town in Texas, becomes famous overnight–– the headlines read, “hailed as the next best thing, McConaughey saves the movies”.

This ten-year Mars in the Ninth House dasha is the most riveting chapter in his book. In Sanskrit, the Ninth House is referred to as bhagya (good fortune) and dharma (higher purpose). When Mars’ daring and courage combine with purpose and luck there is nothing we cannot achieve. McConaughey not only becomes a Hollywood superstar, his Ninth House impulse also sends him in search of broader meaning and purpose to life. Exploring monasteries, floating naked down the amazon, and trekking isolated parts of Africa, he sees himself, “Naked and stripped down to nothing, I was only a child of God, and nothing more”.

Mars is a fiercely independent planet and McConaughey‘s Mars journey was solo (except for his dog Ms. Hud). He lived the “trailer life” driving from “Manitoba to Guatemala” and all over the United States in his airstream going “wherever and whenever”. He dared to take meetings with film directors and producers on the road driving and discussing the project. He wrestled with the village champion in Mali and almost got himself killed (and won).

And who can forget his infamous run-in with the cops when he was arrested in his home for possession of marijuana and refused to put on any clothes to go down to the police station. “Ohhh.. no, I barked, I am not putting shit on! My naked ass is proof I was mindin my own business”.  Oh yeah, and he got out of this also with a small fine.

He took unprecedented risks, lived dangerously and it kept paying off.
This is Mars in his glory, a daredevil, fully awake (exalted) in his consciousness.

June 2003 –2021: Exalted Rahu in the Tenth House in Aquarius ( Ketu in the Fourth House)

Rahu and Ketu can make your wildest dreams come true, but they cannot give you the satisfaction, purpose, and magic of the exalted Mars in the Ninth House dasha that preceded.

Rahu is our “wild side,” the obsessive-compulsive drive in each of us that desires to travel the road of new experiences that eluded us in our past lives. If this sounds like Mars, it’s not. Mars does not look back––he is driven by courage and the “call to adventure”. Rahu constantly looks over his shoulder and fills our heads with doubts and dissatisfaction.

The placement of Rahu shows our new karma, our greatest cravings that we reject and chase at the same time. The placement of Ketu shows our old karma, disinclinations, and latent talents—the area of life we no longer chase but expect to fall into place without struggle.

McConaughey’s Rahu is in the tenth house of career and status and Ketu in the opposite fourth house of the inner child and family life. The tug of war of these two opposite and simultaneous instincts during this nineteen-year period can make it very difficult to harmonize career and family life, often swinging from one extreme to the other. In his book, McConaughey describes the early years of his Rahu dasha as, “I didn’t have to worry about putting food on the table or paying rent, but my career path and the characters and films I was getting offered and doing were not satisfying me anymore”. Bored with the rom-com roles I started turning down “regular work and hefty paychecks”. “An infant son and a newborn daughter kept me steadfast, to navigate my self-induced hiatus from Hollywood”.

Rahu and Ketu produce extreme circumstances as well as extreme success (and failure) because once they get in the game it’s all or nothing. In 2013, McConaughey risked his own health to lose over 50 pounds to play the role of an AIDS patient in the acclaimed Dallas Buyers Club. Despite all the odds this low-budget $5 million film paid off grossing $50 million worldwide and winning McConaughey an Oscar for best actor in March 2014 (Rahu dasha Ketu bhukti).

McConaughey continued to make more movies from 2014-2019 but Rahu’s dissatisfaction and doubts about his career lingered. Remember that Rahu and Ketu are not embodied planets, to see the results they will give look to the ruler of these forces. McConaughey’s Rahu is in Saturn’s sign of Aquarius and his Saturn is placed in the Twelfth House which is the house of retreat and withdrawal from the “real world”. Towards the end of his Rahu dasha McConaughey says, “I began to notice that the characters and films I was doing were feeling more vital than who I was and the story that was my life. I was more alive in my movies than in my life”.

Dasha Sandhi’s, or the transitional period between any two Mahadashas (main planetary period), is confusing as a new planet’s aura is beginning to take over our consciousness but the old one is still holding on with dear life. So much changed for McConaughey in this transitional period between 2019- 2021.

In 2019, he became a Professor and the Minister of Culture at his alma mater, the University of Texas. Big sports fan his whole life, he took on minority ownership of a Major League Soccer team. Speculation started spreading that he may be preparing for a political career and run for governor of Texas. Most importantly, he gathered thirty-five years of notes he had been keeping in his diaries and headed to West Texas to write his autobiography, Greenlights.

When a new Mahadasha is on the horizon you feel it in your core, it bursts forth from within you as seismic shifts occur in your inner world and outer circumstances. As McConaughey leaves Rahu behind he writes, “Time to make a change. Time to get rid of the filters. Make my life my favorite movie. Live my favorite character. Write my own script. Direct my own story. Be my biography… time to catch the hero I have been chasing”.

Jupiter dasha June 2021 –2037: Jupiter in Virgo conjunct Venus in the Fifth House

A brand new dasha started for McConaughey as recently as June 2021 under the guidance of the benevolent and divine teacher and guru, Jupiter. Jupiter’s cosmic energy of creativity, faith, hope, and higher purpose is welcomed in every horoscope. Especially after a 19-year run of Rahu that has left us exhausted and depleted. Jupiter embodies dharma, or a higher noble purpose, and effortlessly attracts mentors’ guides and gurus. Jupiter can also make you a mentor and advisor as the desire to reach out and spread your message of hope and faith in humanity becomes a primary impulse.

McConaughey’s Jupiter is in the fifth house, which traditional Vedic astrologers refer to as the house of children and our relationship with them. However, children embody the fifth house as a metaphor for our innate urge to express ourselves freely, co-create with the divine, and derive joy from our innovative endeavors. With Venus, the ruler of the first house in Taurus in the Fifth House, McConaughey’s children and his creative impulses have always been the driving force in his life but in this new dasha we should expect these impulses to intensify.

As McConaughey leaves his tenth house dasha of “work/career” behind, the eternal child exemplified by the fifth house will push him to rediscover the lost play of childhood under the guidance of Jupiter. With Virgo as the fifth house sign, expect health and healing to take center stage in the coming years.

It is significant that the first week of McConaughey’s Jupiter dasha coincided with the youtube interview with Sadhguru on June 2, 2021. McConaughey says he was introduced to Sadhguru by Mark Benioff, billionaire CEO of Salesforce, who by the way has had many encounters with Hindu gurus and yogis, including my guru Amma. In his book, Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change Benioff describes his private meeting with Amma.

I couldn’t agree more with Sadhguru when he says, “an authentic astrologer will never make predictions for you.” In my book, Before Your Future, I have attempted to demonstrate that Vedic astrology is a profound Yogic technology to help us unravel and alter our Karmic burden, not enslave us to predictions.

However, there is one thing that all Vedic astrologers know, you cannot change the karma of a debilitated or weak planet into an exalted and powerful planet. Sometimes it is more freeing to let our karma run its course and adapt to it rather than trying to transform it.

Finally, the dashas, or mathematical algorithms created by the Vedic seers that reveal the timeline of our life story, as shown in McConaughey’s horoscope below, cannot be altered; just as we cannot change winter to spring, we cannot change Mars dasha into Jupiter or Jupiter into Rahu.