Shri Karve Guruji is an epitome of gentleness, kindness, generosity and sensitivity. He is a house holder with a wife, children and grandchildren and lives in extremely modest accommodations in a suburb of Bombay. He leads a very simple, austere life. devoted to visiting temples, shrines and meeting saintly people. He is almost on a permanent pilgrimage, traveling ceaselessly all over India. His detachment from worldly pursuits is extraordinary. He has no source of income and his wife runs the household through the small donations received from people who consult him. Sanjeevani (aka Pinky), his daughter, has this gift like him. Thousands of people including well-known politicians, industrialists, artists, etc have benefited from his guidance and advice.

Karve Guruji is credited with innumerable startling predictions of all kinds. Shri. Karve Guruji has visited the Middle East and was invited by the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, Institute of Vedanta & Sanskrit, in the USA for spiritual discourses and for sharing his Jyotish knowledge in 1995 and 1997. In November 1997, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi graciously invited, received and felicitated Shri. Karve Guruji (and his daughter [Sanjeevani]) during the Diwali celebrations at Vlodrop Netherlands. Shri. Karve Guruji spent several days with the Maharishi. The Maharishi conferred a title of Satpurusha upon Shri. Karve Guruji. Shri. Karve Guruji is of a very secular outlook, not discriminating between paths to the divine offered by the several existing faiths and religions. To him, all such paths lead to the same goal of enlightenment. Shri. Karve Guruji promotes the saadhanaa or spiritual worship of the Vishvadarshanadevata or the Universal Divinity. His dream is to establish a temple of this divinity, open to people of all faiths and religions.

Jyotish Mati Pragnya - My Experiences with Shri Karve Guruji
During the time I spent with him doing hundreds of charts since I first met him in 1993, I have had the good fortune of seeing him use a blend of some very simple, elegant and yet subtle techniques (about 50% of the time) and intuition or insights (about 50% of the time). Shri. Karve Guruji may not have the training for complicated mathematics and astronomy, but he compensates this mostly with his saadhana and a partly with a phenomenal memory and an unusual ability for mental calculation. I doubt, if indeed there is any "mechanics" about doing what Shri. Karve Guruji is able to do. He is a sattvic blend of qualities, such as a constant orientation to the divine, saadhanaa, simplicity, austerity, humility, stoicism, detachment from bonds, erosion of the ego, compassion and understanding, strong foundation in the eternal philosophical principles and the fundamental principles of Jyotish, cleanliness on all planes, purity and gentleness of speech (vaacha shuddhi),wit and humor and Being in constant knowledge of the movements of the celestial bodies. It is as if he is merged with the cosmos and sees the heavenly bodies. If the canons for qualifications of jyotish, as stipulated by Parashar or Varaahamahir, are a used as a bench mark criterion for rating jyotish, Shri. Karve Guruji would easily qualify with flying colors too.

I asked him on several occasions, what exactly happens when he locates the birth data - the closest he came to offering a reply was that when said that "he can see the planets, rashis, etc., like one would see something on a television set." Sometimes when he is not in a mood to do charts, he says "his television is not getting a good reception!" It just comes to him, periodically. Of course,being as humble as he is, he also adds that he is only a student of Jyotish and anyone who is willing to do the prescribed saadhanaa would be able to do what he does . Personally, I know that saadhanaa of one lifetime, is not enough to reach this stage, for everyone. Such gifts arc a result of sanskaar from previous lifetime(s).

A Practical Demonstration
In October 1997, at the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, Shri. Karve Guruji "did" the chart of Princess Diana and Madhuri Dixit, to offer a practical demonstration of the supremely crucial connection between spiritual evolution and Jyotish and as a kind of (deconstructionist) reminder of the inadequacy of approaching Jyotish with a dry and mechanistic perspective. Until 1993, when I first met Shri. Karve Guruji, I was full of ebullience, arrogance and the conviction of Jyotish being a "science" in the conventional sense of the word (and my competence in it). Being an engineer, I felt adequately "armed" and "equipped" with the necessary "tools" to be able to make sense of virtually any chart confidently! Needless to say, after I saw what Shri. Karve Guruji could do, with no such "equipment", I felt like hiding in a corner!

When Shri. Karve Guruji "does" charts, it does not entail drawing the chart on the chalkboard or anything equivalent to that! It means that he first "conceives" of the chart completely from scratch (in other words, from thin air), starting (or sometimes ending) with correct birth time. He first "gets" the Lagna, then the planets, then their sign positions (sometimes with degrees), then the birth date and finally the birth time. After this he starts his delineation. By this time. one is so baffled that one invariably fails to notice the brilliant application of some of the most simple and elegant Jyotish principles (no divisional charts, no dashaas), which Shri. Karve Guruji uses in the actual delineation. In fact,after doing several hundred charts with Shri. Karve Guruji, I have so much material on Shri. Karve Guruji's magnificent abilities, that even writing a book of anecdotes on the subject would be an inadequate expression or sharing.
During my lecture (October 97 at the Gurukulam), when Shri. Karve Guruji did 2/3 charts (he did not have the birth data for any of them) in the class, the first we took up was that of a very famous film actress from India (Madhuri Dixit). A couple of hours before the lecture, I was with Shri. Karve Guruji in his cabin, to "sound" him that the participants wanted him to "do" some charts "live" in the class. I also mentioned to him (in a rather cocky manner) that he is going to be in for a surprise because I was going to "ambush" him with a chart of someone who was not present and whom he most likely did not know. Within seconds, he replied "do you mean the chart of that woman (how did be know, man or woman ?) having Tula lagna with Ketu in it and Moon+Jupiter in the 10th?" To say that I was "shell-shocked" would be an understatement! An hour later when he came to the class, he started off with off this chart, "got' all the planets, the birth data, etc., and said two very significant things, which only I knew about the native:

a)He said that her bhaagyodaya (breakthrough in life) has occurred very early in life in the field of arts. She is famous. She is an accomplished dancer with a string of awards & trophies, etc (very few know this)

b) She was engaged in 1996, to a man who lived abroad

c) She has, during the last one year, become a member of the governing board of a financially sound organization.

Of course these pronouncements were 100% true. Imagine, that Shri. Karve Guruji did not know at all whom the native was that we were talking about, neither did he have her birth data in advance. He first "arrived at" the birth data. To top it all, he could provide astrological reasons as to how and why he made these pronouncements - and believe me, these included no dashas, complicated techniques, stretching or extrapolating significations, etc. After this chart Mike Conney (one of our senior Jyotishi students) called me over and whispered to me if Shri. Karve Guruji could "fix" Princess Diana's birth data. As all would know, Princess Diana's birth data had been a subject of raging controversy at that time. Various lagnas and the corresponding charts were being discussed.

Many Jyotishis had committed themselves to some birth data or the other, each with eminently credible reasons. Shri. K. N. Rao had claimed Sagittarius Lagna [ascendant] in one of his books some time ago. Dr. Charak published Vrishchik [scorpio] Lagna in his book. Lagnas were being tossed back and forth. Of course, all Jyotishis claimed to be right and had as usual, justified their respective preferences using complicated principles, rules, techniques and reasoning. In that class, I asked Shri. Karve Guruji about this chart I said "there is this woman whose birth data we all want to know". Shri. Karve Guruji said "Okay.draw a chart on the chalkboard as I tell you to. Write the Lagna as Kanya there are 3 planets in the 5th. Saturn and Jupiter are there". He then located the birth date and then the rest of the planets. Lastly, he got to the Moon and said that it was in Makar. He gave the time as 2:10 pm. About her, he pronounced the following after the chart was ready:a) She is a woman, b) She is well-known and of elevated status, c) She is not alive. d) She died in an accident, e) There were three others with her in the car and only one of them survived. f) She has two sons. g) she had enjoyed substantial comforts (implying - with a man) for sometime before she died. No dashaas, no transits, no divisional charts, no complicated and cumbersome techniques. Just the bare essential and elegant astrological reasons, which he rattled off in his (and my) native language (Marathi), with which I gasped to keep up while translating to English

Jyotish, Fate and Free will
People like Shri Karve Guruji make me ponder over the issue of the way Jyotish like us approach (and react to) Jyotish. We have our prima donna egos, which need nursing and boosting always. We feel good when our predictions come true and offended when contradicted. We let our egos get associated and identified with the techniques and methodologies we adopt, and even develop proprietary feelings towards them. We consider ourselves to be a special breed of human beings, with a mandate to comment authoritatively on any subject under the Sun in the guise of Jyotish and expect to be heard and taken seriously. We tend to hog the light rather than emit it. In contrast, a saintly Jyotishi like Shri. Karve Guruji despite his incomparable gifts, talents and skills, claims to be forever a "student" of Jyotish, As a Jyotishi, he remains supremely neutral to and unaffected by the outcome of his predictions. On a personal level he is an epitome of compassion and kindness. He does not touch money, if be does, it is only to give away. He firmly asks Jyotishis not to do Jyotish for money. He always asserts that his gifts are a result (not the cause) of his conduct and are available to anyone prepared to follow the canons of conduct.
Nandan Chirmulay