To me jyotish is a great discipline, a wonderful subject that is like a distant uncle or a family friend who lives far away but who is visiting us from a distant land, bearing many gifts or the promises of a gift, whereas a reading is the relationship between a parent and child in some ways.

Against that backdrop and context you will hopefully understand why I do not consider jyotish itself as something sacred but I consider a reading very sacred. Whether reading is given in full or in part or just focusing on an aspect whether under the guise of a lesson or a partial reading itself!

Anything that is sacred must be based on complete honesty and no false premises, no matter how justified or how innocent. As a reading must in all its shapes and forms...

Justified because people do not wish to reveal their data to a forum full of thousands of strangers even if only 20 may be active at a time. More so if on the forum, though moderated, people have been attacked and abused or personal comments made. This makes others afraid.

Innocent because perhaps people do not realize how these forums operate, or they forget that when they enter the forum they put their birthdates which then shows up under their awatar as their age.

Now if a person begins posting overt or veiled reading requests for a group of cousins, for instance, and the first one happens to have the same birthdate and profession as the poster, one wonders! This weakens the trust and this is sad that it is perhaps not done intentionally but innocently, hopefully.

It is like going to your doctor for his or her advice and not telling the whole story or asking the doctor for medical advice for a "friend" or cousin. Doctors, from what I hear, generally dislike being treated like this and that is why want to see the patient directly as opposed to 'tele-diagnosis' and prescribing on the phone. If you folks do not believe that, go ask a doctor when you run into one! Like jyotish, medicine itself is not sacred, but like a reading, the relationship between a doctor and the patient is sacred!

Like I said, just musing ...

How can we make this "reading" thing more sincere, requested and given in an environment of trust and perhaps more SACRED than it is treated currently ...

I have a vision where jyotish will be standardized one day and one will need to obtain a license from a Board (like doctors do) to be able to practice. I have no qualms in paying a fee, however big it might be, provided I have some assurance that the jyotishi has followed a standardized process (the likes of SEI-CMM for software, Six sigma for manufacturing etc etc something which has been laid down by a standardizing body as the bare minimum). A self sustainable revenue model for such a licensing body, won't be too difficult to come up with, especially with so many generous people around.

The only and the biggest challenge to this vision is uniting the biggies and getting them under one umbrella without them disagreeing too much on their methodologies (which off course, is very dear to their heart) that everything falls apart. They should be willing to sacrifice some of the differences on their very own near and dear theories on the subject, if you will for the sustenance of the common goal.

I am aware that K N Rao has his own thing going on in bharatiya vidya bhawan and Pt. Sanjay Rath is trying to do the same with SJC but I am not seeing standardization at the "process" level from these schools of thought. The need of the hour is a standardized "matrix process" approach since i see too many jyotishis in the professional realm making truckloads of money without following the right "process". What I am trying to highlight is the assurance of "best effort" by following the process without attesting too much importance to the results of the process.
While I believe in free market economics, i also believe in guidelines set by a regulating authority to enable customers make the right choice and provide the necessary security in a free market.

This is just a preliminary vision and therefore very much in its infancy.

regards,

[quote="projenator"]I have a vision where jyotish will be standardized one day and one will need to obtain a license from a Board (like doctors do) to be able to practice. I have no qualms in paying a fee, however big it might be, provided I have some assurance that the jyotishi has followed a standardized process (the likes of SEI-CMM for software, Six sigma for manufacturing etc etc something which has been laid down by a standardizing body as the bare minimum). A self sustainable revenue model for such a licensing body, won't be too difficult to come up with, especially with so many generous people around.

The only and the biggest challenge to this vision is uniting the biggies and getting them under one umbrella without them disagreeing too much on their methodologies (which off course, is very dear to their heart) that everything falls apart. They should be willing to sacrifice some of the differences on their very own near and dear theories on the subject, if you will for the sustenance of the common goal.

I am aware that K N Rao has his own thing going on in bharatiya vidya bhawan and Pt. Sanjay Rath is trying to do the same with SJC but I am not seeing standardization at the "process" level from these schools of thought. The need of the hour is a standardized "matrix process" approach since i see too many jyotishis in the professional realm making truckloads of money without following the right "process". What I am trying to highlight is the assurance of "best effort" by following the process without attesting too much importance to the results of the process.
While I believe in free market economics, i also believe in guidelines set by a regulating authority to enable customers make the right choice and provide the necessary security in a free market.

This is just a preliminary vision and therefore very much in its infancy.

regards,[/quote]

The great visionary of our times (in Jyotish) often dubbed as The Varahamihira of modern times, Dr. Bangalore Venkat Raman after many decades of organizing, planning created the body ICAS for this very purpose, namely standardisation

http://www.icas.org.in/index.html

Not too long after it was created, internal dissension surfaced and satellites were soon formed.

What is the guarantee that the same will not happen (I should say 'occur') again?

Perhaps there is a higher reason behind it being so ...

Some related points to consider:

Who will determine who these pioneers should be to start this organization or standardization body?

Who will assess and ascertain the greatness of these pioneers?

Jyotish is still evolving and itself has not been well-defined or well understood (Even look at the so called classics, why were so many books written each with similarities but some differences as well which to me indicates a growing discipline, one which is not finalized yet). Given that a large chunk of serious, academic astrologers and researchers are by necessity part-timers, world-wide, it is conceivable that the process will not be easy or short.

Everyone and his brother has a view of what jyotish should be and how it should be managed. It will take a lot of dedication, resources and deep honesty and transparency before the dreams will come true.