Home is our abode of love where we expect to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We expect to enjoy our peace & happiness, progress & prosperity, health & wealth and faith & spiritual development from our home. If its surroundings and construction are poor and the atmosphere eerie, we can neither be happy nor healthy. Hence to ensure that the house is built properly, in modern times we take the help of the professionals who can build a good house with a solid foundation, strong walls, a proper structural balance with the right weight and pressure distribution, proper plumbing, electricity, air light etc. This branch of modern knowledge is called architecture, or civil engineering.
The ancient seers of India knew not only the above, but quite a few other things beyond. Hence their house building principles included: the North-South flow of magnetic forces: the East-West earth motion and Solar energy forces: and with Divine Spiritual Perception, they also knew the various Deities who rule the different sections of the house and based on the Nature of the Deities, what type of room/function is ideal in that part of the house (Details given in the section Vastu Purusha Mandala). This branch of ancient Indian knowledge is called Vastu Sastra, or Vastu Shilpa sastra, or Vastu Nirmana sastra. It was employed to build not just houses but to plan and build entire towns and cities and temples.
During the last 10 years, first Vastu was in fashion, then it became a fad, then came fanaticism and now the society is full of blind beliefs. People with all kinds of false notions are rejecting excellent houses just because they are facing the west. The truth is that there is nothing against a west facing house in Vastu!! Self styled Vastu “expert consultants” are taking people for a ride.
The Vastu principles included: on which side(s) of the plot the road(s) should be, the size & shape of the plot, how far minimum away it should be from the public places, what type of plot/house should be there next to the house, the height-length-breath of the boundary & the rooms and their placement/function, the door & window placement etc. It makes the optimised ideal use of the magnetic, solar & spiritual forces and the five basic elements – Earth, Fire, Water, Air & Space. The principles are based on very practical reasons. For example if the East side boundary wall is too high one will not get enough sunlight.
In modern times, especially in cities, only a multi millionaire can follow all the Vastu rules. The rest 99%, especially the flat dwellers can only do the best adjustments. Vastu is like life where you want ideal parents, ideal brothers & sisters, ideal teachers & education, ideal job & money, ideal wife & children and ideal health. This is rarely possible and hence you have to live with and make the best of what you get.
The following pages will give you the authentic Vastu principles. Read them and you can understand Vastu. At least no one can take you for a ride.
One final word. At the time of entering a new house if you get a vastu shanti pooja done, which is part of the Griha Pravesh pooja, it takes care of the Vastu doshas. Vastu cannot adversely affect the house where God is regularly worshiped with pooja, stotra path or mantra japa. Keeping a Vastu Ganesha at the Pooja place is another antidote to all Vastu Doshas. For the past 3 years I have been living in a flat where every thing is totally wrong according to Vastu but this house has given me more peace, prosperity, fame and money than all the other “good Vastu” houses. And mind you, I am going through the peak of my sadesati and Rahu antardasa! God power is always stronger than Vastu power.
