How does a government engineer end up teaching a meditation technique that Krishna describes in the Bhagavad Gita? That question sits at the centre of this Suresh Bhawan interview on The Founder’s Dream, an Indian business podcast where host Abhishek Vyas sits down with the 82-year-old Vedic astrology expert and Kriya Yoga practitioner to trace a life that moved from engineering drawings to ancient texts.
Suresh Bhawan comes from a family with a serious legacy — his great-grandfather, Pandit Gokul Ji, built the Vedshalas whose names still appear on the walls of Jantar Mantar. But the conversation is less about lineage and more about what he actually did with sixty years of studying astrology and practising Kriya Yoga under a direct teacher. It’s a rare, unhurried episode for anyone trying to understand karma, destiny and effort without the usual mysticism or fear-mongering that astrology often gets wrapped in — exactly the kind of grounded conversation that has made this founder podcast, and the wider TFD podcast catalogue it belongs to, worth following.
A Family Legacy Written on the Walls of Jantar Mantar
Early in the episode, Abhishek Vyas asks whether having an ancestor whose name is carved into a UNESCO World Heritage Site is a privilege or a responsibility. Suresh Bhawan doesn’t hesitate — it’s both. His great-grandfather built Vedshalas across Delhi, Kashi and Jaipur roughly 150 years ago, and the Jaipur instrument alone is a 27-metre sundial that can tell time from a shadow with two-second accuracy.
He describes what that inheritance did to him growing up:
Growing up with that standard at home set a benchmark that was hard to reach. I’ve tried, despite everything else going on in my life, to do something meaningful in astrology myself — a subject that meant so much to my great-grandfather.
He mentions spending decades working on a text involving what he calls micro-astrology, or Nadi Shastra — a branch tied to pulse readings that he says most of the old formulas for have been lost to time. It’s unfinished, he admits, because the research itself takes years he doesn’t always have to spare.
What Kriya Yoga Actually Means: Inside the Suresh Bhawan Interview
The heart of this Suresh Bhawan interview is his explanation of Kriya Yoga, which he insists on grounding in scripture rather than popular internet explanations. He points to two specific places in the Bhagavad Gita — chapter four, verse twenty-nine, and chapter six, verse one — where Krishna describes it directly.
Krishna said he first taught this Kriya Yoga to Vivasvan, then to Manu, then to Ikshvaku — but slowly it was lost. So he tells Arjuna, today I am teaching it to you again.
He also references Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, calling it the most authentic text on meditation available anywhere, noting that Patanjali too describes Kriya Yoga in the very first verse of its second chapter. But he’s clear that no book — however popular — can substitute for a living teacher: the real depth of the practice, he says, “can only be learned from a Kriya Yogi, not from the internet, however many thousands of pages are written about it there.”
His own path to a teacher wasn’t quick. He learned about Kriya Yoga as a child reading the Shrimad Bhagavatam, then later through Yogananda Paramahansa’s Autobiography of a Yogi, a book he says has been translated into more than fifty languages. The actual initiation came years later, while he was working as a junior engineer in a government undertaking in Rajasthan, when Dr. Vishwanath Sharma — then Director of Medical and Health — connected him to a saint known as Pahari Baba, Hariharananda Giri, a contemporary of Subhash Chandra Bose. That meeting, he says, changed the direction of his entire spiritual life.
Destiny, Karma and the Line From the Gita Everyone Quotes but Few Explain
A large part of the conversation revolves around one of the most quoted lines from the Gita — karmanye vadhikaraste, ma phaleshu kadachana — and what it actually means for someone chasing a goal. Suresh Bhawan breaks it down carefully: Krishna gives every person, not just Arjuna, the right to act, but explicitly withholds any guarantee over the result.
He gave you the right to act — karmanye vadhikaraste — but he did not give you the right to the fruit. He didn’t build some giant cosmic computer tracking everything you think and do. Instead, he put the results under the control of nature, and nature runs on three qualities — sattva, rajas and tamas.
He connects this directly to how astrology should be read. Rather than treating a birth chart as an unchangeable script, he compares it to a weather warning issued before a storm hits a coastline — it tells you a period is favourable or unfavourable, and by how much, so you can choose to wait, prepare, or act.
Astrology is not fatalistic. It’s like medical science — it only tells you, in a way, that this is possible. But whether it actually manifests or not depends largely on you.
To make the point concrete, he shares a personal example: a UK-trained doctor once ran a glucose tolerance test on him as a young engineer and, comparing the results to a reference chart, told him he was likely to develop diabetes between the ages of 21 and 22 if he didn’t change his lifestyle. He didn’t, and the diagnosis came almost exactly on schedule. For him, that’s proof the tool works as a warning system, not a life sentence — and he’s blunt about how astrology gets misused in India, mostly “to scare people, and then sell them remedies.”
Desire, Loss and Faith: The Human Side of the Story
The episode doesn’t stay abstract. Abhishek Vyas asks Suresh Bhawan directly whether he’s ever questioned his faith, and he answers with unusual candour, describing sudden losses — his father dying when he was very young, and later his wife passing within seconds while mid-conversation with him, with no prior health issue at all. He calls these events shocking enough to “shake anyone out of their moorings,” yet says his faith in God remained intact through them.
He uses a story about Lahiri Mahasaya’s wife — who, decades into her husband’s spiritual practice, had a vision of him surrounded by light and worshipped by celestial beings — to make a larger point about desire and karma across lifetimes. Citing the saint Swami Ram Tirtha, he argues that every genuine desire eventually gets fulfilled, but the timing and circumstances aren’t up to us:
You are bound to have your desires fulfilled — once you’ve made a wish, the divine will complete it. But the circumstances have to align first, and that alignment itself is often the reason we take another birth.
Readers who want more of this kind of grounded, scripture-rooted conversation on the show might also find value in the Ramesh Karandhikar interview on Brahm Vidya, another episode from the same channel that goes deep into ancient Indian philosophy rather than staying at the surface.
Practical Wisdom: Health, Time and the Breath
Toward the end, Suresh Bhawan shifts from philosophy to daily habits — advice he says came from his maternal grandfather, a royal physician (raj vaidya) in Jaipur roughly 150 years ago. He lists four things, learned as a teenager after his own father’s sudden death, that he’s followed ever since:
- Lie on the left side for 15–20 minutes after every meal, which he says releases hormones that keep heart arteries from blocking.
- Urinate after eating, to prevent back pressure building up in the bladder as blood rushes to the abdomen for digestion.
- Walk roughly a thousand steps at home before sleeping, to keep the intestines healthy.
- Drink lassi or chaas after lunch, and milk after dinner.
He closes with a message aimed squarely at younger listeners, tying it back to the idea of sincerity as the real key to success in any field — a lesson as relevant to the entrepreneur mindset as it is to spiritual seeking:
Sincerity leads to the self. You cannot expect success in anything without it — even helping someone injured on the roadside requires sincerity, or you simply won’t succeed in helping them.
His final point is about breath and attention: the mind, he says, cannot hold two thoughts at once — think of Qutub Minar and the Taj Mahal disappears, and vice versa — so anchoring attention on the breath is what keeps the mind still. It’s a simple, almost mechanical explanation for why breath-based meditation works, offered without any jargon.
This wide-ranging conversation is one for anyone curious about where astrology, karma and meditation actually meet, rather than where pop culture assumes they do. If you’re building a reading list around this episode, the site’s roundup of the latest Hindi podcast episodes on TFD is a good next stop for more conversations in this vein.
Watch the full conversation with host Abhishek Vyas on The Founder’s Dream YouTube channel and subscribe for new founder interviews every week.
Frequently asked questions
What is Kriya Yoga according to Suresh Bhawan?
Suresh Bhawan explains that Kriya Yoga is described by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, in chapter four verse twenty-nine and chapter six verse one, and was later popularised in modern times through the lineage of Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya and Swami Yogananda Paramahansa, author of Autobiography of a Yogi.
Is astrology about fixed fate or free will, according to this Suresh Bhawan interview?
Suresh Bhawan says astrology is not fatalistic; he compares it to medical science, which can show a possibility or tendency, but whether it manifests depends largely on the person’s own choices and effort.
Who taught Suresh Bhawan Kriya Yoga?
He learned Kriya Yoga from a saint known as Pahari Baba, Hariharananda Giri, in Jaipur, after being introduced through Dr. Vishwanath Sharma, then Director of Medical and Health in Rajasthan.
What connection does Suresh Bhawan have to Jantar Mantar?
His great-grandfather, Pandit Gokul Ji, built Vedshalas including the one at Jaipur’s Jantar Mantar, home to a 27-metre sundial accurate to two seconds, and his name still appears on its walls today.
What health habits does Suresh Bhawan recommend?
He recommends lying on the left side for 15-20 minutes after meals, urinating after eating, walking a thousand steps before sleeping, and drinking lassi or chaas after lunch and milk after dinner — habits taught to him by his maternal grandfather, a royal physician in Jaipur.
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