Jyotish #1

Osho, one part of my question has been completed; then, in your presence, we were able to discuss temples, pilgrimage, tilak-marks and idol-worship. Today, at your feet, I would like to submit that we wish to seek your guidance on a new subject, and that subject is: astrology. This is an untouched theme; from your own lips there has never been a discussion on it. So again, at your feet, I implore: today please guide us regarding astrology.

Astrology is perhaps the most ancient subject, and in a sense the most derided as well. It is the most ancient because, in all the investigations we have into human history, there has never been a time when astrology was not present. In Sumer, twenty-five thousand years before Jesus, signs of astrology are engraved on discovered bone remains. In the West, the oldest research points to these bones—twenty-five thousand years before Jesus—on which are marked astrological symbols and records of the moon’s phases. But in India the matter is even older.

In the Rig Veda there is mention of the exact configuration of planets and stars as it was ninety-five thousand years ago. On this basis Lokmanya Tilak concluded that astrology must certainly be more than ninety thousand years old. Because if the Vedas mention the constellation patterns as they were ninety-five thousand years earlier, then that mention itself must be that ancient. For the configuration that existed then could not be known later by any means. Now we do have scientific instruments by which we can compute how the heavens would have been arranged in remote antiquity.

The deepest principles of astrology were born in India. In truth, it is because of astrology that mathematics was born. To compute the movements of the skies, mathematics had to arise first. Hence the numerals of arithmetic are Indian—across all the languages of the world. The digits from one to nine in all the civilized tongues of the globe are Indian. And the fact that only nine digits were universally adopted has its simple reason: those nine digits were born in India and gradually spread throughout the world.

What you call nine in English is a transmutation of the Sanskrit nav. What you call eight is a transformation of the Sanskrit ashta. From one to nine, the numerals in all the civilized languages entered under the influence of Indian astrology.

From India the first rays of astrology reached Sumerian civilization. The Sumerians, six thousand years before Jesus, opened the Western world’s door to astrology. They laid the first foundations of a scientific study of the stars. They built very tall towers—seven hundred feet high. On those towers, Sumerian priests studied the sky twenty-four hours a day—for two reasons. First, because the Sumerians had come upon a profound key: that whatever happens in the human world has its initial source related, in some way, to the stars.

Six thousand years before Jesus, the Sumerians held this view: that every illness that arises on earth, every epidemic that spreads, is connected to the stars. Now scientific bases for this have indeed been found. Those who understand the science of today say: the Sumerians began the true history of humankind. Historians say all kinds of history commence with Sumer.

In 1920 a Russian scientist named Chizhevsky researched the fact that every eleven years a periodic, immense explosion occurs on the sun—an atomic eruption. And Chizhevsky established that whenever these eleven-year solar explosions occur, the seeds of wars and revolutions sprout on earth. In a meticulous analysis spanning some seven hundred years, he showed that whenever a catastrophe happens on the sun, a catastrophe occurs on earth. He proved it so rigorously that Stalin threw him into prison in 1920. Only after Stalin’s death was Chizhevsky released. For Stalin, the matter became awkward indeed! Marx and the communists hold that revolutions on earth are caused by economic disparities among human beings; Chizhevsky says revolutions are caused by explosions on the sun.

What relation can there be between solar eruptions and poverty or wealth in human life? If Chizhevsky is right, Marx’s entire explanation turns to dust. Then revolutions are no longer class-caused; they are astrological. No one could prove Chizhevsky wrong, for his seven-hundred-year data were scientific, and the deep correlation he established between solar events and terrestrial happenings was hard to refute. But it was easy to consign him to Siberia.

Only after Stalin died did Khrushchev free Chizhevsky from Siberia. Fifty precious years of this man’s life were wasted there. Even after his release, he did not live more than four to six months. Yet within those months he gathered further evidence for his thesis. He linked the spread of earthly epidemics to the sun as well.

The sun is not, as we ordinarily suppose, some inert ball of fire—it is intensely active. Every moment its radiations undergo transformations. And even the slightest modulation in the sun’s waves makes the life-breath of earth tremble. Nothing occurs here that has not been preceded by something on the sun. When a solar eclipse occurs, birds in the forests stop singing twenty-four hours in advance. During the eclipse the whole earth falls silent; birds cease their songs; all the forest creatures are seized with fear, stricken by a vague foreboding. Monkeys climb down from the trees, gather together, seeking some safety. And a wonder: monkeys, who chatter and clamour incessantly, become at the time of a solar eclipse more silent than even sages and sannyasins!

Chizhevsky established all these observations. The first intuition of such connections appeared in Sumer. Later, a Swiss physician named Paracelsus put forth a very unique hypothesis—one that will, if not today then tomorrow, transform the whole of medical science. It has not yet been emphasized much because astrology is a derided subject—the most ancient, yet most scorned, though also most widely believed.

Last year in France a survey found that forty-seven percent of people believe astrology is a science—France! In America five thousand prominent astrologers work day and night, burdened with more clients than they can handle. America pays astrologers millions of dollars every year. The estimate is that some seventy-eight percent of the earth’s population believes in astrology. But those seventy-eight percent are the common people. Scientists, thinkers, rationalists—at the mere mention of astrology they bristle.

C. G. Jung said: for three hundred years the doors of the universities have been shut to astrology; yet within the next thirty years, astrology will break down your doors and re-enter the academies. It will re-enter because the claims made about astrology could not earlier be verified—but now they can.

Paracelsus set in motion a doctrine: a person falls ill only when the harmony between him and the star-configuration attending his birth is broken. This needs to be understood a little. Long before him, Pythagoras in Greece—six hundred years before Jesus, that is, about twenty-five hundred years ago—unfolded a great philosophy regarding planetary harmony: that among the planets there is a musical relationship.

When Pythagoras spoke so, he had just returned from travels in India and Egypt. And when he came to India, the land was intensely suffused with the thoughts of Buddha and Mahavira. Returning from India, Pythagoras spoke many significant things about the Jains in particular. He called them the ‘Jainosophists’—sophist meaning philosopher, and ‘Jaino’ meaning Jain. He even mentioned their nakedness.

Pythagoras believed that as each star, planet, or satellite travels through space, its movement produces a specific sound. Each celestial body’s motion gives rise to a unique tone. And these tones together compose a grand concord, which he called the harmony of the universe. When a person is born, the arrangement of this celestial music at that precise moment is imprinted upon his primary, most sensitive consciousness. That primal chord keeps him healthy or unhealthy. Whenever he falls back into accord with the musical arrangement that attended his birth, he becomes healthy; when he falls out of that accord, he becomes ill.

Paracelsus worked significantly with this. He would not prescribe medicine to any patient until he had examined the birth chart. Strangely, by consulting birth charts he cured patients whom other physicians had failed to help. He said: until I know under which stellar configuration this person was born, I cannot catch the thread of his inner music. And until I know what the arrangement of his inner music is, how shall we restore him to health? For what is health—let us understand that a little.

If we ask an ordinary physician, he will say: health is the absence of disease. But that definition is negative. It is sad that we must define health in terms of disease. Health is positive; disease is negative. Health is our nature; disease is an intrusion. To have to define the householder by the guest is strange. Health is with us; disease comes and goes. We are born with health; disease visits. Yet if we ask physicians, they can only say: if there is no disease, there is health.

Paracelsus said: this is a wrong explanation. Health must have a positive definition. But how shall we grasp that positive, constructive definition? He said: unless we know your inborn music—that alone is your health—at best we can relieve you of diseases. But we shall free you from one disease and you will immediately catch another. Because nothing has been done about your inner music. The essential thing is that your inner music be established.

Paracelsus lived roughly five centuries ago; his insights were lost. But in the last twenty years, since 1950, astrology has reappeared in the world. You may be surprised: some new sciences have arisen—if I share them with you, the old science will become easier to understand. Around 1950 a new science was born: cosmic chemistry. The man who gave it birth is Giorgio Piccardi. Among the few most precious minds of this century, he established through rigorous laboratory experiments that the entire cosmos is an organic unity—one body.

If my finger becomes diseased, my whole body is affected. Body means the parts are not separate; they are vitally conjoined. If my eye suffers, my toe knows it. If my foot is wounded, my heart is informed. If my brain becomes sick, my whole body is disturbed. And if my body is destroyed, where will my brain stand? The body is an organic unity. Touch any one point—everything flows, everything is affected.

Cosmic chemistry says: the whole universe is a body. Nothing in it is separate; all is joined. Therefore, no matter how far away a star may be, when it changes, it changes the rhythm of our heartbeat. And the sun, however distant, when it grows more ardent, alters the currents of our blood. Every eleven years...

The last time the sun was exceptionally active, its fires erupting, a Japanese physician, Tomoda, was astonished. He had worked for twenty years on women’s blood. Women’s blood has a peculiar feature that men’s blood does not: during menstruation, their blood thins; or during pregnancy it thins. Men’s blood remains uniform. Tomoda had been noting this basic difference.

But when nuclear storms raged on the sun—as they do every eleven years—he was shocked: men’s blood also thinned. During solar nuclear storms, men’s blood thins. This was new; never before recorded—that men’s blood would be affected by storms on the sun. And if blood can be affected, then anything can be affected.

Another American thinker, Frank Brown, worked to provide support systems for astronauts. Half his life went into ensuring that those who journey into space would not be harmed. The vital question was: what influences, what radiations, what currents exist once we leave the earth—how will they affect a human being?

For two thousand years after Aristotle, the West assumed that space is a void—that beyond two hundred miles the atmosphere ends and then there is nothing. The astronauts proved this wrong. Space is not empty; it is overfull—not void and not dead, but very alive. In fact, the earth’s two-hundred-mile atmospheric layers block many influences from reaching us. In space there flow astonishing streams of energies. Can a human bear them or not?

You will be amused to know that before sending a man, Brown sent potatoes into space. Brown said: there is not much inner difference between a potato and a man! If the potato rots, man will not survive; if the potato survives and, when planted, sprouts, then we may send a man. The potato is robust; man is sensitive. If the potato cannot survive in space, there is no chance for man. If the potato returns alive and sprouts, then perhaps a man may go; even then, can he endure?

From this Brown demonstrated another surprising fact: a potato buried in the earth—or any seed for that matter—grows in relation to the sun. The sun awakens it, calls its sprout upward.

Brown pursued another discipline now gaining a proper name: planetary heredity. The word in English is ‘horoscope’—from the Greek ‘horoscopus,’ meaning: I watch the hour—the rising of the heavenly bodies at birth.

When a child is born, at that very time many constellations are rising on the horizon around the earth. As the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, so too stars rise and set throughout the twenty-four hours. If a child is born at six in the morning, the sun too is being born then. At that moment some constellations rise, some set; some are above, some descending, some ascending. The heavens have a particular configuration at that birth.

Until now it has been thought—and many still not deeply acquainted think so—that what can the moon and stars have to do with a child’s birth! Wherever they may be, what difference does it make to a child being born in a village!

They also say: not one child alone is born; under a single configuration, millions are born. One of them becomes a president; the rest do not. One lives a hundred years; another dies in two days. One is very intelligent; another remains dull.

At first glance it seems: how can the heavens relate to the birth of a child? This reasoning seems straightforward: these stars do not bother about a single child. And since under one configuration millions are born, yet they are not alike, for three hundred years these arguments were offered to deny any link between the heavens and the individual.

But the research of Brown, Piccardi, Tomoda and others has yielded a startling result: they say, we cannot yet affirm that an individual child is influenced, but we can assert with certainty that life is influenced. One step: the individual—we cannot say yet; but life as such—certainly. And if life is influenced, as our investigations grow subtler, we shall discover that the person is as well.

Another point to consider: it is commonly held—but it is not factual—that astrology is an undeveloped science, that it began and then failed to develop. In my view the opposite is true. Astrology was a highly developed science in some civilization that then vanished, leaving us only incomplete aphorisms. It is not a new science awaiting development; it was once wholly evolved, and the civilization that evolved it disappeared. Civilizations come and go; with them the things they developed lose their original foundations; their sutras are forgotten.

Science today is approaching acceptance that life is influenced. And at the time of a child’s birth, the state of his mind is just like a highly sensitive photographic plate. To understand that life is influenced—and only then does astrology gain possibility—let us consider twin births.

There are two kinds of twins. Some are from a single egg; others, though twins, are from two eggs. When there are two eggs in the mother’s womb, two children are born. Sometimes one egg contains two. Twins from a single egg are most significant, because their moment of birth is exactly one. Twins from two eggs are called twins, but their exact birth moment is not one.

And know this: birth is twofold. The first meaning of birth is conception—true birth is the day the womb is seeded. What you call birth is the second birth, when the child emerges from the mother. If we were to conduct a complete astrological inquiry—as the Hindus alone did, and used it masterfully—the real question is not when the child is born, but when the journey in the womb begins, when conception occurs. For the true birth is there. Hence the Hindus even concluded: if you wish for a particular kind of child, make love under the corresponding star-configuration and conceive at that moment.

Here I will take you a step back, because much work has been done of late and many things have become clear. Ordinarily we think: a child born at six in the morning is influenced by the constellation as it stood at six. But those who know astrology deeply say: it is not that the planets influence him because he was born at six. Rather, he wanted to be born amidst such influences, so he chose that hour and constellation. This is altogether different. When a child is about to be born, the deep astrologers would say: he chooses his planets; he chooses when to be born.

Go deeper, and you will see: he chooses his conception as well. Each Atman chooses when to accept a womb—at what moment. A moment is not a small event; it means: how is the whole universe at that instant! What doors of possibility are opened by the universe at that moment!

When two children conceive simultaneously in one egg, their moment of conception is one, and their moment of birth is also one. Now it is most interesting: the lives of two children born from one egg are so similar—so similar—that it is hard to say the moment of birth has no effect. Their IQs, their intelligence measures, are nearly equal. The slight differences, those who know say, are due to our measurement errors; our scales are not perfect.

If two single-egg twins are raised entirely separately—one in India, one in China—never knowing of each other, their IQs still do not differ. Astonishing! Intelligence seems tied to birth potentiality. Yet when one gets a cold in China, the other in India also gets a cold. Generally, single-egg twins die in the same year. The difference in their deaths is at most three months, at least three days; but the year is the same. Never yet has there been a gap of a whole year between their deaths. If one dies, within three days to three months the other will die. Their inclinations, styles, emotions run parallel. They seem to live as copies of each other. Their similarity is proved in many ways.

All our skins are individual. If my hand is injured and a skin graft is needed, your skin will not do; a graft must be taken from my own body. There is no person on earth whose skin could be grafted onto me.

Ask a physiologist: is there any structural difference between the two skins? Any chemical difference? Any difference in the elements that constitute the skin? None. If we gave a scientist my skin and another’s to test, he could not tell they are from two different persons. Yet strangely, another’s skin cannot be grafted on me; my body rejects it. Science cannot detect the difference, but my body can; it refuses to accept.

Yes—only the skins of single-egg twins can be transplanted onto each other. Why? If we say: they are the sons of the same parents—then ordinary brothers are too, but their skins cannot be exchanged. Except for the fact that these two were generated in one moment, nothing is identical. The same parents, the same everything—only one thing is distinct: the moment of birth!

Can the birth moment influence so profoundly that their lifespans are almost the same, their intelligence measures almost the same, their skins so alike, their bodily behaviors so similar, that they fall ill with the same diseases and are cured by the same medicines? Can the moment of birth be so decisive?

Astrology has always said: more decisive than that!

But until now there was no scientific consonance with astrology. That consonance is growing. Several new experiments have helped. First, as soon as we launched artificial satellites into space, we learned that from the entire cosmos—stars, planets, constellations—an endless mesh of rays is constantly streaming and striking the earth. And nothing on earth remains unaffected by them.

We know the ocean is influenced by the moon. But we do not consider that the proportion of water and salt in the seas is exactly the proportion of water and salt in the human body. Sixty-five percent of the human body is water; and the salt-water ratio is the same as in the Arabian Sea. If the ocean’s water is affected by the moon, why would the water within us not be affected?

Research has revealed a few facts to note: as the full moon approaches, the number of madness cases increases worldwide. On new moon there are the fewest lunatics; on full moon, the most. As the moon waxes, the proportion of lunacy rises. On full moon days, the largest number enter asylums; on new moon, the largest number leave. We now have statistics. In English there is the word ‘lunatic’—moon-struck. In Hindi too we say ‘chandmara’—struck by the moon. These words are three thousand years old. Even then people sensed that the moon does something to madness.

But if it does something to the mad, will it not do something to the non-mad? The structure of the brain, the bodily constitution, is the same. Perhaps it does more to the mad, less to the others—but not nothing. Otherwise no one could become mad—since all mad were once non-mad; the moon would have to begin with the non-mad.

Professor Brown conducted a study. He himself was not a believer in astrology—he mocked it in his earlier writings. Later, merely for research, he began collecting birth charts of high-ranking military generals, of doctors, of different professions. He was in for a shock. He found that people of each profession are born under a specific planetary influence, a certain configuration.

For example, all renowned generals and warriors show a heavy influence of Mars. That influence is entirely absent in the lives of professors. In a study of about fifty thousand persons, Brown found that, as a rule, when generals are born, Mars is rising. Their hour of birth is the hour of Mars’s rising. In contrast, pacifists are never born with Mars rising. Coincidence in one or two cases is possible; across millions, coincidence is not. Mathematicians are born under one constellation; poets are never born under that one. Perhaps in a rare case it happens; on a larger scale it does not.

There is as much difference between a poet’s mode and a mathematician’s mode as to require a difference in their birth moments. Brown compared people of ten sharply contrasted professions—say, a warlike general and a peace apostle like Bertrand Russell; a man like Nietzsche who declares that a day without war will render life meaningless, and one who proclaims peace for the world. Are these merely intellectual differences, or do their stars also differ? Are there only mental distances, or does the hour of birth lend a hand?

The more the study advances, the more it becomes evident that each person announces certain innate capacities at birth. The ordinary astrologer says it happens because he is born under a particular constellation. I say to you: he chose to be born under that constellation. What he was capable of being, what his inner potential—his accumulated consciousness from past lives—was, that would take birth only under that star.

Every child, every new life, insists on its own hour—wants to be conceived and born in its own hour; the two are interdependent.

As I said: as the ocean’s waters are influenced, so is all life, which is born of water. Without water, life is impossible. Hence old Greek philosophers said: life from water. Ancient Indian, Chinese and other mythologies too say: life is born from water. Today, evolutionists also say: life’s origin is in water—the first life perhaps algae on the surface of water; then, by development, up to man. Those who probe water say: water is the most mysterious of elements. And whatever influence comes to man from the stars and the cosmos, its medium is water. By affecting the water in the human body, any radiation enters us.

Much work is being done on water; many mysterious properties are being discovered. The most mysterious property noticed in the last ten years is water’s supreme sensitivity. In our life, whatever influence comes from all sides first vibrates the water; our water is affected first. Once our water is affected, it becomes difficult for us not to be.

In the mother’s womb the child floats in water—exactly as in the ocean. And the water in which the child swims has the same salt proportion as the sea. And between the mother and the fetus there is no direct connection; between them is water. Whatever influences flow from the mother to the child, they flow through that water. There is no direct link. Even throughout life the function of water in our bodies is similar to its function in the sea.

Many fish have been studied. There are fish that come to the shore to lay eggs only when the ocean is at ebb. They ride the retreating waves, lay their eggs in the sand, and return. In fifteen days the waves will return to that spot; by then the eggs will have hatched and the young will be ready; the incoming waves will carry them back.

Scientists were puzzled: the fish always come when the tide is ebbing. If they came on the swelling tide, the eggs would be washed away. They lay only when the waves are retreating, each step withdrawing. Where they lay, no wave returns, else the eggs would be swept away. How do they know the ocean will ebb? A slightest error and all eggs are lost! For millions of years, they have never erred—otherwise they would have vanished.

By what means do these fish know? What sense informs them that now the sea will recede? Millions gather at the shore at the same moment. There must be some signaling language, some instrument of information. Those who study them say: there is no other avenue than the moon. The sensations received from the moon tell them ebb and flood. Apart from the lunar pushes, there is no way they could know.

Some thought perhaps the waves themselves inform them. Scientists placed fish where there are no waves—on lakes, in dark rooms in water. Astonishingly, when the moon came to the precise position, while these fish were shut in darkness, ignorant of sky or moon, at the exact moment when the sea fish came to the shore, these fish released their eggs in the water. No shore, no beach—so waves are irrelevant.

If someone says, perhaps they copy other fish—that too was eliminated. Single fish were isolated. Exactly when millions reach the coasts, the isolated ones laid their eggs. Scientists tried to confuse their inner clocks—keeping them in continuous darkness, so there is no knowledge of day or night; keeping them in constant light; faking moonlight by increasing and decreasing illumination. They could not be fooled. When the moon reached its position, they laid their eggs—wherever they were.

Every year, thousands of birds migrate across thousands of miles. With winter coming and snow imminent, they flee. The destination is months away. Snow has not yet started; it will after a month. How do they calculate that snow will fall in a month? Our meteorological observatories cannot give certain forecasts. I have heard that sometimes weather men ask roadside astrologers: what do you think—will it rain today?

What arrangements man has made still seem childish. These birds know a month or two in advance. After thousands of experiments it has been seen that each species has a fixed day of departure—changing each year because snowfall is uncertain. If a species departs a month before snowfall, it will always depart a month before; if snow comes ten days later, they go ten days later; if earlier, earlier. There is no certitude about the snow—how do they depart with such foresight?

In Japan there is a little bird that vacates a village twenty-four hours before an earthquake. Even now scientists cannot detect an earthquake two hours prior—and even then it is probabilistic. But twenty-four hours before! So in Japan people immediately know: whichever village the bird has left, run—there are twenty-four hours. How does the bird know?

In the last ten years scientists have begun to say: every creature has some inner sense that experiences cosmic influences. Perhaps man has it too, but in his cleverness he has lost it. Man is the only being who, in his cleverness, has lost many things he had and created many he did not have—taking great risks. He has lost what was, and fabricated what was not.

But even the smallest creature has inner sources of sensitivity. Scientific bases are now appearing for these inner sensors. They inform us that life on earth is not isolated; it is connected with the whole cosmos. Wherever anything happens, its consequences begin to occur here.

As I was saying about Paracelsus: modern physicians too are arriving at the conclusion that whenever spots—the sunspots—increase on the sun, diseases increase on earth; when spots decrease, diseases decrease. We shall never eradicate illness from the earth so long as sunspots exist.

Every eleven years there are great solar upheavals, vast eruptions. When these occur, wars and upheavals occur on earth. The cycle of wars is roughly ten years; pandemics appear in cycles of ten to eleven years; revolutions too.

Once it begins to be felt that we are not separate or isolated, but organically conjoined, then astrology becomes easy to understand. I say all this for this reason. Some feel astrology is superstition. To a great extent it appears so—indeed, anything becomes superstition when we are unable to show its scientific causes. Otherwise, astrology is profoundly scientific. Science itself means the search for the link between cause and effect!

Astrology declares only this: whatever happens in this universe has causes. That they are unknown to us—is possible. Astrology says: the future, whatever it will be, cannot be severed from the past; it will be connected. What you will be tomorrow will be the sum of what you are today. And what you are today is the sum of your yesterdays. Astrology is a very scientific way of thinking. It says: the future emerges from the past. Your today has emerged from your yesterday; your tomorrow will emerge from your today. And astrology says further: whatever is to happen tomorrow must, in some subtle sense, be already happening today.

Understand this a little. Three days before his death, Abraham Lincoln dreamt that he had been assassinated and that his corpse lay in a particular room of the White House. He even saw the room number. He awoke, laughed, and told his wife: I dreamt I was assassinated and that in this house, in such-and-such numbered room, my body lay. You stood at my head; such-and-such people stood around. They laughed, talked; Lincoln slept; his wife slept. Three days later, Lincoln was assassinated, and his body lay in that same numbered room, in that very place, people arranged in the same order.

If what is to happen three days later had not, in some sense, already happened, how could the dream be formed? How could there be a glimpse? A dream can reflect only what exists somewhere—even now. A window opens, we glimpse it—but it must exist outside the window.

Astrology holds: our sense of future exists because of our ignorance. If we had knowledge, there would be no such thing as future; it is already somewhere present.

There is an incident in Mahavira’s life that led to great controversy. In Mahavira’s presence a section of his disciples broke away—five hundred monks formed a separate sect—over this point.

Mahavira said: that which is happening has, in a sense, already happened. If you have started walking, in a sense you have reached. If you are growing old, in a sense you are already old. What is becoming is, in a sense, already become.

One of Mahavira’s disciples, ill during the rains, was away. He told his follower to spread out a mat for him. The follower began unrolling the mat. As he opened the rolled mat a little, it occurred to him: wait! Mahavira says—what is happening has already happened! Stop halfway! The mat is being opened, but it has not opened—stop! Suddenly he felt Mahavira must be wrong. He left the mat half-open. After the rains he came to Mahavira and said: you say what is happening has happened—wrong! My mat is still half open—it was opening, it did not open. I have come to prove you wrong.

What Mahavira said he likely could not understand; he must have been childish, or he wouldn’t bring such a point. Mahavira said: you stopped; stopping was happening—and it has happened! You saw the mat stopping; another action was proceeding alongside—it has completed. And how long will your mat remain half open? Since it has begun to open, it will open. Return and see. When he returned, he found someone had unrolled it and was resting on it. This man spoiled the entire principle!

When Mahavira said what is happening has happened, he meant: what is happening is the present; what has happened is the future. The bud is blossoming—it has blossomed—it will blossom. The flower will appear in the future; now it is blossoming; it is a bud—but since it is blossoming, it will blossom. Its blossoming has happened somewhere.

Let us see from another angle; it is a little difficult. We always look from the past. The bud is blossoming. Our ordinary thinking is past-oriented. We say: the bud is moving towards the flower; the bud will become the flower. But the opposite is also possible! It is as if I push you from behind; you move forward. It could also be that someone pulls you from ahead. The movement can be either way. I push you from behind—you go forward. Or someone pulls you from the front—no push from behind—and you go forward.

Astrology considers it incomplete to say: the past pushes and the future happens. The complete view is: the past pushes and the future pulls. The bud is becoming a flower—not only that—the flower calls the bud to become a flower; it pulls. The past is behind, the future ahead; in the present moment there is a bud. The entire past pushes: open! The entire future invites: open! Under the pressure of both, the bud becomes a flower. If there were no future, the past alone could not make the flower, for the flower needs space in the future. If there is no space ahead, however much I push you from behind, a wall in front prevents you from moving. Space is needed. I push, and the space ahead must accept you, invite you in as a guest. Only then will my push be effective. For my push to work, the future must offer room. The past operates; the future gives place.

In astrology’s view, the perspective rooted solely in the past is incomplete—half scientific. The future is calling all the time, pulling all the time. We do not know; we do not see—this is the weakness of our eyes. We do not see far; we see nothing of tomorrow.

Look at Krishnamurti’s horoscope sometime—you will be amazed. Had Annie Besant and Leadbeater worried to look, they would never have worked with him. For the chart clearly says: whatever organization he joins, he will destroy; any institution he belongs to, he will dissolve. The organization he joins will die.

But Annie Besant could not have believed it; who could imagine! Yet that is what happened. Theosophy tried to raise him up. Because of him Theosophy was struck such a blow that it died as a movement. Then she created the ‘Star of the East.’ One day Krishnamurti dissolved it and walked away. She had poured her life into building it—and destroyed herself.

But even Krishnamurti had little say in this. The stars under which he was born bore a direct message: he would be destructive to any institution. Within any institution he would prove disintegrative.

The future is not utterly uncertain. Our knowledge is uncertain. Our ignorance is vast. We see nothing of tomorrow; we are blind. Because we see nothing, we say it is not determinate. But if we begin to see—astrology is a process of seeing into the future!

Astrology is not merely: what do planets say? what does calculation say? That is only one dimension. There are other dimensions for knowing the future. Lines are etched on the palm, the forehead, the feet. But those are very superficial. In the body are hidden chakras. Each has its own sensitivity, its own moment-to-moment frequency. They can be tested. Within man lies the store of samskaras—the seeds of the past.

Ron Hubbard has introduced a new word and inquiry in the West—though for the East it is ancient. The inquiry is: time-track. Hubbard holds that every person—wherever he has lived on this earth, or elsewhere on other planets—as man, animal, plant, stone—wherever in the infinite journey he has lived, the entire time-track is still preserved within him. And that stream can be opened; one can be reflowed into it.

Among Hubbard’s discoveries, this is precious. He says within man there is not only the daily memory, but a deeper memory of all essential experiences gathered across infinite life-paths. He called it the ‘engrams’—engrained within. They lie buried, whole—like a tape hidden in your pocket. It can be played. When it is played, Mahavira called it jati-smarana—remembrance of past births; Hubbard calls it the time-track—moving back in time. When it opens, it is not that you remember. You re-live. When the time-track opens, you do not say, ‘I recall.’ You re-live it.

Understand: if your time-track is opened—which is not hard—and astrology without it is incomplete—astrology’s deepest grasp is to open your past, for if your past is fully known, your future is known, because the future is born out of the past. Without knowing the past, the future cannot be known; your future will be the child of your past. First, the entire memory-line must be opened.

If your memory line is opened—there are processes and methods—suppose you are re-living being a six-year-old slapped by your father—you will not feel, ‘I remember being six.’ You will re-live it. While you are living it, if I ask your name, you will say, ‘Babloo.’ You will not say ‘Purushottam Das.’ The six-year-old will answer. You are re-living, not recalling; Purushottam Das is not recalling when he was six; Purushottam Das has become six. He will say, ‘Babloo!’ Whatever answer comes will come from the six-year-old.

If you are taken into a past life and are re-living being a lion, and if you are provoked then, you will roar like a lion; you will not speak like a man. You may attack with nails and claws. If you are re-living being a stone and asked something, you will fall utterly silent; you will not speak; you will remain as a stone.

Hubbard has helped thousands. If a man cannot speak properly, Hubbard says: he is stuck at some childhood memory; he has not moved beyond it. He takes him back on the time-track, breaks the engram, and when the person becomes six again—where he had stopped—he returns; the flow breaks; the person comes back to thirty. The gap of twenty-four years is bridged. Astonishingly, thousands of medicines could not help him speak, but returning on the time-track and coming back—he becomes able to speak.

Many illnesses arise only because of the time-track. Asthma, for example: an asthmatic’s date is fixed. Every year, on the exact date, his asthma returns. Hence there is no real cure—because asthma is not primarily a bodily disease; it is a time-track fixation, a stuck memory. When the person re-lives that time—say the 12th of such-and-such month, the rainy day—he prepares: now it will happen; he becomes anxious.

You will be surprised: this time the asthma he has is a re-living; it is not a new asthma—he is re-living last year’s 12th. Treating it, you entangle him. There is no point treating him. The man who needs treatment is the one of a year ago—to whom you cannot give medicines. The drugs you give now go into the present person; but the sick one is the one of last year. There is no coordination between them. Your every medicinal failure strengthens his asthma and convinces him nothing will help. He prepares for next year. Seventy out of a hundred diseases are events fixed on the time-track that we keep re-living.

Astrology is not only the study of the stars—though it is that; we shall talk of it. It is also an effort, from many directions, to feel out the future. To grasp it, the past must be grasped. To grasp it, we must recognize the marks left on your body and mind by the past.

There are marks on your body, and on your mind. Since astrologers became stuck on bodily marks, astrology lost depth. Bodily lines are very superficial. The line on your palm can change immediately with a change of mind. If you are hypnotically convinced you will die in fifteen days, and that conviction is reinforced every day, whether you die or not, your life-line will break at fifteen days. A gap will appear. The body accepts that death is coming.

The body’s lines are very surface phenomena; deeper within is mind. And the mind you know is not the deepest; it is very shallow. Deep within is the mind you do not know. In this body too, deeper within, are the chakras that yoga speaks of—accumulations of your treasure across births. One who knows how to place a hand upon your chakras can know their speed. By touching your seven chakras it can be known whether you have ever had certain experiences or not.

I have experimented on the chakras of hundreds. I was amazed: commonly only one or two chakras move; the third scarcely begins; it has never been set in motion; it lies closed; never used.

That is your past. If someone comes to me and I see all seven chakras moving, I can say: this is your last life; there will be no next life. If seven chakras have moved, there is no possibility of another birth. In this life will come nirvana, liberation.

When anyone came to Mahavira, he would be concerned: how many chakras of this person are functioning? How much work is fitting with him? What can be? Will effort bear fruit, and when? How many births will it take?

Astrology is an attempt to feel the future—through many avenues. Among them, the most popular was the influence of planets and stars upon man. For this, scientific bases accumulate day by day: life is affected, and cannot be unaffected.

The remaining difficulty: is the individual affected—each one? This worries scientists: each person, among three, three and a half, four billion? Each uniquely?

But they should say: where is the difficulty? If nature can give each person an individual thumbprint and never repeat it—keeping such fine accounts that, for this useless thing, the thumb, which seems purposeless to us—she grants such uniqueness; then why should she not grant uniqueness to each Atman and life? There is no reason she cannot.

Science moves slowly—and rightly so. Until facts are fully proven, not an inch should be advanced. Prophets leap; they state what will be concluded thousands of years later. Science moves inch by inch, in language even primary school minds can grasp; not the language of prophets and visionaries who see far. Science has other aims.

Astrology is essentially the search for the future; science is essentially the search for the past—the search for cause. Astrology seeks the effect. There is a great difference. Yet science is daily discovering things once thought impossible.

As I said earlier, scientists now accept that each person is born with a built-in personality. Earlier they would not accept this. Astrology has always said so. Consider a seed of a mango. Within it, in some form, there must be a built-in program—a blueprint—for the tree that will arise. Otherwise, without expert advice or university training, how does the seed produce a mango tree? Again the same leaves, the same mangoes. Within this pit, there must be a concealed program. Without it, what could the seed do? Everything that will appear must be hidden within. We cut and dissect; we do not see it. Yet it must be. Otherwise, sometimes a neem would sprout from a mango. But no such error occurs. It is always mango—repeating itself.

In this little seed, if all the instructions are hidden—how to sprout, how to form leaves and branches, how long to live, how tall to grow—how many fruits, how sweet, whether they will ripen—if all this is hidden; then, when you enter the mother’s womb, will not everything be hidden in your seed?

Scientists now accept that eye color is hidden, hair color, height, propensities towards health or disease, the intelligence quotient. Without such a program, how would you develop? How will one bone become a hand, another a foot? One part of skin become an eye, another an ear? One bone hear, another see—how?

Earlier, scientists said, by chance. But ‘chance’ sounds unscientific. If by chance, sometimes the foot would see and the hand hear! But such chance is not seen; rather, order is evident. Astrology says a more scientific thing: everything is available in the seed. If we can read the seed—decode it—ask it its intentions—we can make declarations about the person!

About trees, scientists have begun to declare. In twenty years they will declare about man. Until now we have thought astrology is superstition; if science makes the declarations, that is also astrology—science will be doing astrology.

In the oldest Egyptian text of astrology—which Pythagoras studied and brought to Greece—there is this: would that we might know all; then there would be no future. Because we do not know all—only a few know—a portion remains unknown and becomes the ‘future.’ We have to say, ‘perhaps,’ because much is unknown. If all were known, we could say, ‘It will be exactly thus’—not a hair’s breadth different.

If everything is hidden in man’s seed—then what I am speaking today must, in some way, have been possible in my seed; otherwise how could I speak it? If someday it becomes possible to peep into the human seed, then, seeing mine, it could have been declared what I would speak, what I could be or not be, what would happen or not. It is no wonder if, today or tomorrow, we become able to gaze into that seed.

The birth chart, the horoscope, is the probing of that. For thousands of years the effort has been: this child who is born, what might he become? If we gain some sense, perhaps we can facilitate him; perhaps we can build appropriate hopes; perhaps, knowing what is to be, we can come into accord with it.

At the end of his life, Mulla Nasruddin said: I was always unhappy; then one day I became happy. The whole village was surprised: the man forever miserable, who always saw the dark side of things—how did he become happy? He who was always a pessimist, always asking where the thorns were!

Once, in Nasruddin’s orchard, an excellent crop of apples came—trees laden! A neighbor thought: now at least he cannot complain. He said, ‘This year such a harvest—gold will rain—what do you say, Nasruddin?’ Nasruddin, very glum, said, ‘All else is fine; but where will you get rotten apples to feed the animals? There’s the trouble: all are good; not a single rotten one!’

One day that man suddenly became joyous. The villagers asked: you—happy! What is the secret? Nasruddin said: I have learned to cooperate with the inevitable. I fought long; now I have decided: what is to be, will be. I cooperate with the inevitable. There is no cause for sorrow. Now I am happy.

Astrology was the search for many things—cooperation with the inevitable; not to struggle uselessly against what is bound to happen; not to demand uselessly what is not to happen. To make man religious, to bring him to tathata—to suchness—into ultimate acceptance: astrology was a device. It has many dimensions.

So, gradually, we shall speak on each dimension. For today, only this much: the universe is a living body—an organic unity. Nothing in it is separate; all is conjoined. The farthest is linked to the nearest; nothing is unlinked. Let no one remain under the illusion that he is an isolated island. No one is separate; all is joined. We are continuously influencing one another and being influenced. Even a stone lying by the roadside, as you pass, throws its rays toward you. A flower too. And you do not just pass—you too are throwing your rays. I said we are influenced by moon and stars. Astrology’s deeper insight is that the moon and stars are influenced by us too. Influence is never one-way. When a Buddha is born on earth, let not the moon think that no storms subside on the moon because of him, or no tempests are raised. If sunspots and solar storms spread diseases here, then when a Buddha is born and a current of peace and deep meditation flows on earth, even on the sun storms find it harder to spread. All is joined.

A blade of grass influences the sun; the sun influences the blade. Neither is the grass so small that the sun may say, ‘I care not for you,’ nor is the sun so great that it may say, ‘What can the grass do for me?’ Life is interconnected. Here, none is small or great; there is an organic unity—an Ekātma. Only when this sense of oneness enters your awareness can astrology be understood; otherwise, it cannot.

So for today I have said this much. Tomorrow we shall slowly speak on other dimensions.