Astrology and the Environment

A discourse by Guruji Sri Amritananda Natha
May 2006, at Devipuram

You can change the future, but you cannot know it. You can know the past, but you cannot change it. The present is the interface between knowing and changing, between knowing and acting. The past is history, the future a mystery. The past is His-story and the future is Her-story. The future belongs to the Mother and the past belongs to the Father.

It would be nice to know the future. All fear is caused by not knowing what the future holds. So people try to dispel its mystery by various means, such as astrology. And astrology can sometimes be a convenient thing, too! Say somebody has made a marriage proposal to your daughter. You don’t like the match, but you don’t want to take the blame for rejecting it. So you say, “The stars are bad; what can we do?”

As a result, many people conclude that astrology is based on myth. And it seems like a pretty good conclusion, doesn’t it? Think about it: “What is your time of birth?” Well, what does that mean? Is it the time when the sperm meets the egg? Or is it when life occurs in the womb, which is the third month? Or is it when the head comes out of the womb? Or when the whole body comes out? Or when you cut the umbilical cord? What is the precise time of birth? Nobody specifies. What for? That’s why they call astrology a pseudo-science.

But if we understand that every human being has a life, and that every planet has a life, and that each life interacts somehow with all other lives and therefore exerts some influence – well, then we can begin to understand astrology. The solar system has a life. And within that living entity, each planet is influencing the system’s other entities in subtle ways that don’t depend upon distance. To understand these interactions, or to get the right intuition about them, you need to do sadhana. For sadhakas, astrology works 100 percent. For people who want to earn money, it’s all bunkum. There is a science and a non-science to astrology. And that is the difference between them.

So you do your sadhana. And once you realize that you are the Truth, what need have you to do more? Once you realize that all efforts take you away from yourself, then you can remove all the effort and just be what you are. What sadhana am I doing? I’m sitting and talking. I’m not doing japa. I’m not doing anything, just easing myself into a state of peace. That is what I’m doing.