OSHO ON ASTROLOGY-PART ONE
By OSHO
Hidden Mysteries of Astrology (PART ONE)
By OSHO (Guru RAJNISH)
Here is a highly informative and interesting discourse on Astrology by Osho which explains in plain and simple English the hidden mysteries of Astrology i.e. the science of predicting future.
This discourse by the name of Astrology: "The Science of Cosmic Oneness" was given by Osho to a live audience on 9th July 1971 PM in Woodlands, Bombay, India. This is an extremely interesting and highly informative. I hope you will gain some deepest insight into the world of Astrology through it.
“He who achieves rest within this cosmic circular movement of the world, I call religious. He is religious who knows that universal forces are at work and there is no hurry — that his hurry is of no use. If we can only be one with the universal harmony, it is enough — and it is blissful” – Osho(RAJNISH)
Astrology- The Science of Cosmic Oneness
Astrology is perhaps the most ancient subject and also in a way the most tabooed. It is the most ancient because as far back as we have been able to investigate the history of mankind, astrology has been in existence. Astrological inscriptions have been found on bone remnants from the Sumerian civilization which existed twenty-five thousand years before Jesus. Bone remnants have been discovered with astrological inscriptions and with an outline of the moon’s orbit in the sky.
But in India this science is even older. In the Rig-Veda, reference is made to a certain constellation of the stars which could only have occurred ninety-five thousand years ago. Because of this, Lokmanya Tilak concluded that the Vedas must certainly be even more ancient: the constellation of the stars as the Vedas described it could only have occurred at a certain moment ninety-five thousand years ago, so that particular Vedic reference must be at least ninety-five thousand years old.
That particular Vedic reference could not have been added at a later period. Other, younger generations would not have been able to work out a constellation that existed many years before. But now we have scientific methods which we can use to discover where the stars were at a particular moment in the distant past.
The deepest laws of astrology were first discovered in India. In fact it was only because of astrology that mathematics was born. To make astrological calculations, first mathematics was needed.
The digits used in arithmetic were invented in India — the numbers one to ten which exist in all the world’s languages are basically Indian in origin. And throughout the world the decimal system has been accepted: the decimal system was born in India, and it slowly spread throughout the entire world. When you say “nine” in English, it is only a modification of the Sanskrit word Nava. When you say “eight” in English, it is only a modification of the Sanskrit word Ashta. The numerals one to nine, prevalent in all the world’s languages, came into existence only because of the influence of Indian astrology.
The first knowledge about the existence of astrology reached the Sumerian civilization from India. Six thousand years before Jesus, the Sumerians were the first to open the doors of astrology to the Western world. The Sumerians laid the foundation for the scientific study of the constellation. They constructed a gigantic tower, seven hundred feet tall, and from that tower Sumerian priests used to observe the sky twenty-four hours a day. Sumerian metaphysicians soon learned that whatever happens to mankind is somehow ultimately connected with the stars — they are the source.
Six thousand years before Jesus, it was the view in Sumeria that whenever illness occurs, whenever epidemics are born, the stars are somehow connected. These days there is a scientific basis for this view. And those who understand the science of astrology today say it was the Sumerians who began the history of mankind.
In 1920 a Russian scientist, Chijevsky, investigated this matter deeply and discovered that every eleven years, enormous explosions take place on the sun. Every eleven years a nuclear explosion occurs on the sun. Chijevsky discovered that whenever such nuclear explosions occur on the sun, wars and revolutions commence on earth. According to him, during the past seven hundred years, whenever such phenomena have occurred on the sun, there have been disasters on earth.
Chijevsky’s analysis was so undeniable, and because it went against the Marxist viewpoint, in 1920 Stalin had him arrested and thrown into prison. Only after Stalin’s death could Chijevsky be released. For Stalin, Chijevsky’s conclusions must have seemed very strange. According to Marxist and communist thinking, whatever revolutions occur on the earth is fundamentally caused by economic differences among men. But Chijevsky declared that the cause of revolutions is the explosions happening on the sun.
How can explosions on the sun possibly be related to the existence of poverty or wealth in the lives of men? If Chijevsky’s thesis is correct, then Marx’s entire system disintegrates into dust. Then you can’t explain revolutions any longer in reference to economics and class struggle; then only astrology can explain revolution.
Chijevsky could not be proved wrong. His seven hundred year calculation was so scientific, the connection he established between explosions on the sun and phenomena on the earth was so close, that to prove him wrong was difficult. But to send him to Siberia was a simple matter.
After Stalin’s death Khrushchev released Chijevsky from Siberia. Fifty valuable years of this man’s life were lost in Siberia. After his release he could not live longer than four to six months, but in those few months he gathered together even more evidence for his thesis. He also linked the spread of epidemics on the earth to solar influence.
The sun is not a static ball of fire, as we ordinarily think, but rather an infinitely alive and dynamic, fiery organism. Every moment the sun changes its mood. And when the sun changes its mood even a little bit, life on earth trembles. Nothing happens on the earth without something happening on the sun. When there is a solar eclipse, the birds in the jungle stop singing twenty-four hours before. During the entire time of the eclipse the whole earth becomes silent. The birds stop their singing and all of the animals in the jungle become oppressed and frightened, full of apprehension. The monkeys abandon their trees and come down below. They form themselves into groups, apparently as a means of protection. And it is a surprising thing that these monkeys, who are always gossiping and making a hue and cry, become so quiet at the time of the eclipse that even sadhus and sannyasins in meditation cannot compare with them.
Chijevsky explained this entire matter, but such thinking first originated in Sumeria. Afterwards, a Swiss physician named Paracelsus discovered more information. He made an unparalleled discovery — and this discovery will transform all of medical science, if not today then tomorrow. Up until now this discovery could not be considered valid because astrology is such an ignored subject — the most ancient, the most ignored, and the most respected at the same time.
Last year in France it was calculated that forty-five percent of the people believe that astrology is a science. In America, five thousand leading astrologers are currently at work night and day. They have so many clients that they can never finish their work properly — Americans pay millions of dollars yearly to astrologers. It is estimated that throughout the world, seventy-eight percent of people believe in astrology. This seventy-eight percent who believe in astrology includes a very large number of scientists, thinkers, and other intelligent people.
C.J. Jung said that the doors of the universities have been closed to astrology for three hundred years, but that in the coming thirty years astrology will open those doors and again enter the university. It will be able to because claims that astrology has made which have up to now been unproved can now be proved.
Paracelsus gave birth to one discovery — that man becomes ill only when the harmonious relationship between him and the constellation of the stars at his birth somehow breaks down. For this, a little explanation is necessary. Many years before Paracelsus, a Greek named Pythagoras gave birth to the very valuable principle of planetary harmony. When Pythagoras proclaimed this principle in Greece, he had just returned from a journey to Egypt and India. When he had come to India, it was intensely absorbed in the ideas of Buddha and Mahavira. After his return to Greece, he included in his reports a specific reference to Buddhist and Jaina sadhus. He gave the Jaina seers the name Jainosophists, and also reported that they walk about naked.
Pythagoras believed that every star, every planet and every satellite gives out a unique vibration through its movement as it travels in space. Every movement of the stars gives out a vibration, and every star has its own individual movement. All the vibrations of the stars together make a musical harmony which he called the harmony of the universe.
When you are born, the melody that is created by the tuning of the stars at that time is inscribed on your mind in its freshest, most unsophisticated, and most sensitive state — that of birth. Throughout your life this will cause good health or ill health. When you live in tune with the original musical harmony that existed at the time of your birth, then you are healthy. And whenever you’re tuning with this fundamental musical harmony breaks down, you become ill.
In this connection, Paracelsus has done very significant work. He would not prescribe medicine to any patient until he had seen his kundali — his astrological birth chart. And it is a surprising thing that after having examined a patient’s birth chart, Paracelsus would cure patients who had confused other physicians — patients who could not be cured by any other physician. He used to say, “Until I know the position of the stars at the time of this man’s birth, it is not possible to know the notes of his inner harmony. Unless I know the arrangement of his inner harmony, how can this man be made healthy?”
But what is meant by health? This we must try to understand. Ordinarily, if we ask a physician what the definition of health is, he will only say that health is the absence of sickness. But this definition is negative. It is unfortunate that we must define health in terms of illness. Health is a positive thing, a positive state: illness is negative. Health is our nature; illness is an attack on nature. So it is very strange that we must define health in terms of illness. To define the host in terms of the guest — this is very strange.
Health coexists with us; illness comes occasionally. Health accompanies us at birth; illness is a superficial phenomenon. But if we ask a physician what is the meaning of health, he can only say that health is present when illness is absent.
Paracelsus used to say that this interpretation is wrong — the concept of health needs to be positively defined. But how can we reach a positive definition, an interpretation of the concept of health that will be creative?
Paracelsus used to say, “Until we know the state of your inner harmony, we can at the most release you from your illness — because your inner harmony is the source of your health. But when we release you from one illness, you will immediately catch another, because nothing has been done about your inner harmony. Your inner harmony has to be supported.”
Five hundred years have passed since Paracelsus, and his discoveries have disappeared into oblivion. But now, during the past twenty years, astrology has re-emerged. During this time a new science has been born. I will describe this new science a bit, and then you will be able to understand the ancient science of astrology more easily.
In 1950 a new science was born called cosmic chemistry. The originator of this science is Georgi Giardi, one of the most significant men of the century. This man, after endless experiments in the laboratory, proved in a scientific way that the whole universe is an organic unity — that the whole universe is one body. If my finger is hurt, then my whole body is affected. “Body” means that no limb is separate, all are joined together. If my eye is in pain, then my big toe also experiences that pain. If my foot is hurt, the message reaches the heart. If my mind is ill, my entire body will be disturbed. If my whole body is destroyed, then it will be difficult for my mind to find anywhere to be. The body is an organic unity: touch a single part and the whole body vibrates; all parts are affected.
Cosmic chemistry says that the entire cosmos is a body. Nothing in it stands apart, all things are joined together. So no matter how distant a star may be from us, when it changes our heartbeats also change. And no matter how far away the sun may be, when it becomes very disturbed our blood circulation is also disturbed. Every eleven years an atomic storm occurs on the sun. T he last time such a great atomic storm and fiery explosions were going on, a Japanese doctor named Tamatto made an amazing discovery. This doctor had been doing work on women’s blood for twenty years. There is one property unique to female blood which is absent in the blood of males. At the time of menstruation the blood of women becomes thin, but men’s blood always remains the same. Women’s blood at the time of menstruation grows thin; at the time of pregnancy also their blood grows thin. This is one basic difference between the blood of men and women, according to Tamatto. But when atomic energy storms were occurring on the sun with great intensity, the blood of men also grew thin. This was a very novel phenomenon. Before this it had never been recorded that men’s blood was affected by disturbances on the sun. And if blood can be so affected, then anything can be affected.
There is an American thinker, Frank Brown, who has been trying to arrange facilities for travelers in space. For half his life, he has made it his task to ensure that the men who travel into space will face no difficulty. The most serious problem is how they will be affected as they leave the earth. No one knows how much atomic radiation they may encounter or how it may affect them.
For two thousand years after Aristotle, in the West it was thought that space is empty, that nothing is there: two hundred miles away from earth the atmosphere ceases and there is empty space. But the investigations of space travelers have proved this notion to be wrong. Space is not empty, it is very full. It is neither empty nor dead — it is extremely alive.
The truth is that the two-hundred-mile wide layer of the earth’s atmosphere prevents many harmful influences from reaching us. But in space all kinds of strange currents are flowing, the effects of which man may not be able to withstand.
You will be surprised to learn this, and you will laugh, but before he would let a man be sent into space, Frank Brown sent a potato into space. It was Brown’s contention that there is very little essential difference between a man and a potato. If the potato rots, then man cannot survive; if the potato survives, then man may also survive. The potato is a very hardy organism, and man is very sensitive. If even a potato cannot survive in space then for man there is no hope of survival. If a potato returns alive, and if it sprouts after being sown in the ground, then man can be sent into space. However, there would still be fear concerning man’s ability to survive.
From his experiment Brown proved one more thing — that a potato seed lying in the ground, or any seed lying in the ground, grows only in relation to the sun. The sun alone arouses it and encourages it to emerge. The sun alone summons the embryo plant and induces its growth.
Brown also did research in another field. This other subject has even now not been given a suitable name, but at present it is called planetary heredity. There is another word in English, horoscope, which comes from the Greek horoscopes. The meaning of the word horoscope is: I observe the emerging planets.
When a child is born, at that moment many stars are emerging all around the earth’s horizon. Just as the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, so stars rise and set in space twenty-four hours a day. If a child is being born at six o’clock in the morning, at that time the sun too is rising. At that time some stars are also being birth, and other stars are setting. Some stars are ascendant; some stars are on the decline, other stars are rising. This child is being born into a certain arrangement of stars in space.
Up until now we have doubted — and even now many people not deeply familiar with the subject still doubt — that the moon and stars can have anything to do with man. Wherever the stars may be, what difference will it make to some child being born in a village? And then too, on the same date, under the same constellation not just one child but thousands of children are born…. Among these one may become the president of some country, but the remainder will not. Among these one may die after one hundred years, and another after two days. Among these one will be a genius and one will be an idiot. So from a superficial viewpoint one might ask how a child can be related to a horoscope just by being born under a certain constellation and planetary pattern.
The logic of such a question seems clear and direct: Why would the stars be concerned with the birth of a single child? And then also, not just one child is born; under the very same stars many are born who are not all alike. From such logic it seems that the birth of a human being has no connection with the stars.
But from the investigations of Brown, Picardi, Tamatto and others, we can draw a great conclusion. All these scientists say that while we can’t yet claim that a child as an individual is influenced by the stars, still, we can now say for certain that life as a whole is affected. Whether a child is influenced as an individual we cannot now say or know, but life as a whole is. And if life as a whole is, then as we investigate the facts of the matter more deeply we will discover that the individual, too, is affected by the stars.
One thing more must be considered. It has been thought that astrology is a science which, because it originated in an earlier time, could not develop. But in my view the situation is just the opposite. Astrology was an infinitely developed science in some extremely advanced civilization, but that civilization has been lost and only incomplete fragments of its astrology has remained in our hands.
Astrology is not a new science which needs to be developed, but a science which was at one time very advanced. Then the civilization which developed it was lost. Civilizations come and go every day: the fundamentals, the basic sayings and the basic principles of those things which have been developed by them, become lost.
Today, science is approaching the point where it will accept the thesis that life as a whole is affected by the movements of the stars.
At the time of birth, the condition of a child’s mind is exactly like a very sensitive photo plate…. Two or three things need to be thought about if we want to understand how life is affected. And only if life is affected can there be the possibility of astrology — not otherwise.
We should try to understand the phenomenon of twins. Two types of twins exist. One is identical twins — those who are born from one egg. The other type is those who, although they are twins, are born from separate eggs; in the mother’s womb two eggs become fertilized, and two children are born. The first type is more rare — two children from one egg. They are very significant subjects to study, because they are born at the same time. Out of necessity we call the children born from separate eggs, “twins,” but the moment of their birth is not exactly the same. It must be understood that birth is an ambiguous phenomenon. The first aspect of birth is conception — the actual birth takes place on the day when the foetus is conceived in the mother’s womb. This is actual birth. What you call birth is really birth number two — when the child comes out of the mother’s womb.
If we were to carry out a complete astrological investigation — as the Hindus alone have done, and done very thoroughly — then our actual concern would not begin when the child is born. Our actual concern begins when the child starts its journey in the mother’s womb, when the embryo takes shape — because that is the actual birth. So Hindus have also come to feel that if a particular type of child is to take birth, it will be born if intercourse and pregnancy occur under an arrangement of planets and constellation most suitable for that type. Now I will explain to you a little of the background of this, because much work has been done in this area and many things have become clear.
Ordinarily, when a child is born at six o’clock in the morning, we think that the constellation which exists at that time influences the child. My view is different, fundamentally different. Just because a child is born at six o’clock in the morning the stars don’t cast their influence over him. No. Rather, the child chooses to be born under those stars which will influence him as he wishes to be influenced. This is a radically different thing. When the child is taking birth, then it chooses the planets and stars and the moment at which it will take birth. And if we go still more deeply, then the child also chooses the time of its conception.
Every soul chooses its own time of conception — when it will accept a womb, at which moment. The moment of conception is not insignificant. It is significant in that it is a question of how the entire universe exists at that moment and to what sort of possibilities the universe opens the door at that moment.
When two children are conceived together from one egg, then the moment of their conception is the same and the moment of their birth is the same. It is interesting that the lives of the two children who have taken birth from one egg are so alike that it is difficult to say that the moment of birth has no influence. The I.Q. of twins born from one egg is just about equal. And the fractional difference which arises — those who know say that it is because of our faulty measuring devices. Even now we have not been able to develop adequate criteria by which we can quantitatively measure intelligence.
Even if twins born from the same egg are brought up far apart from each other, still their I.Q.’s do not differ. Even if one child is raised in India and another in China, and neither is aware of the existence of the other, this will still be true. Cases have occurred where such twins have been raised far apart from each other until they have attained maturity, but their I.Q.’s did not differ. It is surprising that the I.Q. can be associated with the child’s potential at birth.
When the twin who lives in China suffers from a cold, at that time its twin in India also suffers from a cold. Generally, twins born from one egg die in the same year. At the most, three years elapse between their deaths, and at the least, three days — but never more than three years. If one twin has died then we can assume that after three days or within three years, the other will die. Their attitudes, their behavior, their feelings, are parallel, and it seems that the two live in almost exactly the same way. Their similarity is seen in many other things also — each acts like a copy of the other.
Is the moment of birth so influential that their lifetimes are of about the same lengths, that their I.Q.’s are almost equal, that their bodily behavior is the same, that when the two fall ill it is from the same illness, and that when the two become well again it is from the same medicine? Can the moment of birth be so influential?
Astrology has been saying that the moment of birth is even more important than this. Up until now science has not agreed with astrology, but now it is beginning to do so. In coming to this increasing agreement, some new experiments have been helpful.
For example --- At the time when we launched an artificial satellite into space, we learnt that a network of infinite types of radiation continuously pour out from the universe and from the constellations, and are diffused throughout the earth. On the earth, nothing is unaffected by this phenomenon. We know that the ocean is influenced by the moon, but we have not taken into consideration the fact that the same relative proportion of water and salt that occurs in the ocean occurs also in the human body — the same proportion. Forty-five percent of the human body consists of water, and the proportion of salt contained in that water is the same as is contained in thousands of bays. If the water in the ocean is affected by the moon, then how could the water inside the human body remain unaffected?
Now, in this connection, two or three facts emerging from recent investigations must be kept in mind. For example, as the day of the full moon approaches, the amount of madness in the world increases. And on the last day of the darker fourteen days, the least number of people go mad. As the moon grows brighter the proportion of madmen also begins to increase. On the day of the full moon, the greatest number of people enter madhouses; and on the last day of the moon’s waning period, the greatest number of people are discharged from madhouses. Statistics are now available….
In English there is the word lunatic; in Hindi there is the word chaandmara. Chaand refers to the moon, just as lunar does in English. Chaandmara is a very ancient terms, and the word lunatic also is some three thousand years old. Some three thousand years ago, the thought came to men that the moon does something to the insane. But if it does something to the insane, then how can it avoid affecting the sane?
In the final analysis, the construction of the brain and the internal composition of the body are the same for all. Yes, it may be that the moon affects madmen to a greater extent, and the sane to a lesser extent. This is simply a quantitative difference. But it is impossible that the sane remain completely unaffected by the moon. If that was true, then nobody could go mad — because everyone who goes mad was once sane. The moon must first do something to those who are sane.
Professor Brown made an interesting study. He was a man completely without faith in astrology. He was a disbeliever, and in his earlier writings he had very much ridiculed astrology. But despite his skepticism he began some investigation. He gathered together the kundali, the birth charts of many famous generals, doctors, and other professions. But then he found himself in great difficulty because he discovered that members of a certain profession were born under a special planet, under the same constellation. For instance, among all famous generals the influence of Mars upon their lives is very strong. In the lives of professors the influence of Mars is completely absent.
The study which Brown carried out on some fifty thousand men who are generals, reveals that in the lives of these men the influence of Mars is very strong. Generally, when such personalities take birth, the planet Mars is ascending. The moment of their birth is the moment that Mars begins to rise. Just the opposite to this, no matter how many professors there are in the world, they never take birth at the time of the planet Mars’ ascension. If it happened only occasionally, you could think it a coincidence — but there cannot be a hundred thousand cases of coincidence.
Mathematicians are born under a specific constellation; poets are never born under this same constellation. In an occasional case there can be a coincidence, but when it happens so often it cannot be a coincidence.
In fact there is a great difference in behavior among people of different professions and occupations — for example, between poets, mathematicians, generals, and pacifists. On the one hand there can be a man like Bertrand Russell who says that there should be peace in the world, and on the other hand a man like Nietzsche who says that the day war ceases the world will cease to be meaningful. Between them is there only an intellectual dispute, or also a dispute of stars? Is there only an intellectual distance between them, or does the moment of their births also separate them?
The more research is done, the more it is being discovered that the talents of a man are revealed by the time of his birth. Those who know even a little bit about astrology say that this happens by his being born under a specific constellation. But I want to say to you that man chooses the constellation under which he is to be born. According to what he wants to be — whatever his innate possibilities, whatever the shape of his last life taken in its entirety, whatever his motivating consciousness — he will be born under the appropriate constellation. Every child, every new life, insists on a specific moment for birth before its entry. It wants to be born at a specific moment, only at this moment does it wish to be conceived. His desire and that moment are interdependent.
As I have told you, the water of the ocean is subject to certain influences. But all life is created out of water; without water, no life is possible. So in ancient Greece, seers used to say that only from water is life born, that water is life. Ancient Indian, Chinese and other mythologies also say this. Today scientists who believe in evolution also say that life was born in water, that perhaps the first life on the planet lived in the water. This was the first form of life, and then out of this, man eventually evolved.
THANKS FOR READING
TO BE CONTINUED