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Astrology
My two cents
on "Eastern &Western Astrology..."
by Rohini Ranjan
 This article in some ways has been triggered by Hank Friedman's recent
article,
Teachings in Western and Vedic Astrology
recently published on the B.C. based
Fraser Valley Astrology Guild site. This site bravely addresses both sides
of the astrological coin (assuming that there is indeed a coin with two
sides, as opposed to there being only one side of the coin better studied
and currently being divided into several territories - kind of like what
happens in the REAL world we live in).
The COIN is not something that exclusively belongs to ASTROLOGY but to
what I call the "DYNAMIC human experience" or as some would define: A
collective personal view of perceived reality. The 'DYNAMIC' pertains to
the changeable focus and perspective as we humans evolve - hence an ever
moving target!
Perhaps it is a human quality or pressure of the modern times, but most
astrologers of western or eastern kinds seem to be eager, too eager! Too
eager to claim and even try to prove that astrology is something vital,
must be preserved at all costs and that must not become the proverbial
baby that humankind has for centuries been tossing out with the bathwater.
Miraculously, the proverbial "BABY" of reality has FOREVER survived! After
all, back then those were really p-o-w-e-r-f-u-l times seemingly belonging
to rulers and priests - the keepers of religion, morality and all that is
good and godly, when hemlock was served in giant servings, killing
historically documented great minds (BUT SURPRISINGLY NOT THEIR THOUGHTS
OR TEACHINGS!). Invading cultures PLUNDERED IN trying to erase and efface
the traces of the conquered cultures and their banked knowledge. And in
more modern <civilized as our politicians keep reminding us> times, the
likes of Adolf Hitler who have tried to wipe out the likes of Einstein and
the ancient cultures that receive the likes of him as godly reminders of
what it is really all about!
Sure enough, we rejoice and celebrate in the achievements of individuals
-- their strength and survival but really what matters in the long run is
the survival of the body of TRUTH. This brings our collective evolution as
humankind a step further, an evolution that somehow seems to be protected
in a divine manner. I do not want to wax devotional - but really -
considering how frail the human organism and its products are, it is
amazing that bodies of knowledge worldwide have survived barbaric foreign
invasions, often brutal and other attempts at annihilation in other ways,
and here we are hundreds if not thousands of years after the ancient craft
of ASTROLOGY had been attempted to be suppressed by different forms of
religions, churches and other HUMAN houses of God and more recently by
Science or shall we say, the Modern Church of Rationality? Yet,
miraculously we still have the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra and the
Tetrabiblios - mostly intact and still very relevant and meaningful!
Time to say: H-a-l-l-e-l-u-j-a-h?
But, then we must re-turn to
business and the business has another name: pragmatic REALITY!
I have been on the cyber-astrological scene for some decades and despite
being a jyotishi living in North America, I had been privileged to enjoy
the welcome warmth of being allowed to create a niche for the facet of the
ancient craft that I love and am dedicated to, in the very centre of a
forum that had a very dominant western theme and particularly in
astrology. I am talking about my CompuServe days in the early nineties on
the New Age Forum and The Astrology Roundtable on Genie, in the company of
the likes of Roger Elliot, Charles Bowlings, Theresa Kinney, David
Barnett, Michael Munkasey, Michael Erlewine, Ena Stanley, Ed Perrone and
many other individuals -- most very fine western and some equally fine
eclectic astrologers firmly rooted in their chosen framework of
exploration, yet unconditionally welcoming and not one bit dogmatic about
what they chose to follow or against what other discipline they knew lay
out there and were never felt threatened about! I see that replayed in my
two teenager male progenies when despite their natural tensions and
strains, their sibling rivalries - they unabashedly interact with each
other, all fighting aside, laying their maturing egos and personal <oh so
important!> vendettas aside, to exchanging notes and to learn from each
other's unique but parallel experiences, be it in basketball or volleyball
or Physics and how to get into that prestigious University that seems so
very crucial to their immigrant parents or who knows perhaps even girls
(budding ideas about relationships!)
When one grows during the formative years of one's soul in a milieu filled
with love and acceptance like I have been privileged to be, one begins to
on the one hand gain a broader acceptance of Reality and of one's
ignorance and on the other hand, having shed the baggage of there being AN
one and only sacred, divine and exclusive package of truth, is freed of
the need to prove the wrong hypothesis: That there being some one and only
one way of looking at TRUTH.
Scientists are often blamed for being too narrowly focused or of working
with a "blinders on" mentality, but if one seriously looks at how
scientific (particularly physical) explorations are done, these always aim
at trying to view the 'reality' through different view-ports and thus to
formulate a three-dimensional view of reality or truth through a
2-dimensional construct. Kind of like every software programmer of
computer games and modern animated films must do, creating the leela and
maya layer by layer!
Astrologers, modern, eastern and western -- have been sucked into shoving
their ill-understood astrological framework into this rigid construct of
100% predictability. It is amazing, how even the champions of free-will,
many western astrologers - who have intuitively and experientially
experienced (you can tell English is not my primary language!) the
influence of free-will through their personal experiences during their
practice of astrology - when pressed into a corner, begin quoting how
successful they or other revered colleagues were at predicting events and
pinpointing the future before it could be experienced as the present! Do
you see the paradox?
Eastern astrologers, particularly jyotishis on the one hand extol
predictive success and even openly tout the role of destiny and
incontrovertible fate, yet in the very next breath they would chant out
the remedies that could overcome destiny, through use of mantra, Tantra,
gemstones and a myriad of other karmic cop-outs as some call these! So, is
there free-will or does fate stand supreme?
Given the obvious dichotomies,
tracheotomies, polytomies etc., do you wonder why the common man (and
woman) is confused and wary of all these astrologers running their spiel
and not really coming out with the one and only truthful story? Well,
there is NO one and only story! There is no shame in accepting the fact
that all of us are searching and looking! If there was a gospel truth, it
would have been offered freely with a guarantee and a 'P' value provided!
Would it not? But is that possible now, even for the illustrious few that
we keep pointing at as our beacons and supreme examples of predictive
prowess, in our respective camps?
For reasons of politics, ego or whatever else, no single astrologer exists
that can come out with such a Kreskin claim! Do we really need to pretend,
particularly amongst our astrologer brethren, western or eastern, that
there is no rock-solid 100% guaranteed predictability in any form of
astrology? Some of this uncertainty is because of a lack of full knowledge
(many of the rules are probably hidden, lost or yet to be discovered!) but
maybe a lot of it is because of this variable called 'free-will'. Is it
free will of the soul or free-will of the incarnated fraction of the soul?
We would not go there, but should we stop thinking about the wholistic us
and seriously considering it during our astrological evaluations?
There certainly have been a
few, VERY few individuals who had been very successful at predicting,
consistently, in a documented manner available for public scrutiny, but
have they always used ONLY astroLOGIC, knowingly or unknowingly, on which
their track record of outstanding performance is based? When individuals
who have been accepted as authorities or teachers and writers of fame
confess in their rare 'human' moments that there is something higher than
mere logic and knowledge guiding them, and others, invoked possibly
through an arduous spiritual practice, years of yogic discipline and a
ritualistic process in which they take the horoscope to bed and do japam
(chanting/concentration/meditation) and then a picture begins to emerge,
evolve ... etc. What is one to make of this, other than invite a mental
framework in which the boundaries of TECHNICAL astrology have not yet been
nailed down sharp and tight but the need for honest exploration emerges
and hopefully continues, obviously.
K.N. Rao, a
brilliant Indian teacher, jyotishi, writer and predictor of astounding
success indicated a few times in his Jyotish-list messages that even great
jyotishis are about 80-82% accurate, generally. A mini study on CompuServe
done in mid-nineties through message threads showed that in general
average astrologers get things right between 60-75% of times. If we begin
to tease out the important from the non-essential predictions, the
percentage in the accomplished ones will fall further from 82% down, I am
certain.
Even if there are one thousand
super-accurate predictors that exist in the marketplace of astrology at
this time worldwide, who rarely fail or are wrong, is that a good enough
performance record for our ancient disciplines of astrology, given that a
few hundred thousand if not a few millions are ardently engaged in
discussing and living astrology? One in five being the threshold of
statistical significance, we should have infallible performance from
200,000 astrologers per million. How far are we from achieving such
numbers, in the eastern or western camp, or any other camp for that
matter? If not, should we be spending our energies in claiming and touting
the infallibility of astrology as a discipline, let alone as a science,
and should we really be brawling on this tiny island of astrology which
probably holds only an infinitesimal fraction of the entire population,
even if we are counting believers as opposed to practitioners, especially
successful practitioners with a high performance record, consistently and
documented so!
What is needed, perhaps, is not theories and justifications but
DEMONSTRATIONS of what astrology can give, and produce. Failures are as
important as successes and egoism or jingoism have no place at this stage
of growth or perhaps rediscovery of the ancient craft.
I am neither trying to be provocative nor to challenge any individual's,
astrologer or not, view of reality or where our energies should be focused
insofar as astrology is concerned, eastern or western. but, let me remind
you friends, there are way more than just TWO schools of astrology! And
all of these have ardent followers and anecdotes of uncanny predictive
success. And I am not even looking at all the different methods of
divination, in total! It eerily reminds one of the 'dodo bird verdict'
alluded to by Dan Baker in "What Happy People Know". Luborsky, Singer and
Luborsky (1975) were trying to figure out which brand of psychotherapy was
really the best, but did not find any single one that could be called
that. They borrowed the Dodo bird verdict from Alice in Wonderland:
"Everyone has won -- so all must have prizes!" Baker comments that if no
single therapy is superior, then some other healing factor is obviously at
work! We do not know if that applies to the diverse forms of astrology or
not, but perhaps we should keep it in mind, given the diverse and
dissimilar orientation points used in the various forms of astrology.
Perhaps some of the better predictors intuitively know that and do not
remain limited in their armamentaria when tackling the tough job of
reading the signs and symbols of the human soul through heavenly
indicators.
Quite honestly, it is not time yet to get into, "My dad is stronger than
your dad!" games and arguments with our playmates, although modern
astrology, eastern and western, as it is being rediscovered, is indeed at
about that age where such behavior might be just appropriate!
It is all healthy and normal, as long as we do not get stuck, stop growing
as individuals, as groups of explorers and as astrologers of any and all
cloths as we explore this fascinating and largely unknown territory. But
first of all, we must stop in our tracks and really test ourselves
honestly to find out where we stand, in terms of progress and performance.
Most of us will find that when searching a large and unknown territory,
working in groups of individuals with a large variety of skills and
expertise is perhaps more efficient!
April 11, 2004
Top | Astrology
Image under license with Gettyimages.com
Published in arrangement with
Crystal
Pages, Ottawa.
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