Myths about Astrology - Part Deux
True, everywhere you look, all the big blockbusters are coming out with newer and newer sequels... Basic Instinct, Superman, Mission Impossible... just to name a few. The harbingers of Summer :) So I thought to myself... why not make "Part 2" of the very first Blog I ever wrote? The very reason I had started this voyage at one point of time. But I must confess :) It also had the added support of some fresh point of view on the topic.
In recent times, a particular sage named Guru Ramdev with his
Yoga related fitenss programme is rapidly gaining popularity with the masses in India. He is telecasting live shows on spiritual TV channels such as Aastha, Sanskar, Sadhana, God and Q TV. He is also in the process of setting up Yoga Camps in many places, and intends to build and operate out of a new institution called Patanjali Yogapith in Haryana. His yogic principles are founded on Patanjali Yoga.
Now, neither this post, nor my previous one, has anything to do directly with Guru Ramdev or his yogic teachings. It does however deal with some comments he made about "Janma Kundali" (natal charts) that shed new light on the topic of my previous post. My father happened to catch these comments on TV and was responsible for bringing my attention to them.
According to Guru Ramdev, the "applicablity" of Janma Kundali is questionable even if the main concept is not, just because of the uncertainty in one of the concept's fundamental assumption. Typically a Janma Kundali, or Natal Chart is designed based on the Time and Place of Birth. It then elaborates on the position of the planetary bodies at that Time and their gravitational effect on that Place, which is seen as a primary influence on the life-long circumstances of a person. Even if one does not argue the science behind this theory, the fact still remains that you assume complete knowledge about Time and Place of Birth, the founding pillars of this Chart design. Although Place of Birth is seldom disputed, the Time of Birth is highly debatable. Not only is it highly likely to make an error in timing the "apparent" birth of a person for reasons such as clocks showing incorrect time, medical complications at the time causing distractions in noting the time, etc, the main question still remains: "when do you think you were actually born?"
According to Guru Ramdev, "prana" (soul) takes birth in the mother's womb. As such, our "birth" occurs with our independent "sattwa" (existence). Even biologically, we take full form and shape within the womb before we are brought out in the open. And what we end up timing is that "moment of liberation". So going by the science of natal charts, one must consider the time of "actual" birth, from which time it is possible for the individual to be affected by the planets, and not merely bank it on the time of delivery. And I hope I need not mention anything special to indicate the complexity of determining this "actual" Time of Birth.
Thus, people who believe strongly in the applications of the science of astrology shall forever run the risk of interpreting someone incorrectly based on his/her natal charts that in all possibility may be founded on incorrect information. And these interpretations often lead to unfortunate decisions followed by similar actions. Here lies the gravest consequence of one of the biggest myths of our times.
posted by Joy Ghosh at 12:01 PM
22 Comments:
Hey Joy,
this makes sense.. I had never thought of it like this before... but after reading it... I seem to agree with what you have written.
time of death = time at which the soul departs from the body
time of birth = when the soul enters a (new) body
this is more intuitive than defining the time of birth as the time of delivery. funny we never thot of this before!
Joy
It is very reassuring to see present-day spiritual leaders like Guru Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar playing down all this astrological mumbo jumbo that has plagued Indian culture for years and years. My main gripe against these astrological principles is not so much a scientific one. Indeed, I am willing to accept that these principles have some meta-scientific basis after all. Instead, my gripe is that they subjugate the individual will power to a fear complex, and muddle any notion of personal responsibility for one's actions. This has got to go.
Very appropriate and timely! Wish, people appreciate the vulnerability and improprity of leaving important decisions on such an idea rather than on honest and sincere efforts.
@devika - yeah.. it was a very new idea :) and also a very logical one... and i like the way you compared it with death... it does seem more normal that way :)
@vent - what you say is true.. but unless people have self realization of these things, its hard to enforce. when it comes to matter of beliefs.. I have seen first hand that all your personal will force may actually work to make it instead of breaking it! Wish it was other way around though...
@anon - first, you could have signed in to print your name :) second, we have to accept the fact that not all people are waking up at the same time.. we are all at different levels of consciousness. So while we cant force people to awaken, we can see them sleep and learn from it and help them wake up when they do.
my dad was telling me tht he is nowadays doing this yoga thing (the ramdev one) u mentioned.
as far as the post goes, a valid point put forward by u/ramdev abt the time of birth.
Great... this thing seems to be really popular in India then.. :) And yeah.. I guess all great Yogis realize the importance of complementing spiritual sadhana with that of the physical one with yogas.
So when they preach yoga among the masses, hopefully they can also bring forth such topics among the general population who need it the most.
Joy da, Kemon acho? :) Long time since I blogged or read blogs. I was brought to attention to this new blog of yours by someone ;)
So here goes...
Firstly, not sure if it is "moment of liberation" or "moment of confinement"? :) Anyways, I think the time of birth is not taken as the exact time like in hours and minutes. I think the time take to calculate these charts is taken in a range. I am pretty sure because they find out what "house" the sun/moon are in at that time and I don't think that changes very rapidly. Also, I think the time of birth is considered as the time when you come out and cry (and keep crying after that ;-)). So complications, etc. during birth don't affect that too much.
Also, I think the belief that there is a soul in the baby in the fetus is not correct. First, I would like to quote something from our rich texts - "Prana or life force is Brahma" - courtesy of our guru, if you know who I am referring to :). So I believe, you take your first breath when you come into this world and that is when the soul (an essence of the param Brahman) enters you. When you die, you stop breathing, and the soul leaves you.
Scientifically, you cry when you come out because you have to start breathing and that is not too pleasant for the baby because all this while its oxgen input + toxin output is not done via normal breathing operation like we all do. It is done via a different biological mechanism. So this change is unpleasant (as is all change :)).
Comments welcome, as always :). Talk to you soon.
wow.. very very refreshing point of view.. as always :)) its a shame you dont read and comment on my blogs more often :)
i understand your point. but that means you are strictly relating your existence with your act of breathing. which i am not too convinced (and neither are the anti-abortionists i presume :)). True its evident in case of death, but birth is still more complicated.
A 8 month old baby inside the womb eats, sleeps, kicks, and practically performs many "independent" and "lively" actions... except for the direct act of breathing. Then what will you call that state of being? An extension of the mother's existence? Or you mean its not conscious yet? So by your definition of birth and death, that entity is ill-defined. Whereas I would consider it very much alive and "conscious"... and already under the gravitational effects of planetary bodies. So i guess i was not so concerned about the "exact" time of birth.. a range (of a day, or even a week) maybe fine. But it still depends on what state you consider a 8 month old baby (for example) to be... conscious, sub-conscious, or un-conscious ? I guess its the definition of birth that is in question more than the time of it (as the latter is dependent on the former).
looking forward to your view on this :)
Nice discussion going on here. Glad to be part of it. :)
I'd like to amplify on my earlier comment a little. When I argue for abandoning the astrological mindset, I dont mean to deny the validity of astrological principles. Indeed, I accept that planetary positions at the time of birth matter. But they matter only in the sense of *predisposing* the individual towards a future course of life. Just as the Gita tells us that a preponderance of one of the three Gunas determines our thought-action cycle at any moment in time, so also planetary positions predispose us towards this or that trajectory in life. But if life is a differential equation, then all these positions do is fix certain initial conditions. There is no reason to believe that we are stuck with the initial conditions that have been fixed by planetary positions. Indeed, self-determination argues for precisely the opposite - that through the right effort, the right action, the right knowledge, etc. etc., we can choose new initial conditions at every moment in our lives, and so we can choose the trajectory we wish to be on. Indeed, planetary positions may matter not only at the time of birth, but at every instant of time thereafter. So for instance, the quality of one's meditation may be quite different on the night of a full moon relative to any other night (of course, to notice this difference, one has to have the requisite level of self-awareness).
So I guess my general point is that planetary positions may tie our hands but we also have the power to untie those knots, if only we had sufficient faith in our capacity to change, and sufficient will power to take the steps required to change. So also with the Gunas. If my diet to date has predisposed me towards a rajaso-tamasic temperament, then that does not mean that I am bound to that temperament all my life. By changing my diet, I can indeed cultivate a temperament in which the sattwic guna rises to dominate the other two gunas.
Finally, I do not wish to speculate on when exactly consciousness takes root. This is not an important question for me personally, because the answer to it will not help me much. I suspect that what Guru Ramdev is trying to do at one level is introduce doubt in the minds of those who are caught up in the astrological bind, so that they may learn to develop the will power to change themselves rather than have their life pre-determined by a set of initial conditions which they had no power to choose.
I think I remember this point you made about the gunas with respect to my example of having independent choice (choosing to ignore certain TV noises) in an earlier post about mind and self :) And it helps to read it again.. sometimes we do need constant reminder.
And although you didnt want to mention about the exact concept of birth, I was thinking more on it. And now I am convinced that I do not know what you could label as a conscious person. Just like a baby within the womb.. what about a person in coma?
Or someone who is so paralyzed that he/she needs a machine to keep breathing (similar to a baby depending on someone else to provide oxygen) ? What stage of life can they be considered in? Surely just because they are not voluntarily breathing makes them dead? This point of consciousness in humans is seeming to me most intriguing!
It has been very lively interactions.
Though, in my opinion, sustained and sincere efforts can create a change in 'gunas' and human being can compensate initial handicap, if there be any, on account of cellestial influences at time of birth, I think the point in question is the time of birth - when a creature starts its journey in mother's womb or when it comes out in the world.
There are many symptoms to show that the creature within the mother's womb, protected for biological safety reasons, disply its free independent will and actions. So it can be considered that a life is born well before it's coming out in the world.
Mahabharata speaks loud and clear about it. Abhimanyu, while in mother's womb, learned a part of the intricacies of 'chakra-buha' and carried this knowledge through to his youth.
Probably, such points are relevant to the present context.
excellent example from Mahabharata :) I do not know if it was true or a fable.. but it is definitely of interest to me to know if a baby in the womb has independent behaviour. I guess I will look it up a bit.
Interesting duscussion going on..However I was thinking how would you define the concept of differing janma kundali in case of twins.In such cases would not the inception of birth within the womb for the twins be at the same time?? or slightly differing if you consider birth to be after the time of delivery? And if patrikas are dependent on a range of birth times then would twins not have identical destiny?
I visited this guy on my visit to India this time and when he told some unpleasant things about my future we started questioning the accuracy of the Janam Kundali and to this that guy made a very nice point, according to him every astrologer first starts with your past and if he able to accurately speak about your past after studying the natal charts, then his future predictions need to be trusted too if not 100%. This is the basis of all the research done around us. That is what modeling and simulating is all about.
_ Dipti
@mtalpz - another interesting observation. do twins/triplets/etc indded share their destiny? I do not know and would like to find out.
@dipti - sure.. I always believed in what the astrologer said as his interpretation of what the natal charts say. So as such it would vary from one astrologer to another, depending on his/her level of interpretation capability. Btw, was he able to talk about your past in detail looking at your natal chart?
Here we were just trying make sure that we are not disillusioned about what they say in the end and gain an insight as to how the whole natal charts work and how much they can influence what will happen and how much you yourself can control the future incidents.
And it seems like its a mixture of all. No one thing can completely determine or provide a final verdict of things to come. I feel that natal charts (if interpreted with a good level of accuracy) may prove useful in forewarning and providing general guidance, but personal will power can also be instrumental in changing your course of destiny along the way of life.
Good point about WILL, recent discussion with my friend brought to light that the Bible believes that destiny depends a lot on the will of an individual and so predictions could prove to be harmful as we start believing and willing to accept it.
- Dipti
Good point, Dipti. Joy, I have a twin. Is my destiny linked to my brother's? Hmmm, food for thought. Although my mother has always maintained that we have very different temperaments. :)
I don't understand the "science" behind astrology so can't comment.
A related topic is discussed here
Thanks for the link chintan :)
I was going through them and no one seems to have any solid evidence in any direction. In this state of affairs, I would love to stick to my belief that natal charts may indeed have the potential to offer guidance, but its extremely difficult to know if the interpretation by a person is accurate enough. And based on that, one should not let go of common sense or the will to live life as desired.
joy, this has nothing to do with this post, but with yr harmonica-playing talent! caught the link at vb's, u must keep going. i thought it was really good stuff.
A wonderful blog !! :)
The pic is super cool ;)
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