Astrology:
The Science of Cosmic Oneness [part five]
Osho, one of the great spiritual minds of our time, continues his discussion of the essential nature of astrology in this, the third part of the article. "Astrology is a very scientific way of thinking.
It maintains that the future will emerge only out of the past: your today has emerged out of your yesterday and your tomorrow will emerge out of your today. Astrology also maintains that whatever happens tomorrow is in some subtle way present even today. Now try to understand a little about this..." Every year hundreds of thousands of birds fly thousands and thousands of miles.Winter is on its way and soon snow will fall, so the birds begin to migrate from the areas where snow will fall. They will fly to a place thousands of miles away to reach this winter home. So these birds migrate exactly one month before the coming of the snow. At the time they are migrating the snow has not yet begun to fall, but exactly a month later it will fall. How do these birds calculate the date on which snow will fall? Our weathermen, who have the most elaborate observatories, cannot come up with such exact information.
I have heard that some weathermen first ask astrologers sitting on the roadside, “What do you think will it rain today or not?”
The arrangements which man has made seem childish. Birds know a month and a half, even two months before the first snow falls. After thousands of experiments it has been observed that the day on which birds migrate is fixed for every type of bird. And every year the date changes, because there is no fixed date for snow to fall. But it is certain that every bird will migrate one month before the snow falls. If snow is to fall ten days later than in the previous year, they will migrate ten days later than they did in that year. If the snow falls ten days earlier, they will have migrated ten days earlier. If the date of the first snowfall is uncertain, then how are these birds informed?
In Japan there is a bird which will evacuate a town twenty-four hours before an earthquake occurs. It is just an ordinary town bird — there are many of them in every town — but twenty-four hours before an earthquake these birds will evacuate the town. At present, scientists are unable to accurately predict whether an earthquake is coming even two hours beforehand; two hours before they are still uncertain, they are still unsure. There is only a probability, a possibility, that an earthquake may happen. But in Japan people know twenty-four hours in advance that an earthquake is coming. When this bird flies away, the people of the town know that now there is only twenty-four hours’ time. The bird has left — not a single one of this species remains in the town. How does this bird come to know?
For ten years now, scientists have been saying something new: that every living organism possesses an internal sensor, which feels the cosmic influences. Perhaps man too possesses it, but has lost awareness of it through depending on his intellect. Man is the only living being in the world who has, through his so-called intelligence, lost many things which he once had.Through the same intelligence he has also obtained many things he never had before — but the outcome is that he has ended up in danger of self-destruction. What he had he has lost, and what he did not have he has invented. But even the tiniest living organisms possess an inner intuitive source, and now scientific data is becoming available which proves that such an inner source exists. The discovery of an inner source makes us aware that there is nothing alive on Earth which is isolated or separate — everything is joined to the cosmos. Whatever happens anywhere, the effects of it are felt here.
I was talking about Paracelsus.... Present-day physicians are also coming to the conclusion that whenever sunspots emerge and grow on the sun, illness on the Earth increases, and that whenever the sunspots decrease, illness on the earth also decreases. As long as sunspots continue to happen we will never get rid of disease on Earth. Every eleven years there is great turmoil on the sun and huge explosions take place. Whenever explosions and turmoil occur on the sun, wars and disturbances occur on Earth. The wars that take place on Earth follow a ten-year cycle. Epidemics also follow a ten or eleven-year cycle. Revolutions also follow an approximately ten or eleven-year cycle.
Once you have become aware that we are not separate or isolated but joined together in an organic way, then it will be easy to understand astrology. This is why I am explaining all this to you.
In the past some people have thought, and even now think, that astrology is superstition and blind faith. To a great extent this seems to be true. Those things for which it is difficult to find a scientific explanation seem to us to be based only on blind faith. But astrology is very scientific. The meaning of science is the investigation of the relationship between cause and effect. Astrology says that whatever happens on this earth is not uncaused; however, we may not be aware of the causes. Astrology says that the shape which the future will take cannot be isolated from the past but must be connected to it: what you become tomorrow will be connected to what you are today; what you were until today is connected to what you will be tomorrow. Astrology is a very scientific way of thinking.It maintains that the future will emerge only out of the past: your today has emerged out of your yesterday and your tomorrow will emerge out of your today. Astrology also maintains that whatever happens tomorrow is in some subtle way present even today. Now try to understand a little about this.
Three days before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln had a dream that he had been murdered, and that his corpse was lying in a special room in the White House. He even noted the number of the room. At that point his sleep was broken, and when he woke up he laughed. He said to his wife, “I dreamed that I was murdered and that my body was lying in room number such-and-such, and in the such-and-such wing of the White House” — he was sleeping in that wing of the White House. “You stood at my head, and these people were standing all around.”
It was a joke, a laughing matter to him. Lincoln and his wife went back to sleep. Three days later Lincoln’s assassination took place. Three days later his body was lying in that number room, in that very place, and people were standing around his body in that sequence.
If what was to occur three days later had not in some way already occurred, then how could such a dream have taken place? How could the dream resemble what actually took place, in such detail? Such a glimpse is only given in a dream if in some way it is already existent in the present moment. Only then can we get a glimpse of what will take place in the future.
If we open the window of the present we will be able to see that the future is just outside this window. It is the hypothesis of astrology that the future is simply our ignorance — hence we call it “the future”. If we were able to see it, then the future would not happen for us — we would know it is already present here and now. There is an incident in Mahavir’s life over which there has been much dispute.Because of this dispute a group of his disciples broke away from him in his very presence. Because of this dispute, five hundred of Mahavira’s monks created a separate order. Mahavir used to say that whatever is happening has in some sense already happened: if you are walking, then in a sense you have already arrived at the destination; if you are growing old, then in a sense you have already grown old. Mahavir used to say that whatever is happening, whatever is in process, has already occurred.
One long-time disciple of Mahavir lived far away from him during the monsoon. He was sick, so he asked a newer disciple who was present to spread out a mat for him. So the newer disciple began to spread out the mat and he was just unfolding the rolled-up mat when the older disciple remembered Mahavir’s saying. He said, “Stop! Mahavir says that what is happening has already happened.”
The mat was in the process of being rolled out but it had not yet been completely opened. It had suddenly occurred to him that Mahavir had said a very wrong thing. The mat was half-opened, but in what sense was it already completely opened?
He left the mat there. After the monsoon he went to Mahavir and said, “You are mistaken when you say that what is happening has already happened, because right now the mat is lying half-opened. It was being opened but it has not been opened. So I have come to prove that your saying is wrong.”
Mahavir told him that he had not understood what he had said. This disciple must have had a very childish mind, otherwise he would not have spoken that way. Mahavir said, “You have stopped the process. It was happening but you interrupted it. The mat which you prevented from unfolding was already actualizing itself in the very process of unfolding. It had, in fact, already been actualized. You only saw the mat in the process of unfolding, but one more process was going on, and that is what has already happened. Now for how long will your mat remain folded? It is becoming opened, and it will open. You go back.”
When the disciple returned he saw that a man had opened the mat and was lying on it, resting. This man had upset everything; he had destroyed the disciple’s whole theory.
When Mahavir was saying that whatever is happening has already happened, he was saying that whatever is happening is the present, whatever may be is the future. The bud which is coming into blossom somewhere has already blossomed, so it will blossom, it will become a flower. Right now the bud is in the process of flowering, right now it is only a bud, but if it is in the process of flowering, then it will flower. Its having flowered has also in a sense already occurred somewhere.
Now we should look at this from another angle. It will be a little difficult. We always look from the viewpoint of the past.The bud is blossoming... but our thinking is generally past-oriented, bound to the past. We say that the bud is blossoming, that it is becoming a flower, that the bud will become a flower. But the reverse may be the case. For instance, if I push you from behind, I am making you go forward. But it may also be that someone is pulling you from ahead. The motion can be in both directions. I am pushing you from behind and you are going forward. It may be that someone is pulling you from ahead, and that no one is pushing you from behind. In this case too you will move forward. Read part six of Astrology: the Science of Cosmic Oneness |
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