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ASTROLOGY AS KARMA YOGA
The fundamental concept on which astrology is based is that everything that is "born" (i.e., that begins to operate as an individual factor in a specific environment) at a particular time and point of space is organized according to a particular seed-pattern or archetype symbolized by its birth-chart. This seed-pattern defines what that organism (or organized field of activity) SHOULD be if it fulfills its function in the universal scheme of things, or one might say according to God's Plan.
There may be of course not only a number of human beings but a great variety of biological organisms born at this same time and at least very nearly at this same place. They all have therefore the same time-space formula of existence. The same fundamental Cosmic Intention exists in all these wholes. Will this Intention work out in actual facts and existential events in exactly the same manner? Obviously not. What these facts and events will be will depend on, first, the nature of the organism — i.e., its genetic character and background — then, on the manner in which the organism is related, and will relate itself through its own effort, to the environment.
Such a relationship is almost exclusively determined by the racial type and heredity in biological species below primitive man. But with man the capacity to control this relationship to the environment appears. Man can transform his environment in order to fulfill a specific purpose. This is theoretically wonderful; but whether it actually is or not depends on what the purpose is. The purpose may be determined by collective-social factors and cultural values which have nothing or very little to do with "God's idea" for any individual entity born at this or that place and time. An individual human being may therefore live a kind of life in which the God-ordained structure of his total being is so overlaid by social, cultural and family determinants and collective Images of what should or should not be done that this life will turn out to be an expression of only superficial and collective aims, and a perversion of the "Creative Intention" of the universe. The archetypal essential character and purpose of the person's life will have been largely ignored, or at least they will have operated only through the distorting and darkening lenses of what family and society, but not the universe or God, thought to be the purpose of this life.
Several human beings may have the same birth-chart, the same seed-pattern, but Nature is prolific in its production of seeds; only a few acorns become full-grown oaks. Of these human beings who were born with the same seed-pattern only one or a very few perhaps will actualize the potentialities inherent in this seed-pattern in a conscious and significant manner. A genius and a madman may well have the same chart. This fact does not mean that astrology is without value, provided we realize that astrology does not tell what will happen, but what would happen, should the person act consciously and earnestly according to the celestial instructions represented in code by the birth-chart.
This is at least the attitude implied in what I call humanistic astrology. Humanistic astrology deals essentially with problems of consciousness. It is based on a philosophy of conscious acceptation. It asks of every individual that they accept what they potentially are — the whole of it, without any ethical tag of good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate, being attached to it. This means that a person should accept one's birth-chart as it is and be intent upon fulfilling its implications. But these implications must be seen in a totally new and untraditional light, in the realization that every birth-chart fills a significant purpose, all valuable, and that, as an embodied individual, one is that purpose, whatever it is and however society parents may regard its value.
When one approaches life in such a manner one understands in a most vivid way what the Hindu philosopher means by dharma. According to the concept of dharma, every living creature has its own dharma, its "truth of being." It has what is often called today its "real identity." The rebellious youth of our day is often desperately striving to discover his identity, his "uniqueness of being," and it is because, in our culture, he has been given no traditional way of consciously searching for this identity and of discovering his "true Name" that he often tends to rebel wildly against every social-cultural-religious Image that has been stamped upon his mind during the early formative years of childhood, or else he wanders along paths of quasi-mystical escape in search of ever-evasive ecstasies.
Dharma, truth of being, identity: these and other terms all refer to what I have called the seed-pattern of an individual person's being. The spiritual life is one which is based on the conscious acceptation of this dharma-pattern. But how can one consciously accept that of which one is not aware? The first thing is therefore to come to a vivid, and if possible, clearly conscious, realization of what one essentially is as an individual — and not as a member of this or that race, family, social class, religion, culture and nation.
Astrology can become a method for such a realization; but if it is what is expected of astrology then obviously a great many of the traditional astrological concepts have to be utterly transformed. The birth-chart has to be understood as an archetype or seed-pattern one's individual being — as the symbolical "form" of one's individuality, and therefore also of one's destiny, for the two are identical A man's destiny is the way following which he is able to fulfill his identity and to actualize what at his birth was only potential. Individuality is the dharma, destiny the karma of the human being. Dharma is the fundamental pattern, karma the specific type of activity to actualize this pattern of individual selfhood.
What the Hindu philosopher calls "Karma Yoga" is a process of total acceptance of the specific activities required to actualize and fulfill one's dharma. Karma does refer also to the results of past actions, but this is not the most essential, even if it is the popular, meaning. Past actions which were not performed according to the dharma of an individual leave residue or waste products; moreover what has not been done, but should have been done in order to fulfill one's dharma, remains as unfinished business. As existence is cyclic, the unfinished business left at the close of a cycle reappears during the next (or some new) cycle as karma. This "old karma" conditions and in most cases, determines, the character of the new dharma — that is, of the seed-pattern of the new birth. When the rigid concept of reincarnation is accepted, then obviously one must likewise accept that of karma being the results of the failures, the perversions, and the unfinished business of a past life.
Karma Yoga is "union" (i.e., yoga) with what needs to be done in order to fully actualize the characteristics and the potentialities of one's birth at a particular place and time — that is, in a particular environment and during a specific phase of the cyclic evolution of mankind. This means a total unconditioned acceptance of the chart as means to fulfill the dharma which if symbolizes, but only when the chart is seen and understood as a focused image of the entire universe and of its rhythms as a whole of interdependent parts; and no part, nothing in the chart is considered essentially "bad" or evil.
Some forty years ago I wrote a pamphlet entitled: "The Will to Destiny." The phrase is in a sense a translation of the term Karma Yoga — but of course it is also an expression of the Christian ideal of surrender to the Will of God. However, all such phrases and what they imply become futile at our present stage of human evolution if one does not add that this identification with a cosmic pattern and attunement to the great rhythms of the universe should be the results of a conscious process. In other words, what is idealized is NOT a passive attitude of merely letting go, but a positive, dynamic focusing of consciousness upon the dharma. The consciousness is focused in a consistent and constant endeavor, first, to recognize the character of this individual "truth of being" — then, to understand its meaning. The end purpose is not only to fulfill one's destiny-individuality but, in the very process of this fulfillment, to realize consciously and clearly the cosmic-divine purpose of one's birth where and when it occurred — i.e., the why of one's existence as an individual person.
However, this purpose can never be truly understood unless the act of understanding is identical with the act of destiny-fulfillment. Dharma is revealed through the operation of karma, but only if there is a focusing of consciousness upon this operation as it happens — not before it happens. A birth-chart (plus its progressions and transits) has value only as it is seen as a background during the turning points, crises and decisions of the life of the person it symbolizes. It is, one might say, a kind of map upon which a navigator marks the path described by the past advances. The navigator faced with a possible change of direction asks: Considering what I have reached, what is the next step?
Nevertheless, such a question is not only futile but perhaps damaging, spiritually speaking, if the individual is not willing and ready to "perform yoga" with this next step, whatever it be. This means, if they are not able to realize that any step which is for them the next step ahead is "right," whether society or religion — and the usual astrologers — consider it good or bad, easy or hard, fortunate or unfortunate. The Karma Yogi will perform this act regardless of consequence if they "know" — with a knowledge beyond reason, tradition, fear or anticipation — that it is for them the step just ahead.
The willing readiness to face any crisis and in general to live up to the hilt one's recognized and accepted destiny is not ordinarily found among human beings, especially in our permissive, hedonistic and comfort-oriented society. It has never been widespread at any time, and it is because of this that the Hindu guru has to play in the life of his disciples a role which the latter usually fail to understand and, even if they do so, rarely appreciate. The guru "precipitates" the karma of his disciple; he forces, directly or indirectly, the disciple to face the karma which this disciple would normally try to run away from, or to postpone by devious and clever mental subterfuges. But at the same time the guru remains close, psychically if not physically, so as to act as a kind of "magic mirror" on which the disciple can see consciously — perhaps not immediately, but sooner or later — what is happening and why it happens.
This is the "conscious Way"; and it is as well the way of the "symbolic life." The life is symbolic because every process and event in it is pregnant with meaning, and in some degree is an expression of the Will to Harmony which is the foundation of all existence, of microcosm as well as macrocosm. The birth-chart itself is a symbol. Astrology is a cosmic language. Every moment of time has a "message" to communicate to every point of space. The whole is constantly communicating with its component parts; but the parts cannot hear because they are mainly concerned with keeping their boundaries protected against any too disturbing communications. They should realize that the very form of the boundaries reveals their "celestial" identity. The universe is the outside of the form; the personality is the inside of it. The form — i.e., the individuality — does not separate; it defines the meaning of what it structures.
All of this can be applied to astrology. The birth-chart is the universe as a human individual sees it; but it is also the individual as the universe responds to him. The name given to a child by his parents establishes the character of the relationship of the parents (and of their community) to the child. The birth-chart of an individual is his celestial Name — the Name given to him by the universal Whole, i.e., by God. Will the individual accept this Name, accept this particular pattern of relationship to the universe? Will he accept it as a Karma Yogi accepts and wills his destiny with equal-mindedness — that is, without attachment to success or failure, to pleasure or pain, to joy or sorrow, to wealth or poverty?
In nearly four decades of familiarity with astrology I have remarked that so-called critical aspects seem to bring to a person astrologically aware of them sharper and often more upsetting confrontations than they did before they knew about astrology. The psychological explanation may be that, consciously or unconsciously, they expected and probably feared these confrontations; but this may not be deep enough an explanation. It may be that by establishing a conscious contact with their celestial Name (the birth-chart) the individual made themselves more open to a downpour of the karma, held as it were in suspension in their unconscious, and more willing to accept it to the full without evasion.
I would indeed tell any person who seeks proficiency in astrological knowledge: Are you ready and willing to meet up to the hilt your destiny? Are you really intent upon discovering your true Name? If not, leave astrology alone. It might only bring you confusion. True astrology is "beyond good and evil," as these terms are usually interpreted in our supposedly Christian civilization. It is an approach to a philosophy of life which is demanding in a way with which you are perhaps not at all familiar. It is an application of this philosophy — a holistic, cyclo-cosmic way of attunement to the universe. To follow this way you have to leave behind many traditional beliefs. What you may achieve is simply the ability to qualify for a deeper participation in the process of birth of a new humanity.
