Is an astrologer bound karmically if he helps the masses through his predictions and remedies? Because there are situations when his prediction might not be accurate, even if the astrologer wanted to help the other person. Does this trap an astrologer karmically, and does he get entangled into karmic bondage? The aim of life is to be free from karma. But if he gets entangled karmically then he would lag in his process to moksha.
A second question: how can an astrologer spiritualize astrology?
—Nidhi Damle, India
Dear Nidhi,
Karma is created by an action done from the ego. The less ego, the less karma. Therefore, before you interpret a horoscope, meditate. Ask God to inspire your thoughts and intuitions. Then while you read the horoscope, try to be a pure channel, keeping inwardly connected to the Divine Presence. In this way you create no karma, or very little.
Karma has also to do with intention: if your intention is good, the karmic consequence is much less when you make a mistake, than when your intention is to hurt.
Something else: I suggest that you don’t concentrate principally on predictions when you read the horoscopes for people. Try instead to understand their karmic situation, which you see in the chart, and the situations they might have to face. Tell people: everything happens for the best, it is all meant to help us learn and grow.
Predictions of the future are always precarious, as the future is never written in stone. In the Autobiography of a Yogi you read: “A child is born on that day and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual karma. His horoscope is a challenging portrait, revealing his unalterable past and its probable future results.”
Yogananda wasn’t in favor of fixed predictions at all. For example was told by a family astrologer: “You will marry three times, being twice a widower.” He tells that he “brooded over the matter, feeling like a goat awaiting sacrifice before the temple of triple matrimony.” Finally he set fire to the horoscope scroll, placing the ashes in a paper bag on which he wrote: “Seeds of past karma cannot germinate if they are roasted in the divine fires of wisdom.”
Do you see? A horoscope shows karmic tendencies, but what man has done, he can undo. Nothing is unalterable. Everything can be overcome.
About your second question: you spiritualize astrology if you use it to help people grow spiritually. Give them meditations to do. Give them a divine mantra. Give them goals of the soul, like loving God more, or expressing their beautiful soul qualities more, or turning to saints and Masters for help. (You might find Swami Kriyananda’s book helpful, Your Sun Sign as a Spiritual Guide.)
All the best, jayadev
