With Spiritual Advancement, Do Astrological Predictions Remain Valid?

Dear Harsh,

Predictions remain valid to a certain degree but less and less so: the more we advance spiritually, by Kriya Yoga or other methods, the more another power enters the picture: grace. The grace of God and Guru is above all astrological laws.

In the Autobiography of a Yogi, Sri Yukteswar explains: “Astrology is the study of man’s response to planetary stimuli.” We react to those stimuli according to our inner karmic patterns. Kriya Yoga burns our karmic tendencies, so astrological predictions can be nullified.

In short: the purpose of astrology is not to give rigid predictions but to show tendencies which we are supposed to overcome instead of letting them come true. Sri Yukteswar explains:

The message boldly blazoned across the heavens at the moment of birth is not meant to emphasize fate–the result of past good and evil–but to arouse man’s will to escape from his universal thralldom…. The wise man defeats his planets–which is to say, his past–by transferring his allegiance from the creation to the Creator.

Yogananda put this teaching into practice. In his Autobiography of a Yogi he recounts:

I had been prejudiced against astrology from my childhood, partly because I observed that many people are sequaciously attached to it, and partly because of a prediction made by our family astrologer: ‘You will marry three times, being twice a widower.’ I brooded over the matter, feeling like a goat awaiting sacrifice before the temple of triple matrimony. ‘You may as well be resigned to your fate,’ my brother Ananta had remarked. ‘Your written horoscope has correctly stated that you would fly from home toward the Himalayas during your early years, but would be forcibly returned. The forecast of your marriages is also bound to be true.’ A clear intuition came to me one night that the prophecy was wholly false. I set fire to the horoscope scroll, placing the ashes in a paper bag on which I wrote: ‘Seeds of past karma cannot germinate if they are roasted in the divine fires of wisdom.’

So practice your Kriya. The deeper you go, the better it roasts your horoscope and all its predictions.

In divine friendship,
jayadev