The Three Layers of Astrology

Part 7 of 8 in our series on Osho's 1971 talks on astrology.

At the heart of Osho's second talk is a simple map. Astrology, he said, has three parts, like three circles, one inside the other. Understanding them explains both what astrology truly is and why it fell into disrepute.

The three circles

At the centre is the essential. Here nothing changes, not by a hair. It is the hardest part to know. Once it is known, there is nothing to do but cooperate with it. Osho said that the religions created astrology precisely to search for this essential layer.

Around it is the semi-essential. Here change is possible, but only through knowing. If you know, you have alternatives and can choose. If you do not know, whatever is going to happen will simply happen.

On the outside is the non-essential. Nothing here is necessary. Everything happens by chance. Yet, this is the only layer most people want to know about.

The questions people ask

The astrologers most of us know, Osho said, deal almost entirely with the non-essential.

One person asks: will I get a job? The moon and stars have no deep connection with whether you get a job. Another asks: will I get married? Society could exist without marriage at all. Another asks: will I be rich or poor? A society could be organised so that no one is rich or poor.

He gave a deliberately comic example. Someone asks whether the stars were responsible for him slipping on an orange peel in the street. No star decided that a particular orange peel on a particular road would make your foot slip, Osho said. Such an event depends on a thousand causes, but there is no necessity in it. It has nothing to do with your being, your soul. It is the surface of events.

This, he said, is exactly why the palace of astrology fell. Astrologers busied themselves with this kind of talk, and no thinking person could accept that the day of your birth decided which orange peel you would step on. By tying itself to such things, astrology earned a bad name.

The middle layer

Birth and death, Osho said, belong to the semi-essential. As our knowledge of medicine grows, we lengthen human life, and we are already doing so. As our weapons grow more powerful, we can end many lives at once, and we have done so. In this layer some things may happen or may not. Knowing is valuable here, because knowledge opens up choices.

But the centre, the essential, which cannot be changed at all, is something our curiosity rarely reaches, and our desire does not reach it either.

Mahavira, Gosala and the plant

Osho illustrated the essential with a story from the life of Mahavira. Mahavira was walking near a village with Gosala, a companion who would later turn against him. They passed a young plant, and Gosala asked: will this plant live to flower or not? Does it have a future?

Mahavira closed his eyes and stood beside the plant. Gosala grew impatient. What will closing your eyes do? Don't avoid the question. He did not understand that Mahavira was searching for the essential. To answer, one must enter the very being of the plant.

Mahavira opened his eyes and said: this plant will flower. At once Gosala pulled it out by its roots, threw it aside and laughed. What better proof could there be? Mahavira only smiled, and they went on their way.

Then came seven days of heavy rain. When the two returned along the same road, Mahavira stopped at the very same spot. The plant was standing again. The rain had softened the earth, and its roots had taken hold once more.

Gosala was amazed. Mahavira explained what he had been looking for when he closed his eyes: the plant's inner strength. Did it truly want to live, or did it carry a wish to die and would use any excuse to do so? If it wanted to live, even being uprooted would not stop it. He had also seen Gosala standing beside it, and he knew Gosala would pull it out.

This time Gosala did not dare to uproot the plant again. As they walked on, it was Mahavira who was smiling. Gosala asked: if you knew so much, you should have known whether I would uproot it a second time. Mahavira's answer is the key to the whole teaching. That is non-essential, he said. You may pull it out or you may not; it depends on you. What was essential was that the plant wanted to live with its whole being. And in this, he said, you have proved weaker than the plant.

Events and souls

Osho then applied the map to our own lives. Our curiosity, he said, goes at most as far as the semi-essential. How long will I live? Will I die soon? But we never ask what we will do with our lives, or who we will be as we live them.

Living is only an event, he said. What I am while I live is my soul. Death too is an event, and it happens to everyone alike. But how each of us meets the moment of death is different. "Death is an event, but dying laughing is the soul."

He told of Mulla Nasruddin, who was asked near the end of his life where people come from and where they go. Nasruddin said that, as far as he could tell, they come crying and go crying, so they neither come from a good place nor go to one. Yet a man like Nasruddin, Osho said, can die laughing.

Have you ever asked an astrologer whether you will die laughing or crying, Osho asked? No one on earth has asked this. Yet it is the question worth asking, because it belongs to the essential. We ask when we will die, as if dying were the important thing. We ask how long we will live, as if merely living were enough. We never ask why we live, or what we will become.

That, he said, is why the palace fell. A palace whose foundation is laid on the non-essential cannot stand. It needs foundation stones.

A different astrology

The astrology Osho was speaking of, then, is deeper than the one people usually mean. It is concerned with what is essential in a life, and with how that essential core is joined in rhythm with the life of the whole universe. In it, he said, you are not alone; the whole world takes part.

In Part 8: Astrology as a Door to Spirituality, the final part, Osho shows where this understanding leads: to the end of the ego, and to rest within the vast movement of the cosmos.

This article explains, in our own words, ideas from Osho's talk "Jyotish Arthat Adhyatma" (Astrology Means Spirituality), given at Woodlands, Bombay, in July 1971. Short quotations are our English renderings of his Hindi words. Osho's works are copyright of Osho International Foundation. This series is an independent study and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Osho International Foundation. For the full text, see Osho's book Astrology.