Astrology as a Door to Spirituality

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

In the closing part of his second talk, Osho brought everything together. Essential astrology, he said, comes down to one realisation: we are not separate. Whatever happens within us happens with the participation of the whole universe.

The Buddha bows to the earth

When the Buddha attained enlightenment, Osho said, he folded his hands and bowed his head to the earth. According to the story, the gods who had come down from heaven to honour him were astonished. Whom could a Buddha be bowing to? Buddhahood is the last word.

The Buddha opened his eyes and answered: in what has happened, I am not alone. The whole universe is in it. So I have bowed to thank it all.

That is why, Osho said, the Buddha told his monks to feel grateful to the whole world whenever they found any inner joy. If the sun had not risen, if the moon had not risen, if even the smallest thing had been different, it would not have happened. It has happened to you, but everything has had a hand in it. "A cosmic interrelationship: that is the name of astrology."

A crossroads of the universe

So the Buddha would not say, "It happened to me." He would say that it happened to the world, through him. He was only the occasion, a crossroads where all the paths of the world met.

A crossroads looks important, Osho said, but it is nothing in itself. Take away the four roads that meet there, and it disappears. Each of us is such a meeting point, where the endless forces of the universe cross. There an individual is formed.

Held by the past and the future

The Buddha also said that he bowed to the Buddhas who came before him and to those who would come after. Someone asked how he could owe anything to people not yet born.

His answer, as Osho told it, was that where he stood, past and future had become one. Sunrise and sunset stood at the same point. If the future were not there, he could not be here.

Osho admitted this is hard to grasp. We easily see that we depend on the past: without my father, and his father, I would not exist. It is harder to see that we depend equally on what is to come. Every present moment stands on the past and leans on the future. Our feet rest on the shoulders of the past, and our hands rest on the shoulders of the future. Take away either, and we fall.

When a person sees himself joined in this way, Osho said, astrology becomes religion and spirituality. Without this understanding, tied only to the non-essential, it becomes street-corner magic. Even the finest science is worth no more than dust if we misuse it.

Ali lifts one foot

This raised the old question of freedom and fate. Ali, the companion of the Prophet Muhammad, once asked him: is man free to act, or bound?

It is an old and serious question, Osho noted. If everything is fixed, then telling a person not to steal or lie is pointless, and all the prophets and teachers have wasted their words.

The Prophet gave a simple, direct answer. He told Ali to stand on one foot. Ali lifted his left foot. Then the Prophet said: now lift your right foot too. Ali protested that this was impossible. The Prophet said: if you had wished, you could have lifted the right foot first. But now that you have lifted the left, you cannot lift the right.

A person is always free to lift one foot, Osho said, but the moment he does, the other is bound. We are free within limits, not outside them. In the non-essential parts of life we are fully free to move. But the steps we take there become bonds in the essential parts.

Neither fate nor chaos

Osho described two common errors. The ordinary astrologer says everything is fixed, and nothing can move an inch. If that were so, all religion would be pointless.

The rationalist says the opposite: nothing is connected, everything is chance, and there is no law at all. Osho told of Mulla Nasruddin, who was walking past a mosque when a man fell from the minaret onto his back and broke it. Asked what lesson this held, Nasruddin declared that there is clearly no link between action and result. One man falls and another man's back breaks, so from now on, no more theories! He was angry, Osho said, and with good reason.

But the rationalist, Osho said, never shows the joy of a Buddha or the happiness of a Mahavira. They must be doing something from which their joy and stillness come.

The truth, he said, is a third position. The more we move toward our centre, the more certain things become. The more we move toward our periphery, the more things are governed by chance. Between the two lies a middle zone of choice. There the person who knows can choose well, while the person who does not know simply takes whatever chance hands him.

Osho gave the example of a man about to steal. Stealing is not his destiny. Until he acts, he is fully free, swinging between yes and no. If he says no, he moves toward the centre. If he says yes, one foot is lifted and the other is caught, and the act begins to grip his whole being. A life lived so as to reach the centre, Osho said, becomes religious. A life that never reaches it does not.

The wave and the ocean

Osho returned to the sun. We are its outstretched hands, he said, its far-reaching branches and leaves. Whatever happens at its roots trembles through every fibre of us. Seeing this, we can feel like part of one family with the whole world, and there is no reason left to live inside our separate ego.

Astrology's greatest blow, he said, falls on the ego. If astrology is right, then the ego is wrong. I am only a small wave on a stream of vast forces. Riding a big wave, I imagine that I exist on my own. I forget the big wave, and I forget that the big wave rides on the ocean.

When the ocean withdraws its support, the wave breaks and I am lost. I suffer, because I had wrongly enjoyed believing that I was. If I saw that I rise and fall by the ocean's will, there would be no suffering. Gone too would be the pleasure of "I won" and the pain of "I was defeated". When both pleasure and pain are gone, Osho said, we enter the essential world, where there is bliss.

This is the irony he pointed out. People go to the astrologer to protect their ego: will I make a loss, will I win, will this business succeed? Yet astrology itself is wholly against the ego. Its very meaning is: you are not, the universe is.

Circling the still centre

Osho widened the picture to the whole cosmos. The earth spins on its axis and circles the sun. The sun spins and circles some greater point. That point, with all it carries, circles something greater still.

The circular walk around a temple, parikrama, is a symbol of this, he said. Everything turns on itself and circles something else. The final centre, which neither turns on itself nor circles anything, the sages called Brahman. It is empty and silent, the still axis on which the whole universe turns, expands and contracts.

Hindu thought, he said, sees the universe itself living in vast rhythms. Like a bud opening into a flower and then falling, the cosmos blossoms and expands, then returns into dissolution, pralaya. As there is day and night, so there is a day and a night of the whole universe. Earths and suns come into being and pass away, and we too are part of that great turning wheel.

"I call a religious person one who has found rest" within the vast movement of the universe, Osho said. To remain one with its rhythm is enough, and it is full of bliss.

That, Osho said, is why he spoke about astrology at such length. Understood in this way, astrology can become a door to spirituality.

This concludes our series on Osho's talks on astrology. Return to the hub page to read any part again.

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.