Astrology And Reincarnation

ASTROLOGY AND REINCARNATION

Let us return to our natal horoscope. We have seen that it represents a person's study plan for life and as such reveals a person's fate. The course of a person's life is already evident at birth. In living out his life he is merely bringing a latent pattern into realization. In human life there is no coincidence.

The question arises whether someone would have had a different study plan and therefore a different fate if he or she had “by chance” been born a few hours earlier or later. The answer is yes, for a different time would be of a different quality and would therefore indicate a different course of life.

My readers may think that we have gone to a lot of trouble to eliminate chance from human life only to encounter it again in a concentrated form at the moment of birth. Can the chance factor of the moment of birth determine a person's fate? Let us not forget that nothing in this world happens by chance and that therefore the event of a birth is also subject to higher laws.

Every event is only a formal expression of some inner content. Form and content must correspond. From the form one can recognize the content and vica versa. A typical error of youth is to imagine that, in looking for meaningful content, one can neglect form. A birth is a formal event which takes place at a moment of a certain quality and which expresses the content of that moment. So what is this content?

At this point we must jump ahead a little to the subject of reincarnation. A new-born individual is not a blank sheet of paper, that is to say a pure and virgin soul, as we imagine children to be, dependent only on the fortune of his moment of birth. If we look backwards through the biography of a person's soul, we find, as we shall see later, that it has a long chain of earthly existences behind it. In each new life it was confronted with a specific study plan which it was free to tackle properly or not.

When a person dies it is rare for him to have fully grasped and fulfilled all the demands and tasks presented to him by fate. Nearly always something remains unredeemed and unassimilated. This can be compared with a commercial balance sheet where the bottom line shows a debit which is carried over. This figure is, as it were, the soul's code number. This code number is indicative of the soul's degree of maturity and therefore of the quality it possesses at any given time. A soul can only reincarnate when the quality of the moment corresponds to its own quality.

Earlier I said that if an event is to manifest itself it can only do so at a moment when the time quality is commensurate with the latent content of the event. The same is true of a soul. The time quality is the gateway to material reality and will only open when the soul's quality of content corresponds to it. Such is the law of resonance! The moment of incarnation is the moment of conception. But, according to the law we have already studied, there is a correlation between conception and birth. Hence we can say: the quality of the moment of birth is expressive of the nature of the incarnating soul.

The horoscope is nothing but an intermediate reference, showing the stage that an individual has reached on the journey through their series of earthly existences. It is therefore neither random nor unjust. The horoscope shows us the individual's karma – it is the study plan that has become necessary for his present incarnation.

Here it becomes apparent how fundamental is the connection between astrology and the doctrine of reincarnation. Without reference to reincarnation astrology is untenable nonsense. No astrologer can deny reincarnation and give a satisfactory answer to the question of why one person's horoscope should be different from another's. Without reincarnation the horoscope would become a product of chance occurrence or of fate's capriciousness. But if we accept that fate is random and arbitrary our preoccupation with astrology becomes senseless because we can then use it only to calculate the patterns of chance occurrence.

The horoscope represents what each of us has acquired through his or her deeds. One cannot complain about it. There are no good horoscopes or bad horoscopes, but certainly there are tasks which can be more easily or less easily accomplished.

Unfortunately more and more erroneous ideas are spreading among astrologers because of a tendency to mix up astrology with the mechanistic thinking of our age. And thus there is an increasing danger that a person who seeks advice in astrology will come to more harm than good. A particularly dangerous notion is that the planets exert an influence, for this encourages people to turn the heavenly bodies into a new kind of projection screen for their feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Previously it was the environment, the family, the profession or the state that served this purpose. Now it may be Saturn who is the scapegoat. The victims of this attitude blame all their difficulties in life on the fact that they have “bad horoscopes”, and they envy successful people for their “good horoscopes”.

When astrology drops to such low standards we should not be surprised that accusation of superstition are still heard. This fundamentally wrong attitude gives rise almost automatically to what is probably the most widely disseminated error among followers of astrology: namely that astrology is a method for correcting one's fate. Almost universally astrology is used with the intention of outwitting fate a little to the advantage of the astrologer or his client.

As a result of this attitude there are consultations where people are, for example, strongly recommended to be extremely careful for the next few months, not to undertake anything important during that period and, if possible, to stay in bed on three particular days, because at that time a wicked and dangerous configuration of planets will be operating. However, the astrologer goes on to add, his client need not completely despair because six month later Jupiter will be in trine with the Sun and things will be looking much rosier. This is the time for carrying out projects; anything undertaken then should meet with happy and profitable results.

Better no astrology at all than thus misleading mankind! This sort of thing produces astrology addicts who, before taking a decision or even making a car journey, have to consult the astrologer in order to hear whether the planets are favourably inclined or not. Astrology should not be evaluated by the aberrations of those who use it – otherwise it would soon have to be classified among the worst addictions.

Mankind is fascinated by the idea of cheating fate and each of us tries it his own way: doctors with their intensive care units, astrologers with their charts. The same gulf that stands between orthodox medicine and true healing also separates modern-day astrology from true knowledge of the starts and planets.