How to Live a Life of Contentment- zen

This fantastic quote summarizes something that I’ve been trying to focus on recently in my daily life:

“Whatever the tasks, do them slowly
with ease,
in mindfulness,
so not do any tasks with the goal
of getting them over with.
Resolve to each job in a relaxed way,
with all your attention.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master

In our daily lives, we often rush through tasks, trying to get them done, trying to finish as much as we can each day, speeding along in our cars to our next destination, rushing to do what we need to do there, and then leaving so that we can speed to our next destination.

Unfortunately, it’s often not until we get to our final destination that we realize what madness this all is.

At the end of the day, we’re often exhausted and stressed out from the grind and the chaos and the busy-ness of the day. We don’t have time for what’s important to us, for what we really want to be doing, for spending time with loved ones, for doing things we’re passionate about.

And yet, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible to live a simpler life, one where you enjoy each activity, where you are present in everything (or most things) you do, where you are content rather than rushing to finish things.

If that appeals to you, let’s take a look at some suggestions for living a simple, peaceful, content life:

1. What’s important. First, take a step back and think about what’s important to you. What do you really want to be doing, who do you want to spend your time with, what do you want to accomplish with your work? Make a short list of 4-5 things for your life, 4-5 people you want to spend time with, 4-5 things you’d like to accomplish at work.
2. Examine your commitments. A big part of the problem is that our lives are way too full. We can’t possibly do everything we have committed to doing, and we certainly can’t enjoy it if we’re trying to do everything. Accept that you can’t do everything, know that you want to do what’s important to you, and try to eliminate the commitments that aren’t as important. See this articlefor more.
3. Do less each day. Don’t fill your day up with things to do. You will end up rushing to do them all. If you normally try (and fail) to do 7-10 things, do 3 important ones instead (with 3 more smaller items to do if you get those three done). This will give you time to do what you need to do, and not rush.
4. Leave space between tasks or appointments. Another mistake is trying to schedule things back-to-back. This leaves no cushion in case things take longer than we planned (which they always do), and it also gives us a feeling of being rushed and stressed throughout the day. Instead, leave a good-sized gap between your appointments or tasks, allowing you to focus more on each one, and have a transition time between them.
5. Eliminate as much as possible from your to-do list. You can’t do everything on your to-do list. Even if you could, more things will come up. As much as you can, simplify your to-do list down to the essentials. This allows you to rush less and focus more on what’s important. See this articlefor more.
6. Now, slow down and enjoy every task. This is the most important tip in this article. Read it twice. Whatever you’re doing, whether it’s a work task or taking a shower or brushing your teeth or cooking dinner or driving to work, slow down. Try to enjoy whatever you’re doing. Try to pay attention, instead of thinking about other things. Be in the moment. This isn’t easy, as you will often forget. But find a way to remind yourself. Unless the task involves actual pain, there isn’t anything that can’t be enjoyable if you give it the proper attention.
7. Single-task. This is kind of a mantra of mine, as I talk about how to single-task all the time. But it’s an important point for me, and for this article. Do one thing at a time, and do it well.
8. Eat slower. This is just a more specific application of Tip #6, but it’s something we do every day, so it deserves special attention. See this articlefor more.
9. Drive slower. Another application of the same principle, driving is something we do that’s often mindless and rushed. Instead, slow down and enjoy the journey. See this article for more.
10. Eliminate stress. Find the stressors in your life, and find ways to eliminate them. See this article for more.
11. How and why to slow down. This is such an important point, that I’m going to point you to two other articles on this: here and here.
12. Create time for solitude. In addition to slowing down and enjoying the tasks we do, and doing less of them, it’s also important to just have some time to yourself. Read this article for more.
13. Do nothing. Sometimes, it’s good to forget about doing things, and do nothing. Here’s more.
14. Sprinkle simple pleasures throughout your day. Knowing what your simple pleasures are, and putting a few of them in each day, can go a long way to making life more enjoyable. Here’s a list of 75 simple pleasures.
15. Practice being present. You can practice being in the moment at any time during the day. Here’s how.
16. Find inspirations. Learn from the best. Here are 5 inspirations for being in the moment.
17. Make frugality an enjoyable thing too. Instead of delayed gratification, tryenjoying life now while saving for later.

Living Gracefully with life situations - Osho

I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln….

I love this anecdote so much! It was his first address in the Senate as president. He was a poor man’s
son, his father was a shoemaker – in India he would have been an untouchable. Even in America people were very annoyed, irritated, angry that a shoemaker’s son had become the president; the aristocrats, the rich, the super-rich naturally were angry. There was great tension on the first day when he addressed them. As he stood up, one aristocrat also stood up and said, “Mr President, before you start speaking, I would like you to remember that your father used to make shoes for
my family. Right now I am using the shoes made by your father, so don’t forget that. Just becoming president does not mean anything. Don’t forget that you are a shoemaker’s son.”

There was absolute silence, pin-drop silence. Everybody felt that Abraham Lincoln would feel embarrassed, but instead of feeling embarrassed, he made the whole Senate feel embarrassed.He said, “It is good, I am immensely thankful to you that you reminded me about my father” — and tears came to his eyes. And he said, “How can I forget him? I know that he was a perfect shoemaker and I can never be that perfect a president. I cannot defeat the old man. It is a question of perfection. I know my father and I want to ask you, do you have any complaint against my father's shoes ? Then I can come and repair them, because I have learned from my father the art of making shoes."

“You are still wearing shoes he has made — many of you must be wearing them. If they do not fit you,
if they are pinching, if you are feeling uncomfortable, don’t be worried. Although my father is dead, he made me learn the art enough to mend your shoes. I cannot replace him; he was a perfect master. I am just an amateur, but I can mend your shoes and I will always remember to try at least to become as good a president as he was a shoemaker. I cannot hope to be better than him — that is
impossible, because I know him.”

How to take care of the Old

Old people are no different from children! You should treat them like kids. Like children, they are adamant and repeat the same things! They talk about the same thing over and over again, without realising they have already said it several times! When a pattern sets in them, you accept them as they are. They come into your life and make you realise that. You cannot change old people overnight, or even in a period of time. You need to accept them.

See, there is some wisdom in what they are saying. Sometimes, you are unable to see wisdom in what an experienced, mature person says. They speak from their own experience, over the years. Understand that they have a different set of experiences than yours. So don't get upset if they don't change! If you accept them as they are, a miracle will happen. If you give them space, love and compassion, they slowly start changing. But you need to have a lot of patience. You will learn patience dealing with old people, with grannies, who have certain patterns!

Also, don't take their moods too seriously! If they're upset, don't take it too seriously because then, you won't be able to communicate with them. Don't try to convince them. Sometimes, they just want to pour out their heart to you. If they are grumbling, they are just grumbling. They're saying it, but they don't really mean it! If they say, "I'm so upset" – they may say it, but they will still go and have their food, watch television and do all their things – but when they see you, they say, "Oh, I'm so upset, I never ate food, I didn't do this, I didn't do that!" If you take all their complaints seriously, you become miserable, and won't be able to help them. You should realise it's only their way of communicating. People who are very aged or sick just want to communicate with you, but what is it that they can share? When people don't have enthusiasm, they will only share their grievances. That doesn't mean that they are purely miserable. There is a corner in them that is untouched by any amount of misery. Whether it is extreme joy, happiness or misery, there is a part in every human being that remains untouched. It is the same with people who appear to be very miserable. In reality, they are not that miserable, but they talk, talk, talk and talk! Especially when you know that someone cares for you, you don't always go to him (or her) with a smile and with joy. You go to him (or her) with all your problems and complaints! This is the normal course of things in the world. Isn't that so? Suppose you are at a big party, you will go find your very close friend and complain, "The party is good, but this should have been better and that should have been better. They should have put that thing there. This light is not good. That curtain is a little crooked and you know there is no salt in this food...did you taste the food?!" You will find your close friends and talk, but you won't complain to the host. Out of good manners, you won't go and complain to someone new! The same is true of elderly people!

There is a nice story. A man earned a lot of money and then gave all his property to his son. When his son got everything, he built a small out-house behind the main house for his parents and he told them, "Now you have to stay there." So the old couple stayed there, while their son and his family started living in the big bungalow. One day, while playing, the grandchild came into his grandfather's home, where everything was old and in a very poor, pathetic condition – old utensils, old chairs, all unwanted goods. Things that could break at any time were kept in that house. So the grandchild came and told his grandpa, "Grandpa, be careful with your plate and your chair. Don't break them!" When he asked why, the child said, "Because tomorrow, my father needs all this." The child's father heard this and was shocked. That little boy saying, "Grandpa don't break it because tomorrow, when I grow older, I'm also going to send myfather here. So better save this!" One does not realise this fact. You are also going to be old one day, and are going to be like them. If you find that the elderly people in your home are complaining, and you don't like it, you better not do it today, and if you see them as being so generous, so calm, so serene, so loving, you better start being that way right now. And I tell you, if you're on the path, in the knowledge, and if you keep doing your meditation and the breathing exercises, your ageing reverses! That enthusiasm to learn will exist and your alertness, focus, attention – everything – increases in life. You will not become cynical and senile as you advance in age.

Sri Sri Ravishankar

my dear stupid non-vegers!

A man who is vegetarian is basically nonviolent. You can see it: the people who have been vegetarians for centuries are absolutely non – violent. They have not created any wars; they have not created any crusades, any JIHADS. The people who are meat eaters are bound to have little sensitivity, they are more hard. Even in the name of love they will kill; even in the name of peace they will go to war. In the name of freedom, in the name of democracy, they will murder.

There are cannibals also still in existence – not many: a small tribe in South Africa, of three hundred people. Nobody passes through that area, because if you pass through that area you will never reach your goal – you will become food! Because nobody passes through that area, those people have been eating their own people. In the beginning of this century their population was three thousand. Now they are only three hundred.

I am reminded of a Christian priest, a missionary, who was the first man from the West to reach to the cannibals to convert them to Christianity. They immediately got hold of him. They put him in a big pot. He said, ”What are you doing?” They said, ”Just wait a little and you will know.” Then they started putting logs and wood under the pot. The missionary saw the situation, looked around at those people’s faces... ferocious. Trying somehow to persuade them that this was not good, he said, ”Before you do anything, listen to me. Have you ever had any taste of Christianity?” They said, ”Wait, we will have. We will make soup of you and then everybody will have the first taste of Christianity.”

A cannibal cannot be called human. If he can eat living human beings, he has no heart, he has no love, he has no sensitivity. He is just a stone. But you don’t think the same way when somebody kills a lion or a deer, because you don’t think that the deer has as much life as you have. The deer may have a beloved; the deer may have children. You don’t think of the lion, when you kill him, that he may have a family. His small cubs will be orphans. He is as alive as you are – in fact more alive than you are. Destroying him only for a few taste buds on your tongue, for the taste...

It seems to me that killing animals for eating is not very far away from killing human beings. They differ only in their body, in their shape, but it is the same life that you are destroying. With new technology the earth is perfectly capable of giving you food. You can make it as tasteful as you want, and you can give it any flavor that you love. Just for taste, destroying life is simply disgusting. And destroying life, you are destroying many qualities in you. You cannot become a Gautam Buddha. You cannot have that purity of consciousness, that sensitivity.

One day Gautam Buddha is passing a street with his disciple Ananda, talking to him. A fly sits on his forehead and he is so much involved in talking that just mechanically he waves his hand – the way we do – and the fly is gone. But then he suddenly stops, closes his eyes, and raises his hand very slowly, very gracefully. Ananda said, ”What are you doing? The fly is no longer there.” Buddha said, ”I misbehaved with the fly. That was not the right treatment – I should have been more graceful. I’m trying it, now I should have behaved, so that in future I don’t commit the same mistake. After all, a fly is also alive, and she was just sitting on my forehead.”

Now this man, who cannot even mistreat a fly, will certainly have a far purer consciousness than anybody else, a far deeper serenity than anybody else. Vegetarian food lacks only one thing: certain proteins, which are absolutely needed for intelligence to grow. That is the reason not a single vegetarian has been awarded the Nobel prize. Even in India three persons have been awarded the Nobel prize, but all the three persons were nonvegetarians. I have looked into the matter deeply. I have enquired from scientists, medical people, and found a substitute, the unfertilized egg. Added to vegetarian food, it makes it complete. It gives all the proteins that the old vegetarian food misses. And the nonfertilized egg is just vegetable; it has no life.

A simple change, and we can make the whole of humanity more sensitive, more artistic, more full of reverence for life. You cannot be religious if you are not full of reverence for life. God you have not seen, but life is all around you. To you, life is the only representative that proves that existence is not dead, it is alive.

Eating anything by killing is irreligious, unspiritual, unaesthetic. And once the unfertilized egg is added to the vegetarian food, the food is perfect – better than the none vegetarian food. It fulfills all your needs without any destruction. A man who lives by destruction will die by destruction. It is not a coincidence that both the world wars were fought in the West. And the third world war will also begin – if it begins – in the west.

In the East – particularly the people who have been vegetarian for centuries – they have never fought a war I remember my childhood. My grandmother would not allow poor tomatoes in the house, because they look like meat. I said, ”You are mad. These poor tomatoes are not meat.” But she said, ”Even the look... As long as I am alive, please don’t bring any tomatoes into the house.”

Do you think this woman can kill somebody? Can you imagine this woman can commit suicide? Yes, it is true, you are what you eat, because what you eat makes your mind, makes your body, makes your senses, gives you qualities. In India, I have been watching – not a single vegetarian is a beggar. Where there are millions of beggars, not a single vegetarian is a beggar. I have been visiting jails, and enquiring; I have never come across a vegetarian in the jail. They simply don’t commit anything – their sensitivity prevents them. If we want a really human world, a world of loving people, respectful of each others’ lives, then we will have to think about our food and about our other habits. They should be changed. They are not so valuable.

And if you love the flavor of meat, that flavor can be given to any food. Now it is a simple matter. There is no need, just for that flavor, to kill a living, beautiful animal and destroy the ecology of the earth. They are our brothers and our sisters.

The day Saint Francis died – he used to travel on a donkey – the last thing he said is worth remembering. He addressed the donkey – the last thing – not his disciples. He said, ”Brother donkey, please forgive me. I have been riding on you. I accept my guilt; it was not right to ride on a brother. Please forgive me before I die.” But he addressed the donkey as brother.

We are part of this existence: these trees, these animals, these birds, they are our brothers and our sisters. This is our whole family. Just a slight understanding, and you can change your consciousness from being polluted, from being destroyed. You can rise as high as anybody has ever been able.

~osho~

What's wrong in being a fool ? - Sri Sri Ravishankar

We want to find a reason for everything, a purpose for everything. We want to analyze and understand everything. People even try to understand their dreams. What is the use? Whatever dream you have had, so what? Whether you are sitting on horseback or on top of a train in your dream; whether you see a crow or a duck or a pigeon or swan or a mouse or a cat in your dream, what does it matter? Why do you waste so much time interpreting dreams, trying to know something about dreams? We call ourselves wise because we want to understand. We want to do something only if we get something out of it.


A fool is somebody who does something and doesn't get anything out of it. Their foolish acts, even those you can interpret into meaning and purpose, you see they do them without any purpose, without any meaning. Since childhood we have been told, "Don't be a fool." What is wrong with being a fool? What is wrong with standing alone, apart from the crowd? Let the crowd act however it wants. I stand apart from that. I act my way!A fool is somebody who does something very unique, which is not accepted by others.


All entertainment, including games, are foolish acts. Just think of a person from another planet, maybe Mars, comes here and sees a huge crowd watching a team of boys on this side and another team on that side, trying to fight for a ball and put it into a basket. It would appear absolutely funny! One ball in the middle, a team of boys here, trying to push it there, trying to push it that way. Why all this trouble? Why don't they just take the ball and put it in the basket? What difference does it make whether they put it in this basket or that basket? It is so foolish, playing soccer, playing basketball. For hours together other people sit there, howling and yelling and clapping. George Bernard Shaw said somewhere, "Cricket is a game where eleven fools play and eleven thousand watch." It is true. All games are foolish acts. A game is a game because it is foolish. If you find meaning, purpose, aim and competition, you destroy the whole game.


If you are not foolish in your life for some time if possible all the time, if not possible, at least some time-you miss your life. You miss the joy in life. If somebody calls you a fool, how do you act? Your eyes become red. You start grinding your teeth! However, it is a great compliment. You should wait for such a compliment because this is very difficult to get. People may feel that you are a fool and they often don't say it to you. If some people, with great courage, come and tell you that you are a fool, you should feel happy. The greatest problem for us is being a fool. We try not to be fool. All our life we resist and fear arises in us. A fool is one who acts with freedom, who has all freedom, isn't it? That is how he could be a fool. If somebody has not experienced freedom, he cannot be a fool. Freedom is behind every fool. God loves you being a fool. He doesn't love wise men so much. He is bored of their philosophies. He is terribly bored by all the books written about Him.


Make the whole life a game. A game means there is no purpose, there is nothing. Just take it lightly, easily. Play the game. That is worship that is celebration. There is nothing that you do that will please God. There is nothing that you will do that will displease God. He is not waiting there with a staff, just waiting for you to do a mistake so He can punish you. Don?t have such cruel picture of God as someone who is judging, who is going to punish you if you do this or that. If He doesn't want you to do something, you can never do it. It is impossible. The very fact that He has allowed you so much freedom to do anything you like, means He says, Don't take anything seriously, it is all a game. It's all like a dream!

The legend turns a lesson – Superstar in CBSE school book!!

There is a lesson regarding Superstar in Grade VI English Book of CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education).

A remarkable achievement
If he manages to get a place in a school book that is read by kids all over the country, then what else he has to achieve?

A distinct honour
I think no other actor in India had this honour so far. That is getting a place in school book while they were in the profession of acting. (Yes, a few actors managed to get the place bcos of their political status and that too in State Board Syllabus. But this particular lesson reg Superstar has come in a Central board book where it is common for the whole country!!)

And what adds more to the pride is the heading under which the lesson was found.

Unit 3: The dignity of Work - From Bus conductor to film star.

Surely a remarkable achievement!! Isn’t it?

And surely this would apply tons and tons of coals on those faces who take dig at thalaivar whenever there’s a little opportunity. But beyond their calculations, Superstar’s name and fame skyrockets to unimaginable heights each time.

Just wish to remind you a quote:
“Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.”
- Oliver Wendell

I am happy to say that this blog is the first to bring you this good news. Will put efforts to make this news appear in other media sources including newspapers.

And don't forget to go throught the 'Evaluation' page i present beside. It is not only for studs, it is also for us. Just try it.

Rajnikanth on Iphone

Sydney based fan releases iPhone app of Rajnikanth.

Rated 12+, ”Rajnikanth for iPhone” is Chaitanya Kolluri’s creation who is a Sydney based FX trader. It is a simple 2D side scrolling, arcade action game, where the player plays the mantle of the action hero and battles through 15 challenging levels. It is currently

supported on iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4 and the iPad.

Each level has a different setting with different enemies.Cultural references to blockbusters like“Padayyappa”, “Muthu”, “Chandramukhi” and the upcoming “Endhiran” have been built into it.

The story is based on the King Chandrahaas of Vijayanagram who loses his powers, an old Sadhu(priest) enlists his services to salvage the nation.

link:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rajnikanth/id387687545?mt=8

Samsung Windows Phone 7

Samsung focusing on Windows Phone 7 next year?

According to New York Times, Google Android’s “friend” Samsung will be focusing on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7next year. The report quotes gadgets blog based in China.

The figure was given by the report: 63 percent of smartphones built by Samsung will be WP7 devices, followed by Android at 32 percent and its own Bada OS at 6 percent.

What?

NY Times added that this new report follows on a report last week that Samsung was internally focusing on WP7.

The fact:

Samsung’s recent success is because of the popularity ofAndroid, and the best example is the Samsung Galaxy Tablet reportedly recorded 600,000 of sales in just one month. Strong enough to say that it’s really an iPad competitor.

I’m not convinced that Samsung will just abandon the “momentum” of Android.

Aside from the fact that Samsung is obviously excited with the Android Gingerbread, and Google’s next big venture with Samsung with codename “Nexus S” only proves that there’s no turning back.

Nexus S, also called the Nexus One sequel, is the first-ever confirmed phone to use Android’s Gingerbread update, and will sport NFC functionality.

In fairness to Windows Phone 7, they reportedly recorded good sales number, plus, Verizon’s change-of-heart proved that this Microsoft OS is promising too.

link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQBpiLudT40

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10-inch Model Coming in 2011

The HP Slate Windows 7 tablet video has been review earlier; even it hasn’t been shipped by the company yet. Recently, Samsung Mobile Ireland manager Gary Twohig gave some details about the other Samsung Galaxy Tab which comes with 10-inch. According to Gary Twohig, the 10 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab will be available in the first half of 2011. It will also come with Android and a V8 Javascript engine, but there is no detail about whether it’s uses 2.2, 3.0 or later version of Adroid.

There is no detail yet from Samsung about this 10-inch device. Better we wait the appearance of the first generation which is just about to appear next month than leaping ahead forecasting something that is not available yet and uncertain.

World's first Android projector phone by Samsung

Samsung is coming up with its latest phone 'Galaxy Beam', touted to be the world's first Android projector phone. It is scheduled to release in July in Singapore. The rest of Asia and Europe should see its launch shortly after that. This comes in as another first from Samsung after the launch of its Wave S8500 which was the first smartphone to be powered by Bada operating system.

The Galaxy Beam, earlier called Halo, comes with a 3.7 inch screen super AMOLED display. It has a built-in DLP pico projector and runs with Android 2.1. The connectivity features of the phone include Bluetooth v3.0, USB v2.0, Wi-Fi. It has also got TV out option.

Other regular features like camera, radio and video are present. There is a front facing VGA camera and 8MP camera that comes with auto focus with flash. It plays FM radio and supports MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV, DivX and Xvid video formats.

Weighing at 155 grams, the device uses 1800 mAh battery that gives 7 hours of talk time and 530 hours in standby.

As far as the evolution of cell phones go, the projector phones are most likely to set in a new trend in the mobile world. In late 2009, LG had come up with eXpo, a smartphone running on Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, that came with a removable pico projector. And with Samsung running the phone with the Android OS, it will be exciting to see the impact that the Galaxy Beam will create in the markets.

for further details

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Samsung-I7410_id3509

superstar's video songs .......

~~~~AMAZING CHINESE DRAWINGS~~

The Science of Cosmic Oneness

Osho, one of the great spiritual minds of our time, discusses the essential nature of astrology. Astrology, the Science of Cosmic Oneness, dates back in one form or another thousands of years to the earliest known civilisations. The article, in six parts, examines the true spiritual meaning of astrology and the profound underpinnings of this marvellous science.

Astrology is perhaps the most ancient subject and also in a way the most ignored. It is the most ancient because astrology has been in existence as far back as we have been able to investigate the history of mankind. Astrological inscriptions have been found on bone remnants from the Sumerian civilization, which existed twenty-five thousand years before Jesus. Bone remnants have been discovered with astrological inscriptions and with an outline of the moon’s orbit in the sky.

But in India this science is even older. In the Rigveda reference is made to a certain constellation of the stars, which could only have occurred ninety-five thousand years ago. Because of this, Lokmanya Tilak concluded that the Vedas must certainly be even more

That particular vedic reference could not have been added at a later period. Other, younger generations would not have been able to work out a constellation that existed many years before. But now we have scientific methods, which we can use to discover where the stars were at a particular moment in the distant past. The deepest laws of astrology were first discovered in India. In fact it was only because of astrology that mathematics was born. To make astrological calculations, first mathematics was needed.

The digits used in arithmetic were invented in India — the numbers one to ten, which exist in all the world’s languages, are basically Indian in origin. And throughout the world the decimal system has been accepted: the decimal system was born in India, and it slowly spread throughout the entire world. When you say nine in English, it is simply a modification of the Sanskrit word nav. When you say eight in English, it is simply a modification of the Sanskrit word aht. The numerals one to nine, prevalent in all the world’s languages, came into existence only because of the influence of Indian astrology.ancient: the constellation of the stars as the Vedas describe it could only have occurred at a certain moment ninety-five thousand years ago; so that particular vedic reference must be at least ninety-five thousand years old.

The first knowledge about the existence of astrology reached the Sumerian civilization from India.

Six thousand years before Jesus, the Sumerians were the first to open the doors of astrology to the Western world. The Sumerians laid the foundation for the scientific study of the constellation. They constructed a gigantic tower, seven hundred feet tall, and from that tower Sumerian priests used to observe the sky twenty-four hours a day. Sumerian metaphysicians soon learned that whatever happens to mankind is somehow ultimately connected with the stars — they are the source.

Six thousand years before Jesus, it was the view in Sumeria that whenever illness occurs, whenever epidemics are born, the stars are somehow connected. These days there is a scientific basis for this view. And those who understand the science of astrology today say it was the Sumerians who began the history of mankind.

In 1920, a Russian scientist, Chijevsky, investigated this matter deeply and discovered that every eleven years enormous explosions take place on the sun. Every eleven years a nuclear explosion occurs on the sun. Chijevsky discovered that whenever such nuclear explosions occur on the sun, wars and revolutions begin on Earth. According to him, during the past seven hundred years, whenever such phenomena have occurred on the sun, there have been disasters on Earth.

Chijevsky’s analysis was undeniable and, because it went against the Marxist viewpoint, in 1920 Stalin had him arrested and thrown into prison. Only after Stalin’s death could Chijevsky be released. For Stalin, Chijevsky’s conclusions must have seemed very strange. According to Marxist and communist thinking, whatever revolutions occur on the Earth are fundamentally caused by economic differences between men. But Chijevsky declared that the cause of revolutions is the explosions happening on the sun.

How can explosions on the sun possibly be related to the existence of poverty or wealth in the lives of men?

If Chijevsky’s thesis is correct, then Marx’s entire system disintegrates into dust. Then you cannot explain revolutions any longer in reference to economics and class struggle; then only astrology can explain revolution.

Chijevsky could not be proved wrong. His calculation covering seven hundred years was so scientific, the connection he established between explosions on the sun and phenomena on the Earth was so close, that to prove him wrong was difficult. But to send him to Siberia was a simple matter.

After Stalin’s death Khrushchev released Chijevsky from Siberia. Nearly fifty valuable years of this man’s life were lost in Siberia. After his release he only lived another four to six months, but in those few months he gathered together even more evidence for his thesis. He also linked the spread of epidemics on the Earth to solar influence.

The sun is not a static ball of fire as we ordinarily think, but rather an infinitely alive and dynamic, fiery organism. The sun changes its mood every moment. And when the sun changes its mood even a little, life on Earth is affected. Nothing happens on the Earth without something happening on the sun. When there is a solar eclipse, the birds in the forest stop singing twenty-four hours before. During the entire time of the eclipse the whole Earth becomes silent. The birds stop their singing and all of the animals in the forest become oppressed and frightened, full of apprehension. The monkeys abandon their trees and come down below. They form themselves into groups, apparently as a means of protection. And it is a surprising thing that these monkeys, who are always gossiping and making a hue and cry, become so quiet at the time of the eclipse that even meditators cannot compare with them.

Chijevsky explained this entire matter, but such thinking first originated in Sumeria. Afterwards, a Swiss physician named Paracelsus discovered more information. He made an unparalleled discovery — and this discovery will transform all of medical science, if not today then tomorrow. Up until now this discovery could not be considered valid because astrology is such an ignored subject — the most ancient, the most ignored, and the most respected at the same time.

Last year in France, it was calculated that forty-seven percent of the population believes that astrology is a science.

In America, five thousand leading astrologers are currently at work night and day.

They have so many clients that they can never finish their work properly

— Americans pay millions of dollars yearly to astrologers. It is estimated that throughout the world, seventy-eight percent of people believe in astrology. The seventy-eight percent who believe in astrology belong to the general public. Thinkers and intellectuals are on red alert at the very mention of astrology.

C. G. Jung said that university doors have been closed to astrology for three hundred years, but that in the coming thirty years these doors will again open and astrology will enter the university. It will happen because claims that astrology has made, which have up to now been unproved, can now be proved.

Paracelsus gave birth to one discovery — that man becomes ill only when the harmonious relationship between himself and the constellation of stars at his birth somehow breaks down. For this, a little explanation is necessary. Many years before Paracelsus, some six hundred years BC, Pythagoras gave birth to the very valuable principle of planetary harmony. When Pythagoras proclaimed this principle in Greece he had just returned from a journey to Egypt and India. At the time when he came, India was intensely absorbed in the ideas of Buddha and Mahavir. After his return to Greece, he included in his reports a specific reference to Buddhist and Jaina monks . He gave the Jaina monks the name Jainosophists, and also reported that they walk about naked.

Pythagoras believed that every star, every planet and every satellite gives out a unique vibration through its movement as it travels in space.

Every movement of the stars gives out a vibration, and every star has its own individual movement. All the vibrations of the stars together make a musical harmony, which he called the harmony of the universe.

When you are born, the melody that is created by the tuning of the stars at that time is inscribed on your mind in its freshest, most unsophisticated, and most sensitive state―that of birth. Throughout your life this will cause good health or ill health. When you live in tune with the original musical harmony that existed at the time of your birth, then you are healthy. And whenever your tuning with this fundamental musical harmony breaks down, you become ill.

In this connection Paracelsus has done very significant work. He would not prescribe medicine to any patient until he had seen his kundali, his astrological birth chart. And it is a surprising thing that after having examined a patient’s birth chart, Paracelsus would cure patients who had confused other physicians — patients who could not be cured by any other physician. He used to say, “Until I know the position of the stars at the time of this man’s birth, it is not possible to know the notes of his inner harmony. And unless I know the arrangement of his inner harmony, how can I make this man healthy?”

But what is meant by health? This we must try to understand. Ordinarily, if we ask a physician what the definition of health is, he will only say that health is the absence of sickness. But this is a negative definition. It is unfortunate that we must define health in terms of illness. Health is a positive thing, a positive state; illness is negative. Health is our nature; illness is an attack on nature. So it is very strange that we must define health in terms of illness. To define the host in terms of the guest is very strange.

Health coexists with us; illness comes occasionally.

Health accompanies us at birth; illness is a superficial phenomenon. But if we ask a physician to define health, he can only say that health is present when illness is absent.

Paracelsus used to say that this interpretation is wrong — the concept of health needs to be positively defined. But how can we reach a positive definition, an interpretation of the concept of health that will be creative?

Paracelsus used to say, “Until the state of your inner harmony is known, you can at best only be released from your illness ― because your inner harmony is the source of your health. But when you are released from one illness you will immediately get another, because nothing has been done about your inner harmony. Your inner harmony has to be supported.”

Five hundred years have passed since Paracelsus, and his discoveries disappeared into oblivion. But now, during the past twenty years, astrology has re-emerged. During this time a new science has been born. I will describe this new science a bit, and then you will be able to understand the ancient science of astrology more easily.

In 1950, a new science was born called cosmic chemistry. The originator of this science is Georgi Giardi, one of the most significant men of the century. After endless experiments in the laboratory, this man proved scientifically that the whole universe is an organic unity ― that the whole universe is one body. If my finger is hurt, then my whole body is affected. The body means that no limb is separate, all are joined together. If my eye is in pain, then my big toe also experiences that pain. If my foot is hurt, the message reaches the heart. If my mind is ill, my entire body will be disturbed. If my whole body is destroyed, then it will be difficult for my mind to find anywhere to be. The body is an organic unity: touch a single part and the whole body vibrates; all parts are affected.

Cosmic chemistry says that the entire cosmos is a body.

Nothing in it stands alone, all things are joined together. So no matter how distant a star may be from us, when it changes, our heartbeats also change. And no matter how far away the sun may be, when it becomes very disturbed our blood circulation is also disturbed. Every eleven years an atomic storm occurs on the sun. The last time such a great atomic storm and fiery explosions were going on, a Japanese doctor named Tamatto made an amazing discovery. This doctor had been doing work on women’s blood for twenty years. There is one property unique to female blood which is absent in the blood of males. At the time of menstruation the blood of women becomes thin, but men’s blood always remains the same. Women’s blood at the time of menstruation grows thin; at the time of pregnancy also their blood grows thin. According to Tamatto, this is the one basic difference between the blood of men and women. But when atomic energy storms were occurring on the sun with great intensity, the blood of men also grew thin. This was a very novel phenomenon. Before this it had never been recorded that men’s blood was affected by disturbances on the sun. And if blood can be so affected, then anything can be affected.

There is an American thinker, Frank Brown, who has been working on the safety and facility aspects of space travelers. For half his life, he has made it his task to ensure that the men who travel into space will face no difficulty. The most serious problem is how they will be affected as they leave the Earth. No one knows how much atomic radiation they may encounter or how it may affect them.

For two thousand years after Aristotle, in the West it was thought that space is empty, that nothing is there: two hundred miles away from Earth the atmosphere ceases and there is empty space. But the investigations of space travelers have proved this notion to be wrong. Space is not empty, it is very full. It is neither empty nor dead — it is extremely alive.

The truth is that the two-hundred mile wide layer of the Earth’s atmosphere prevents many harmful influences from reaching us. But in space all kinds of strange currents are flowing, the effects of which man may not be able to withstand.

You will be surprised to learn this, and you will laugh, but before he would let a man be sent into space, Frank Brown sent a potato into space. It was Brown’s contention that there is very little essential difference between a man and a potato. If the potato rots, then man cannot survive; if the potato survives, then man may also survive. The potato is a very hardy organism, and man is very sensitive. If even a potato cannot survive in space, then there is no hope of survival for man. If a potato returns alive, and if it sprouts after being sown in the ground, then man can be sent into space. However, there would still be concern about man’s ability to survive.

From his experiment Brown proved one more thing — that a potato seed lying in the ground, or any seed lying in the ground, grows only in relation to the sun. The sun alone arouses it and encourages it to emerge. The sun alone summons the embryo plant and induces its growth.

Brown also did research in another field. This other subject has even now not been given a suitable name, but at present it is called planetary heredity. There is another word in English, horoscope, which comes from the Greek horoscopos. The meaning of the word horoscopos is: I observe the emerging planets.

At the moment a child is born, many stars are emerging all around the Earth’s horizon.

Just as the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, so stars rise and set in space twenty-four hours a day. If a child is being born at six o’clock in the morning, at that time the sun too is rising. At that time some stars are also rising, and other stars are setting. Some constellations are ascending, some constellations are on the decline. This child is being born into a certain arrangement of stars in space.

Up until now we have doubted — and even now many people not deeply familiar with the subject still doubt — that the moon and stars can have anything to do with man. Wherever the stars may be, what difference will it make to some child being born in a village? And then too, on the same date, under the same constellation, not just one child but thousands of children are born.... Among these one may become the president of some country, but the remainder will not. Among these one may die after one hundred years, and another after two days. Among these one will be a genius and one will be an idiot. So from a superficial viewpoint, one might ask how a child can be related to a horoscope just by being born under a certain constellation and planetary pattern.

The logic of such a question seems clear and direct: Why would the stars be concerned with the birth of a single child? And then also, not just one child is born; under the very same stars many are born who are not all alike. From such logic it seems that the birth of a human being has no connection with the stars.

But from the investigations of Brown, Picardi, Tamatto and others, we can draw a great conclusion. All these scientists say that while we cannot yet claim that a child as an individual is influenced by the stars still we can now say for certain that life as a whole is affected. Whether a child is influenced as an individual we cannot now say or know, but life as a whole is. And if life as a whole is, then as we investigate the facts of the matter more deeply, we will discover that the individual too, is affected by the stars.

One thing more must be considered. It has been thought that astrology is a science which, because it originated in an earlier time, could not develop. But in my view the situation is just the opposite. Astrology was an infinitely developed science in some extremely advanced civilization, but that civilization has been lost and only incomplete fragments of its astrology have remained in our hands.

Astrology is not a new science which needs to be developed, but a science which was at one time very advanced.

Then the civilization which developed it was lost. Civilizations come and go every day; the fundamentals, the basic sayings and the basic principles of those things which have been developed by them, become lost. Today, science is approaching the point where it will accept the thesis that life as a whole is affected by the movements of the stars.

At the time of birth, the condition of a child’s mind is exactly like a very sensitive photo plate. Two or three things need to be thought about if we want to understand how life is affected. And only if life is affected can there be the possibility of astrology — not otherwise.

We should try to understand the phenomenon of twins. Two types of twins exist: One is identical twins — those who are born from one egg; the other type is of those who, although they are twins, are born from separate eggs — in the mother’s womb two eggs become fertilized, and two children are born. The first type is more rare — two children from one egg. They are very significant subjects to study because they are born at the same time. Out of necessity we call the children born from separate eggs twins, but the moment of their birth is not exactly the same.

It must be understood that birth is an ambiguous phenomenon. The first aspect of birth is conception — the actual birth takes place on the day when the foetus is conceived in the mother’s womb. This is the actual birth. What you call birth is really birth number two — when the child comes out of the mother’s womb.

If we were to carry out a complete astrological investigation — as the Hindus alone have done, and done very thoroughly — then our actual concern would not begin when the child is born. Our actual concern begins when the child starts its journey in the mother’s womb, when the conception takes place — because that is the actual birth. So Hindus have also come to feel that if a particular type of child is to be born, it will be born if intercourse and pregnancy occur under an arrangement of planets and constellation most suitable for that type. Now I will explain to you a little of the background of this, because much work has been done in this area and many things have become clear.

Ordinarily, when a child was born at six o’clock in the morning, we thought that the constellation which existed at that time influences the child. But those who know astrology deeply say that the stars do not cast their influence over a child just because it is born at six o’clock in the morning. No, rather, the child chooses to be born under those stars which will influence him as he wishes to be influenced. This is a radically different thing.

When the child is taking birth, it chooses the planets and stars, and the moment at which it will take birth.

And if we go still more deeply, then the child also chooses the time of its conception.

Every soul chooses its own time of conception — when it will accept a womb, at which moment. The moment of conception is not insignificant. It is significant in that it is a question of how the entire universe exists at that moment, and to what sort of possibilities the universe opens the door at that moment.

When two children are conceived together from one egg, then the moment of their conception is the same and the moment of their birth is the same. It is interesting that the lives of the two children who have taken birth from one egg are so alike, that it is difficult to say that the moment of birth has no influence. The IQ of twins born from one egg is just about equal. And those who know, say that the fractional difference which arises is because of our faulty measuring devices. Even today we have not been able to develop adequate criteria by which we can quantitatively measure intelligence.

If twins born from the same egg are brought up far apart from each other, their IQs still do not differ. Even if one child is raised in India and another in China, and neither is aware of the existence of the other, this will still be true. Cases have occurred where such twins have been raised far apart from each other until they have attained maturity, but their IQs did not differ. It is surprising that the IQ can be associated with the child’s potential at birth.

When the twin who lives in China suffers from a cold, at that time its twin in India also suffers from a cold. Generally, twins born from one egg die in the same year. At the most, three years elapse between their deaths, and at the least, three days — but never more than three years. If one twin has died, then we can assume that after three days or within three years the other will die. Their attitudes, their behavior, their feelings are parallel, and it seems that the two live in almost exactly the same way. Their similarity is seen in many other things also — each acts like a copy of the other.

Everyone’s skin is individual. If my hand is damaged and new skin needs to be grafted, then your skin cannot be grafted onto my hand; it will be necessary to use a piece of my own skin. On the entire Earth, there will be no one whose skin can be grafted onto my hand. My body will give signs of rejection; it will not accept another’s skin. However, the skin of twins born out of one egg can be transplanted. This is the only exception. If the skin of one is grafted onto the skin of the other, the other’s body will not reject it. Why is that? What is the cause? We cannot say that it is because they have the same parents, because even though two brothers may have the same parents, their skins are not interchangeable. The only exception is found in those children who were conceived at the same moment. Even between them no other common factor exists.

Their brothers also came from the same mother and father, but their skins cannot be interchanged the skin of one brother cannot be grafted onto another brother’s body. Only the moment of their births differ; the mother and father are the same, everything else is the same. They differ greatly in only one thing, and that is the moment of their conception.

Is the moment of birth so influential that the life span is of about the same length, that their IQs are almost equal, that their bodily behavior is the same, that when the two fall ill it is from the same illness, and that when the two become well again, it is from the same medicine? Can the moment of birth be so influential?

Astrology has been saying that the moment of birth is even more important than this.

Up until now science has not agreed with astrology, but it is now beginning to do so. In coming to this increasing agreement, some new experiments have been helpful.

For example, when we launched man-made satellites into space, we discovered that a wide range of radioactive rays from space, and the constellations are continuously bombarding the Earth. Nothing on the Earth is unaffected by this phenomenon. We know that the ocean is influenced by the moon, but we have not taken into consideration the fact that the same proportion of water and salt that occurs in the ocean also occurs in the human body the same proportion. Seventy percent of the human body consists of water, and the proportion of salt contained in that water is the same as is contained in the Arabian Sea. If the water in the ocean is affected by the moon, then how could the water inside the human body remain unaffected?

Now in this connection, two or three facts emerging from recent investigations must be kept in mind. For example, as the day of the full moon approaches, the amount of insanity in the world increases, whereas on the last day of the darker fourteen days, the least number of people go insane. As the moon grows brighter the level of insanity also begins to increase. On the day of the full moon, the greatest number of people enter madhouses; and on the last day of the moon’s waning period, the greatest number of people are discharged from madhouses. Statistics are now available....

In English there is the word lunatic; in Hindi we have the word chaandmara. Chaandrefers to the moon, just as lunar does in English. Chaandmara is a very ancient term, and the word lunatic also is some three thousand years old. Some three thousand years ago, people realized that the moon affects the insane. But if it affects the insane, then how can it avoid affecting the sane?

In the final analysis, the construction of the brain and the internal composition of the body are the same for all.

Yes, it may be that the moon affects the insane to a greater extent, and the sane to a lesser extent, but this is simply a quantitative difference. It is impossible that the sane remain completely unaffected by the moon. If that was true, then nobody would go mad because everyone who goes mad was once sane. The moon must first affect those who are sane.

Professor Brown made an interesting study. He was a man completely without faith in astrology. He was a skeptic, and in his earlier writings he had very much ridiculed astrology. Yet despite his skepticism he began some investigation. He gathered together the birth charts of many famous generals, doctors, and other professionals. But then he found himself in great difficulty because he discovered that members of particular professions were born under a specific planet, under the same constellation. For instance, among all famous generals the influence of Mars upon their lives is very strong, whereas in the lives of academics the influence of Mars is completely absent.

The study which Brown carried out on some fifty thousand men who were army officers reveals that the influence of Mars is very strong in the lives of these men. Generally, when such personalities take birth, the planet Mars is ascending. The moment of their birth is the moment that Mars begins to rise. Exactly opposite to this, no matter how many pacifists were studied, they were never born at the time when the planet Mars was ascending. If it happened only occasionally, you could think it a coincidence, but there cannot be thousands of cases of coincidence. Mathematicians are born under a specific constellation; poets are never born under this same constellation. In an occasional case there may be a coincidence, but when it happens so often it cannot be a coincidence.

In fact, there is a great difference in behavior among people of different professions and occupations — for example, between poets, mathematicians, warmongers, generals and pacifists. On the one hand, there may be a man like Bertrand Russell who says that there should be peace in the world, and on the other hand, a man like Nietzsche who says that the day war ceases the world will cease to be meaningful. Is it only an intellectual dispute between them, or also a dispute of the stars? Is there only an intellectual dispute between them, or does the moment of their births also separate them?

The more research is done, the more it is being realized that the special talents of a person are revealed by the time of his birth.

Those who know about astrology even superficially would say that this happens because he is born under a specific constellation. But I want to say to you that man chooses the constellation under which he is to be born. He will be born under the appropriate constellation according to what he wants to be whatever his innate possibilities, whatever the shape of his last life taken in its entirety, whatever his motivating consciousness. Every child, every new life, insists on a specific moment for birth. It wants to be born at a specific moment; it wants to be conceived at a specific moment both are interdependent.

As I have told you, the water of the ocean is subject to certain influences. But all life is created out of water; without water, no life is possible. In ancient Greece, philosophers used to say that only from water is life born, that water is life. Ancient Indian, Chinese and other mythologies also say this. Today scientists who believe in evolution also say that life was born in the water, that perhaps the first life on the planet lived in the water as algae. This was the first form of life, and then out of this, man eventually evolved.

Water is the most mysterious element of all. Whatever influences reach man from the stars, from the universe, from outer space, reach him through the medium of water. Only after affecting the water in a man’s body, can any radiation gain access to him. Much work is being done with water, and many mysteries concerning water are coming to man’s attention.

The biggest mystery about water, which has come to the attention of scientists in the last ten years, is that water possesses a lot of sensitivity. Whatever influences are active, from whatever direction in life, they first move through the medium of water. The water in us is the first thing to be affected. Once the water in us is influenced, then it is very difficult for us to avoid being influenced.

You will be surprised to learn that when the child floats in the mother’s womb, he floats just as if he were in the ocean. The water in which the child floats in the mother’s womb possesses the same proportion of salt as is present in the ocean. Influences from the mother’s body do not reach the child directly; there is no direct connection between the mother and the child growing in her womb. The medium is water; whatever influences reach the child from the mother, do so through the medium of water — there is no direct relationship. Then throughout our lives the water in our bodies behaves just like the water in the sea.

Fish in the ocean have been much studied. There are fish which come onto the seashore and lay their eggs at low tide when the ocean is receding. Riding with the waves the fish come onto the sand, lay their eggs, and return with the ocean waves. At a fixed time the tide returns, and by then the eggs will have hatched, and the spawn will have come out. Then the incoming tide will take the spawn back out to sea.

Scientists who studied these fish were very surprised, because the fish always come to lay their eggs at low tide.

If they were to lay their eggs at high tide, the eggs would be washed away in the flood. They lay their eggs when the tide is going down, and withdraw for a little time in the recesses of the waves. And the tide does not wash over the place where they lay their eggs a second time, otherwise the tide would wash the eggs away.

Scientists are very puzzled as to how these fish know when it is going to be low tide. If there were even the slightest mistake in timing, the eggs would be washed away. But in hundreds of thousands of years they have never made a mistake. If they had made a mistake they would have disappeared as a species. But they have never made a mistake. What equipment do these fish possess by which they can know about the tides? What sense organ do they possess that tells them when the tide will ebb? A hundred thousand fish will be gathered together at one time over the entire seashore.... These fish must possess some kind of signaling system, some kind of transmitter. A hundred thousand fish will come from thousands of miles away to lay their eggs on the ocean beach — and all at the same time.

Those who have studied the phenomenon say that there can be no source of information other than the moon. The moon is the source of the fish’s intuition, nothing else — the fish know intuitively when the tide is ebbing and when it is rising. The impact of the moon is the only way they have of knowing the tides.

There was another possibility. It has been conjectured that these fish might somehow be influenced by the waves of the ocean. So scientists put them in a place where there are no ocean waves: in water, in an unlit room. But the results turned out to be really surprising. The fish were enveloped in darkness, the moon was not in view there was no light visible at all but when the moon reached the exact point at which the fish in the ocean would go and lay their eggs on the shore, at exactly the same moment the fish in the laboratory laid their eggs. What does this fact show...? That it is not a question of the ocean waves.

Someone may suggest that the race only begins when the fish receive signals from each other, but this hypothesis does not hold water. Scientists have witnessed the fish when they were isolated from each other. They have tried to disturb the brains of these fish in every way. They have placed the fish in darkness for twenty-four hours, so that the fish do not know when it is morning and when it is night. They have observed these fish after placing them under a bright light for twenty-four hours so that the fish would not know when it is day. They have observed them after setting up an artificial moon, and daily either decreasing or increasing its brilliance — but these fish could not be fooled. When the real moon came to the right point, only at that moment the fish laid their eggs; wherever they were, they would lay their eggs at that moment.

Every year hundreds of thousands of birds fly thousands and thousands of miles.

Winter is on its way and soon snow will fall, so the birds begin to migrate from the areas where snow will fall. They will fly to a place thousands of miles away to reach this winter home. So these birds migrate exactly one month before the coming of the snow. At the time they are migrating the snow has not yet begun to fall, but exactly a month later it will fall. How do these birds calculate the date on which snow will fall? Our weathermen, who have the most elaborate observatories, cannot come up with such exact information.

I have heard that some weathermen first ask astrologers sitting on the roadside, “What do you think will it rain today or not?”

The arrangements which man has made seem childish. Birds know a month and a half, even two months before the first snow falls. After thousands of experiments it has been observed that the day on which birds migrate is fixed for every type of bird. And every year the date changes, because there is no fixed date for snow to fall. But it is certain that every bird will migrate one month before the snow falls. If snow is to fall ten days later than in the previous year, they will migrate ten days later than they did in that year. If the snow falls ten days earlier, they will have migrated ten days earlier. If the date of the first snowfall is uncertain, then how are these birds informed?

In Japan there is a bird which will evacuate a town twenty-four hours before an earthquake occurs. It is just an ordinary town bird — there are many of them in every town — but twenty-four hours before an earthquake these birds will evacuate the town. At present, scientists are unable to accurately predict whether an earthquake is coming even two hours beforehand; two hours before they are still uncertain, they are still unsure. There is only a probability, a possibility, that an earthquake may happen. But in Japan people know twenty-four hours in advance that an earthquake is coming. When this bird flies away, the people of the town know that now there is only twenty-four hours’ time. The bird has left — not a single one of this species remains in the town. How does this bird come to know?

For ten years now, scientists have been saying something new: that every living organism possesses an internal sensor, which feels the cosmic influences. Perhaps man too possesses it, but has lost awareness of it through depending on his intellect.

Man is the only living being in the world who has, through his so-called intelligence, lost many things which he once had.

Through the same intelligence he has also obtained many things he never had before — but the outcome is that he has ended up in danger of self-destruction. What he had he has lost, and what he did not have he has invented. But even the tiniest living organisms possess an inner intuitive source, and now scientific data is becoming available which proves that such an inner source exists. The discovery of an inner source makes us aware that there is nothing alive on Earth which is isolated or separate — everything is joined to the cosmos. Whatever happens anywhere, the effects of it are felt here.

I was talking about Paracelsus.... Present-day physicians are also coming to the conclusion that whenever sunspots emerge and grow on the sun, illness on the Earth increases, and that whenever the sunspots decrease, illness on the earth also decreases. As long as sunspots continue to happen we will never get rid of disease on Earth. Every eleven years there is great turmoil on the sun and huge explosions take place. Whenever explosions and turmoil occur on the sun, wars and disturbances occur on Earth. The wars that take place on Earth follow a ten-year cycle. Epidemics also follow a ten or eleven-year cycle. Revolutions also follow an approximately ten or eleven-year cycle.

Once you have become aware that we are not separate or isolated but joined together in an organic way, then it will be easy to understand astrology. This is why I am explaining all this to you.

In the past some people have thought, and even now think, that astrology is superstition and blind faith. To a great extent this seems to be true. Those things for which it is difficult to find a scientific explanation seem to us to be based only on blind faith. But astrology is very scientific. The meaning of science is the investigation of the relationship between cause and effect. Astrology says that whatever happens on this earth is not uncaused; however, we may not be aware of the causes. Astrology says that the shape which the future will take cannot be isolated from the past but must be connected to it: what you become tomorrow will be connected to what you are today; what you were until today is connected to what you will be tomorrow.

Astrology is a very scientific way of thinking.

It maintains that the future will emerge only out of the past: your today has emerged out of your yesterday and your tomorrow will emerge out of your today. Astrology also maintains that whatever happens tomorrow is in some subtle way present even today. Now try to understand a little about this.

Three days before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln had a dream that he had been murdered, and that his corpse was lying in a special room in the White house. He even noted the number of the room. At that point his sleep was broken, and when he woke up he laughed. He said to his wife, “I dreamed that I was murdered and that my body was lying in room number such-and-such, and in the such-and-such wing of the White House” — he was sleeping in that wing of the White House. “You stood at my head, and these people were standing all around.”

It was a joke, a laughing matter to him. Lincoln and his wife went back to sleep. Three days later Lincoln’s assassination took place. Three days later his body was lying in that number room, in that very place, and people were standing around his body in that sequence.

If what was to occur three days later had not in some way already occurred, then how could such a dream have taken place? How could the dream resemble what actually took place, in such detail? Such a glimpse is only given in a dream if in some way it is already existent in the present moment. Only then can we get a glimpse of what will take place in the future.

If we open the window of the present we will be able to see that the future is just outside this window. It is the hypothesis of astrology that the future is simply our ignorance — hence we call it “the future”. If we were able to see it, then the future would not happen for us — we would know it is already present here and now.

There is an incident in Mahavir’s life over which there has been much dispute.

Because of this dispute a group of his disciples broke away from him in his very presence. Because of this dispute, five hundred of Mahavira’s monks created a separate order. Mahavir used to say that whatever is happening has in some sense already happened: if you are walking, then in a sense you have already arrived at the destination; if you are growing old, then in a sense you have already grown old. Mahavir used to say that whatever is happening, whatever is in process, has already occurred.

One long-time disciple of Mahavir lived far away from him during the monsoon. He was sick, so he asked a newer disciple who was present to spread out a mat for him. So the newer disciple began to spread out the mat and he was just unfolding the rolled-up mat when the older disciple remembered Mahavir’s saying. He said, “Stop! Mahavir says that what is happening has already happened.”

The mat was in the process of being rolled out but it had not yet been completely opened. It had suddenly occurred to him that Mahavir had said a very wrong thing. The mat was half-opened, but in what sense was it already completely opened?

He left the mat there. After the monsoon he went to Mahavir and said, “You are mistaken when you say that what is happening has already happened, because right now the mat is lying half-opened. It was being opened but it has not been opened. So I have come to prove that your saying is wrong.”

Mahavir told him that he had not understood what he had said. This disciple must have had a very childish mind, otherwise he would not have spoken that way. Mahavir said, “You have stopped the process. It was happening but you interrupted it. The mat which you prevented from unfolding was already actualizing itself in the very process of unfolding. It had, in fact, already been actualized. You only saw the mat in the process of unfolding, but one more process was going on, and that is what has already happened. Now for how long will your mat remain folded? It is becoming opened, and it will open. You go back.”

When the disciple returned he saw that a man had opened the mat and was lying on it, resting. This man had upset everything; he had destroyed the disciple’s whole theory.

When Mahavir was saying that whatever is happening has already happened, he was saying that whatever is happening is the present, whatever may be is the future. The bud which is coming into blossom somewhere has already blossomed, so it will blossom, it will become a flower. Right now the bud is in the process of flowering, right now it is only a bud, but if it is in the process of flowering, then it will flower. Its having flowered has also in a sense already occurred somewhere.

Now we should look at this from another angle. It will be a little difficult.

We always look from the viewpoint of the past.

The bud is blossoming... but our thinking is generally past-oriented, bound to the past. We say that the bud is blossoming, that it is becoming a flower, that the bud will become a flower. But the reverse may be the case. For instance, if I push you from behind, I am making you go forward. But it may also be that someone is pulling you from ahead. The motion can be in both directions. I am pushing you from behind and you are going forward. It may be that someone is pulling you from ahead, and that no one is pushing you from behind. In this case too you will move forward.

Astrology recognizes the incompleteness of the perspective that the past gives the impetus and that the future happens as a result. If one views a phenomenon in its totality, one sees that the past is providing the impetus, but that the future is also exercising a pull, an attraction. The bud becoming a flower is not all that is happening. The flower is calling out to the bud to become a flower it is exercising a pull. The past is behind, the future is ahead. Now, in the present moment, there is a bud; the entire past is pushing the bud to become a flower, and the entire future is calling on the bud to become a flower.

Under pressure from both the directions, past and future, the bud will become a flower. If there were no future, the past by itself would not be able to create the flower because the future must provide the space for the bud to become a flower. In the future a place, some space, is necessary. Only if the future provides the space will the bud be able to flower. If there were no future, then no matter how much the past tried, no matter how much it pushed you, it would be in vain. No matter how much I push you from behind, if there is a wall in front of you, I cannot make you move forward. Space is needed to move forward. If I push you and the space ahead accepts you with the invitation, “Come, be my guest,” only then can my pushing be significant. For my pushing a space in the future is needed. The past does the work; the future gives the space.

It is the view of astrology that looking from the standpoint of the past alone is insufficient and only partially scientific.

The future is calling all the time, drawing us all the time.

We do not know, we are not aware. This is the weakness of our eyes, this is our shortsightedness we cannot see very far. About tomorrow, nothing is revealed to us.

If you looked at Krishnamurti’s birth chart, you would be surprised. If Annie Besant or Leadbeater had cared to look at Krishnamurti’s birth chart, they would have seen that it was wrong to work with Krishnamurti, because his birth chart clearly shows that whichever organization Krishnamurti was to belong to, he would be its destroyer. It shows that whichever organization he was to belong to, he would bring about its disintegration; whichever organization he was to join, it would die. But Annie Besant was not ready to accept this. No one could think such a thing but this is the way it happened.

The theosophical movement tried to groom Krishnamurti as its leader. Theosophy made such an effort on Krishnamurti’s behalf that the movement died forever. Annie Besant created a large organization called the Star of the East, just for Krishna-murti. Then one day, after having inspired the organization, Krishnamurti separated himself from it. Annie Besant had dedicated her entire life to putting the organization on its feet, and had destroyed herself over it. But Krishnamurti cannot be blamed for this. The star under whose influence he was born clearly announced that he would be a destructive and disruptive force within any organization.

The future is not utterly uncertain. Our knowledge is uncertain; our ignorance is weighty. Nothing of the future seems to be revealed to us. We are blind; nothing at all of the future is revealed to us. And because nothing seems to be revealed to us, we say it is uncertain. But something of the future is revealed to us: astrology is not merely the study of what the stars and planets say, or of calculating their significance. This is only one dimension of astrology.

Then there are other dimensions of knowing the future too. People have lines on the palms of their hands, people have lines on their foreheads, lines on the soles of their feet, but this too is superficial.

In the human body there are hidden chakras.

Every chakra has its own unique sensation; every chakra vibrates in its own unique fashion, at its own frequency, all the time. There are ways to check what these are. Human beings have concealed within them the mental impressions or seeds of the past.

Ron Hubbard has brought a new word, a new science, to the West. For the East it is ancient. The name of this science is “time-track”. Hubbard thinks that in whatever form a man has lived, whether as man or beast, whether as plant or stone, in whatever form he has lived throughout his infinite span of lives, this entire stream of memories is still contained within him. This stream can be exposed, and a person can even be made to re-experience those memories.

In all of Hubbard’s research, this is the most valuable discovery. Hubbard has said about time-track that within man there are engrams. On the one hand, we possess a memory by which we recall what happened yesterday and what happened the day before. This is our “working” memory, this is our everyday memory. Just as every shopkeeper or office worker keeps a daily register, this is our working memory. It becomes useless every day, and then no longer exists — it is not at all permanent. This is the working memory through which we do our work every day, and then every day we throw it out.

But deeper than this is a memory which is not merely for getting work done: a memory which is our life, which sums up our entire experience, the accumulated essence of our experience throughout countless lives on the path. Hubbard has called this an “engram” — it has become ingrained within us. It lies there in its entirety, locked deep within, just as if a tape is kept locked up in your pocket. It can be opened, and when it is opened it becomes what Mahavir used to call past-life remembrance. Hubbard calls it time-track — it makes it possible for you to go back in time. When it is opened, the experience is not that you are remembering; it is not as though you are remembering, you relive the experience.

When it is unlocked, when the time-track is unlocked, you do not feel that “I am remembering.” No, you relive it. Try to understand. If your time-track is unlocked, this reliving will not be difficult. In fact, without it astrology is incomplete. The deepest realization of astrology is that your past must be unlocked, because if you become aware of your entire past then you will be aware of your entire future; your future will emerge out of your past.

Without knowing your past you cannot know your future, because your future will be the child of your past, your future will be born out of your past.

So first it is necessary that your entire memory track be exposed to view. If your memory track is unlocked — and for this there are techniques and methods — you are mistaken if you think that you will remember how your father slapped you when you were a six-year-old child. You will not remember how you were when you were six years old — you will relive it.

You will relive the event. Also, at the time you are reliving it, if I ask, “What is your name?” you will reply “Junior,” not “William Smith Junior” — a six-year-old child will be replying. You will be reliving the event at this time; you will not be remembering it. William Smith Junior is not remembering when he was six years old. No, William Smith Junior has become six years old. Now he will answer “Junior;” whatever reply he gives will be the reply of a six-year-old child.

If you were brought back to a past life and you remembered that you were a lion, then if you were disturbed at this point you would begin to roar just like a lion. You would not speak like a man. It is possible you would even attack someone with your fingers and nails. If you remembered that you were a stone and someone asked you a question, then you would remain completely silent. You would not be able to speak, you would remain like a stone.

Hubbard has helped thousands of people. For instance, if a man cannot speak, Hubbard would say that this person has been blocked by some childhood memory and cannot move on. He would then take him back along his time-track and break open his engram at the time when he was six years old, or the point at which his growth became blocked and he could not proceed. As he returns to this point, the influence of this childhood memory will disperse. Then this man will again return to being thirty years old and the twenty-four years’ difference will be put aside. The surprising thing is that thousands of medicines might not help the man to speak, but by going back along the time-track and then returning, he becomes able to.

Many illnesses come to you only because of this time-track.

Many illnesses fit into this category: for instance, hay fever or asthma. For the patient who suffers from hay fever, a fixed date exists: every year on the same date, at the same time, his hay fever returns. So there can be no remedy for this hay fever. Why?...because hay fever is not actually a bodily illness, it is a time-track illness. Somewhere a memory has been fixed, somewhere a memory has been blocked.

For instance, a man has a memory related to the twelfth of the month during the rainy season. When the twelfth comes, when the rainy season comes, the man is getting ready; he is already afraid of what will happen. You will be surprised that the hay fever which will now attack him is just something he is reliving it is not really hay fever at all. He is only reliving what occurred on the twelfth, the previous year. If you give him any treatment now, you will only be putting him in more trouble. Medical treatment is of no use because he is not the same man who existed a year ago, and who at that time could have been treated. You are unnecessarily throwing the medicine away, because it is going into the man who exists now, not into the man who was sick a year ago. There is no connection between the two, no relationship. Every medicine will fail, every medicine will only increase his hay fever and so he will say that nothing is working. He is again getting ready to repeat what happened the previous year. Seventy percent of our illnesses happen through the time-track. They have been caught and grasped so tightly that we relive them again and again.

Astrology is not merely the study of the stars, although it includes that. We will talk about this. Besides the study of the stars, there are other, separate, dimensions through which astrology tries to probe man’s future, by which it can get hold of the future.

In order to become aware of the future, it is necessary to become aware of the past. In order to be aware of the past, it is necessary to read the inscriptions traced on your body and on your mind. There are inscriptions on your body and there are inscriptions on your mind. From the time astrology became obsessed with these bodily inscriptions, it could no longer go very deep, because these bodily inscriptions are very superficial.

If your mind undergoes a change, then the lines on your palm will immediately change.

If under hypnosis you are assured that after fifteen days you will die, and if every day for fifteen days you are made unconscious and assured in your unconscious state that you will die after fifteen days... whether you actually die or not, your life-line will be broken at the proportional length of fifteen days. A gap will have appeared in your life-line; the body will accept the notion that death is on its way.

The lines traced on the body are a very superficial phenomenon. Deep within is the mind. However, the mind with which you are familiar does not exist deep down; it is superficial. Deep down there is a mind which you do not know at all. The centers that exist deep within this body, which yoga calls chakras, are the accumulated forms of many lives. One who knows can, by placing his hand on a particular chakra, discover how active it is. By touching your seven chakras, it can be known whether you have ever experienced them or not.

I have experimented with the chakras of hundreds of people and I have been surprised to find that at the most one or two, and only rarely three, chakras have begun to be activated; generally, they remain dormant. You have never used them, but they are your past. If a man who has experienced them comes to me, and I can see that all his seven chakras are active, then it can be said that this is his last birth. Then there will not be another birth, because if all seven chakras are active, there is no possibility of another life. This life will be nirvana, this life will be liberation.

If someone came to Mahavir, he made it his concern to discover how many chakras were active in the person how much work must be done with him, what his possibilities were, when and whether his labor would bear any fruit or not, and how many more births he would need.

Astrology is an attempt to probe the future by many, many paths. Among these and the most commonly used path is the study of how the planets and stars influence man. For this, more scientific evidence is becoming available every day. This much has been decided: life is affected and cannot avoid being affected by these influences. Only the second part remains difficult to determine: whether each person is also affected as an individual. It worries scientists a little whether each person is affected individually, whether the three or four billion people on this planet are each affected as individuals. But they must realize that it is so.

But why are they so troubled?

Nature gives each person a thumb which is uniquely his, which is individual and unrepeatable.

Nature keeps such a subtle account that it gives each person a thumb which is uniquely his, and a thumbprint which can never belong to anyone else, neither now nor in the future. Several billion people may have lived on the Earth, several billion people may live on the Earth in the future, but my thumbprint will not be repeated. You may be surprised to learn that even in the case of twins born out of one egg, their thumb-prints will differ from one another.

If nature can bestow so much individuality on each person with regard to a worthless thing like a thumb a thing which is of no special value and which seems to fulfill no special purpose if nature can even give a thumb a uniqueness, then can’t it give each man a unique life and a unique soul? There seems to be no reason why it should not. But science moves in slow motion and it is good! For science, slow motion is good. Until a fact has been completely proved, it is not good to move forward even an inch. But prophets can take a leap. They can declare what will happen in a thousand or even a hundred thousand years right now.

Science moves forward inch by inch. It sees only facts, facts that can be experimented upon. Dreaming is of no use to science, but prophets can discover truth even in dreams. For them, even the future is simply the expanded present. Astrology is basically an investigation of the future. And science is basically the investigation of the past. Science is the investigation of the cause of all that exists today. Astrology is the investigation of the effect of all that exists today. Between the two there is a huge gap. But every day science experiences new things, and the theories which seemed impossible have begun to seem possible.

As I have said, science has only recently accepted that every person is born with a built-in individuality. For a long time it has been reluctant to accept the validity of this idea. But astrology has always been saying this. Just try to understand....

For instance, take a seed, a mango seed...when we sow the mango seed, contained within it there must be some sort of built-in program, there must be a blueprint. If this were not so, the seed would be helpless. It neither takes advice from a specialist nor does it study at a university.... How then can a mango tree develop out of this seed? Still, it produces the mango-tree leaf, it bears the mango fruit. Concealed in the stone-like seed there must be a complete program. Without such a program what could the seed do? Everything must be present within it. Whatever the tree will be, must somehow be concealed within the seed. It is not visible to us. We can smash it and dissect it, and it will still not be visible. But it must be there somehow, otherwise a neem tree might possibly emerge from the mango seed.

It seems that there is never a mistake.

Only a mango tree emerges; everything is repeated correctly. Stored in this tiny seed is all the information which relates to what the seed must do how it must sprout, what type of leaf and how many branches to produce, how big a tree to become, for how long it will grow, how tall it will grow — all this must be hidden within the seed. How many mangoes, how sweet, whether they will ripen or not all this must be concealed within the seed. If all this is concealed just within a mango seed, then when you come into your mother’s womb will there be nothing latent in your seed?

Now scientists agree that even at this stage the color of your eyes must lie concealed, that the color of your hair must lie concealed, that the height of your body must lie concealed, that the possibilities of health and ill health must lie concealed, and that even your IQ must lie concealed — because without all this how would you develop? And by what means? You must have a program that is built-in in advance. How will certain bones

Astrology says a more scientific thing. It says that everything is available within the seed. Astrology says that if we study the seed, if we can discover the language of the seed and if we can decode this language if we can ask the seed, "What is your intention?" — then we will be able to draw up the complete blueprint of a human being too. Scientists have already begun to draw up such blueprints for plants. Up to now we have considered astrology to be superstition, a matter of blind faith. But if science draws up such blue-prints, it will in fact become astrology — and certainly science has already begun to draw up such blueprints.

Astrology declares that if by divine grace we can come to know the whole, then the future as such will not exist. But because we do not know the whole we know only a small fragment what we do not know becomes the future. We are obliged to say, "Perhaps it will be like this." because much is unknown to us. If the whole were known then we could say, "It will be like this." And it would be exactly so. join together as a hand, and others as a foot? One part will begin to see, another part will begin to hear. How can all this happen? Scientists used to say that it is just coincidence. But the word coincidence seems very unscientific. Coincidence means chance. By chance a foot might begin to see and a hand to hear. But there does not seem to be much coincidence; everything seems to be in order, prearranged.

If everything is latent within the human seed, then it is only a matter of studying the seed.

What I am talking about today must in some form have existed in my seed as a potentiality; otherwise, how could I talk about all this? If some day it becomes possible to observe a human seed, then after observing my seed, a blueprint could be drawn up indicating what I will say in this life, what I will become, what I will not become, what I will make of myself, what I will not make of myself, and what will happen. All this could be forecast. It will not be surprising when, maybe tomorrow if not today, we have the capacity to peep into the human seed. The first steps have already been taken in this direction.

Birth charts and horoscopes are only a probing into all these matters. For thousands of years when a child is born, we have tried to find out what he will become. If we could get some idea, then perhaps we could make some arrangements, and perhaps we could increase the child’s opportunities. Then whatever is to happen, we could become accepting of it.

Towards the end of his life, Mulla Nasruddin declared that he had always been miserable, but that suddenly one day he had become happy. The entire population of the village was struck with wonder that a man who had always been depressed, who had always seen the dark side of things, should suddenly have become cheerful. He was a man who had always been pessimistic, who had always looked for thorns.

Once there was an excellent crop in Nasruddin’s garden. There were so many apples

In great sorrow Nasruddin said, "Everything is okay, but where will I get rotten apples to feed the animals?"

Such a man always remains miserable: "Where will I get rotten apples to feed the animals?" All the apples were good, none were rotten — this was his difficulty. Suddenly one day this man became happy, and so the people of the village were curious. They asked, “You are happy, Nasruddin? What is the secret?"

Nasruddin said, "I have learned to cooperate with the inevitable. After many years of struggling, I have realized something. Now I have decided that what must be, must be. Now I cooperate with the inevitable, so now there is no reason to be miserable. Now I am happy."

Astrology investigates many things. It lends a cooperative hand to whatever is inevitable. It does not unnecessarily struggle against whatever is to be. It does not demand or reach out towards whatever is not to be.that the trees were overloaded. One man in the neighborhood inquired whether Nasruddin could now have any complaint. He said, "This time the crop is such that it will rain gold. What do you think, Nasruddin?"

Astrology was a means for making man religious — for bringing him to suchness, for bringing him to an ultimate acceptance.

It has many dimensions, it has many aspects. We will gradually discuss each dimension. For today, just this much: that the universe is a living body, an organic unity. In it nothing is isolated, all is connected. Whatever is far away is connected to that which is near, nothing is separate.

So no one should remain in a fallacy that he is an isolated island, separate, aloof. Each one is connected to the whole, and each one is all the time affecting the other and being affected by the other. Even when you pass by a stone lying on the road, it is throwing its vibrations in your direction. The flowers too are throwing out their vibrations. And you are not just passing by, you too are throwing out your vibrations.

I said that we are affected by the moon and the stars. Another idea that astrology has is that the moon and the stars are affected by us, because influence comes from both directions. Whenever a man like Buddha is born on the Earth, the moon may not realize that it is because of him that storms are not arising on its surface that because of Buddha the storms have subsided. The moon is affected and the sun is also moved.

When spots occur on the sun and storms arise, diseases spread across the Earth. When a person like Buddha is born on the Earth, a current of peace flows, the pillar of consciousness grows strong, and the deep beauty of meditation moves over the Earth; which also makes it difficult for a storm to arise on the sun because everything is joined together.

A tiny blade of grass has an impact on the sun, and the sun has its impact on the blade of grass. The blade of grass is not so tiny that the sun can say, "I do not care about you," nor is the sun so big that it can say, "What can this blade of grass do for me?" Life is interconnected. Here nothing is big or small; everything is one organic unity.

Life is a whole. You will only understand astrology if you can perceive this wholeness, otherwise you will not.

~osho~