Does the precision of astrological predictions imply that we don’t have free will?
When we return back to Krishna so suppose say if I am going from here to Melbourne and I board a flight to Melbourne once I board the flight to Melbourne the trajectory is more or less fixed and I can see ok I am here now and now come to Kolkata now I am coming to Bangkok now I am coming to Singapore so that trajectory is more or less fixed and once I have boarded that flight I can't change the trajectory at the same time within that when the plane is going along that trajectory I have still choices so it may also be determined once I take a particular seat who is going to sit next to me that may also be fixed who is sitting to my left who is going to sit to my right that may also be fixed but within that what I do I still have free will I can be in a very argumentative mood and I quarrel with the person next to me I quarrel with the person next to me and then or I may just become abusive and attack somebody and as soon as I come out of the flight I am under arrest or I find that the person sitting next to me is a very influential businessman and I come up with a business deal and I have a lot of prospects ahead of me after I come out the flight so once I am in the flight a large pattern of my life is fixed once I have boarded the flight but still within that also I have substantial freedom so astrology can predict so basically when we start on a life journey it's like if we consider the body to be like a plane we have ascended the plane and at a very broad contour the body is in a plane journey from birth through youth through middle age through old age ultimately to death that is the trajectory that is fixed so that trajectory to some extent can be told by astrology so things like if you go on a flight they can tell us where are you going to go where is the plane going to be at this time where is the plane going to be at this time who is going to be sitting next to you over here who is going to be ahead of you who is going to be behind you those things are fixed but still what we do is not fixed now within that also sometimes you may say I want to change my seat I want to go from here and sit somewhere else some amount of freedom is there so astrology does determine certain things in our life and those who are accurate astrologers they may be able to tell us about these things so still that does not mean everything is determined so for example again very generic terms if I am born in India then a large percent of the people whom I am going to associate with are Indians that is just fixed by my birth in India now I may emigrate to some other country and then my people around me may change but even there also I may want to associate with Indians because that's what I am familiar with and I may form a group then even then I will have a large number of Indians with me I may interact with some other people also so it's not necessary that the predetermination of certain things or the capacity to determine certain things necessarily implies that nothing is in our hands or everything is predetermined we do have freedom and one challenge in dealing with astrology is to know in advance which factors which are predicted are right or which are wrong we may not be able to know that based on how precise the astrologer is how precise the particular kind of astrology is and how how how much of an initiative we take in our own lives especially if we start practicing bhakti then often astrologers tell that that is also an important element which may change the astrological predictions to some extent so that's why we don't have to over depend on astrology first of all the principle astrology does not mean that we don't have freedom it does mean that certain things in our life are determined and certain things are still valuable and choosable for us.