What is the relationship between astrology and karma, especially for devotees?
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especially for devotees yeah basically astrology offers something like a road map or you could say a weather forecast so it gives us some broad indicators of what is going on so in that sense astrology tells us something about destiny not entirely but broadly the broad patterns can come to us so broadly speaking if you want to understand the relation between karma and destiny now what happens to us is destiny how we respond that is our fate how what happens to us is destiny how we respond to it is our fate so astrology can act as a guide for how should we use them but telling us certain things are going to happen now so now while using astrology there are several caveats first of all not all astrologers are very reliable and quite often there are people who have asked for just for a little money and it is big business because everybody wants to know about the future and they exploit that fascination in the future and they so they often use it to exploit that is from there are people within who are astrologers they may not be able to help you so in the other hand it can also work out the other way that somebody wants to use astrology to rationalize what they want to do so for example somebody finds that i don’t want to be in this situation i don’t want to be in this relationship i don’t want to be in this particular position whatever it is so there is this one devotee called how to mess your life with astrology so she herself a great astrologer so she gives example let’s say somebody doesn’t want to be in and they want to have a decision to end the marriage so they go from one astrologer to second astrologer third astrologer till they find an astrologer who says this marriage is bad for me and then they use that as for the justification to try to end that marriage so here what is happening here we are simply using astrology to try to do what we want to do and then we basically all of us by past karma are going to have some problems and astrology cannot like a magic man solve all our problems that it is astrology doesn’t work like that because you can give us certain values by which we can make certain decisions with sort of greater foresight so broadly speaking and this is with respect to generally astrology now with respect to devotees yes it is said that by the process of bhakti we come in connection with krishna and krishna takes charge of the devotees and it is true at the same time krishna may allow things to happen according to the karma also if that is uncool to him so it’s not that krishna takes away all the karma from the devotee he may allow that karma to act but within the act of the karma krishna ensures that the devotee gets the opportunity to turn towards him more so he may get some problems but whereas if a non-devotee just becomes frustrated by the problems then we get problems we by bhakti we become more dependent on krishna we take more shelter of krishna and we realize the reality of the issue so the same problems may come but he may go closer to krishna with those problems if we are devoted to krishna so as devotees we can go to two extremes one is that you may think that i don’t need any astrology at all and i just depend on krishna which is fine if one has enough faith in oneself that is fine the other extreme is that for every single thing we are concerned in astrology so if we start what if what we try to do is we basically try to make the astrologer into like our we imagine the astrologer to be like a readily available substitute for god that is whatever i want to do i just ask the astrologer and i do it it doesn’t work like that so astrology is in its own reassignments and it can offer us a roadmap of what is what kind of territory we are going to encounter in our but ultimately it is our choices our decisions that are going to determine how we move on so for any major life decisions i have talked about these two extremes like one is that what is the concern at all otherwise overall as devotees if we have come from a background where we already have some faith in astrology we used to consult astrologers and if you’re inspired also and if we have come from a background where we do not really have much interest in astrology we do not consult astrologers then it is not that as necessary as a part of bhakti we have faith in astrology so if you already have some faith in astrology and you want to use that guidance for deciding how we can serve krishna better then it’s fine it is not that every devotee has to consult an astrologer so now those if we if if somebody doesn’t want to consult an astrologer that’s perfectly fine we can pray to krishna seek his guidance use our best intelligence and make decisions but if somebody wants to consult an astrologer it is best to see if we can find some devotee astrologers so devotee astrologers there are several devotees in different parts of the world and if you can connect with some devotee astrologers and they give us guidance which we find helpful we can take that but even then we should not depend on them for every major broadly speaking some important decisions for example say get married at that time you want to match the astrological charts or if you are having children and especially say what is the nature of the child you want to broadly understand now so that you don’t don’t push the child into an incompatible career that is also helpful so for major decisions in our life we can consult astrologers and now gopal binti goswami in his uh in his books he’s talking about deity worship and also talked about how we can spiritualize the astrology that means normal astrologers they tell us that say that you should worship this devata for this problem you worship that devata for that problem now devotee astrologers based on the goswami writing they say that each of these devatas is the various devatas are supervised or they are connected with they are overseen by particular forms of Vishnu so for example Ganesh his worship ability is not seen and there are different devatas so the devotee astrologers instead of asking us to worship a particular devata they ask us to worship the particular supreme manifestation of the supreme lord particular avatar who is the overseeing deity of that devata and that way through that consulting that’s what we also we can we are basically practicing so in that situation if you feel inspired you can do that overall if astrology acts as a aid to krishna you accept it then if astrology becomes an alternative to krishna and it can very easily become then it is best to avoid it actually prabhupada he would he would consult a soul sometimes now according to astrology according to some traditions of astrology say it is said that you should not travel on horses this is giving an example so prabhupada if he had the freedom to plan he would usually travel and say when does it take off not always but he would try to do it but if suddenly a program came up and he had an opportunity to do some pinching and he was required to travel so that means our primary focus is serving krishna and astrological it became harmonized astrological principle by serving krishna it’s not that we have deliberately neglected the astrological principle for the sake of krishna but that doesn’t mean that we have to adjust everything in our life and it is everything our bhakti according to astrological principles so based on our faith whatever we have in astrology based on whatever kind of connection we can develop in astrology based on whatever when we feel we get the astrology because it is something maybe a valid science but it may not