In the name of astrology, ninety-nine percent of astrologers are only bluff. Only one percent know that astrology is a vast subject – so vast that someone can only enter into it hesitatingly. The astrology I am talking about is of much depth. Something essential between your life and the universe is connected, is in a rhythmic harmony. We are not separate or isolated but joined together in an organic way. Life is a whole. Whatever is happening anywhere in the universe also affects man and vice versa. If we can understand this properly, there is no need to live encaged within ego and pride. Your ego is not, but the cosmos is. Very powerful forces are operating, and your ego is absolutely insignificant. You are an integral part of this big world.
Every child, every new life, insists on a specific moment for conception and for birth – both are interdependent. He will choose the appropriate constellations according to what he wants to be – whatever his innate possibilities, whatever the shape his previous lives have taken in their entirety, whatever his motivating consciousness is.
At the time of birth, the condition of a child’s mind is exactly like a very sensitive photo plate. When a child is conceived, this is the first exposure. The day the child is born is a second exposure. These two exposures are registered upon the sensitive mind of the child, as if on film. The world, as it is at that moment, is imprinted upon the child. This determines the child’s sympathies and antipathies for his entire life.
The first part of astrology is the outermost layer, which is nonessential. There everything is circumstantial, uncertain, unpredictable. The more we talk about external happenings, the more there is coincidence. The second part is the middle layer, the semi-essential layer. There is possibility of transformation if the right choice is made. The third part is the core, the essence. It cannot be changed. When it is known, the only way is to cooperate with it.
The real thing is the third. It is the quintessence of everything. It belongs to the innermost and is absolutely predetermined. The more one moves toward one’s center, the nearer one comes to the essential, the predetermined part. With inner phenomena things begin to appear scientific, as if based on a definite law. They become more and more decisive.
Between these two conditions – the peripheral and the essential – in the middle layer there is ample room to effect changes by exercising one’s freedom of choice. Here, someone with awareness will make the correct choice, and the right way is to start moving towards your center. A person who is in the darkness of ignorance, though, will drift into his destiny, putting up with whatever comes his way.
When you go to an astrologer, ask him an essential question, like, “Will I die unhappy or fulfilled?” This is worth asking; it is connected to essential astrology. You are usually asking the astrologer how long you will live – as if just living is sufficient. Why will you live? For what shall you live? What shall I become if I live? Astrology can become a tool in your hands only if you distinguish the essential from the nonessential.
Osho, Hidden Mysteries, Talk #6