So long the veil of unknown covers our eyes everything is illusion. Science works on data, this data helps to remove the veils to expose the science behind things. We as a generation have grown on education based on these scientific process. What we forget is, this education is not designed to create thinkers, it creates batches of workers – as in clerks to process the data, on which industrial revolutions are achieved.
With this, to certain extent our brain washed selfs, we approach most of the things. We try to alchemy things to produce gold. Even the great Newton spend years on Alchemy to produce gold. He who understood the nature of physics, he who documented mysteries of forces of this universe, did spend time exploring this alchemy, although in secrecy. Like him you will find many others who tried the same and failed utterly, contrary to him we don’t have any such individual (famous or otherwise) from Indian sub continent in ancient times wasting his focus on alchemy. The reason is simple, our school of philosophy had already found answers to these. We had Rishi like Kanaad who had long ago solved the riddle of atoms, just described it in philosophical quartets. We as civilisation has already understood that material conversion is not possible but energy transformation is possible from one form to another. Our ancient seers had long ago accepted the basic —sun being the centre of our solar system. We did not have any confusion about the planets being spherical in nature. We did not have to wait for Galileo to make us understand.
But with time we did lose that and embraced more simpler ways science and left behind the complexities of philosophical methods. We even have forgotten the concepts of year, months, weeks, days hours are all deeply rooted in Jyotish (astronomy goes hand in hand). As matter of fact the start of the year at 1st of January isn’t that an illusion? A year, 24 hours all these have specific definitions based on motions of earth. But in 3D space of universe, where is the start point of rotation of earth to count the rotations, where is up? and what is down ? (why is north north or south south?) How are these things fixed? Despite these uncertainties our GPS works precise, we have atomic clocks, satellites move around earth, reaching Mars has become possible because of all this and we as a human race landed on Moon too. This all is possible due to the openness of science, whose roots are in astrology, or at least thanks to astrology (not using Jyotish here) it has reached where it has.
Openness is must for a scientific mind, but how open is modern science to Jyotish? Lets stick to the example of Corona. When it arrived on the world stage, it brushed the egos of the practitioners of science. Though none knew what it was, every one threw in their opinion. But when a scientist says we accept it, even if it is wrong, we gave them a leeway thinking that this is developing situation. The same leeway is not allowed for a Jyotishi. There we expect an absolute answer. Jyotishi is not allowed to make mistake, but the learned scientist are allowed to share any theory as fact and we accept it (to certain extent.) In past 3-4 months we have seen how facts have been changing on the corona front. Like any astrologer (considering ones outside India too) the scientists have been throwing data at us, be it about the virus, vaccine and how we mere mortals should handle it.
What one can observe is that for any mistake the scientists are accountable, but accountability is absent in the field of astrology. Not a single astrologer gets challenged . Every astrologer blamed the ill famed eclipse in Dec 2019, the root cause of the corona virus. If astrology was predictive, why hadn’t these horde of future predictors missed to predict this event? Why are the predictions in retrospect, after the occurrence of the event? In current age of youtube has tones of astrologer doling out their predictions for every event. But wondered if these self declared astrologer have any worth? Just because they proclaim to know this science of predictions, do they posses the real knowledge? Why is that we believe any tom dick and harry who throws some astrology jargon at us to be expert astrologer? We are doubting the scientist when it comes to the Corona, then why we accept any astrologer. Data or not, our understanding of ‘astrologer’ matters too. How well are our minds toned, how open are we is what matters. Point is do we treat them as same ? or have different yardsticks?
There are astrological conferences happening all around the world, where people (not only practicing Jyotishis) present their researches on this science. Some have studied and applied the classical dictums for years, and present this data to in debates within their communities. Outside the astrology world very few people know these conferences. The happenings of these conferences are rarely circulated, not because of secrecy but lack of interest by the audience at large. One thing for sure, for many centuries knowledge was held close to the chest by a few. There are various reasons for this, few acceptable, few laughable. But this did harm the divinity science and its spread. Like the knowledge from Vedas was captive for long, so was the knowledge of astrology. But in the last century due to the hard work of few selfless Jyotishis the knowledge become accessible. That which was only for chosen few came out into the public. Magazines, schools are established to promote the knowledge. Lot has done but a lot remains
Also we need active participation of the public. By and large the people avoid learning this science only because it is still considered not for the commoners, it still has this halo of taboo around it. Think this as days when britishers forced education in India, and Indians avoided it, or even when girls weren’t sent to schools. The logic, that education is not girls, but this charade has been long shattered. Yes it took time, required time. Same goes to astrology, it needs to be accessible to people, they have to study it, learn the pitfalls, understand the challenges of it. We all studied science in school, but not all of us are in the fields of those sciences. As part of our growing up, we faced the physics, boring biology and confusing chemistry. We have first hand experience of these, hence understand or we have empathy towards the practitioners, we do know why and how difficult it is for them reach conclusions. We need exact same experience for astrology.
Like after studying the science in school people form their opinions, similar yardsticks should apply to Jyostish too. Let people study it, understand the nitty gritty of how astrology works. It will make them realise as to why the some many so many people who make predictions are fundamentally wrong.
Like any other field egos play and important role here too. Most of the time these bloated egos get larger than the science they practice. This also goes for the scientists involved in handling of corona too. Many came forth as final authority on it, but fell flat on face. Corona, the old virus has brought earth to grinding halt, exposed our fault lines, divided nations, pitched immunologists against virologists, we all are hurled into a dark room, with no door, in such a scenario why should astrology be any exception?
There has to be churning only then the poison and nectar get separated. Likewise astrology needs churning, it needs people to participate and debate over it. Sitting on fence will only do harm to it. To accept it or reject it, one has to try it.
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