In truth, to me, Indians – and especially the males, THINK differently than do we Westerners.  And I do not mean to imply that Westerners have superior minds or think better.  I only mean that some of them are thinking inside certain patterns or structures of thought, and that if anyone’s thoughts fall outside those patterns, there seems no possibility of communication.  Nor am I, with my own patterns of thought, able to cross some line and understand theirs.  

I spent over thirty years studying the Cabala, the Tree of Life and the Tarot Keys.  I spent another seven years studying Pantajali’s Yoga Sutras and such texts as the Gita and the Upanishads.  And I know nothing.

I think it was very good of Swetha to post that material on Carl Jung.  He believed that both astrology and alchemy were forms of ancient psychology, and -- from my own understanding, of the meaning of the ancient symbols, I would personally agree.

For example, there are archetypal patterns (Nature’s Way) which govern our physical growth, our social growth and the development of our psyches.  And if we look at all of human life from this basis, then obviously the positions of the outer planets are our biological clocks.  The growth of infants, both physically and in terms of their emotional and mental growth, is clocked in months (the Moon).  

And the pioneer work of the child psychologist, Jean Piaget, measured the evolution of the infant, the child and the teen ager, with exquisite insight.  Obviously, then, if one wishes to fit the personal growth of an individual to the movements of the heavenly clocks, then Tropical Astrology is the way to go.  And I think it is equally obvious that – matching these outer planets there are inner centers that respond to their movements.  After all, a one-to-one mapping is possible between the Chakras, the Alchemical metals and the so-called Planets.  BUT – the organic nature of the Yogi’s symbols (the Lotus), and the Cabala’s (The Tree of Life) makes it very obvious (at least to my mind) that these inner centers are really related to our individual organic growth.  

Unfortunately, in my view, the practice of most ‘Astrology’ falls into frozen patterns – called rote or traditions.  Vedic astrology suffers from this limitation, as does most so-called Western Astrology, which seems to have NO understanding of the principles involved.  And in what I call ‘Cabalistic Astrology’ I am interested to see if it is possible to cross these lines between the frozen and the Real.  

Carl Jung often wrote that the Westerner should NOT play around with Eastern Yoga – that it was alien to his being.  And I also remember that Krishna Prem disagreed with Jung – because (and obviously) the symbols of the East and the West do match!  So, what is going on here?  I suspect that Jung was talking as a psychologist.  First, and clearly, there is some Conscious Power behind all of Creation.  How can archetypal patterns form, unless there is some goal for life?  And how can Conscious Life evolve here on earth unless there was Consciousness in the original Chaos?  

But these are metaphysical or religious concerns, and Jung (who obviously believed in God), limited his remarks to the realm of empirical psychology.  In other words – to what the average Westerner makes of it all.  And here, I feel he is right.  The average Easterner has a quite different psyche, because (for most of us), our psyches do not go beyond our cultural experience.  And the same seems true for most Indians.

ParaBrahma is obviously Pure Consciousness, Existence and Enjoyment but without form.  This is the same as the Void of the Buddhists, and the En Sof (Limitless Nothing) of the Cabalists.  And following those hints, it is the Mother and Father Principles within Life that create a ‘Self’ to which then all experience can be related.  Therein lies the problem: if you create a self, to which experience can be related, you have not only created the pattern for all of humanity, you have also created ‘dualism’.  

But that is a Western way of thinking about the ‘Gods’, no?  To me, the average Indian does not even think about the Gods.  They simply are …

And I can be wrong, and usually am.  

BUT – and here is the central core of my own personal approach to the natal chart: most astrology only concerns itself with the growth or our patterns of wants and desires, and resentments and attachments and hang-ups. This is like saying we are no more than our hang-ups and conditioning.  But the same natal chart also shows the possibility of forming a higher center or ‘self’ – roughly equivalent to the Atman or Purusha, or Primordial Adam (or the Christos).  I say this because in the so-called Cakras there is a Heart Center which corresponds to this higher level of evolution, and the Sepherah called ‘Tiferet” on the Tree of Life, corresponds exactly to this same, higher, ‘Self’.

Finally, and historically, many individuals have succeeded in reaching this higher level.  You can name a few yourself.

Marbeh