Could Your Horoscope Ruin Our Nation? - Revelation Movement

Making India a Great Nation – Part VIII
Vishal Mangalwadi ©
The New Year brings much business to astrologers. People love them because they always find some nice things in your horoscope. A horoscope is a scientific chart of the movement of the planets with reference to an observable path of certain constellations. A computer will draw exactly the same horoscope as a careful astrologer. However, its interpretation is subjective and arbitrary.  Some astrologers even have siddhis – dark, occult powers. This article deals with the question: has astrology ruined our culture?
Jantar Mantar: A lesson India is yet to learn
Recently, I participated in a seminar near Lucknow (UP). I asked 45 village-level leaders, “What is ‘Jantar Mantar’?”
“Jadu-Tona” (hocus-pocus/black magic/occult powers/siddhis) was their spontaneous response.
jantar-mantar-observatoryA few knew that Jantar Mantar was a place in New Delhi. It houses strange structures. No one knew that it was built as a religio-scientific observatory. Learned Maharaja Jai Singh II (1686–1743) constructed similar “scientific” yantras (instruments or jantar) in Varanasi, Ujjain, Mathura, and Jaipur to measure time by observing the movement of sun, moon, planets, and stars.
With help from pundits such as Rajguru Jaggannath and Guru Vidhyadhar, Jai Singh planned his city, Jaipur, as a “Mandala,” (esoteric geometric designs), theoretically related to tantric yantra. Being a ruler, Jai Singh knew that effective governance requires understanding the times. Knowledge is power. To know your unique place in a cosmic moment can be awesome power. Jai Singh recognized his moment in history.
Aurangzeb’s successors were murdering each other in quick succession, which was destroying the Mogul Empire from within. A century earlier, the Moguls had permitted the British to establish trading bases. But until his time, British traders had appetite neither for wars nor for governance.   During Jai Singh’s rule, Persian invader Nadir Shah plundered Delhi (1739). That exposed the Mogul Empire’s military bankruptcy, triggering revolts that broke up the Empire and created a political vacuum. Marathas and the French tried to fill the void, ultimately filled by the British. They were able to acquire cooperation of many Indians by means fair and foul.
Jai Singh knew that his time offered to Hindus a unique moment to claim India as their domain. That is why (as Andreas Volwahsen points out in Cosmic Architecture in India), political power, not science, was the primary motive that drove Jai Singh’s ambition to build grand astrological observatories.
This confusion of power and science was compounded by a deeper problem in Indian thought: How do spiritual, rational, and physical realms connect with each other? India produced no theologians like Francis Bacon, who could guide us in our pursuit of power that comes from truth. Because of this confusion, Jai Singh’s gurus placed science at the service of occult siddhis. They lost the opportunity to transform medieval India into a culture that seeks truth, including scientific truth.
Just 14 years after Jai Singh (1757) Robert Clive, a clerk in the East India Company who had no military training or experience, won the Battle of Plassey. The siddhis of our enlightened gurus could do nothing to save us from 190-years of colonial rule.
Why were the British able to come overseas to colonize India? Were we not a much larger and wealthier subcontinent? Why couldn’t we sail to England – at least to trade or to teach our philosophy and arts?
the-legacy-william-carey book coverMahatma Jotiba Phule (1827–1890), India’s first “low-caste” social reformer, believed that astrology was one the strongest chains through which India’s downtrodden had been enslaved. Therefore, he devoted an entire book attempting to emancipate our people from this slavery. Phule’s effort to emancipate the downtrodden by truth-based education was sparked by the Church’s educational mission in Pune and Bombay. Fifty years prior to Phule, William Carey, a Baptist missionary, began teaching astronomy in Bengal in order to replace the occult power of astrology with the objective power of science.
Why does astrology enslave? This brief article will illustrate only one point by looking at a single aspect of a complex worldview: the Indian inability to manage time.
The Hindu View of Time
Decades before William Carey, Maharaja Jai Singh had befriended Jesuit missionaries and given them housing in Jaipur. They, in turn, introduced him to the telescope. In his text, Zik Muhammad Shahi, Jai Singh dismissed these European instruments on the ground that they “were not large, therefore, the calculations and observations were somewhat inaccurate.” Jai Singh preferred large Yantras (instruments, jantar) because they inspired awe in viewers. That, he felt, befitted his majesty. Whether the instruments served any practical purpose was irrelevant. That is why Indians tended to see his works as “Jadu Tona” – useful for tantrics; useless for the common man.
Most of his “instruments” did observe time (albeit inaccurately). Others, such as the impressive Mishra Yantra (mixed instrument) at Jantar Mantar, served no astronomical function. This show piece was built to impress onlookers, if not to appease gods to obtain siddhis. Why?
The learned pundits fused objective science with the search for occult siddhis, because Hinduism taught that Time was the terrible god of death – Kaal. He was to be feared, worshipped, and appeased with appropriate rituals and gifts. That is why in Hindi – our de facto national language – both yesterday and tomorrow are called “kal.”
Because “Kal” is a deity, you cannot plan “kal.” What you should do and will do is already written in the astral world. Fortune tellers can read it in your horoscopes, palm, or forehead. This worship of the god of Time built our culture of astrology in which our times rule over us. This culture tells us not to make important decisions by looking at available facts and information but in consultation with astrologers, priests, and other fortune tellers, whose source of information and judgement is hidden (occultic) and not verifiable . Failure to appease the planetary deity governing a particular day or occasion brings misfortune. Risk taking is “hubris,” offensive to the gods.
Mahatma Phule opposed astrology because he had studied the books of Moses, who liberated the Jews from Egypt’s slavery 3,500 years ago. Moses knew that intellectual-spiritual slavery was a much deeper problem than political and economic slavery. Therefore, he banned all forms of fortune telling. His command was, “Do not practice divination or seek omens” (Leviticus 19:26). A critical question is:
How Did The Bible Empower the British?
Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. His writings created a liberating worldview, because in the first chapter of the first book Moses taught that God existed prior to the cosmos of space and time. Man was made in God’s likeness – greater than other created things. Time (seven days of the week) was a part of the physical reality that God had created. And God created Man (male and female) to govern the physical realm. Human beings were given the privilege of using time (days, weeks, months, years) as an aid to just governance. A week’s work had to be finished in six days, so that man could rest on the seventh. The day of rest, Sabbath, was holy – a regular reminder that we, as men, are to live for God and not for work, time, or making money.
Surya-Namaskar (sun worship) is an integral part of Yoga. But according to the revelation given to Moses, the sun, moon, and stars should not be worshipped, because they were not created to govern man. They were created to govern the day and the night. The sun, for example, dictates to the world of animals and plants when to wake up and when to go to sleep. Man, on the other hand was created to use the sun, moon, and stars as aids to establish his dominion over nature.
Why did the Bible’s view of the cosmos promote the study of astronomy instead of astrology? Why did biblical cultures study geography and devise calendars and clocks as means of establishing human dominion over physical creation?
The Prophet Jeremiah (10:2-3) declared, “Hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel.  This is what the Lord says:
“Do not learn the ways of the nations
or be terrified by signs in the heavens,
though the nations are terrified by them.
For the practices of the peoples are worthless;
they cut a tree out of the forest,
and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel.”
luni-solar-calendarBiblical cultures followed a path different than the rest of the world, because the Bible taught that cosmic bodies were not gods. They were created as “signs” for us to study: “And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years”” (Gen 1:14). The sun, moon, and the stars are our primary signs of east, west, north, and south. They help us divide the immense monotony of space and time into manageable parts of directions as well as days, weeks, and years.
We Indians could not travel overseas to colonize England, because we studied the stars to be their subjects. British sailors studied the stars to make maps as aides in order to fill the earth and establish their dominion. Establishing human dominion is to choose which plant will grow in your garden – instead of letting Mother Nature decide whether you will live in a garden or a jungle of weeds.
Who Is Greater – Man or Time?
We are born into time and we die. Time was before us and continues after us. Therefore, it appears greater than us. But that is only an observed truth, just as we observe the sun rising and setting, even though it does not. Moses banned astrology also because he knew that Adam and Eve were created to live forever. That fact made man greater than Time.
Why then does man die? Why does he lose to time? Death came as a curse because man chose to sin (Genesis 3). Death makes time greater than man. But Moses knew God as the Saviour who forgives sin and delivers human beings from slavery. Moses became a mini-liberator because he followed God. He was able to save the Jews from their slavery in Egypt but not from their sin. He prophesied that one day God would send the real Saviour who would crush evil under his feet. This promised Saviour would bless all the nations of the earth.
The British view of time and time-management was different than ours. They believed that Moses’ prophesy was fulfilled when Jesus Christ triumphed over sin and death through his own death and resurrection. If the Lord Jesus actually forgives those who repent of their sin; if he actually restores the eternal life that God gave to human beings from the beginning, then those who have eternal life will exist for all eternity. As spiritual, God-like beings, we are part of a dimension beyond time.
If God’s children are greater than Time, then we must bring time under our dominion – just as we govern horse power, electrical power or nuclear power. We have to learn to plan and manage time.
The Indian view of time, combined with the sin of laziness and corruption, continue to make us slaves of time. Time is a natural resource which is given to everyone in equal measure. Some cultures use it well and progress. Others waste time and become backward. In India, anyone who has power uses time not to serve others but to waste everyone’s time. The bosses want their subordinates to stand around them to fan their egos. The demon of greed compels them to waste our time in order to extort bribes from us.
Why did the West become a culture that lives by the watch? 
Jantar Mantar was built, in part, to watch time. It failed to create a culture of time-keeping and managing because from the outset it was rightly seen as Jadu-tona (hocus-pocus or siddhis.) Anyone interested in making India a great nation must ask: Who invented watches and why? As I have explained in The Book That Made Your World, the mechanical clock is the matrix of modern mechanical engineering. It was invented by European monks. Initially, they made, sold, and maintained all clocks.
Why?
All monks living in a monastery had to gather together for prayers seven times a day. One monk may be milking cows, another chopping wood, grinding wheat, cooking, or sleeping. Yet each one had to plan his work or rest in such a way that he could pause and go to the chapel. The first and the last prayer times were before sunrise and after sunset respectively. That made the sun dials useless. Water clocks stopped functioning when the water froze. That made mechanical clocks necessary, but the real “necessity” was to transcend individualism; to coordinate work and prayer in the context of community life.
Clock in SteepleA productive community requires efficiency. You cannot sit in a cave and meditate leisurely. How well you plan your time and how soon you complete your work matters. The next person in the chain is waiting for you. Each worker completing his job on time makes an economic enterprise, including a nation, competitive.
“Time is money” means that unless we become an efficient culture, making the most of the time given to us, we cannot possibly compete with the rest of the world. The government and bureaucracy have to set the standards of time management. They are our leaders.
The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation took the Bible out of monasteries and made it the handbook of every person who wanted to know and serve God.  The Bible taught Englishmen, He also that is slack in his work is brother to him that is a destroyer (waster)” (Proverbs 18:9). When common people started reading the Bible, they learned that the Lord Jesus himself taught that a good, wise, and faithful servant, approved and commended by God, is a diligent worker. He will be given authority to govern (Matthew 24: 45 and 25:21). The Apostle Paul commanded believers to “redeem the time” (Ephesians 5:16; Colossians 4:5).
To redeem something or someone is to put considerable value on it; to buy it – not waste it.
England became a powerful nation because the people who wanted to obey God began using time conscientiously. Leaders as well as simple people kept private journals. They noted down how they utilized every hour of every day. When they wasted time, they repented privately and sometimes publicly.  This attitude of time management enabled Christian nations to become more powerful than the cultures that waste time.
Maharaj Jai Singh, a learned ruler, and his Jantar Mantar could not empower India because he sought secret, occult power. He did not seek truth that transforms culture.
Vishal Mangalwadi
The author of “Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations” is Hon. Professor of Applied Theology at SHIATS University, Allahabad (U.P.) India.
You can make an Year End donation to Vishal’s ministry at www.RevelationMovement.com
Or send a tax-deductible check to Revelation Movement, 1605 E. Elizabeth St., Pasadena, CA 911004, USA

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