What
is unexplainable today need not be out rightly wrong.
Astrology1 is said to be among the oldest of sciences. Some consider it a pseudoscience at least. The similarities, in the basic structuring and techniques, across astrology’s many variants (from Native-American to Mayan to Tajik to Indian to Chinese) that too in seemingly disparate communities) is fascinating.
Even attempting to prove that such divinations (or superstitions) may work do sound preposterous and even embarrassing to rationalists (that includes me). But what if there is a perspective we simply missed!
Let me even try:
Erase-off the proponents’ common explanation that astrology works because light from the other planets in our solar system affect the living things on earth. A simpler mind may be happy with this line of explanation just as most believers are happy with the Genesis story of human origin.
The real obstruction to our explanation-attempts is our mental paradigm (rather our belief) of the universe. In our current belief everything is separate – God, you, me, the planets, earth, oceans, animals, space. What this model makes us believe is that we are the center of the universe and everything else revolves around us humans. Its a model we are used to for so long.
What if it’s a model that could use some improvisation?
For the sake of my attempts here, let’s try switching to a monistic2 model. By monistic here I mean that all of the universe is one entity – imagine it as a cosmic clock or say a gigantic jukebox J or maybe even the body of the Almighty!
If that can be imaged - hold that model in your head and realize that this cosmic-entity’s constituents are sub-systems. They should be interconnected and interdependent – say like the organ-systems of a human body.
Yes? If this much can be realized, then we have progressed much. Many of these constituent-(sub) systems within may be individually deterministic3
Now zoom in to our solar system. So its now (in this model) just another cog in the bigger machinery. It is a sub-system which has further, almost infinitesimal layers of constituent, sub-systems – one of level being us as individuals. So if this Solar system is like a human body, we are then just cells within!
In this model, the planets' state maybe more like positions representing the overall system status at a point of time (like an LED blink-pattern on a panel in a control room) . Which in turn translates to a situation at our realm. And this is the information that an Astrologer tries to use.
A pulse check is not the cause of a hypertension, a scan picture is not the cause of a tumor – they are the lights patterns on the panel that depicts the current state of the overall whole.
Occult (hidden) connections could be plausible. Omens may be useful. A divination stream may be a case of someone happening to decipher the patterns on the panel. Like using eyes (one constituent of the human body) to see rashes on the skin (state of another constituent) and analyzing that the soup had shrimp in it (interpretation) and predicting the run to the nearest toilet (fortune-telling) J
It’s what I call a side-effect of singularity.
1 Astrology is just one among the many divinations practiced around the world; there are numerous other fortune telling systems like readings based on geckos, entrails of sacrificed animals, tea leaves, coffee-dust patterns, omens or just rants of a person in trance – many of these traditions on the decline. Some ex-believers have just degraded Astrology to a pseudo-science, and not a full-blown .
2 Monism is a philosophical view. One of its regional definitions is called 'Advaitham'. For our purpose this essentially means: Everything is one, and the one is part of everything else. In the east they call the 'everything' as the 'Supreme Being’.
3 Based on the system’s general behavior, given its state at a point of time one could determine its status in the next. Here in this example assume the solar system is deterministic and its constituents works interdependently. Why? For a reason perhaps, which is beyond a mere human’s imaginative capacity.
Astrology1 is said to be among the oldest of sciences. Some consider it a pseudoscience at least. The similarities, in the basic structuring and techniques, across astrology’s many variants (from Native-American to Mayan to Tajik to Indian to Chinese) that too in seemingly disparate communities) is fascinating.
Even attempting to prove that such divinations (or superstitions) may work do sound preposterous and even embarrassing to rationalists (that includes me). But what if there is a perspective we simply missed!
Let me even try:
Erase-off the proponents’ common explanation that astrology works because light from the other planets in our solar system affect the living things on earth. A simpler mind may be happy with this line of explanation just as most believers are happy with the Genesis story of human origin.
The real obstruction to our explanation-attempts is our mental paradigm (rather our belief) of the universe. In our current belief everything is separate – God, you, me, the planets, earth, oceans, animals, space. What this model makes us believe is that we are the center of the universe and everything else revolves around us humans. Its a model we are used to for so long.
What if it’s a model that could use some improvisation?
For the sake of my attempts here, let’s try switching to a monistic2 model. By monistic here I mean that all of the universe is one entity – imagine it as a cosmic clock or say a gigantic jukebox J or maybe even the body of the Almighty!
If that can be imaged - hold that model in your head and realize that this cosmic-entity’s constituents are sub-systems. They should be interconnected and interdependent – say like the organ-systems of a human body.
Yes? If this much can be realized, then we have progressed much. Many of these constituent-(sub) systems within may be individually deterministic3
Now zoom in to our solar system. So its now (in this model) just another cog in the bigger machinery. It is a sub-system which has further, almost infinitesimal layers of constituent, sub-systems – one of level being us as individuals. So if this Solar system is like a human body, we are then just cells within!
In this model, the planets' state maybe more like positions representing the overall system status at a point of time (like an LED blink-pattern on a panel in a control room) . Which in turn translates to a situation at our realm. And this is the information that an Astrologer tries to use.
A pulse check is not the cause of a hypertension, a scan picture is not the cause of a tumor – they are the lights patterns on the panel that depicts the current state of the overall whole.
Occult (hidden) connections could be plausible. Omens may be useful. A divination stream may be a case of someone happening to decipher the patterns on the panel. Like using eyes (one constituent of the human body) to see rashes on the skin (state of another constituent) and analyzing that the soup had shrimp in it (interpretation) and predicting the run to the nearest toilet (fortune-telling) J
It’s what I call a side-effect of singularity.
1 Astrology is just one among the many divinations practiced around the world; there are numerous other fortune telling systems like readings based on geckos, entrails of sacrificed animals, tea leaves, coffee-dust patterns, omens or just rants of a person in trance – many of these traditions on the decline. Some ex-believers have just degraded Astrology to a pseudo-science, and not a full-blown .
2 Monism is a philosophical view. One of its regional definitions is called 'Advaitham'. For our purpose this essentially means: Everything is one, and the one is part of everything else. In the east they call the 'everything' as the 'Supreme Being’.
3 Based on the system’s general behavior, given its state at a point of time one could determine its status in the next. Here in this example assume the solar system is deterministic and its constituents works interdependently. Why? For a reason perhaps, which is beyond a mere human’s imaginative capacity.
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