One’s outward personality does determine to some extent also how one approaches deep, spiritual realities, but there are many levels of consciousness in us all.
On deeper levels, most of us are very different from the face we show to the world — not because we seek to deceive others, but only because those sensitive feelings which are at home in the depths of our mental seas would not survive at the surface.
They are too deep to be verbalised.
The sun’s placement in your solar horoscope, then, determines the way in which you seek to impress your authority on the world around you.
The other planets, in this system, must be considered as each influencing especially this outward manifestation of your personality.
In fact, one cannot but note that Western astrology is a natural outgrowth of Western society, where man is exceptionally goaloriented, where the traditional emphasis is on conquering nature rather than harmonising oneself with it, and where chief importance is placed on the individual — not as he relates to his inner world or to universal realities, but rather as he relates to, and can stand in personal dignity before, his fellowman.
Personality has become more an more so, interestingly enough, the farther the sun signs have become separated, by equinoctial precession, from the constellations.
It is interesting to note, also, that the growing interest of Western astrologers in constellational astrology coincides with a growing interest, in the West, in the ancient philosophies of the East.
Man’s relationship to the universe is the special concern of those philosophies.
One reason Western astrologers are turning increasingly to the constellational system is that they are discovering, as their own mental horizons expand, that their system is too limited.
But once our own view of life broadens, discrepancies begin to appear, and Western astrologers have found these discrepancies bewildering — until they turned for help to constellational astrology.
In predicting the future, for example, solar astrology is accurate primarily in so far as the future is determined for us by our own personalities.
But people are becoming aware that there are deeper influences at work within us—subconscious impulses, old karmic debts and credits—that never rise so close to the surface as to become identified with our outward personalities.
Western astrology, unfamiliar with these influences, yet growingly aware that such influences do exist, are beginning to feel cramped by a science that, in confining them to such a small segment of our galaxy — the solar system — succeeds also in limiting their understanding.
What I have done is seek to explore the familiar sun signs in order to see how they can be related to the broader, more ancient, insights out of which they have grown.
Instead of writing yet another analysis of how people, born under the different signs, act and react with the world around them, I have sought to show how their personalities can be used to help them — to help you — to develop a more universal awareness.
Though sages have spoken of it by different names, they have recognised it as one: the still Ocean of Consciousness out of which all the waves of creation have appeared.
The highest purpose of astrology is to assist man on this inward journey.
The true goal, then, of astrology is not to fascinate people with endless proofs of their subtle kinship to this universe, but to take them from outward theory to inward practices.
Swami Kriyananda is a living disciple of Paramhamsa Yogananda. He is also the founder of Ananda Sangha with nine communities around the world.