At first glance Tantra and Astrology appear to be at odds with each other: astrology suggests the hand of destiny, while Tantra reinforces the freedom of our will.

An astrological birth chart is none other than a map of how we are bound in our human condition. Tantra is the map of how to overcome the bounds of the human condition.

The very nature of Vedic Astrology is to look into the intricacies of exactly how we are individually bound by our karma and desires, our communities and even how we expend it all. The Vedic birth chart is said to be the body of Kala Parusha, kala means time, while Parusha indicates an individual soul.

As an embodied soul in time we are subject to the veils of maya and the physical realities of karma.

Such is life.

This is why they say to let go of it all and remain in the moment. The karma we are here to experience will happen with or without worry or planning. Tantra teaches us to shift our awareness away from the objects of our lives and focus instead on the awareness itself.

This is where purity comes in.

We have to wash away the impurities of our senses; objectivity is the main impurity.

In this subject-object relationship we have with the world—us and them, me and you—the objects basically just muddle up the purer experience of just being aware of seeing.

When we start seeing in this way we start seeing things as really are.

Almost every eastern philosophy has a different way of explaining this, Tantra often says that they are incomplete and would lead only to inertia. Tantra fills everything with divinity of consciousness rather than relegating it to mere illusion while setting divinity apart from the reality we experience in a day-to-day way.

There are 36 elements in the Tantric worldview. Beginning with the five gross elements of earth air fire and water the elements get subtler and subtler: objects sounds, gunas (the famous elements of Ayurveda), thoughts, mind, memories, kinetic and potential energy. Tantra teaches us to experience these subtler and subtler energies.

An astrology chart could be said to be a chart of how these subtle energies are working in our lives. From a karmic point of view there is little we can do. But by working with the subtler energies, Tantra teaches many ways we can use these energies as the naturally manifest in objects to improve our lives and get what we want.

In the material world we are bound by the laws of karma, but the spiritual world is quite a different matter: once we learn how see that it’s essentially a spiritual world we are living in, we begin to see how we are absolutely free.

 

Relephant:

19 Ways to Create Good Karma 

 

Author: Mike Holliday

Editor: Renee Picard 

Photo: Wiki Commons