Short
Biog | Professional
Resume | Deepak & Astrology |
Deepak & NLP | NLP
Resume
Deepak
and Astrology?
It
is not my fault. I didn't go looking for astrology. It found me.
I was on the last year of my doctorate in psychology and, like
everyone else that was highly 'educated', I thought astrology
was some kind of superstitious fortune telling scam run by gypsies
with bad teeth and dirty hands. Then one fine summer day in 1970
I was visiting friends at a hippie house in Boulder, Colorado
and this guy with long hair called Billy came over and said, “I
bet you are about 1943 Capricorn”. Now what got me was not the fact that he was right, but
the fact that a 1943 Capricorn was different than a 1944 or a
1942. I thought there were just 12 signs and that was it.
I told him he was right and he asked what day and then he pulled
out this dog-eared blue paperback and started reading. He was
very abstract and very esoteric, but what he said had more than
a grain of truth to it. I had already taken courses in psychological
testing and graduate courses in group therapy and I thought I
knew myself. Hah! This was something more. More deep. More comprehensive.
More significant. More understandable. More resonant with my soul.
Finally my curiosity
could stand it no more and I asked (demanded) Billy to let me
see that book. One look and I was shocked. It was a whole page
after page of nothing but numbers and cryptic glyphs and no words
or proper nouns at all. 'What the hell', I wondered and Billy
patiently explained the whole thing to me. It was a Rosicrucian
ephemeris he said and it told where the planets were for any given
day. Over the next several weeks he showed me how to make a chart
for any given birthdate and he loaned me all the books for calculation
and interpretation and my scientific nature set out to test this
strange 'superstitious' phenomena that had literally been put
in front of my face. Six things in my life had made me immediately
curious and this was one of them.
First I started getting the birthdates of all my family and friends
and people I thought I knew pretty well. My mother was a Leo.
No wonder she was constantly fishing for compliments about how
good she looked. My sister was a Sagittarius. She was an airline
stewardess and constantly traveling, traveling. One good friend
was a Pisces and he was constantly helping people. Another friend
was a Capricorn and he was the business manager of the college
newspaper. Pretty soon, the summer was over and it was time to
go back to university and finish the last year of my doctorate.
The last year of the program was mostly learning how to give IQ
tests, both the Wechsler and the Stanford-Binet. I had already
spent a year studying the projectives, the Bender-Gestalt, the
Draw-A-Person/House/Tree, and the famous Rorshach Inkblot Test.
Later on in post-graduate settings, I would learn the classic
MMPI and 16PF.
I finished my coursework for my doctorate in 1972, got certified
as a school psychologist, and started working in the field in
Colorado. How I learned astrology was to compare the results of
psychological testing with the interpretation of the birthchart.
When doing a psychological evaluation I would have the social
history from the social worker, academic records, teacher interview,
parent interview, clinical interview, observation in the classroom,
and psychological test results. Not only were the astrological
interpretations always insightful, they helped me to organize
and make sense out of the scattered, discordant and contradictory
results of different psychological tests. It turned out that astrology
was far superior to psychology and psychology was the backward,
limited 'superstitious' system. What a joke.
One fine summer day in 1976 I noticed an article on the front
page of the local newspaper, '19 Nobel Prize Winners
Claim Astrology is Superstitious'. It went on to say that
astrology was unreal and anybody who believed in it was gullible
or insecure weak personalities looking for guidance in the world.
Wow, this was the first and still the only time in modern scientific
history that such a large body of prestigious scientists had come
together and publicly declared something was unreal. Turned out
this same article was on the front page of almost every newspaper
all over the country. Turned out the campaign was organized by
some group called the Committee for the Scientific Investigation
of the Paranormal. (CSICOP). No one knew where they came from,
but they had enough budget to fly around the country in first
class.
There was
something strange about this public claim in the name of science.
The first thing is that not one of these 'scientists' had done
any kind of scientific experiment, study, or even review in the
field. This is a blatant violation of scientific ethics. The true
scientist limits his claims to the evidence he has himself produced
in such a way that it can be repeated and replicated by another.
Any extrapolation beyond the facts is theory or philosophy.
Example:
One
day two scientists are riding in a train together. One looks out
the window and says it is raining. The other scientist looks out the
same window and says, 'It sure is...on this side'.
The second thing
strange about this was that most of these guys were astronomers,
with a few physicists, science writers, and even a professional
stage magician called Randi mixed in. Not one of these guys was
a psychologist. They were out of their field. A physicist is not
professionally qualified to make a professional opinion about
sociology and an astronomer is not professionally qualified to
make a professional opinion about psychology. To scientifically
investigate the claims of astrology made to the public would require
a scientist with a psychological background using psychological
methods.
It was time to do my thesis and finish my doctorate and get that
final degree. This article decided what I was going to do it on.
I was going to go up against the entire scientific establishment
and cultural prejudice and test for myself if astrology was really
real. Maybe I could be wrong or deluded somehow. The only evidence
I had was clinical opinion. In clinical practice it seemed to
explain things somehow.
I submitted my proposal to the Department of Psychology at the
University of Northern Colorado in 1977. It is to their credit
that they accepted the proposal. Most departments would not have
accepted research into a controversial area that was presumed
to be superstitious and unworthy of professional attention. Maybe
it was because I was the whiz kid in the department and considered
to be pretty smart. Maybe it was because I was argumentative (college
debate team), verbally fluent, well read, and was going to put
up a protest if someone said no. Maybe it was because of the openness
of the times. Maybe it was because I was likeable. Maybe it was
because it was a good proposal. Who knows? They let me do it.
The title of the
dissertation was 'Astrological Discrimination Between
Authentic and Spurious Birthdates' and it used a double blind
experimental method with control group. It was the first time
in scientific history it had been done on this subject. The subjects
didn't know the answers and I wouldn't know the answers. First,
I collected personal histories from fellow graduate students and
had them give me two birthdates, one true (authentic) and one
false (spurious). Only my research advisor was given the true
birthdates. Then I took these case histories (more than 10 pages
each) with me to a professional conference of astrologers in Arizona
and asked for volunteers to read all these case histories and
tell me which ones were the true birthdates. The statistical probability
of getting it right was 50/50. Once I collected the results, I
showed them to my research advisor, Dr. Richard Bear, and we together
calculated the outcome using both chi square and t-test. They
got it right 2/3 times, which, with a very small sample, was statistically
significant at .05 level. It was not an accident. I had scientifically
proven that astrology was real. It did not prove astrology
was true. The first step was to prove if it was real. It
would take a lot more work to prove how much of it was true.
Now it was time to do the literature search for the thesis. I
could have made it easy on myself and just done the literature
search in the field of psychology to see if anything had been
done. Nothing had been done. There was not one scientific piece
of research in psychology using the experimental method on the
subject of astrology. There was nothing to report. I could have
put it on one page and been done with it, but, no no, I had to
do it the hard way. It took me 6 months of reading and research
12 hours a day to get it all done and I just tapped the surface
of it. What I did was ask myself, 'If astrology is real, would
there be any evidence of that in biology, chemistry, physics,
geology, and history?' In science, it is called an operating hypothesis.
It was incredible. Not only the evidence was there in every field
I looked into, it was clear. In biology were the studies of biological
clocks and oysters opening their shells when the moon passed overhead
(Dr. F.A. Brown). There were other studies of migratory and navigational
behaviors of birds and animals. There were studies in exobiometeorology
from NASA and other studies in 'jumping genes'. In chemistry,
there were the studies by Dr. Piccardi. In geology, there were
studies of the full moon passing overhead triggering earthquakes
and there was the theory of 'catastrophism'. In history, astrology
had occupied a major space in every civilization of mankind. In
religion, there were the 3 Magi (astrologers) of Christianity
and the Vedas of Hinduism and the astrological prediction told
to Buddha's father that the young prince would either be a great
king or a great sadhu. Astrology was a significant part of civilization
up until the newly founded French Academy of Sciences eliminated
the spiritual/superstitious component of the ancient sciences
in 1666. They took the spiritual component out of alchemy and
called it chemistry. They took the spiritual component out of
astrology and called it astronomy. Kepler warned them not to throw
the baby out with the dishwater, but they did not heed.
The thesis was complete, all several hundred pages of it, and
I handed it in to the committee. My advisor was Dr. Darrell Anderson,
a clinical psychologist head of the department. All the faculty
members on my committee were senior members of the department.
Dr. Carol Lutey had done the first factor analysis of the Stanford-Binet.
Dr. Richard Bear was the Associate Dean of Education. Dr. Liz
Rave was a hardworking warhorse with twenty years experience in
the field and a no-nonsense attitude. They reviewed my raw data
and the experimental design and crossed my t's and dotted my i's
and pretty much left the whole thing intact.
The one thing they changed was my conclusion and recommendation.
Most scientific studies recommended that further research be done.
My recommendation was that no further research be done because
of taboo reaction and the professional damage it would
do to the researcher. They didn't believe such a thing existed
in science. They were not sociologists or anthropologists. They
didn't know about the sociology of knowledge and how some subjects
are accepted as real and others are forbidden and taboo. Everything
I had read in the last six months had convinced me I had just
put my intellectual head in the lion's mouth by daring to deal
with this subject. The first geologist to propose the 'drifting
continents hypothesis' had been ridiculed. It is now confirmed.
The first biologist to propose the 'jumping gene theory' had been
scorned. It is now confirmed. The first psychologist to prove
that Freudian psychotherapy was useless and gave no results was
physically attacked. It is now confirmed. The first medical doctor
to recommend physicians wash their hands after examining a patient
and before examining another one was condemned. It is now standard
practice. The scientist who proposed the Gaia Effect was
mercilessly flayed by an editorial in the prestigious Nature
journal. CSICOP was still active, well funded by someone,
and busy busy attacking any researcher in any of the 'forbidden'
fields. The committee wouldn't accept my recommendation. They
made me take it out.
The thesis was accepted and approved. Then the magic day came
in 1978 when it was time to walk out on stage in the monkey costume
and accept the scroll that named me Doctor of Psychology. My first
thought when I received it in my hand was, 'This is it? This is
all you have to teach?' There were no higher degrees to reach
for.
Then I did what I was supposed to do as a scientist. I kept the
raw data of the experiment for 10 years in case anyone wanted
to check the results. I also mailed a copy of the research to
an expert in the field for review. Since there was no expert in
this field, I mailed it to one of the most famous, respected,
and well published psychologists alive, Professor Hans J. Eysenck.
He had written over 65 books and published hundreds of articles.
The average academic psychologist will publish maybe 3 articles
in a lifetime. There were two schools of factor analysis in theories
of personality and he was the head author of one. The other school
belonged to Dr. Cattle and his collaborator, Dr. Ralph Mason Dreger.
Cattell had invented the 16PF Personality Inventory and Eysenck
had invented the Eysenck Personality Inventory. Eysenck was the
first psychologist to test if Freudian psychotherapy really was
effective or not. It wasn't and he caused an uproar. Eysenck was
famous for strict scientific procedure and experimental design.
His ethics were beyond question.
One year later, my dire prediction came true. On the front page
of the Greeley Tribune and on page 3 of the Denver Post was an
article about the deteriorating quality of the University and
as evidence of this was that someone had done a doctoral dissertation
called Astrololgical Discrimination Between Authentic and Spurious
Birthdates. I called the reporter on the Denver Post who had
written that article and he admitted he never read the dissertation.
The University immediately took all the dissertations off the
open stacks and put them down in the basement. Just a few months
later, my dissertation had somehow been lost and could not be
found.
Well, maybe the library 'lost' it, but it is listed in Psychological
Abstracts. Hah ha.
I didn't realize
they would put the title of the dissertation on the front page
of the transcripts. Somehow I wasn't getting the offers for employment
from public schools I usually got. Now I had done all this extra
work to get a doctorate and I wasn't getting job offers. I began
to suspect I had shot myself in the foot with both barrels. I
even requested the graduate school to delete the word 'astrological'
from my dissertation because of taboo reaction but they
didn't know what the hell I was talking about and refused. Finally,
I got a position as Associate Professor of Gifted Education at
Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. I don't
think the guy who hired me noticed the title of my dissertation.
We were from different professions and it wasn't important to
him. A department of psychology would have looked at the dissertation
first thing. The subject of a doctor's dissertation is the area
which defines his expertise and specialty.
I was determined to do everything a professional psychologist
should do to be recognized and given credibility. I started the
incredibly long, arduous process to be licensed (two years post-doctorate
supervised experience, passing the 33rd percentile
on the written examination from hell, and oral examination before
four senior anal retentives on the Board of Examiners) and I applied
for membership in the state psychological society.
My application for membership in the Louisiana Psychological Association
was taking a long time. I was fully qualified and I was wondering
why it was taking so long. Finally I heard through the pipeline
that people were objecting to my dissertation on astrology and
there was a big argument going on. Finally, a well respected grandfather
psychologist, Dr. Ralph Mason Dreger, stood up and said I had
all the qualifications and there was no reason why membership
could be denied. I was accepted. Six years later, I was elected
President of the Louisiana Psychological Association. So hah!
Meanwhile, Professor Eysenck had come out with a new book called
Astrology: Science or Superstition. Mostly it was a review
of Dr. Gauquelin's massive statistical correlational studies on
planetary positions and personality. He had found that athletes
had a strong Mars, scientists had a strong Saturn, and politicians
had a strong Jupiter. It had even been reported in the media as
the Mars Effect. Immediately his work came under ridicule
from CSICOP and when Gauquelin submitted his work for scientific
review, it was rejected. Eysenck reviewed all of this and concluded
that Gauquelin's work was valid and that the behavior of CSICOP
was in violation of scientific ethics.
To use astrology in my psychological practice was in violation
of professional standards of practice. I decided to play the game
according to the rules and put my entire astrological library
literally in the closet to avoid any further controversy. It was
a mistake and cost me dearly. I became a workaholic and ignored
my own personal life and my marriage. Six years later my marriage
had deteriorated and there was a horrible divorce. If I had paid
more attention to our astrological charts, I would have known
better what was going on and maybe could have done something to
fix it.
Unfortunately, any psychologist who uses astrology to study psychology
will be crucified. It is too close to home. It is too close to
the true self. And this knowledge is classified and taboo. It
has always been restricted to the few. In ancient Egypt, it was
part of the preparation to become pharaoh. In ancient Rome, it
was outlawed and forbidden to the public even though the emperors
had their own court astrologers ready at hand. As recently as
1985 I saw astrologers arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana for daring
to participate in a 'psychic fair' at a shopping mall in the 'land
of the free'. I put on suit-and-tie professional garb as a Licensed
Psychologist and went to testify before the City Council on their
behalf. They were found guilty anyway. The joke was that one of
the City Council members was one of my patients who respected
me very much. It didn't help. He didn't dare vote any differently
than the others. He was scared. He would have been ostracized.
Although
I didn't look at my astrology books again for almost ten years,
I continued researching the scientific aspects of it in the physical
sciences trying to find out the physical mechanisms of how it
might work, how those little lights up there far away in the sky
could have such an effect. The best I could come up with is that
at birth, the first breath was accompanied by an ionization process
whereby the DNA rearranged itself on the strands of the helix
according to the positions of the stars. The old argument in psychology
between influences of heredity and environment could not be resolved
because there was a 3rd factor – astrology. This idea
could have been tested if I had had an electron microscope to
see if genes jumped on the helix at time of birth, but I didn't
have an electron microscope.
Years passed, divorce happened, trauma happened. All my investment
in psychology turned out to be personally useless. I had grown
in the frontal lobe only, but not as a person. I started exploring
other more effective forms of therapy. I went back into hypnosis
and started going to the workshops of the American Society of
Clinical Hypnosis. Then I started private sessions with Dr. Fred
Orr and learned/received hypnosis sessions 1x a week for two and
a half years. Then I discovered NLP and invested every spare moment
learning this system for another two years. I totally shifted
from diagnostic testing into NLP and hypnotherapy. I was able
to do miracles with people and it was a joy. I had given myself
a post-hypnotic suggestion that whatever pain and suffering I
could relieve in people, I would feel just as much myself. When
pain is relieved, then there is joy. Whatever joy people would
feel after a session, I would feel just as much myself. It was
a win-win situation.
I sold everything in 1991 and went to India on a spiritual journey
to find out what more was possible with my life.
I ended up at the Osho Commune in Pune, India and, after
a year of doing active meditations and working as an ashram hypnotherapist,
I was asked to write the monthly horoscope for Osho
Times. There were thousands of people from all over the world,
mostly Europeans and Japanese and Brazilians, and we were all
on the spiritual search to know ourselves. I got very well known
because everyone was reading the horoscope and my picture was
there. People started asking me for astrology sessions. I knew
astrology, but I had never given sessions in it before. I was
very unsure at first and kept asking people each step of the way,
'Is this true for you?' They kept saying it was. They were amazed
and I was amazed.
The NLP background I had was enormously helpful to the astrology
session. The ideas of parts
and positive intention and reframing helped me communicate
to people in such a way that they could relax with themselves
and feel o.k. Most people beat themselves up for not being exactly
the way their society tries to force them to be. Not one society
on Earth, including the Osho Commune, supported individuals to
be true to themselves. Without astrology, there is no way to know
there is any such thing as one's true self. Every society has
its own characteristics and conditioning and because all these
thousands of people were from everywhere, we all became acutely
aware of each other's national characteristics.
Every nationality had its own reputation. The ashram was mostly
German, and then Italian, and then Japanese. Oddly enough, most
of the spiritual seekers were from countries who lost WWII. The
Germans were thought to be the organizers, but not very juicy
to be with. The Italians were the drama queens who were juicy
to be with but not very organized. The Brazilians were the magnetically
sexual ones. The Japanese never showed their feelings and were
always polite and reserved. The English were always in their heads.
The Russians were always broke and slept 16
to a room. There were strangely very few Americans in the
ashram. Our reputation was that we were superficial. At the time,
I wondered what that meant.
My sociologist/anthropologist
part was having an expansion of awareness in a beautiful way.
With the astrological map I could see a person's inborn true nature,
and then with knowledge of the person's family/culture, I could
see how the person's true self would twist and turn to find its
way through all the external restraints and expectations. A Neptune
personality born in Germany would be a misfit, but if they were
born in India or Bali, they would have an easier time. A Saturn
personality would fit just fine in Germany, but would have a hard
time in the manana cultures of Mexico and India. There were not
many Americans in the Commune, but all half dozen of us had strong
Jupiters (we're the best). A Uranus woman born in California would
have a good time, but in Asia she would be miserable. Astrology
turned out to be the ultimate map to one's individuality and true
self before conditioning.
In the summer of 1997, I put my Royal Enfield 350cc on the train
up to the Himalayas to fulfill my dream, to drive my motorbike
through the mountains from Dharamsala to Manali to Ladakh to Kashmir
back to Dharamsala again. It was a 2000 km journey through ancient
and sacred lands and over some of the highest mountain passes
in the world. In the incredibly beautiful Manali Valley, I ran
by accident into Swami Samdarshi's ashram with maybe 60 Western
Osho sannyasins doing meditation and retreat. I had given hundreds
of sessions by then and I was famous and they invited me in. People
were asking for astrology sessions and I was giving and then one
day someone came and said Samdarshi would like a session. 'Oh
shit, I thought, how do you give a session to an enlightened spiritual
master?'
So I climbed up the hill to his house with the Tibetan prayer
flags around it and opened up my portable computer and gave him
a session. In front of 13 of his closest disciples I gave him
a session. That night at tea time, when we would ask him questions
after meditation, someone who wasn't there said they heard he
had had session with Deepak, how was it?
He slowly looked around the room and raised his hand in
the air and said, ''Absolutely Correct!' Wow, everyone in that
room turned around to look at me sitting in the back and all of
a sudden I have 100 eyes looking at me. I must have been embarrassed
for maybe two seconds, longest in my life. Us Jupiter Rising people
are born with big big egos and self-confidence. Needless to say,
I gave everyone in that ashram a session before I climbed on my
motorbike and headed into the unknown over the 5 mountain passes
into Ladakh.
I learned something important about astrology from Samdarshi.
The books will tell you the orbs of the planets should be 6 or
8 degrees, maybe up to 12 for the luminaries (Sun, Moon, Ascendent).
The orb is the distance one planet has to be to another for the
two to have effect on each other. Transits should be just 1 or
2 degrees apart. What I discovered with Samdarshi is that very
conscious people have wider orbs than the books say. It is like
the expansion of consciousness includes the expansion of sensitivity
to planetary effects further and further away. When sensitivity
has been increased to include all the planets at the same time,
then All-Is-One. Also with transits. Ordinary people are insensitive
to the energies going on, so when the transit gets there, then
they realize there is something to be done. By then the transit
has moved on, and so they are always behind the energy playing
catch-up.
The conscious person feels the transit coming from further away
and takes action so that when the transit arrives, the work is
done and the job is complete. They are in synchrony and harmony
with themselves and the energies of the universe.
Some people think that enlightened masters have transcended beyond
astrological influences. First thing is, most people wouldn't
know enlightenment if it bit them on the butt. Second thing is,
according to Khrishnamurti, meditation and enlightenment do not
change the personality and do not cure the problems of the personality.
Third thing is, no one goes beyond the effects of the stars, no
one, not enlightened people, Santa Claus, or anything else in
body and spirit. Enlightened people do not escape their chart,
they fulfill their chart. I have done the transits for half a
dozen enlightened masters and everything that happens is right
on schedule. What is different is the response they choose to
give. Ordinary psychology is about stimulus-response. Transcendental
psychology is about response-stimulus. Choose your response and
let the chips fall where they may.
In the summer of 1998, my beautiful Dutch friend, Tom, loaned
me his big, loud, black, shiny Harley Davidson 1500cc Fat Boy
to drive through Europe. I put the computer in the saddle bag
and packed a sleeping bag and tent and camping gear and drove
this incredible thing through Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain
giving sessions at meditation centers wherever I went. The best
time was giving sessions in my tent by the river in Basel with
the computer running off of the battery. Or maybe it was when
I was woken up in the middle of the night by wild pigs when I
was sleeping out in the Black Forest of Germany. Or maybe it was
when I met RA, the source of Human Design, in Ibiza, Spain. After
four months of nomadic adventures, I dropped the Harley in Holland
and then went to Mexico looking for more.
I ran a Mystic Rose
group and gave individual astrology readings to rich people. It
had to be rich people because the poor people couldn't afford
it. That is the way it was in Mexico. You were either rich or
poor and not very much in-between. It was also the most crime
ridden place I had ever been in my life. One day this rich lady
came for session in her bullet proof limo with a guard for the
car, a guard downstairs at the entrance, and another guard outside
the door of the flat. She was complaining that they had stolen
her last bullet proof limo and she had had to replace it with
this one and how expensive they are. I never did have much sympathy
for troubles of the rich.
It was nice traveling with the computer. It made the nomadic life
possible. Otherwise, I would have had to pack such a stack of
books (ephemeris for 50 years, table of houses, atlas of time
changes in the world, atlas of longitude and latitude for cities
in the world) that it would have dug deeply into my baggage allowance.
To do a chart by hand would have taken me up to 2 hours. To do
a chart on the computer took me 2 minutes. It was a blessing that
had turned into a necessity. After two months in Mexico, the hard
drive crashed and I lost everything. I lost the birthdates of
several thousand sannyasins, which was probably the largest databank
of spiritual seekers in the world. I didn't have the money to
replace it all and I was stuck.
I ended up back in the USA for the second time in eight years.
I had some savings and used them to buy a new computer and an
old custom van with 140,000 miles on it and a folding bed in the
back. This was the way to travel. I had my 'home' and books with
me and I was flexible enough to travel and stop almost anywhere.
I preferred the nature and sleeping outside. Even when I was offered
a roof over my head, if the weather was nice and the wind was
blowing, I would go outside and sleep in the van.
I left Seattle in a dark, cold rain and drove down the coast of
Oregon and slept under the giant Redwoods of northern California
and along the coast of Highway 1 and then from LA to Sedona, Arizona.
I stayed there for 5 months looking for work and trying to establish
myself. I was 55 years old and imagined I should be secure and
stable. All my licenses as psychologist and school psychologist
were expired and out of date. It would take a year of paperwork
and continuing education to get them active again. The joke was
that I had been doing nothing but 'continuing education' throughout
the world in the last eight years, but none of it was 'accredited'
by an institution and none of it would count. Besides that, the
application forms for a job would take days to fill out and, because
of Affirmative Action, the jobs were not really open after all.
Besides that, there were requirements for criminal background
check, random blood testing for drugs, and there were a lot of
questions where I had been for the last eight years. Jeez, this
country is really turning paranoid, I thought, and I gave it up.
I
went to Holland to participate in a thirty day therapy/transformation
group at a place called Humaniversity. My god, I had no idea what
they did. My third night there with no sleep, I realized they were
using sleep deprivation. My god, I hate sleep deprivation. They
also used primal and catharsis and confrontation and group pressure
to break the ego. I hate catharsis and group pressure to break the
ego. According to NLP, it doesn't resolve anything and it only retraumatizes
the original painful experience. It was an adaptation to the old
Phoenix House model used for heroin addicts. The guru there thought
it had worked for him, so it should work for spiritual seekers.
Debatable. I finished this marathon intensive by pulling myself
over the finish line by my fingernails. I had gotten maybe 80 hours
sleep in 30 days. No one knew because they took away your watches
and closed the doors and covered the windows. It was the only thing
I never quit and it is the first thing I should have quit.
They closed the group without preparing people for the outside world.
Almost a hundred people had had no sleep for a month. We were all
in what is called 'Marathon Space'. People took off on motorbikes
and in cars and I took a train to Amsterdam Central. I spacily put
my bags down to make a phone call and turned my head. Zam! I got
robbed. I turned my head around and the computer was gone.
Devastation. Literally tears came to my eyes. I told my sob story
to friends and, blessedly, one of them helped me buy an older, used
notebook. Good enough.
I returned to India with a ten-year visa just in time for the Millenium.
I had left the Osho Commune in 1998 because it had 'all of a sudden'
turned authoritarian and repressive. I watched it for awhile, watched
people's responses to a society turning into a dictatorship like
the good little scientist I was, analyzed the birthcharts of Osho
and the people in charge, and thought I knew what was going on.
I came back hoping it was better. It was worse. What had been one
of the healthiest societies on earth with the healthiest population
possible had been turned into something out of 1984.
It was a Pluto transit. Societies have personalities just like individual
people do. In sociology, it is called, sui
generis. Societies
have changes (transits) just like people do. They are born, they
have changes, and they die. All of them. Nothing last forever.
The Commune was finished for me. I had been a big fish in a small
pond and now the pond was dried up. I shifted to the tropical beaches
of Goa in the winter and the cool Himalayas of Dharamsala and Manali
in the summer. The dirty, filty confused and chaotic conditions
of India suited me. Only in disorganization and chaos can an individual
be free, free to dress and act as he wants. In the stable, regulated
societies of the West, an individual cannot step off of the sidewalk
or even breath.
In the summer of 2000, the Dalai Lama was giving the kalachakra ceremony in Spiti Valley at over 5000 meters (15,000+ feet).
I loaded up my motorbike, put the computer in the saddlebag,
drove over Rohtang Pass, and then at the bottom turned right. My
god, what a 'road'. Broken bridges, flooded roads, landslides, narrow
turns around curves with thousand foot drops, sharp rocks, big rocks,
lots of rocks. Out of fifty motorbikes that made it up there, at
least fourty came back on trucks. I gave sessions and I had the
honor of being the highest altitude computerized astrologer in the
world. I couldn't breath, the motorcycle couldn't breath, but the
computer was ok.
I spent the winter in Goa and then I was invited to Ibiza, Spain
for the summer. Ibiza is not the place for astrology or know-yourself
approaches in any way. It is a party island. Tatoo artists and massage
people do well, but nothing spiritual or meditative. I was sucking
air and living hand-to-mouth and looking for ways to do my work.
In India I was well known and didn't have to market myself. In this
new place in the disbelieving materialistic west, no one knew who
I was or what astrology could do.
There was an art show at a very nice garden bar and that is where
my people were. Artists, actors, musicians, dancers, intelligentsia
are the people in the west who are open to self exploration. I set
up a table outside the entrance and put my computer on it and offered
little 15 minute mini-sessions. One lady came who was very nice
and then spoke about me so highly that all the other five women
at the table came also, one by one. Then she invited me out to her
finka to give sessions to her guests and then one night she said
that one of her friends in London, who was 'wealthy beyond imagination',
wanted to fly me to UK to give sessions to a few of her friends.
Would that be ok with you, Sioned asked? I almost laughed. London
was where I had Jupiter on my Midheaven and it was the perfect place
on the planet for me to work.
I arrived at Heathrow Airport on the morning of September 11, 2001,
that fateful day. I took the train to Euston Station and made that
same dumb unaware mistake I had made at Amsterdam Central just two
years before. I dropped my bags to make a phone call and turned
my head. Zam! Computer bag stolen. Ouch. I arrived at Sioned's house
in Bangor in distress. Like the fairy godmother she really is (she
is always helping people in need/Neptune-Ascendent), she helps me
get another notebook until I can pay her back. Then she brought
people to me like I had never met. It was like she knew half the
industrial/aristocratic elite of UK personally. I never met people
like this as a psychologist. Like J.P. Morgan said, 'Millionaires
don't believe in astrology, but billionaires do.' It
was all very interesting.
One day, Sioned reminded me of that session I had taped of a blind
birthdate. I didn't know who it was. She told me he was so impressed
with the reading that he had left his home in California and was
on his way to Wales when he got stopped at the airport in NY on
September 11th. It was Bob Dylan. Damn. I love Bob Dylan.
I spend the winter in the warm sunshine under the coconut trees
in Goa again. People are coming and then someone says Aziz would
like a session. Another enlightened spiritual master with maybe
a 100 European disciples. I was nervous again. How to talk to these
people? Actually, it is somewhat easier. They know exactly what
you are talking about and there are not a lot of defenses and denials
that other people get into. It is a confirmation of what they already
know, just as it is for everyone else, and, paradoxically, that
is one of the values of an astrological reading. Confirmation is
of enormous value in a person's life and there are not many places
to find it. There is the added value of being able to time travel
into a person's future, far beyond the sensitivities of even an
enlightened master, to see where one cycle leads into another cycle
and which part-of-the-whole a particular time period is.
I noticed a lot of Aziz people coming for session and I liked them
all very much. Students and disciples have astrological charts compatible
with the teacher and Aziz was truly and honestly an evolved spiritual
seeker. Finally, one of the students told me that Aziz had said
to go get a session with Deepak and they all were planning to come.
I ended up being an ashram astrologer again. It was a perfect combination.
The job of the guru was to get them to the divine and my job was
to get them across a busy street. I was doing the same work I was
doing as a school psychologist, but this time it was with better
methods and the school was the school of life.
The next summer I am in Istanbul, Turkey and I am busy. I had given
sessions to some Turkish sannyasins in Goa and when the word got
out I was in Istanbul, I was busy. I was getting rich people again.
Turkey was a little bit like Mexico with this large gap between
rich and poor, but it was missing all this violent crime. It was
a beautiful, beautiful exotic city with very cultured people and
tall, thin minarets rising high above us all. I sat in the backyard
of the center with an extension cord running out to the computer
and gave sessions under the trees and flowers.
I ask people to give me 3 questions to start the session. Many people
find this very difficult and Neptune people find it near impossible.
I have learned to be more gentle with them and not try to row up
river against the flow. Instead of 3 questions, I ask them for 3
wishes. This they can do and it even brings a smile to their face.
The value of asking people to bring questions is that it involves
them in the process. Unless the person is involved, they are going
to just sit there like passive pussies hoping to be wowed with predictions
and never intending to do anything with their lives. It is not the
purpose of my life to entertain people in this condition. I even
tell them I want 3 questions and no dumb questions. This can be
such a challenge, such a hurdle for some people, that I lose maybe
one out of ten sessions. Some will come back months later saying
'I have them now.' Some never come back, or, when they do, I am
gone to somewhere else.
One of the questions I hate to hear is 'What about my health?' O.K.,
I have some patience with 'What about my love life?' and 'What about
money?' I'll help them reframe into a level of self reflection and
then we get on with the session. But 'What about my health?' is
stupid. I usually say something to the effect of, 'Do you go to
a plumber to fix your teeth? Do you go to the dentist to fix your
car? Why do you ask an astrologer about your health? Why don't you
ask a doctor?' And
then one day it had to happen, my client said, 'But Deepak, I am
a doctor!'
This is not to say astrology is not useful in medicine. It is enormously
useful. It is to say I am not trained in medicine and it is not
my area of expertise. I am a doctor of psychology, not a doctor
of medicine. Even though I have a background as a medical psychologist
and a medical hypnotherapist, I am not qualified to make a medical
diagnosis and I would not try. I can sometimes see in the chart
the quality of the illness, the quality of treatment, and the duration
of the difficulty. If I saw an illness coming I would not say for
fear of prophecy fulfillment and posthypnotic suggestion. I shudder
to think of the damage a kitchen table astrologer can do if they
fall into the trap of answering this question. However, if a trained
physician would use astrology, he would save thousands of lives
and countless millions of dollars.
This winter in Goa, I am sitting on the porch of my bungalow with
the waves of the ocean splashing on the rocks below and the wind
blowing through the leaves of the coconut trees above. I am wearing
no socks, no underwear, no shirt. I don't have a bank account, a
retirement system, a job, a boss, a schedule, a mortgage. No is
expecting anything and time, precious time, is all my own. Beautiful
interesting people come and people go and it has been a remarkable
meeting, everyone. I watch the setting sun over the waves and I
realize what a success my life has become.
The weather changes from warm to hot and I take the train to Dharamsala
where the air is cool and chanting sounds spill over into the streets
from the Tibetan monasteries
all around. My people are here, the spiritual seekers and
the meditators from all over the world. I meet the Karmapa and am
smiling happy at who I find. There is a place of silence for me
in the nature nearby this magic place and I am alone with the presence
of myself. I have lived my life and everything is complete and ok.
Now I have met Ming-Yng and I am on my way to Taiwan…….
It is a systems theory because it is a theory that can be
used by any system of knowledge there is. One of the best there
is, Living Systems by Dr. Miller, says there are 16 processes
any living system must perform to be alive...ingestion, digestion,
assimilation, expulsion of waste, etc. Any biologist who uses astrology
to study biology will win the Nobel Prize. Just call it something
else like exobiometeorology. Any physicist who uses astrology to
study physics will win the Nobel Prize. Just call it something else.
Any chemist who uses astrology to study chemistry will win the Nobel
Prize. Any historian who uses astrology to study history will win
the Nobel Prize. Any economist who uses astrology to study economics
will win the Nobel Prize. Any medical doctor who uses astrology
will be able to save lives and any psychologist who uses astrology
will reduce the suffering of untold numbers of good and honest people.
If 'modern' society were to adopt astrology as real, the value to
mankind would be in the trillions of dollars and millions of lives.
This is a conservative estimate.
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