SRF Views on Astrology

Paramahansa Yogananda

Astrology is a true science, though only an intuitive and spiritually developed person can rightly interpret a horoscope. Self-Realization Fellowship teaches that all things in the heavens and on the earth are interrelated; the whole cosmos is one unified structure. But SRF does not teach astrology. Our guru Paramahansa Yogananda pointed out that the highest science is meditation on God — the One who created the stars and planets and who gave them their characteristic influences.

Each of the twelve astrological (zodiacal) signs has a good side and a bad side. The qualities of each sign can be used or misused. Each sign has distinctive virtues and faults. However, it is not an astrological sign that determines one’s character, it is one’s stage of spiritual advancement. A good man will make the best of whatever sign he happens to be born under. A man who is low in spiritual evolution will make the worst of even an auspicious zodiacal endowment.

Every man has been or will be born many times under each of the astrological signs, so one should feel impersonal about the matter. As one becomes more universal in outlook the less his particular zodiacal sun-sign affects, restricts, and defines him.

God made the heavens and the earth and God made the soul of man. The soul is not subject to any limitation or condition of the phenomenal worlds. The wise man strives for knowledge not primarily of creation but of the Creator.

Many students of astrology tend to become fanatical about it and to miss the point of the spiritual path — the search for God alone. If we strive to do His will we shall be in tune with the Infinite. That goal is far better and more spiritually rewarding than to seek to analyze ourselves and others astrologically.

Source : July-August 1962 SRF magazine