34 QUESTION: This would explain the astrological riddle that sometimes death does not occur according to the usual progressions.
ANSWER: Exactly. You see, my dear friend, perhaps now, with the help of the teachings you receive here, you will be able to understand many things in astrology that were not quite clear before. It may be very good to adopt right now the idea that each human being has necessarily been given many alternative plans for a life. This will also clear up another question, namely, why some aspects work, as you say, and some do not. That is so because astrology does not contain all plans. Some are found in domains not yet known to humankind. Perhaps you can fit this into your picture.
QA171 QUESTION: Sometimes in the horoscope, there are relationships between the courses which the planets represent, which can indicate something going on in a deep psychological sense, but also an event may occur. {Yes} Can a deep consciousness of the psychological meaning avert or change the possibility of disaster?
ANSWER: Yes, absolutely! If this were not so, everything I’ve said for years would not be true. And everyone who follows this Path finds out, as a personally experienced fact, that these are truths. It is a fact that you direct your life, that you are the captain of your fate in the true sense of the word.
But there are very deep-rooted, unconscious factors that you cannot directly reach by an act of will. And that must be accepted temporarily. In that acceptance, a new balance structure exists that makes it possible to get to this material. Because as long as you reject what you have produced, you cannot even find it and understand it and dissolve it.
So as you go slowly and patiently this way, it may absolutely be possible that a very severe condition can be completely eliminated. It depends on the person’s attitude toward it.
QA177 QUESTION: When the horoscope is drawn, the implication is that certain constellations have a certain specific effect on human beings.
ANSWER: Well, the way you human beings see it is that way, but the way it really is, it is not that way. The way it really is, is a human being is born under a certain constellation because that is the way he is. Therefore, he can only come into this channel.
QA190 QUESTION: Some time ago you were asked about why souls incarnate – why we come to life – and you said it was to confront the challenges and difficulties, in order that there can be a very rapid growth and development. I asked, was this related to the squares and oppositions in the horoscope, and the answer was Yes. So if a person chooses to be born – to be confronted with specific difficulties – then when they have these difficulties in their lives, they are told “you are creating this.” Isn’t it appropriate that these difficulties be created in order to be handled?
ANSWER: No. It is the other way around. Entities who are conscious beings – acting, determining beings – have created the conditions and they come to life in order to meet these conditions, because the circumstances here lend themselves exceedingly well to do this in the particular configurations of earth life.
You see, it is very difficult to put this into words without seeming to be contradictory. I also said in one of the recent lectures that the human being unifies the universe by having aspects within himself which are, let us say, destructive, and by meeting these destructive aspects, by confronting the feelings; by giving up destructive attitudes, the unification takes place. But it is nevertheless so, that what each person carries with him is self-created.
QUESTION: Is it that the proper confrontation of these challenges and difficulties then results in a resolution of the problem? And then there can be the joy in spite of the difficulties?
ANSWER: Absolutely, absolutely. There is, of course, this world of duality in which difficulties, pain, suffering, and all of that seems like a fixed thing. It is not fixed. It depends upon from what vantage point you look at them and it depends what attitude you assume toward them.
For example, let us take suffering and pain, and difficulties. If the attitude is the truthful one, the open one, the unresisting one, the constructive one – and everyone of you, especially those of you who are engaged in a more intense Pathwork, I am sure can recall instances where when you truly met the feeling, the feeling dissolved – if you truly do not resist pain, the pain becomes pleasure. If you truly meet your difficulty, the difficult becomes a stepping stone, the fulfillment itself. If you truly meet your fear, your fear becomes security.
All of this that I say here is not mere words or theory or philosophy that has no value for you right here and now. All of this can be experienced for every one of you, depending on if you truly wish to go into yourselves. So you’re quite right when you say that the very difficulties become the fulfillment and then are no longer difficulties.
From a point of view of the astrological chart or the horoscope, the horoscope cannot change in its appearance, but inwardly it changes in the person, but that cannot be visible. If the person truly grows and makes his squares his positive aspects, if the chart could be remade, it would look very different.