What’s going to happen next? Most answers could be a ‘I don’t know’. A stone thrown up will invariably come down …. that’s the rule of Nature. But the spot of fall and the impact it creates would change even at the pressure of a wind, which too moves according to set rules. Nobody can exactly predict a physical movement on earth. The person who falls from a particular height need not necessarily end up with the same damages that another person who fell from the same height earlier had. Predictions require an added intuitive eye.
Future, it is an area on which we are all anxious to have some glimpses and astrology is not an absurd science either. But both Vastu and astrology are prone to error and abuse. Every action is invariably followed by reaction. Calling back the arrow, once shot, is not practical; so is changing the course of karma too. There are people who could not marry, because of of horoscope rules. The relaxation allowed to those who have crossed 40, could be just based on practical logic only. Everybody knows that there are exceptions for Vastu in cities, where space is comparatively limited. The story of Vararuchi, a very knowledgeable person in the court of Vikramaditya, is famous. He knew that he was destined to marry a low-caste girl. He identified the girl child and also arranged to kill her. The legendary story says that Vararuchi had to marry the same ‘parayi’ girl who had been saved from being killed.
Life has always been mysterious; it ceases to be thrilling, the moment the future is revealed. With the future wide open, it is impossible to live by the proposed karma. The big question is why we are all here? Hindus believe that they are on an evolutionary path, spread across many births, clearing all karmic debts one by one. This says that it should not only be pleasure that life needs, all through. It also says that there is nothing unnatural with the obstructions that frequently appear.
Every life has both joy and sorrow in it. It is impossible to choose to live in joy only. Both the gross and subtle worlds, move according to the fundamental universal rules. Suppose I had hurt a person in one of my previous lives. Healing from that scar happens only when I get the same hurt from another person, unless a competent person resolves it. Suppose a foreseer change somebody’s course, by a prediction. There, the foreseer turns responsible for all the changes he has caused. In other words, he was blocking a person from going through his karma, without his permission or request. It is always the rule that people not healthy enough to take over others’ karmas, never try predictions.
The one who willingly surrenders to his karma with an equanimous mind, in gratitude, with consistency in action and without considering the future, is on the path of a revolutionary evolution. I remember the story of Andreas Nikolaus Lauda. Niki Lauda was an Austrian Formula One driver and an aviation entrepreneur. He won F1 World Drivers’ Champion title three times and is the only one driver in F1 history to have been champion for both Ferrari and McLaren. In 1976, while he was only 27, he met with a fatal accident. It was from the burning fire that his friends took him and admitted in a hospital. The doctors briefed, “Never likely to be back.”
See, he lost the Champions title in the next race held after 40 days of this accident, by just one point only. The Buddhist adage says, “You are your own master; you make your own future.”
