WE HAVE given in earlier issues three illuminating incidents in the travels of Paul Brunton, related in his book “A Search in Secret India;” and because the learned from a noted Astrologer in Benares some important truths that confirm the Impersonal teachings and which the way they are told are most interesting and helpful, we give herein part of his experience with Sudhei Babu, this Astrologer.

We will omit the part telling how he heard of and contacted him and will quote only what is of deepest interest, putting in italics the statements to which we particularly wish to draw attention.

As an excuse to talk with the Astrologer he asked him to cast his horoscope, which told him many things about his past life that were correct. While impressed yet he voiced his lack of faith in Astrology. Sudhei Babu replied:

“Why should it seem impossible to you that such distant stars can influence the lives of men? Do not tides respond to the distant moon in their ebb and flow? Does not the body of a woman undergo a change every lunar month? Does not the absence of the sun make men more liable to depressed moods?”

“Quite so. But that is a far cry from asserting the claims of Astrology. Why should Jupiter or Mars care two annas whether I meet with shipwreck or not?”

He looks at me with an unruffled face.

“It is better that you regard the planets as being only symbols which stand in the sky; it is not they which really influence us, but our own past,” he replies. “You will never understand the reasonable nature of Astrology unless you accept the doctrine that man is born again and again, and that his fate follows him with every birth. If he escapes the results of his evil actions in one life, they will punish him in his next; and if he does not receive a due reward for his good actions in one lifetime he will surely receive it in the next.