How to change destiny?

O Learned and Devoted Servants of God, [April 29, 2012] This world of humanity is based on full freedom and absence of any forcible destiny. Here, you are free to do any type of work and no destiny forces you to do any specific work as said in the Gita (Na kartrutvam...). The concept of destiny exists only in the link of the specific work and the specific fruit. You have full freedom to put your finger in fire or water. No destiny forces you to put your finger in fire or water. The destiny lies only in the link between a specific work and corresponding specific fruit. It is destined that the fire burns your finger and the water keeps your finger cool. The destiny is not in the selection of the work. You have put your finger in the fire due to ignorance or ego. After burning the finger, you may say that you have put the finger in the fire due to the destiny. God has destined the specific system, which links every action with a specific fruit. After putting your finger, God is not ordering the fire to burn it. The subsequent fruit for a specific work is already destined. God or the destiny does not interfere with the choice of your selection of a specific work. Even the so called past destiny does not interfere with your works. The composition of your psychology is fixed based on your past deeds. Thus, work is responsible for the will and the will is the generator of the work. Since the composition of your psychology is already based on your past deeds and is fixed, you can treat that as destiny and in such case, destiny is guiding everything.

The psychology is a specific pattern of ideas generated by the past deeds and it is called as ‘Samskara’. An idea can be changed by knowledge. Samskara is a fixed concept and the right knowledge is a group of right concepts. You have the opportunity of hearing the right knowledge since God comes to this world quite often in human form. You have the freedom to hear such divine knowledge or not to hear. You have also freedom to practice the knowledge or leave it without practice. At every step, the basic freedom is given. This human world is also the right place for testing the devotees and here also, the full freedom is protected. You are totally free to sacrifice anything or not to sacrifice anything even if God desires for it. God does not force you or threaten you or wash your brain in your sacrifice since such sacrifice is not real. God is pleased only with the real sacrifice done by the soul in the atmosphere of total freedom. In the examination hall, you are totally free to answer the question paper to any extent or even to return the white paper without writing even a word. God preaches the total concept and in the stage of implementation of it, God does not influence your mind in any way. After teaching all the right knowledge through the Gita, Krishna said that the decision to fight or not is totally left to Arjuna (yathechchasi…). The basic reason is that God is not in need of anything from anybody. The sacrifice is not to satisfy God but only to uplift you. The sacrifice proves your real attachment to God and such real attachment is not in the benefit of God but it is only in your benefit. Krishna asked for the special gem from Satrajit, the father of Satyabhama. Krishna is not in need of that gem. He is the creator of that gem. Even without the help of that gem, He can create wealth. He can even stop the power of the gem to create the wealth. Krishna asked the gem from Satrajit because Satrajit cannot maintain it and will fall in trouble. Only for the welfare of Satrajit, He asked him for that gem. But, Satrajit thought that Krishna asked that gem for His personal benefit and thereby, for His personal satisfaction. Such misunderstanding made Satrajit to refuse the gem.

Astrology says that the happening of good or bad incidents is due to the planets. This misunderstanding again leads the people to think that their actions are destined by the planets. Here, your actions are not destined by the planets. Your actions are only destined by your psychological set up, which is destined by your past deeds. The planet links the specific fruit for the specific action. You do something based on your Samskara. The planet gives its correspondent fruit immediately. You blame the planet for guiding you to do a specific work and this is totally wrong. A planet is only destined to give the specific result linked with your specific action. The specific work is based on your specific psychological pattern only. The horoscope gives the composition of your specific psychological pattern. Since your future actions also depend on the same pattern, future prediction can be easily given. A specific psychological pattern is always linked with a specific composition of planets representing your qualities or ideas. Therefore, there is no external destiny here other than yourself regarding your future. If the Samskara is modified with the help of the divine knowledge, the whole destiny is changed, which means your horoscope totally disappears. Every period is divided into sub periods, every sub period is again divided into further sub periods and every division involves the revolution of all the nine planets again and again. This means that human being is a mixture of both good and bad always in every step of the time.

Astrology is Introduction to Philosophy
Actually, the basic concept of astrology indicates that there is the existence of some unimaginable supernatural force that guides this world. Hence, astrology is an introduction for the philosophy. Without taking this basic reality, you misuse the astrology to justify yourself by linking your wrong actions to the planets. The worship of the supernatural and unimaginable planets introduces the worship of unimaginable God. But, this is again misused as the worship of the planet for not giving the bad result for the bad action done by you. If you worship God, He will preach you the right knowledge, which changes the total destiny. By your worship, God will not protect you from your sins. Therefore, in this world, the destiny is also in your hands only. There is full freedom for you to change your destiny through the right knowledge. Hence, this world of humanity is called as ‘Karma Loka’, which means that your actions decide everything and that your action is based on your psychological pattern only and not by any pre-determined external destiny. The upper worlds are called as ‘Bhoga Lokas’ because there is no freedom to perform any new action and you have no freedom at all, but for enjoying the destined results for your already recorded actions.

‘Pravrutti’ means attachment to worldly bonds. ‘Nivrutti’ is detachment of your worldly bonds for the sake of God. This world is the stage for both pravrutti and nivrutti. Full freedom up to the level of changing your destiny exists here. Your destiny is only your fixed psychological pattern generated from the past deeds and not any other external force. This pattern can be changed by the right knowledge received from God in the form of preacher. Therefore, there is every chance for changing your destiny in this world. Generally, people blame the reason for their bad actions to be some external force called as destiny in which there is no trace of their personal psychological involvement. People say, ‘People say so’. The people cannot be the authority unless the whole subject is perfectly analyzed. Even there are several misinterpretations in books written by ancestral scholars. You should not blindly take the people or the ancient books as authority without analyzing them perfectly. The Gita says that you will laugh at such authorities if you analyze the subject with sharp scientific intelligence (Buddhyaayukto…).

Even if the implementation is impossible, it is better to have the right knowledge, which follows the soul to the next birth so that the practical implementation can be done sometime in the future. This point looks quite good, but there is the practical danger. Just like the cooked food can be attacked by the bacteria in the atmosphere, the right knowledge is also attacked by the worldly attractions and sometimes, the right knowledge may become weaker and weaker and even may finally disappear even in the later part of this life. Therefore, it is better to implement the realized concept as early as possible like eating the cooked food immediately.

At the lotus feet of Shri Datta Swami

-Durgaprasad