An Answer to Lady K

My good friend once asked me, confused, “Why Dostoevsky, and why astrology?”

Here I am sharing with you my answer to her which was part of a very intimate, intense and emotional conversation. I find that within these lines is briefly summarised what I truly think and feel about this topic.

“When I first read Crime and Punishment, something within me changed. It was more because of Dostoevsky’s approach to his characters than because of the book itself. He dealt with very complex characters which are usually people from the “underground society”. They were broken and divided. His interest was to find both light and darkness within those troubled people. He was not interested in the “happy” aristocracy like Tolstoy was, but rather in the soul of those who are suffering. Everything about Dostoevsky is deep, and maybe dark at first. But when you dig a little bit deeper, you find light, purity and beauty of the human soul. Then I knew that my task in this lifetime is to always look deeper within people, which goes beyond science and its tools.

I was quite unhappy at college because everything was so limited. Every construct is measured. If it cannot be measured, then it is not valid and, in a way, not real. Psychologists are very happy when they can give you some scale that you can fill out. I believe that some things just cannot be measured, like love, spirituality and basically the entire cosmos within us. Then I realised that psychology is too limited for me. I was always interested in the depths, and when I cannot find one, I lose interest. Then I found astrology, which is sort of a map of the human soul. It is wider than psychology and of course, a much older discipline. Carl Jung once said that astrology is an older sister of psychology, which I believe is true. It has a different approach and different tools but ultimately the same goal. True astrology accepts that it hasn’t got all the answers. And above depth, it offers freedom of thought, which is immensely important to me.”

Q