Oscar Pistorius was the poster boy for the 2012 Paralympics and a star of that year's full Olympics in his own right. He was the first double amputee to compete in the Games, when he ran in the 400 meters and 4x400 meters relay. His use of prosthetic limbs was highly controversial, but even those who argued Pistorius had an unfair advantage admitted that he was an inspirational figure.
On 14th February 2013 - Valentine's Day - Pistorius's girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was shot to death at his home in Johannesburg, and Pistorius was charged the following day with her murder. Initial reports claimed that he was awoken early in the morning by Steenkamp, whom he mistook for an intruder. The story went that it was a Valentine's surprise gone horribly wrong.
At the bail hearing on 19th February, it emerged that Pistorius had fired four shots through a locked bathroom door, three of which hit Steenkamp. Lawyers argued the crucial point as to whether Pistorius had got up and put on his prosthetic limbs first before firing. According to the prosecution, the time required for this process was enough to make the shooting 'premeditated'. Pistorius made bail and the case continues.
Oscar Pistorius
Astrologically, even a brief look at Pistorius's chart shows a jealous, passionate, romantically obsessive nature. His Scorpio stellium includes Venus conjunct Pluto, a classic controlling signature, regardless of the sign. This is the mythological Rape of Persephone brought to life, where the individual's passions are intensified and he is sucked into an emotional Underworld. Ideally, such base emotions are expressed freely and transformed, but anyone with Venus-Pluto aspects, let alone a conjunction in Scorpio, will (over)react strongly to the slightest stimulus or provocation.
Pistorius's intense energy was sublimated into running, to a degree, and we saw his competitive nature clearly at the 2012 Paralympics. He made a furious outburst after failing to win his expected gold in the 200m. The 'focus' routinely described by athletes would have been far greater in his case, simply in order to run at all, let alone at a world-class level. Pistorius's mother raised him to be self-reliant, no different to anyone else, and never to feel sorry for himself.
Venus-Pluto in Scorpio are squared by the Moon at 3 Leo in the Sixth house, adding emotional fire to an already volatile mixture. A man's Moon and Venus are archetypes of femininity, showing the kind of woman he is instinctively attracted to. With Moon and Venus in square, the picture is complex - he wants somebody dark and intense, but also sunny and generous, and the two qualities are at odds. He can have one side or the other, but seemingly never both together.
Then we see Reeva Steenkamp's natal Mars in Leo exactly conjunct Pistorius's Moon, acting as a trigger. This contact reveals a tetchy, passionate relationship, with a potential for 'needle', and ultimately violence if the physical energy is backed up. Her free-spirited retrograde Venus square Uranus may also run into difficulties with a possessive type of man. We do not have a birth-time for Reeva, but a noon chart puts her Moon at 10 Capricorn, where Pluto is currently transiting.
Their - admittedly wide - composite Sun-Venus conjunction is the signature of love par excellence. This is a very common pattern in a close relationship, be it friends, family or lovers. Two people who are just extremely fond of each other, because they can't help it. Does this make a foolproof relationship? Far from it. Composite Sun-Venus often has a compulsive quality that means a couple cannot detach, even when they are not good for each other. 'Can't live together, can't live apart'. Composite Mars opposite Saturn also shows frustration and a potential physical mismatch.
Composite
Transiting Saturn having recently passed over Pistorius's Venus-Pluto, suggests a relationship going through a testing phase. There might have been a repeating pattern of behaviour between him and Reeva, and also a large element of fate. Saturn approaching his midheaven makes the infamous event very public, a kind of South African OJ Simpson case. Instead of being a famous athlete, he has become a famous criminal. Add further a hair-trigger mutual Moon-Uranus conjunction on the 14th February, and we see abundant potential for an event such as happened on the fatal day.
Nobody disputes that Pistorius actually fired the shots that killed Reeva - the only argument concerns his intent. The added frustration he must have experienced as a double amputee would bring extra pressures in a domestic situation. He may have felt powerless, and in a moment of madness fired his gun in order to assert himself. Very likely. To say that his and Reeva's horoscopes, looked at together, show that they loved each other in no way blurs the astrological picture. Two passionate people with strong feelings, are the classic ingredients of a crime passionnel, or 'temporary insanity'.
The other day I came across a 1989 copy of Deepak Chopra's Quantum Healing that still carried its dedication to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, "with a full heart and deepest thanks".
Deepak was, let's remember, the TM movement's blue-eyed boy in the mid-80s, plucked from his role as a Western-trained doctor by Maharishi himself. The foreword to Quantum Healing relates how Maharishi encouraged DC to promote traditional Indian healing, Ayurveda, in the simplest, most straightforward terms. Meditators rushed out to buy his first book Creating Health, co-written with other TM-trained Ayurvedic experts, making it a best-seller and launching the Chopra brand.
A good-looking Western-trained doctor and fluent communicator, Chopra soon found an influential position in the TM organization. Yet for his own reasons, he eventually decided to go his own way. Financial constraints may have been among these: after all, he had a family to support and could sense greater opportunities to be had operating for himself. Maharishi always worked his followers hard, too, needing practically no sleep, he was apparently running teams of assistants ragged well into his 70s and 80s.
Yet it is hard to fathom the reasons why a spiritual seeker like Deepak would abandon a bona-fide guru, especially for superficial gains. Chopra is clearly very smart and highly evolved, but seems to have found it hard to accept a student's role rather than the teacher's. The meditation methods he has subsequently promoted under his own name, (Primordial Sound, etc), are very close to the legal limit in their similarity to advanced TM techniques. Chopra would no doubt claim that there is no patent on Yoga, and coming himself from an Indian background, insist that he is simply an exponent of his country's own timeless tradition.
Yet he has absorbed the way Maharishi and his line have re-cognized the Veda and taken it away from the previous emphasis on effort and renunciation. Chopra is steeped in Maharishi's teaching and his decision to separate himself from his guide and inspiration shows there are no guarantees on the path to realization. Let's hope he realigns himself one day.
I was also reminded this week of another former Maharishi devotee, John Lennon. His selected letters were anthologized last year, edited by Hunter Davies, the Beatles' official biographer. He wrote this letter from Rishikesh in 1968, on Spiritual Regeneration Movement (precursor to the Maharishi Foundation) headed notepaper.
Dear Beth:
Thank you for your letter and your kind thoughts. When you read that we are in India searching for peace, etc, it is not that we need faith in God or Jesus we have full faith in them; it is only as if you went to stay with Billy Graham for a short time it just so happens that our guru (teacher) is Indian and what is more natural for us to come to India his home. He also holds courses in Europe and America and we will probably go to some of these as well to learn and to be near him.
Transcendental meditation is not opposed to any religion it is based on the basic truths of all religions the common denominator. Jesus said: “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” and he meant just that “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” not in some far distant time or after death but now.
Meditation takes the mind down to that level of consciousness which is Absolute Bliss (Heaven) and through constant contact with that state “the peace that surpasses all understanding” one gradually becomes established in that state even when one is not meditating. All this gives one actual experience of God not by detachment or renunciation when Jesus was fasting etc in the desert 40 days & nights he would have been doing some form of meditation not just sitting in the sand and praying although me it will be a true Christian which I try to be with all sincerity it does not prevent me from acknowledging Buddha Mohammed and all the great men of God. God bless you jai guru dev.
With love,
John Lennon
A few things strike me on reading this: a) how little MMY's message changed over the years. b) how cogently and enthusiastically John relates Maharishi's message, c) how wise John sounds.
We all know how John's interest in TM came to an abrupt halt amid unsubstantiated allegations and innuendos, subsequently denied by all of the surviving Beatles*. The surprising thing is how long his meditation practice lasted and how enthusiastically he embraced it for a year or so at the height of his powers. In the late 1960s, the Beatles were the most famous and feted people on earth and John was their leader, The Man.
TM was then in its first flourishing of popularity, following Schopenhauer's 'three stages of truth': first ridicule, then violent opposition, then acceptance. After first immersing himself in meditation, to the extent of going on an extended retreat with 8-hour daily sessions, John then boomeranged the other direction. He abandoned the overt spiritual path and within a year was back in the hurricane of the outside world, reportedly battling with heroin addiction.
This is the ebb and flow of life and purportedly it works the same way from lifetime to lifetime. In one incarnation we may be full of spiritual striving and the good karma we accrue propels us on the path of liberation in our next lifetime. But there are no guarantees: we can still stray and become in Paramahansa Yogananda's phrase a 'fallen yogi'.
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*"Maharishi only ever did good for us, and though I haven't been with him physically, I never left him". - George Harrison.
"[Maharishi] was a great man who worked tirelessly for the people of the world and the cause of unity". - Paul McCartney, 2008.
