Understanding Zarathustra with Jason Reza Jorjani

thinking aloud conversations on the leading edge of knowledge and discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove hello and welcome I'm Jeffrey Mishlove we'll be exploring the teachings of Zarathustra today with me is dr. Jason raisa george on'y who is on the faculty of philosophy at the New Jersey Institute of Technology he is also the author of Prometheus and Atlas welcome Jason's always a pleasure to be with you Jeffrey likewise many people today have heard the name Zarathustra it comes up in popular culture here and there but very few people I think in the Western world really know much in detail about who Zarathustra was what he taught and why is important today so perhaps we could begin our discussion of his teachings by grounding people a little bit and who this person was well Zarathustra is probably most famous on account of Nietzsche who had adopted him as his mouthpiece in his greatest work thus Spoke Zarathustra and Richard Strauss composed a great or gastral piece on the basis of Nietzsche's book and further popularized Arthas drove Voltaire considered him the religious prophet most suited to the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment of 18th century Europe yes of Martha Voltaire referred to him as Zoroaster which is the greek version of his name i I see so so some of the leading thinkers in Western culture admired 0 through Strauss oral Astor as perhaps for them the most important spiritual teacher in philosophical history yes and in the Magic Flute Mozart highlights that aspect of Zoroaster ours are astray that is associated with magic alchemy and the occult I see and of course in Christianity you have the three wise men or the Three Magi who seem to know in advance about the birth of Christ yeah the Magi are the Zoroastrian priests it comes from the word Mugen which became Nagas in migoi plural or Mago singular in Greek yes this is where we get the term magic from Zarathustra Zoroaster was known as the founder of the order of the Magi and also as I understand it in Christianity they're sometimes referred to as three kings you know this is a corruption I don't know how this evolved but it's very clear in the Greek original of the New Testament that Magli that there's Austrian or Mithraic priests who've come from the Persian Empire I see but I also know I'm making reference to Plato's ideal of the philosopher King seems to be echoed in that very interesting that is something that you know we should discuss in the context of these our Austrian political philosophy okay well let's cover some of the teachings and and I understand there are seven major principles - Zarathustra teachings they're often called the bounteous immortals but that word being translated as bounteous really means progressive spenta ameesha spent us and I think of these as the seven things that don't change in cosmic order which allow for all progressive evolution mm-hmm and when you say progressive I know that's a word widely used in contemporary American politics there's probably a similarity there actually in terms of looking toward the future well there was hardly any notion of progress in pre-modern societies and probably every trace of a notion of creative evolution that you can find goes back to Zarathustra more than Persians in some way Zarathustra is the first person to break out of the mold of a cyclical view of time in history where we're constantly declining from a golden age and past and golden age that will simply repeat itself after everything has declined and degraded you know when you say he's the first person I suppose it's useful to provide some sort of a date as to when he lived and taught there are some debates about this but Zarathustra is at least 1500 BC which puts him far before the rise of Greek philosophy before Gautama Buddha and long before Christ mm-hmm okay so another one of the prominent teachings is reverence for truth and wisdom yes well the first of these unchanging primordial principles is the very idea of the progressive mentality itself spenta mainyu is the primary quality of our Amma's de or the lord of wisdom and the idea is that through his mind he guides creative evolution in the cosmos it seems to be the first notion of intelligent design that we have in literature and so truth what's often translated as truth and what plays a central role in ancient Persian culture Asha actually means cosmic order so the idea is that implicit in the cosmos is a certain order that's been thought out by a rational mind and it's associated with fire with an undying fire we can align ourselves with this cosmic order through cultivating what's called the good mind bohu Menna and this word beau mana eventually evolves through the history of the indo-european languages into who mana and Humanitas in the Latinate branch a central ideal in greco-roman and renaissance culture the implication being that the properly human being is the one who's cultivated his mind there's an awful lot in there we could unpack a great deal in in what you just said I mean to understand the last two minutes it could take almost a lifetime I think so I have a few things I like to interject if I may one is the highest deity is Ahura Mazda that's right the Lord of wisdom and this word Ahura is a cognitive Ashura in Sanskrit and the Hindu religion the asuras are the Titans so what's taking place when Zarathustra turns Ashura Mazda or the Titan of wisdom into his chief God is an inversion of the indo-european pantheon because the Greeks said that the titans came before the gods and were overthrown by the gods of olympus well the Greeks and the Hindus both demonized the Titans who are in a battle against the gods whereas our thirst reflects this and says that the gods are promulgator 'he's of deceit intent on manipulatively oppressing humanity and tyrannize Innova us whereas the titans serve the cause of lord wisdom and let me just mention one other thing a parenthetical interest who are a must the name Mazda is also associated with a Japanese automobile and that's not an accident no the founder of the Mazda car company deliberately named his company after a zarathustra's god and in fact the logo of the Mazda car companies a more stylized form of this this is the FRA vaasi or foutre bahar the perfected form of the human soul what state of embodiment we are able to attain at the end of history on the other side of this creative or progressive evolution which is another important teaching that's right the idea that the soul is eternal is that right well the soul is eternal but evolving and so you know the idea that we learn in successive phases and that we need to continually cultivate our minds is at the core of Zarathustra is teaching and this idea of constant evolution is also related to the significance of fire as a central symbol that's right the undying fire is the symbol of cosmic order or truth asha and interestingly it was adopted by Heraclitus who is the first person in greek philosophy to forward this idea of cosmic order he was invited by King Darius to become the court philosopher of the Persian Empire and you can find many traces of Zoroastrian influence in the fragments of his writings that survived and I know in an earlier interview that we did a year ago we talked about how Greek philosophy basically was born because these philosophers such as Heraclitus and the other pre-socratic philosophers emerged from the portions of Greece that were ruled by the Persian Empire another huge sign of Persian influence on the Greek philosophers is the concept of philosopher kingship which was anathema to the political forms that the Greeks actually practiced whether that was democracy or oligarchy or hereditary aristocracy plato's concept of philosopher kingship was influenced both by Heraclitus and by pythagoras and we've talked about Heraclitus his relationship with iran briefly pythagoras spent a decade in the capital of the persian empire plato becomes a pythagorean and absorbs the idea of the guardianship of the wise or the leadership of a society by thinkers from pythagoras this brings us to another of the msys pentas the idea of desirable dominion or the right form of government shot Riveria or shot Evod and more contemporary persian this is the idea that an ignorant mob ought not to be making important decisions for the whole of society and at the same time the caste system which hinduism preserves and which was part of the primordial indo-european culture that's our oyster is emerging from out of the caste system ought to be rejected there's a profound message of social justice in the gothis or hymns of Zarathustra and the Zoroastrian religion that Zarathustra founded I don't know whether was intentional or not but became the dominant religion of several of the great Persian empires that's right so the Persian empires especially the first one embody this idea of shoddy valor or desirable Dominion the idea of wisdom and the pursuit of truth being the basis of proper governance you see in the ancient Persian inscriptions Darius say things like may Ahura Mazda protect this country from the enemy from droughts and from the lie he includes the promulgate errs of deceit as a Kalama as people who bring about calamities on a scale with famines and droughts and foreign invasions now we have in Christianity and I think to some extent in Judaism a notion of the struggle between good and evil and the figure of Satan is an evil figure who is somehow divine but not part of the Godhead essentially this sense of duality I think is more clearly expressed in Zoroastrianism yes the rival of spenta mainyu or the progressive mentality is something that our that does Zarathustra calls Angra Mainyu or the constricted constrained mentality that root there get us suggest being knotted up and it also in Angra you can hear the english word angry so this is a polar opposite to spend to menu and what it suggests is that Ahura Mazda is not omnipotent and so our free will is central to human cultural evolution so the notion which I think is sort of implicit in much of Western culture although most people don't realize it's a Zoroastrian notion essentially is that there's a cosmic battle going on between these forces of wisdom and these forces of darkness and the humans are part of the battlefield and we have free will we can choose yes al hora Mazda calls human beings into this world as champions of the truth there's an idea that we volunteered you know to be incarnated in this existence to fight this cosmic battle against the forces of darkness deceit and retrogression or constraint mm-hmm I think theologically speaking it's it's much clearer than in Judaism or Christianity where Satan is sort of the shadowy figure and we don't know why he's here how we got there that's right there's a tremendous emphasis on personal conscience in Zoroastrianism mm-hmm now one of the other great principles as I understand it is is the Annunciation of Ecology yes so one of the ways in which this battle against the forces of deceit and the enforcers of ignorance one of the ways that battle is prosecuted is through cultivating the earth the gothis the hymns of Zarathustra begin with the soul of Mother Earth crying out for some protector for someone to save her from the plunderers who are ravaging the earth and the mumbling priests who sanctify the rule of these warlords so you see a Zarathustra repeatedly emphasized that agriculture is one way of promoting righteousness and it's not accidental that this became the basis of the construction of what are called cannot soar tenets large underground channels that bring water from aquifers into very arid regions of the Persian Empire so that you could have gardens growing where you'd never imagined they'd be possible these gardens were referred to as paradise ax which is the source of our word paradise and the idea was that we can turn this earth into a paradise we can improve upon nature and perfect existence it's a utopian vision that's right it's a utopian vision and this brings us to two very closely connected msys pentas one is a MoDOT or Amira tot as our thirst Rah's dialect and this means it's often translated as immortality but it really means vitality and the furtherance of life and it's associated with the growth of vegetation the other one is hoard of a dot which means wholeness or health and it's associated in particular with water so the idea of health and vitality is bound up with cultivation of the earth and the promotion of a settled agricultural way of life as opposed to one based on plunder and conquest now earlier you referred to Mother Earth using the feminine and of course many ancient cultures worshiped female deities associated with the earth and with agriculture is that part of 0's turian teaching very much so and one of the meshes ventas spent to RMIT is specifically referred to as feminine of span Dartmouth and more contemporary Persian and this is devotion serenity or love the idea being that the more you align your thoughts your words and your deeds the more unity of purpose and focus you have on seeking truth the more you become inwardly settled the Morecambe settles over you and over adjust Li governed Society so this msys Penta has a feminine aspect it's also noteworthy that in ancient Persian society women had a far more significant role than probably in any other pre-modern society you had female naval commanders in the Persian Empire women who were the owners of large estates and the Greeks even made fun of the ancient Persians really for being under the thumb of their women mm-hmm then that would suggest something very almost contemporary with the emphasis on feminism the emphasis on ecology the emphasis on progress it's not what we normally associate with the ancient empires of this planet well the respect for women has to do with sorrow through stress emphasis on the individual mm-hm you in the Gotha Zarathustra referred to men or women or men and women repeatedly and in particular in the little vignette where he is officiating at his youngest daughter's wedding you see how he honors her choice of her own husband and refers to her addresses are very respectfully now you use the term gatha's it sounds like geeta is in bhagavad-gita yes it's a cognate zarathustra's language is almost identical to the oldest form of Sanskrit so Gotha means the same thing as Gita song or hymn so we're talking historically speaking about the very earliest indo-european culture indeed indeed it may even be the case that Zarathustra is revolutionary message which inverted the indo-european Pantheon was the cause of the breakup of the indo-european community into the Indians and the Europeans who migrated in different directions so that they could maintain their more pagan religion and their cyclical conception of history mm-hmm but there's this sense that he's a reformer that there's something in the existing religious culture that he finds deceitful that he feels people need to stand against that's right there are it's interesting because on the one hand Zarathustra on a number of occasions says that he is going to tell us something unheard of he's aware of the sense in which his message is unprecedented and something new which by itself is very peculiar in literature that's that archaic but on the other hand there are repeated references to him being a reformer of an existing tradition that has somehow been corrupted and how those who have perverted it are manipulating people and oppressing them mm-hmm there are other important principles though that we need to review no I think we really discuss all of these unchanging fundamental principles which govern all progressive evolution both in the cosmos and in the justly governed society and this religion was unique in the ancient world insofar as for example in abolish slavery well this goes back to the idea of alumina or humanism so you know people who are living under conditions of slavery are not in a position to cultivate their minds which means that they don't fulfill their human potential and affording people the opportunity to be humanized is that the core of Zarathustra teaching and was the basis of the administration of the Persian Empire when we think of the Persian Empire I'm going to throw you a curveball if I may I know that it's been conquered many times by other cultures there's a tragic history to it there have been many different Persian empires as I understand it and I think most people know about the great conflicts with Alexander the Great and the Greek traditions and yet each time the Empire seems to over time come back yeah it does and perhaps this means that spenta mainyu is winning in the battle against the forces of ignorance and deceit yeah split now spenta mainyu is progressive mental the progressive mentality it's associated with the deity ahora must it's the chief attribute of the deity Ahura Mazda ends now hora Mazda is the first of the msys pentose and these other unchanging principles are emanations or powers of Ahura Mazda and the opposite of spent tomato is uncreated that's right the constraining or constricted mentality promulgates deceit and is responsible for people being able to oppress others and manipulate it is also associated with a deity Ahriman well ari none the deity our Ramon is a traction and middle Persian of Angra Mainyu I see so I'm gonna man who is both a deity a deity of darkness and a principle yeah so I mean any deity who operates in a fashion consistent with the promulgation of deceit and concerned the constraint of evolution would be then an expression of Angra Mainyu mmm-hmm well let me ask you this we mentioned in the beginning that Voltaire one of the great European philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment felt that Zarathustra was a better instructor of enlightened thinking for Humanity better than Christ right why did he think that well because the message of the New Testament is rather schizophrenic on the one hand you have a gospel of love and compassion and on the other hand you have an affirmation of the Old Testament Jesus at one point says that not a dot of an eye or a cross fatigued from the Torah will pass out of existence or become irrelevant until the end of the world and if you look at you know Exodus or Leviticus there are some very harsh laws in there and in particular the conquest of Canaan was actually you know a genocide of the native population putative ly under the direct command of the Lord yes and in coordination with the army of the Lord through you know the use of magical devices like the Ark of the Covenant I think that if Zarathustra could see how Jehovah operated he would probably identify him as an expression of Angra Mainyu or re men mm-hmm which is interesting because cyrus the great the persian emperor who whose humanism and cosmopolitanism reflects our Austrian teachings winds up becoming identified as a savior of the Jews he liberate them from Babylon and commissions the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and I believe is referred to in the Bible itself as oshi accor savior he's the only historical figure referred to as Messiah mmm-hmm one can say then that in ancient times the Persian Empire which lasted for centuries an extensive discourse with the Jews with the early Christians with the Buddhists and Hindus and with the Greek philosophers as well so that much of our culture is derived from the teachings of Zarathustra though we may not recognize it today that's right and I think we can excavate various elements of zarathustra's worldview from out of all of these traditions that's something that's beginning to take place in Iran today mm-hmm well today Iran is referred to as the Islamic Republic Islam Mohammed specifically conquered Zoroastrian Empire that's right and the Parsees of India marzo Astron to convert to Islam and took refuge ultimately in Bombay so often people associate Zoroastrianism only with the Orthodox form that's been preserved by the parsees but in fact a great deal of Zoroastrianism was simply absorbed into what became Sufism and we can also extrapolate certain elements of Zarathustra teaching from some of what's now referred to as Islamic mysticism in a sense a more living and dynamically evolving variant of Zoroastrianism remained in Iran then the static form that wound up being fastidiously preserved by the parsy's and I suppose it's fair to say that Western humanism also has been influenced by the teachings of Zoroaster indeed because Mithra is the savior figure of Zoroastrianism one thing that we didn't touch on was this idea of a and progressive history also implicates the coming of a future savior toward the end of history and the Savior figure in particular is identified as Mithra who becomes Mithras and the cult of Mithras actually rises to dominance in the Roman Empire it's embraced by most of the Roman legionaries before Christianity has made the official religion of the Empire so through the vehicle of Mithras and Zoroastrian ideas deeply influenced Roman and subsequent medieval European culture and and I gather that the choice of the Emperor Constantine to convert his entire empire to Christianity was in part a desire not to have his army under the sway of a religion that came from his neighbouring competitive Empire that's right Rome and Iran were the two great rival superpowers of the time and had to have the Roman military convert to the religion of the Persians represented a grave national security threat mm-hmm well we're going to have more interviews in which we'll talk about this ancient history more and we'll talk about the influence of Zarathustra teachings in contemporary society the legacy of Zarathustra as well jason raize Oh George Ani thank you so much for being with me it's been a pleasure being with you again Jeffrey and thank you for being with us you

Channel: New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove

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Keywords: Jason Reza Jorjani, Jeffrey Mishlove, New Thinking Allowed, Zarathustra, philosophy, Zoroastrianism, Sufism

Id: RTZ0FGcKPuE

Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 03 2016

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