Zarathushtrian Religion: Philosophy and History

Hello, my name is Shah Rouzash and I am going to conduct an interview today with Professor K. Khosrow-Irani from City University, New York. He's a professor of ancient philosophy and it is a great pleasure and honor to have him here today and to be able to do an interview with We have individuals who have translated the Gathas but yet their profession is translation and they have lacked philosophical knowledge and understanding. It is like me translating an economic document but there are certain terms in their interest rates, supply and demand but yet I'm not an economist to understand it. So my job is to really translate it and then we send that translation to the economic department let's say of a university and they're the experts to comprehend it. So isn't the best source of understanding Zartushro's message for most part is to refer to philosophers who have studied it as opposed to translators. You're so right. There will be people who would resist your suggestion but undoubtedly it is a philosophic doctrine and it needs very subtle interpretation and some of the linguists are able to offer visions at least partly valuable but the general conception has to be reconstructed by appropriate philosophic analysis and if you would like me to do that I'll give you my reconstruction. I'm pleased to do so. Zartushro offers a view of the world in terms of certain abstract concepts which as was traditional in those days I mean throughout the world religious poetry personalized abstract concepts and he does that. The creation that thought of it was in his mind and he articulated it and made it an ideal creation not material but ideal. Now that is called literally that word means truth but the notion of truth here is a very special one. Truth really means the totality of the vision of ideal existence. It doesn't mean in our ordinary sense the truth or falsity of a statement. The truth that he is talking about is the relationship of all things in perfect harmony so that nothing occurs at the expense of something else. There is no friction in that existence. This ideal world of Zartushro Asha was then actualized in the material world. In his wisdom conceived of a perfect existence in purely ideal terms and this is what is called Asha the truth. The truth then means an ideal form of existence where nothing is in conflict or in abrasion with anything else. It is also the notion of social justice. No one prospers at the cost of somebody's injury. Now this ideal conception exists in an ideal world what we might call the mental world. The term is Mainyu which exactly the word comes the source of the word is the word which in English we have mind. Now this ideal conception Aura Mazda then created into a material world. This is called the Gaithya world and the ideal world was supposed to be materialized, actualized in matter. There would be of course material objects, physical objects, there'd be animal life, there'd be human life and so on and it was supposed to evolve according to Asha to a state of total perfection. However and here comes the essential dualist doctrine of Zartushro. Within this material world there is also the possibility that Asha may not be actualized. Indeed Zartushro says there are two forces. I use the term vectors but often the term spirit is used but we shouldn't transform these into personalities. There is the spirit which promotes Asha and there is the spirit which opposes, frustrates Asha and this is the dualism between good and evil. The universe is to be understood as a potentially ideal evolution which has been contaminated by internal opposition and frustration. The world is to be looked at as a moral reality in which there is the movement towards goodness but there is also the movement towards frustration. Now this vision is the central religious vision of Zartushro and if one doesn't accept that one cannot accept the faith of Zartushro. Now what is the individual to do? Here come the different abstractions of Zartushro. Each individual is gifted with the good mind. It's not just the mind which enables us to work out mathematical problems or something like that but the mind which is capable of grasping the moral nature of things. When you see something in occurring in your society you recognize that this much is fair and this is unfair. As one of the later priests said it is not conceivable that a human being can look at the face of injustice and not recognize it. So we recognize it. When we recognize it then we should articulate it and commit ourselves to improvement. We discuss it with people whose lives will be affected. We formulate a way of actualizing the good to whatever extent we can and then we do it. And this is repeated in a phrase which comes in prayers all over. It's called the practice of good thought, good word and good deed. See there is no such thing as a good deed without good thought because in the tradition of Zartushro there are no prescriptions. Do this, don't do that and so on. You are left to think through what should be done. The responsibility is yours. This acceptance of this responsibility becomes the way of life and you have the view of the world. The world is a moral reality, your way of life. Act with good thought, good words and good deeds and you have accepted the doctrine of Zartushro. Now the interesting thing here is contrary to the tribal notion this is a decision to accept this way of life, this vision and this way of life. It's a purely individual matter. In one of the verses of the Gathas Zartushro says, I talk to each of you. Listen with care and with careful thought and make a judgment each individual by individual, man and woman. Why does he say this? He distinguishes it from the tribal conception where each individual didn't think for himself or herself. The tribe made the decision. If you're a member of the tribe that's what you did. But here each one is asked to make the decision and each one is asked to bear the responsibility for that decision. You choose to live in this way or you don't. And thus what we have is a shift from the tribal to the individual which has sometimes been called the first enlightenment and recognition that you have to take the responsibility for what you do. And this is at the heart of it. It must have been a strikingly different teaching. To us it appears rationally clear but in a tribal society this appears strange. Before Zartushro humans had a deterministic view of the world and they thought that each person had their destiny preset and their future was predetermined and it seems after his arrival we started gathering the notion that we are in control of our future and that we are free and that we can shape the future according to our own will. In the Gathas there are two places where he talks about this making responsible decisions freely. In one case he says that Aura Mazda made us such that he gave us this privilege of thinking and deciding and being responsible for the decision. But the individual's existence was so caught up with the notion of tribal existence that there was really no individuality. Everything was done in the tribe. The tribe controlled the families. The families controlled the individuals and you see tribal life today in certain regions. We have the idea of Asha and its opposite which is Duruj and then we have the idea of free will so there's this right and wrong ideal situation and we freely choose one of these and then you have reward and punishment which is the consequence of the choice and based on the reward and punishment we judge that. We judge well I like this outcome not this so we're constantly judging our actions based on whether I desire the outcome or not and I guess that will ultimately lead into what people have become to understand as a final judgment. How did I conduct my life? Accumulating, adding all of these rights and wrongs and going to immortality. This is I guess how we get the idea or the notion of heaven and hell. What is this idea of the final judgment? Is this judgment something we render upon ourselves? Do we judge ourselves at the end or is there some deity that judges? We developed this notion right from the start. We human individuals look at various circumstances of our lives and make decisions. We see alternatives of action and we choose one. How this choice is made is an important thing. Is it made with the good mind, with good intentions, with good thought? Now what does this good thought mean? That you recognize a situation, you see that in some way it is flawed. You notice that it is flawed because it is in some way distinct from what it ideally should be which your good mind, Bahumāna, is capable of seeing. Then that should be the only reason, that is called righteousness, to do the right thing merely because it is right. And that's a very famous prayer which everyone recites that that will give me ultimately my satisfaction to do the right thing because it is right. What is evil? Evil is that intention which violates that, which gets you to do something for some reason other than that it is right. Some self-promotion or something else. One of the priests of the later Sasanian period said that all our thoughts, if they are kept pure, will tell us what the right thing is. Then why don't we do it? His son asked the high priest, why don't we do this? And the high priest says, because our mind is clouded. It is clouded mainly by two forces, greed and fear. When these move us, then we look for self-interest. We put that above the interest of the right and fail to act correctly. Well, in that case, we have failed in our responsibility. All these acts of doing the right thing for the right reason, doing the right thing out of some accidental judgment, doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason, or doing the wrong thing accidentally and so on, all this is, so to speak, collected in a book of accounts. And when the soul goes to the other side of the gates of death, and now we come to a kind of a dramatic vision, it comes to the bridge of the separator. And then on this bridge, its accounts, all the good is put on one side and all the evil and the opportunities for good that were lost are put on the other side. And if the good outweighs the evil, you cross the bridge into the state of best consciousness. If not, you fall off the bridge into the state of worse consciousness. These became heaven and hell later on. These are states of consciousness of our spirit. These are not halls where we live in comfort and so on. That's a highly materialist conception of heaven and hell. But the conception that there are two different ends for differently valued souls is part of the doctrine. And this, you don't appeal for mercy, you don't plead for this or that. It is the consequence of your life. The moral consequence of your life appears in the state that you go into after you die. Going back to this heaven and hell, the idea of heaven and hell, we, later on, we developed the idea of Satan or the devil character, so to say. And in Zoroastrianism, as you mentioned, we have this serpentamenu and the angramenu to the evil spirit and the holy spirit or evil mentality or good mentality. Is the Satan a personification then of this angramenu? Exactly. Or the unholy spirit? Yes. You see what happens in every religion, in every teaching of the initial prophet, there is a spiritual message. Gradually, this spiritual message is promulgated to the people by the priesthood. And the priesthood requires the people to do this and that and so on. Rituals of various kinds. And the message is mythologically degraded into standard stories of divine forces which look human. We already had standard Greek mythology, standard Babylonian mythology, standard Egyptian mythology. But with these reflective religions, like Zoroastrianism, the teaching of Zarathustra, or the Upanishadic religion, which come at the end of the Vedas, or the certain prophetic prescriptions in the Old Testament, the book of Isaiah, for example, where you have abstract commitments which are demanded of the religious person. But the priesthood gradually humanizes them. And now you do this, you pray to so-and-so, you do this and that. And there's a ritual, and as Bound Slug once said, the priests have to construct rituals because they are by profession technologists. There's a technique of communicating with the divinity. And one day I was in a discussion, someone asked me, what do you need this technique for? And I said, this is a technique for getting into the good graces of the divinity, asking for this and that. So the priest asked me, tell me precisely what this technique does. And I said, well, actually, I can't do that because this is a kind of the technology of beggary. We ask to do, give me this, give me better health, save my son, and so on. But that's popular. Max Weber in his Sociology of Religion says that with most prophets, the religious vision is given and offered by a charismatic character. Who makes this believable? And then gradually, this person disappears. And the priesthood then, and I'm now using the word of Max Weber, the priesthood develops the ritualization of charisma. And the chapter ends with this phrase. It may well be that in the end, the priest becomes the enemy of the prophet. Now, that's not always the case, but often. But the priest transforms the religious vision into techniques and practices and mythology. Satan is the mythologization of that force in opposition to Usher. And then he became a person, and then there were all sorts of stories about him, and so on. Now, I want to switch the subject to Greek philosophy. And as to Herodotus, the Greek historian, for example, writes and states that the Zoroastrians taught their children three things. One is horse riding, the use of bow and arrow, and speaking the truth. Did this culture of truth come down from the Zoroastrian days? Oh, yes, without any doubt. But the notion becomes degraded because one often thinks of speaking the truth as merely not telling lies. But that is not the essence of the faith. The deeper, ideal reality, that's what understanding or grasping the truth is. For example, if you ask me, how many cups of coffee did you drink this morning? And I say one, when in fact I had two. I'm telling you a falsehood. But that's not the kind of lie that Zarathustra is talking about. He's talking about the sort of thing in which I see that so-and-so has been treated unjustly. And someone says, what do you think of this treatment? And I would say something like, well, this is usually the way it is done. I've lived long in the academic life, and I know that's the usual way administrators put it. Well, that's how it's always done. And I once told the president in a situation which I think somebody was very unfairly terminated. And I said, here is a competent person, person wishes to teach here. He has done nothing wrong. What has happened is that he is in a kind of a program that we don't want to promote. And I said, he's prepared to teach in an analogous one. And the president, this is how it's usually done. And I said, but the president just recognized what is happening to this person. He is not being treated justly. And he said, well, you know, administration implies certain rules and regulations. I said, if the rules and regulations are such that they lead to injustice, something should be done. He looked at me and laughed. He said, well, what sort of a fellow are you to talk in this way? But the amazing thing was about a week or 10, about 10 or 12 days later, he told me, you know, I've been thinking about what you said. Maybe we'll put him in this other department, talk to him and so on. Here was a president in whom the spirit of righteousness resonated. And we could talk this way. This is the notion of truth. Philosophy originated about 4,000 years ago with the Indo-Iranians. And this is according to Oxford University's chronology of philosophers. Also, many Greek philosophers used to live in the Zoroastrian territory and obtain their education in the Zoroastrian territory of ancient times. Are the Iranians and the Indo-Iranians the predecessors to the Greek philosophy? And when they came into contact with each other, how did they influence the Greek thought and thinking? Oh, yes. Well, the earliest visions we have in the Iliad and the Odyssey and so on is a tribal religion, as all the Indo-European religions were. They were tribal gods. And you have to placate the tribal gods to manage to lead a successful life. The gods were so utterly human that they were not above trickery among themselves. And so you had to know that and play along. But that view was transformed and certainly transformed by Socrates, who said that there was such a thing as right and wrong. And how do you get that? By thought, human thought. And how do tribal societies flourish? They flourish by tradition. This is our tradition. Why are you doing this? Well, that has been the tradition. Our ancestors did it. Our parents did it. We do it. That notion, that tradition was unacceptable to Socrates. In the dialogue, Euthyphro. Euthyphro, it's an ironic dialogue. This is the last year of the life of Socrates. And Euthyphro is a 25-year-old fellow who has received instructions in the temple. And he says, oh, I've learned all about piety. I know whatever there is to know about it. Socrates says, let's examine that. What is piety? And he says, piety is doing what not doing what the gods don't wish. And Socrates says, is this an adequate definition? And Euthyphro says, yes, of course it is. That's what's taught. And Socrates says, yes, that may well be. But shouldn't we examine it? That's the matter, that the human being takes upon himself or herself the authority to examine what is given by tradition. And the traditionalists are horrified at that idea. Who are you to examine something which has come to us from immemorial tradition? I've been told that by some of the Zoroastrians who don't like my views, who are traditionalists. And I say, I have nothing against tradition. But I think we should examine it, they say. Who are we to examine it? We are rational human beings. We need no additional authority. And so they say, well, you know, the church at one time, the Catholic church at one time considered this attitude to be an act of pride, a major sin. Gradually, that has been restrained. Well, but you see, this is what we face. And as you point out, that notion of free will is not just a separate notion, determinism, free will. The moment you introduce the notion of free will, you introduce the right to examine. I was reading a book by Ruhi Afnan called Zoroaster's Influence on Anaxagoras, the Greek Tragedians and Socrates. And he, on page 33, he emphasizes that Anaxagoras, being, I guess, a teacher of the Greek Tragedians and Socrates, emphasized to be skeptic and to freely think. That's right. And that's the culture. Exactly. To have the absolute freedom to inquire and question. Yes, yes. This is the Enlightenment. That's the concept of the Enlightenment. In the 18th century, this was raised by the French philosophers, by the English social writers, and by Immanuel Kant in Germany, where he wrote an essay in German, What is the Enlightenment? And he says the Enlightenment is the view where you accept, and he has a Latin phrase, sapere aude, sapere meaning thought, aude, same word as audacity. It means have the courage to think. Have the courage to think on your own. And having done that, you recognize that you have the right to think. But that's not the only part, because then it follows that you also have the responsibility to judge carefully. I see. This is the Zoroastrian position was the first one. The same emerged in the Socratic Enlightenment of the Greeks. And in the Platonic doctrine, this is a very major element. The dictionaries of philosophy claim that Plato's Middle Platonic, which is part of his work, was influenced by Zoroastrianism. In what context, or can you shed some light how Zoroastrianism influenced Middle Platonic work? And there was great works and pieces in there, such as The Republic. Can you tell us a little bit about this, please? One idea, which is characteristic of the thinking of Zarathustra, is this existence in two realms, the existence, which is a mental existence, the manual existence, as it is called in the Gothic, and the material or the tangible existence called the Gaetia. And this distinction, that we as human beings, possessing a mind, can grasp mental existences independently of perceiving their actualizations in this world, and also perceiving objects in the material world. This separation of two realms, which we find in Zarathustra, we find in Plato. Plato called this grasping of the essences which were in the ideal world, the world of ideas, that capacity is called nous, and that grasping is the act of nouisses. And this is certainly, it appears nowhere. It appears in Zarathustra, and it appears in Plato. Then it appears later on in European thinking, and that's always called Platonic thinking. But this is so characteristic, a theme, that many people think that Plato was informed of it in some form or other by the Greeks who lived in Asia Minor, which was a province of the Persian Empire, and where there were fire temples and major teachers of the faith. I don't know if, to what extent Plato was influenced by it, but I think he must have heard of it. And then he was inspired by it, and produced his own conception, which is a very interesting one. You don't get the idea of justice by looking at just acts and unjust acts. You make the distinction between justice and injustice by grasping the idea of justice, and seeing to what extent it's actualized. Zarathustra's view of the world, materialistic, or did he believe in this duality of material and the non-material, similar to what you just explained about Plato? Whether it's the soul or the mind that would tend to separate that. He had these two realms. He definitely had these two realms, the Mania world and the Gaetia world. But he didn't have the notion of a different kind of reality implanted in matter. I think we do have souls, and the soul then is judged by its moral worth, Daina. And the soul is, after death, is known as the Uruwan. And that is clearly the soul. He has a notion of existence, of material existence, and a non-material existence. And is this the duality later on that Descartes tries to further articulate, but in terms of mind? Yes, it's that same theme that has dominated philosophy. As Xenophon states, Cyrus the Great, the ancient Zoroastrian king, was a Mazda worshipper, which means a wisdom worshipper. Who was responsible for the education of the Zoroastrian kings in the field of wisdom? Oh yes, what happened was that the Medes and the Persians got together, two separate tribes of the whole set of Iranian tribes, and they got together with the father or the father-in-law of Cyrus, who was a Mede. And Cyrus married his daughter. Cyrus was a Persian. They got together, and then a church was established, which was the Church of the Achaemenian Empire. And the Medes were the organizers, the administrative priests, and the ritual priests. And the Ayatollahs were the teachers, and they were usually Persian, and they taught the Gothic message. To the emperors and the kings at that time? Yes, and also, I suppose, to the more literate public, but also to the general public. It was a very enlightened population in those days. And the fact that they absorbed this message, we can see in their inscriptions and in their practices. Many scholars claim Cyrus was one of Zartusha's disciples. And also in the Bible, we see the name of Cyrus as the anointed one, and a savior. In what context is he known to be the savior in the Bible? Can you articulate and elaborate this notion for us, please? This is what happened. Cyrus viewed himself as a world ruler to establish the kshatra, that means the authority, the dominion, which would organize the world according to Asha. And so he just walked into other states and incorporated them into what he called the good state. He did not impose any of his laws on him. Of course, these people had to pay tax, naturally, to support the authority, and they had to live by the national laws. But the particular private laws were left to each group, each state. The family laws were the laws of the people as they had them, and he permitted them to have their own religious temples, religious practices, and so on. When he conquered Babylon, Babylon was under a tyranny, and many Babylonians themselves were agreeable to having him enter Babylon. He entered with a minimal of military friction, and one of the first things he did was the Jews were in Babylonian captivity. You know, they had been conquered by the grandfather of the king and brought to Babylon, the elite, and they went to Cyrus and said, we are prisoners here, etc., and Cyrus freed them, and they said, we have to go back and we have to build, our temple was destroyed, and so Cyrus helped them to build the temple, and their temple vessels had been confiscated by the Babylonians. He restored those. So the Jews said, here is someone who is helping us, our tribe, and therefore he is sent by Jehovah to be our helper, and they considered him as the anointed of the Lord. Professor Richard Fry from Harvard University argues that Cyrus was the first person who demonstrated the concept of separation of church and state. He also claims Cyrus established a secular society where each person could freely practice their own individual belief. Cyrus is also known for writing the first declaration of human rights. There's a cylinder in the British Museum called the Cyrus Cylinder. Is this because Cyrus believed that basic human rights such as freedom, equality, and justice are universal and therefore the moral absolute? I think so. He didn't put it that way. We haven't a record of this kind of thing, but he certainly saw that, as Zarathustra said, each individual must make an informed and intelligent choice. Now, in order to do that, you must be left free. There is also the notion of asha, which is justice, and so he established the national courts, what we might call the federal courts, where any dispute of this kind would be treated fairly. In order to have a standard way of life, he established the rules of the marketplace, so that was governed throughout the empire. But in each individual state, they could have their own laws about property transfer, inheritance, and so on. That was for the local people to decide on their own. In this book, Philosophy of History, by George Hegel, he claims the Persian Empire is an empire in the modern sense, for we find it consisting of a number of states which are indeed dependent, but which have retained their own individuality, their manners and laws. The general enactments binding upon all did not infringe upon their political and social idiosyncrasies, but even protected and maintained them, so that each of the nations that constitute the whole had its own form of constitution. Can you tell us a little bit about the formation of the government that Cyrus the Great had established that represents what Hegel is stating for us, please? This is the idea that each culture had its own vision of life, and that that was part of their heritage. It was not the function of the emperor to trespass upon it. The emperor merely established a universal society which harmoniously practiced trade and organized in such a way that there is the least amount of friction. This is a very interesting idea. Social friction is viewed as a very damaging thing, because what has happened with our contemporary society is that we have viewed our welfare so very much in terms of economic advantage, and many people are not satisfied with being just economically adequate. There's this constant need to have more, because who knows in the future you may need the money and so on and so forth. This kind of uncertainty and the anxiety has produced a culture which is, I suppose there may have been that sort of thing even in the old days. But today this is a very big problem, and the tribalism is being replaced by the conflict between classes, which was of course magnified by the communist vision. It seems that part of it is because man feels insecure, and certain philosophers that life is nothing but a struggle to survive, and since we equate survival to economics, it seems if we gave everyone a blanket security of some form, perhaps it might hopefully reduce some of that. I hope so. At least that was the view of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But they are now trying to turn that back. Some of that social legislation. It seems we need a balance. Exactly. That's the thing. In these matters, there are always issues where somebody's interest is being imposed upon, and one must get the best possible balance. That is what democracy was supposed to be. Instead it has become battlefield. But what's the use of complaining about these things? But there must be a vision somewhere that can solve it. Zarathustra's vision is that there is a solution. There is the ideal asa. You need to have the intelligence and the insight to get to it by restraining your personal self-interest or your fears. It seems this notion of heaven that man has is the supreme idea, because we see this world to be imperfect. So it's the perfect state of mind or idea that comes to the mind, except we lack the wisdom to create that. And in order for someone to do the right thing and progress to that ultimate state, it seems Zarathustra reduces finally everything to wisdom. Yes. It's ultimately we lack the wisdom, and he puts so much emphasis on this which becomes his god and deity. That is the final frontier. There are two aspects of it. One is grasping the ideal state of the social order where most of the friction lies. And even in the natural order, because there is friction between us and the natural order too, diseases for example, and so on and so forth. So the curing of diseases becomes a morally worthy act, produces good. One of the reasons why there are so many doctors among the Zoroastrians. This is an idea of some high degree of optimism. We'll be able to grasp this truth, and we will know what to do. You must get to know what the truth is. You must be able to formulate the proper way to achieve it, and you must have the will and the courage to put it into practice. This is the wisdom. Can anyone choose this religion and philosophy freely for themselves? Zarathustra declares this to be a vision to be chosen by each individual by himself or herself. Doesn't say individuals of this kind or that kind belonging to this group or that group. This is an individual faith, and therefore it is absolutely inconceivable that he would have thought that this applies only to this group or that group. His whole approach was to move from tribalism to individuality.