Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor’s Desk" Quest 108:4, pg 2

From the Editor’s Desk

Many people claim to have spiritual teachers whom they barely knew and who barely knew them. The teacher might have thousands, even tens of thousands of disciples, so it has always been hard to understand how any one of them (outside the innermost circle) can claim that individual as any kind of preceptor.

It’s not my business to say who is whose teacher, or under what circumstances that name applies. But I would find it difficult to go to a weekend workshop—even, say, a Tibetan Buddhist empowerment—and claim the instructor was my teacher afterward. Even if one has attended many such workshops by the same person.

This observation forms the core of this issue. Three articles—by Lucy Oliver, Joscelyn Godwin, and the Members’ Forum by Ed Abdill—show another aspect of the spiritual teacher in our time: an individual, who may or may not be in any known lineage, who attracts a few dozen students with whom he or she works on a long-term basis. To me, this setup has far more potential for promoting long-term development than practically any other in this age.

The teachers in question were not gurus as such: they did not demand devotion and, in the case of Lucy Oliver’s Glyn, whom I knew myself, actively repudiated it. (For my portrait of Glyn, see “From the Editor's Desk Spring 2015,” Quest, spring 2015.) Nevertheless, they conveyed a certain knowledge and power that enabled their students to advance in a way that very few spiritual programs have.

In a Theosophical context, as Ed Abdill points out, Dora Kunz, the late president of the TSA, fulfilled this role for many, and her pupils that I know seem to think that no one since has managed to replace her.

We are talking about living human teachers here, and there may be many other kinds. Certain people say that they have had instructions from masters on the inner planes. This certainly seems possible, even likely, to me, but it is very difficult to claim any kind of authority on that basis. If you have any such experiences, I would imagine that the most prudent approach would simply be to keep your mouth shut about them. Nothing is easier than to sound crazy by prattling on about your contacts on the inner planes.

True masters, in my experience, make no such claims, even about themselves. I have been told, and I believe, one thing about masterhood, adeptship, and so on: if you claim to be it, you’re not it. Running around talking about yourself as a Master (with a capital M, of course) is itself a disqualification.

Hence genuine teachers are extremely evasive, not only about claiming such titles, but even allowing them to be applied. Even the Dalai Lama has said more than once that he is just “a simple monk.”

This presents a dilemma for the would-be student. How do you know who is genuine and who isn’t? Many of the highest teachers make themselves difficult to recognize, even affecting gruff or slovenly behavior in order to put off those who can’t see past appearances.

But then that is the first initiation. You have to have enough discernment to see past appearances—of any sort. On the flip side, demonstrating what used to be disingenuously called “crazy wisdom,” is hardly a reliable sign either.

A peculiar verse in the Gospels reads, “And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). There is an obvious meaning here: the difference between genuine spiritual authority, as shown by Christ, and the mere chapter-and-verse knowledge of the scribes.

But there is another, more oblique lesson to be learned from this verse. The people had to have something in themselves that could distinguish genuine authority from pettifogging.

Unfortunately, there is no ultimately reliable touchstone. Even a sincere, ethical individual may really have nothing more inside than platitudes. Consequently, you have no guarantee that you will not be fooled. I would go further and say, if you can be fooled, you will be.

These are the risks we all run. You can never really tell the depth of another’s integrity. You can only maintain your own.

This puts me in mind of a peculiar theory of mine, which I cannot claim to be anything more than speculation. After their downfall at the hands of church and king, the medieval Knights Templar were accused of secretly worshipping a god called Baphomet. Historians have not known what to make of this claim. The Templars, the guardians of Christendom, worshipping some grotesque unknown god? Was it just slander cooked up by the priests?

Here is my suggestion. The Templars did have a god called Baphomet, which they used in their initiations. It was a ridiculous joke god invented for the purpose of the ritual. At one point the candidate was given the ultimate test: he was told that the secret of the Templars was they worshipped Baphomet. To become fully initiated into the order, the candidate was given the choice: he had to renounce Christ and worship Baphomet. But this was merely a test. If the candidate yielded and bowed down before Baphomet, he failed. If he refused to reject Christ, even on the threat of death, he passed.

You never know in advance what form the test is going to take.

Richard Smoley

           

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Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Macrae, Janet, "Angel of the Pines" Quest 108:4, pg 34-37

By Janet Macrae

It was three o’clock in the afternoon on February 17, 2012.  I was inside the barn with my two horses: Baton Rouge, a dark brown Australian Thoroughbred with no white markings, and Poco, a chestnut American quarter horse with a white blaze on his face.

We were waiting for the saddle fitter. He was very late, and I was starting to get irritated. Should I just cancel the appointment and go home? I picked up the cell phone, but then thought twice and put it down. No, I would have to wait. The saddles were due to be repadded, and I did not want the horses’ backs to grow sore. To pass the time, I decided to take them out to the back field to graze. I put the halter on Poco, the younger horse, and led him from the stall into the hallway.

In view of the circumstances, and my frame of mind, what happened next was quite extraordinary:

The walls and ceiling of the barn somehow faded from my sight. Up in the sky, above the fields, I saw a slender, golden energy form radiating thin strands of white and golden light. It seemed to have a face (although I could not discern any features), above which was a rounded golden arch resembling a halo. I’m not sure to what extent I was using my physical eyes. It resembled, or felt, like a dream image. But I was in my waking state, and this being seemed very much in the real world.

Almost immediately, a feeling of recognition came over me. I knew what this was! It was a great Angel of the Pine Trees. I had seen an illustration in an old book that looked exactly like this . . . no, not exactly . . . I tried to focus more clearly . . . This angel had an indentation in the middle, like a waist, while the angel in the book did not.

 I stood motionless, staring, for perhaps ten seconds. The angel did not move, and there was no message or other communication of which I was aware. Then it was gone. The walls and ceiling of the barn came back into view, and I felt my hand on Poco, who was waiting patiently.

Why had this occurred? I could think of nothing that might have brought this about. There was little time to ponder, however, because the saddle fitter finally arrived. When he finished, it was still daylight, so I took the horses out to the back field, as I had planned. This was a large, unenclosed area where the grass was relatively undisturbed and, even in February, fairly lush. Coming out here was one of the high points of the horses’ day. I held Poco on the lead rope, but this past year I had been letting Baton Rouge, the older one, wander freely. He never strayed far. The three of us were like a small herd, enjoying each other’s company and the peacefulness of the landscape.

I usually tried to make this back field time a meditative experience. On that particular afternoon, however, my mind was not at all quiet: it was filled with thoughts of angels. I was trying to remember some of the things that Dora Kunz, the codeveloper of the Therapeutic Touch healing method, had taught about them. She had been able to see them since her childhood, and sometimes (not too often) she would give some descriptions to those of us who studied with her.

Dora emphasized that angels, or “intelligences,” as she referred to them, do not have physical bodies: they comprise a separate evolutionary line inhabiting the higher dimensions of this earth. There are many different types, she told us, but they are all aspects of the universal order; they help to balance the forces of nature. Some types are involved with humanity, but generally in an impersonal way. Indeed, this was one of the big differences Dora found between humans and angels. As humans, we tend to take things personally; angels do not. There are angels who preside over cities and towns, helping to balance positive and negative energies. Others are associated with hospitals, sending supportive energy to the ill and to those who care for them. Dora said that if we try to quiet our minds and attune to them, we can receive some help.

Working under the supervision of the angels are many varieties of nature spirits. These are smaller, less intelligent entities whose energies are of a denser quality, closer to that of the physical earth. Because of this relative density, they are more often seen by human beings: they are the fairies, gnomes, sea sprites, and elves that appear in the world’s folklore. I wondered why I had suddenly seen an angel and not one of these entities that appear to be more accessible.

I stood there in the grass, remembering Dora’s voice, until a chilly wind suddenly arose that penetrated my jacket. “Come on, boys, we’re going in.” I led Poco toward the barn, and Baton followed us closely. He did not see well out of one eye and would get a little fearful at dusk. Inside the barn, the staff was distributing hay and preparing the evening meal. The horses were content, and I was free to go home.

It was a short beautiful drive from western New Jersey across the Delaware River to eastern Pennsylvania. I entered the house and immediately took out a book that I had bought almost forty years ago: The Kingdom of the Gods by Geoffrey Hodson, a gifted clairvoyant from New Zealand. He had made extensive observations of many types of angels during the 1920s and had engaged an artist to paint some of them following his descriptions. I found these illustrations to be so beautiful and interesting that I returned to them many times over the years, and even showed the pictures of the healing angels in some of my nursing classes.

	The Angel of the Pines, from Geoffrey Hodson’s Kingdom of the Gods.

I first opened to plate 6: “A Lord of the Pines.” This was definitely the type of angel that I had seen. But Hodson’s lens was much more focused than mine, because he showed, in greater detail, the specific lines of energy radiating from the angel’s denser form. Indeed, these lines actually resembled the foliage of pine trees. Hodson explained that angels take on, to some degree, the characteristics of their physical region. In the illustrations, the Pine Angel is slender and graceful, like many pine trees; the Mountain Angels are broad and massive; the Angel of the Sea is curved and wavelike. It is easy to understand why they have been depicted in paintings and other art forms as beautiful people with wings. The denser core of these beings does have a humanlike appearance: the radiating bands of energy give the impression of wings, and the fact that they live in the higher dimensions reinforces the idea of flight.

I spent the evening looking over sections of the book, and the next day I described what I had seen to a few people at the farm. They listened with interest and asked to see the book. Word spread, and soon everybody knew about it. And then, happily for me, some corroboration came within a few weeks.

David, the owner of the farm, is a surgeon who likes to relax by taking long walks in the woods. He told me that he saw “a Great Being in the sky over the fields. It was like a Christmas tree. All lit up!”

We were sure that we had seen the same Great Being. David’s beloved dog had recently died, and I wondered if the Angel had reached out to him because of that. Both Dora Kunz and Geoffrey Hodson say that major transitions such as birth and death are attended by angelic forces. But why did the Pine Angel reach out to me? Although I did not realize it at the time, and might not have been willing to accept it, the consciousness of the angel was embracing my horse Baton Rouge.

Baton had been abused by a former owner but had made great progress in healing with the help of therapists using several modalities over the years: chiropractic, massage therapy, acupressure, and Therapeutic Touch. He showed great interest in the healing methods, giving his full attention during each session. “He’s exceptional,” said the chiropractor. “He tries to figure out what I’m doing and work along with me.” I always felt that Baton was more than a horse. Someone once remarked that he seemed to be a human being in a horse’s body.

Baton was twenty-eight years old, and he finally seemed at peace with his life. The status of his physical health, however, was worrisome to me. He suffered from arthritis, allergies, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. On the afternoon of June 5, almost four months after the sighting of the angel, he had a severe respiratory attack. Our vet came and gave him some potent intravenous medications. “This should take care of it,” he said. “Baton should be better in the morning.” As he was leaving, he gave me an oral bronchodilator to use when necessary. I watched Baton carefully, and he continued to improve as the hours passed. Sheila, David’s wife, who is a physician, told me she would keep an eye on him, so I returned home in the early evening.

I ate a quick dinner and then sat at my desk thinking over the events of the day. Baton had had many episodes of respiratory difficulty before, but this attack was much more severe, and it frightened me. I was also worried about the coming summer heat, which takes a toll on all the animals, particularly the older ones. At some point, a thought of the angel crossed my mind. Should I ask him to help Baton? Geoffrey Hodson’s book contains illustrations of beautiful healing angels that preside over hospitals, sending supportive energy to the ill. This angel was not of that type, but he might be able to help in some way.

Dora Kunz, using her clairvoyant ability, observed that angels are attracted to altruistic feelings. She used to suggest that nurses and other caregivers try to attune to them in their work. But she had an admonition: angels, by their very nature, are not able to grant personal favors. The universe is orderly, she would remind us, and angels work as agents of the laws of nature. They exist in the higher realms, where the experience of time is more expansive. Thus they can see into the future and get a sense of the destiny of the living beings around them. Angels can and will help, but they cannot work against destiny.

With this in mind, my inner sense told me to proceed: make a request, but be nonattached to the outcome and accept whatever happens. So I visualized the angel and made the intent to connect. Then I pictured Baton and asked the angel to help him in any way that would be appropriate. I did not expect a direct response, but hoped there would be an improvement in Baton’s condition. What happened next was a complete surprise and one of the most profound gifts I have ever received.

In just a few seconds, I felt a generalized sense of pressure, as though some type of energy were gently impinging on my subtle field. Then it felt as though part of my subtle energy field on the right side became synchronized with the new frequency, and it was this synchronization, or partial synchronization, that allowed me to experience the angel’s presence. I am not sure that any amount of spiritual reading or meditation could have prepared me for this. I had never felt such a majestic presence, so completely above our human personality dynamics, and yet so profoundly courteous to me at this level.

“I acknowledge your request.” This was not so much an audible voice in my inner ear as an idea impressed from without on my mind. I sat with my eyes closed, barely breathing. Across my inner visual field came a sequence of moving images: I saw Baton surrounded by little earth-tone figures. They stood about as high as his knees. Were they plants? No, they looked like plants, but they were moving around. Then I saw that they had stubby legs and odd-looking faces. They were nature spirits! I watched them perform some kind of dance around Baton. An inner circle suddenly formed, so now Baton had two circles of nature spirits dancing around him. At one point they seemed to be covering his body with leaves. Baton seemed to be completely comfortable with these little beings and what they were doing.

The vision faded, and I sat at my desk for a long time. At first I was too stunned to move or even to think. Then I felt compelled to write down what had happened. This was a glimpse into another dimension and, like dreams that are not recorded, it could slip back into the depths of my unconscious. And so I wrote, hoping the words would anchor this experience in my waking mind. I wondered if the great angel sent some energy or life force through the nature spirits, directing them to perform a healing ritual dance. It was my hope that the angel’s energy would help Baton regain his strength. Many horses are now living well into their thirties, I reasoned, and with all the supportive therapies available, Baton could be among them. But at that moment, the angel could see what I, in my physical consciousness, could not: that my hope, my personal wish, was not his destiny.

 And so it happened, very quickly. On the morning of August 13, two months after the dance of the nature spirits, I was preparing a late breakfast when the phone rang. It was Sheila. “Baton doesn’t look good at all,” she said. “I think he’s critical.”  Our vet was away, so I immediately called the nearby equine clinic. Then I ran out the door. It was brutally hot, as it had been all week, and now Baton was in respiratory distress.

Gemma, a young vet, quickly arrived. She medicated Baton, and he soon started to breathe more easily. However, Sheila detected an irregular pulse and asked Gemma to do a scan of his chest. She agreed, and we were all shocked as the picture emerged: his heart was so enlarged that it was impinging on his lung.

“This doesn’t look good,” said Gemma. “You can bring him into the clinic for a cardiology workup, but I doubt, in this condition, that we could give him any more than a week.”

I stood there trying to think clearly. The clinic is excellent, but I felt Baton would not want this option. If he stayed here, however, how much discomfort might he endure? Even if he managed to survive more than a week, he still faced the rest of the summer heat and the early fall allergens. Hard as this was, I knew I had to let him go. Gemma accepted my decision and said she would make the call for his body to be picked up for cremation. She then went to her truck to prepare the injections, and we led Baton out to the back field.

There was an unusual, profound stillness in the air. Everything seemed to have stopped. Most of the horses had been brought inside because of the heat. The instructors were on vacation, so there were no lessons, and the custodian had the day off, so all the machinery was quiet. In the distance I saw a woman leading her horse out to graze in the front yard. In the back field there were four of us with Baton: Gemma and her assistant, me, and Sheila, who had stayed with us all morning. Soon, when it was all over, there was only me, kneeling there on the grass beside him.

I covered Baton’s body with a sheet and waited there in the stillness and the heat, periodically taking refuge in the shade of the barn. I felt for Poco and tried to comfort him. After a while, maybe an hour, I heard the sound of a motor and saw an unfamiliar square truck making its way up the driveway. A sympathetic man got out of the truck and asked me to sign something. He also suggested that I leave. “You don’t want to see him hoisted onto the truck,” he said. So I went back into the barn and waited with Poco until the sound of the truck faded away.

Then Carolyn appeared, the woman who had been grazing her horse in the front yard. I did not know her well, because she had only recently started boarding her show horse here. Someone told me that she lived on her own farm nearby.

“I’m really sorry about this,” she said. And then, after a moment, she added: “Did you see all the eagles?”

 “No.”

“About ten or twelve of them came when your horse died. They flew over him in a big circle and then flew away. I’ve never seen so many—maybe a pair or two—but nothing like this.”

I wished that I had seen the eagles, but I was not looking up at the sky. I was looking down at my loss. Even in my shocked state, however, I felt a sense of mystery and gratitude. How fortunate that she had been there, at that moment, able to see what I had not. A circle of eagles. I thought about the circle of the nature spirits, and I wondered if the eagles also had been sent by the Angel of the Pines.

It was only later that my friend Geri, who lives with her family on a nearby farm, told me that she too had seen the eagles. Around noon on that hot August day, she was standing in one of her fields with a friend.

“There were several of them in a circle,” she said. “They were flying so low that I could see some individual feathers. And they were flying in your direction, towards you and Baton. I had never seen anything like that, and I remember I said to Maryanne, ‘Oh my God, what kind of a sign is this!’”

It was a sign, to me, of successful completion. Birds symbolize the human spirit and its flight to a higher dimension. Eagles, in particular, indicate strength, victory, and the release from bondage. And the circle, in all cultures, means wholeness, fulfillment, and the completion of a cycle. The circle of eagles told me, therefore, that Baton had accomplished his life’s purpose. He had been hurt and, with Poco and me at his side, had walked a long path of healing. His earthly life was fulfilled, and he was open to a higher level of existence.

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Sources

Hodson, Geoffrey. The Kingdom of the Gods. Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1952.

Kunz, Dora, and Dolores Krieger. The Spiritual Dimension of Therapeutic Touch. Rochester, Vt.: Bear and Co., 2004.

Kunz, Dora van Gelder. The Real World of Fairies. Wheaton: Quest Books, 1977.

———. “Devic Consciousness,” Quest 97 (fall 2009), 152–53.

Van Gelder, Kirsten, and Frank Chesley. A Most Unusual Life: Dora Van Gelder Kunz, Clairvoyant, Theosophist, Healer. Wheaton: Quest, 2015.

Janet Macrae taught holistic nursing at New York University for many years. She is the author of Therapeutic Touch: A Practical Guide (Knopf, 1987). This article contains excerpts from her e-book On the Road to the Spirit: A Journey with a Horse, available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and SmashWords, 2014.

 

 

           

           

           

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Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bowen, Robert, "Blavatsky on How to Study Theosophy" Quest 108:4, pg 29-33 

By Robert Bowen 

As the introduction below suggests, these notes have been reprinted often in Theosophical venues, including Theosophy Wiki.

This version was published by the Theosophical Publishing House in 1960. According to TSA archivist Janet Kerschner, “H.S.,” the author of the introduction, was almost certainly Henry Smith, then president of the TSA.

Robert Bowen was born in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1815 and educated in Jesuit schools. He served in the Royal Navy: the signature at the end says he was a commander, but a search of Royal Navy records turns up no Robert Bowen during that period. It has been suggested that he was actually a purser—a naval officer, in any event. He joined the TS in the early 1880s after meeting Anna Kingsford and became a personal pupil of HPB’s in 1889. He died in 1908.

Bowen’s son, Patrick, was born when his father was seventy. He spent a great deal of time in Africa, and was initiated into certain African esoteric groups. In 1969, he published a paper entitled “The Ancient Wisdom in Africa” in Studies in Comparative Religion. The article closely correlates esoteric African and Theosophical doctrines.

Theosophical scholar Michael Gomes considers the evidence for the authenticity of this material “inconclusive.” In an article in the December 2013 issue of The Theosophist, he writes: 

Aside from no one else ever seeing Bowen’s notes [apart from Patrick], there are a number of other difficulties with this material. So far no Robert Bowen has been found in membership records of the time. Most Lodge meetings were only open to members or associate members. The dates given for his association with HPB do not match with what we know of her life at the time.

In a letter in the Archives at Adyar, dated 6 March 1891, Countess Wachtmeister writes: “The Thursday evenings are continued, though HPB is seldom present; in fact, we rarely see her now. She shuts herself up for days together.”

While on 19 April 1891, the date Bowen concludes his meetings with Blavatsky, the Countess writes: “HPB is certainly growing more and more feeble, and she feels that to be able to do any work at all she must be quite alone, so as to enable her to concentrate her energies.”

So there appears to be some discrepancy.

—Ed.  

Introduction

These notes of teachings given by H.P. Blavatsky towards the close of her life have already appeared in print at various times in a number of journals. They were made by Robert Bowen, an elderly naval man who joined Mme. Blavatsky’s circle and questioned her persistently about what attitude a student ought to take towards The Secret Doctrine. He made careful notes of the answers she gave him and subsequently read them over to her to make sure that he had not mistaken her meaning. The notes were later brought to light by Bowen’s son, the late Captain P.G.B. Bowen, who was at the time a member of the Theosophical Society in Dublin, and they were first printed in the January-March 1932 issue of Theosophy in Ireland, just over forty years after they were written. Painstaking enquiries that have since been made in Dublin have failed to bring to light any other similar material from the same source.

Much of the value of the Bowen notes lies in the fact that they contain principles that can be applied not only to the study of The Secret Doctrine but to all Theosophical studies. Repeatedly they assert that any descriptive Theosophy is not to be taken as a necessarily correct picture of the universe. It is rather a secondary pattern, which is brought into being in the course of an experience of a Truth which is beyond words, beyond description and beyond relative values. Such a Theosophy is intended not to portray Truth but to lead towards it.

It will be seen that, by these standards, the value and authority of any descriptive Theosophy are not necessarily to be judged according to whether that Theosophy agrees accurately with scientific facts or principles or with the descriptive Theosophy propounded by some other person. The value of any exposition of Theosophy must lie in the depth of experience to which it can lead the student who is strong enough and daring enough to pass beyond its form or pattern to its occult or hidden reality.

Another piece of advice repeated through the notes is that, for its fuller understanding, any Theosophical teaching ought to be brought into a universal setting. As an aid to this, Mme. Blavatsky strongly recommended that the student should try to gain a deep appreciation of the three fundamental propositions, which are to be found in the proem of The Secret Doctrine.

H.S.

 

The Secret Doctrine and Its Study

HPB was specially interesting upon the matter of The Secret Doctrine during the past week. I had better try to sort it all out and get it safely down on paper while it is fresh in my mind. As she said herself, it may be useful to someone thirty or forty years hence.

First of all then, The Secret Doctrine is only quite a small fragment of the Esoteric Doctrine known to the higher members of the Occult Brotherhoods. It contains, she says, just as much as can be received by the World during this coming century. This raised a question—which she explained in the following way:

“The World” means Man living in the Personal Nature. This “World” will find in the two volumes of the S.D. all its utmost comprehension can grasp, but no more. But this was not to say that the Disciple who is not living in “The World” cannot find any more in the book than the “World” finds. Every form, no matter how crude, contains the image of its “creator” concealed within it. So likewise does an author’s work, no matter how obscure, contain the concealed image of the author’s knowledge. From this saying I take it that the S.D. must contain all that H.P.B. knows herself, and a great deal more than that, seeing that much of it comes from men whose knowledge is immensely wider than hers. Furthermore, she implies unmistakably that another may well find knowledge in it which she does not possess herself. It is a stimulating thought to consider that it is possible that I myself may find in H.P.B.’s words knowledge of which she herself is unconscious. She dwelt on this idea a good deal. X said afterwards: “H.P.B. must be losing her grip,” meaning, I suppose, confidence in her own knowledge. But Y and Z and myself also, see her meaning better, I think. She is telling us without a doubt not to anchor ourselves to her as the final authority, nor to anyone else, but to depend altogether upon our own widening perceptions.

(Later note on above: I was right. I put it to her direct and she nodded and smiled. It is worth something to get her approving smile! — [signed] Robert Bowen.)

At last we have managed to get H.P.B. to put us right on the matter of the study of the S.D. Let me get it down while it is all fresh in mind.

Reading the S.D. page by page as one reads any other book (she says) will only end in confusion. The first thing to do, even if it takes years, is to get some grasp of the “Three Fundamental Principles,” given in the Proem. Follow that up by study of the Recapitulation—the numbered items in the Summing Up to Vol. I (Part I). Then take the Preliminary Notes (Vol. II) and the Conclusion (Vol. II).

H.P.B. seems pretty definite about the importance of the teaching (in the Conclusion) relating to the times of coming of the Races and Sub-Races [see sidebar]. She put it more plainly than usual that there is really no such thing as a future “coming” of races. “There is neither Coming nor Passing, but eternal Becoming,” she says. The Fourth Root Race is still alive. So are the Third and Second and First—that is, their manifestations on our present plane of substance are present. I know what she means, I think, but it is beyond me to get it down in words. So likewise the Sixth Sub-Race is here, and the Sixth Root Race, and the Seventh, and even people of the coming Rounds. After all that’s understandable.

Disciples and Brothers and Adepts can’t be people of the every day Fifth Sub-Race, for the race is a state of evolution.

But she leaves no question but that, as far as humanity at large goes, we are hundreds of years (in time and space) from even the Sixth Sub-Race. I thought H.P.B. showed a peculiar anxiety in her insistence on this point. She hinted at “dangers and delusions” coming through ideas that the New Race had dawned definitely on the World. According to her the duration of a Sub-Race for humanity at large coincides with that of the Sidereal Year (the circle of the earth’s axis—about 25,000 years). That puts the new race a long way off.

We have had a remarkable session on the study of the S.D. during the past three weeks. I must sort out my notes and get the results safely down before I lose them.

She talked a good deal more about the “Fundamental Principle.” She says: If one imagines that one is going to get a satisfactory picture of the constitution of the Universe from the S.D. one will get only confusion from its study. It is not meant to give any such final verdict on existence, but to Lead Towards the Truth. She repeated this latter expression many times.

It is worse than useless going to those whom we imagine to be advanced students (she said) and asking them to give us an “interpretation” of the S.D. They cannot do it. If they try, all they give are cut and dried exoteric renderings which do not remotely resemble the Truth. To accept such interpretation means anchoring ourselves to fixed ideas, whereas Truth lies beyond any ideas we can formulate or express. Exoteric interpretations are all very well, and she does not condemn them so long as they are taken as pointers for beginners, and are not accepted by them as anything more. Many persons who are in, or who will in the future be in the T.S. are of course potentially incapable of any advance beyond the range of a common exoteric conception. But there are, and will be others, and for them she sets out the following and true way of approach to the S.D.

Come to the S.D. (she says) without any hope of getting the final Truth of existence from it, or with any idea other than seeing how far it may lead Towards the Truth. See in study a means of exercising and developing the mind never touched by other studies. Observe the following rules:

No matter what one may study in the S.D. let the mind hold fast, as the basis of its ideation, to the following ideas:

(a) The Fundamental Unity of All Existence. This unity is a thing altogether different from the common notion of unity—as when we say that a nation or an army is united; or that this planet is united to that by lines of magnetic force or the like. The teaching is not that. It is that existence is One Thing, not any collection of things linked together. Fundamentally there is One Being. The Being has two aspects, positive and negative. The positive is Spirit, or Consciousness. The negative is Substance, the subject of consciousness. This Being is the Absolute in its primary manifestation. Being absolute there is nothing outside it. It is All-Being. It is indivisible, else it would not be absolute. If a portion could be separated, that remaining could not be absolute, because there would at once arise the question of Comparison between it and the separated part. Comparison is incompatible with any idea of absoluteness. Therefore it is clear that this fundamental One Existence, or Absolute Being, must be the Reality in every form there is.

I said that though this was clear to me I did not think that many in the Lodges would grasp it. “Theosophy,” she said, “is for those who can think, or for those who can drive themselves to think, not mental sluggards.” H.P.B. has grown very mild of late. “Dumskulls” used to be her name for the average student.

The Atom, the Man, the God (she says) are each separately, as well as all collectively, Absolute Being in their last analysis, that is their Real Individuality. It is this idea which must be held always in the background of the mind to form the basis for every conception that arises from study of the S.D. The moment one lets it go (and it is most easy to do so when engaged in any of the many intricate aspects of the Esoteric Philosophy), the idea of Separation supervenes, and the study loses its value.

(b) The second idea to hold fast to is that There Is No Dead Matter. Every last atom is alive. It cannot be otherwise since every atom is itself fundamentally Absolute Being. Therefore there is no such thing as “spaces” of Ether, or Akasha, or call it what you like, in which angels and elementals disport themselves like trout in water. That’s a common idea. The true idea shows every atom of substance no matter of what plane to be in itself a Life.

(c) The third basic idea to be held is that Man is the Microcosm. As he is so, then all the Hierarchies of the Heavens exist within him. But in truth there is neither Macrocosm nor Microcosm but One Existence. Great and small are such only as viewed by a limited consciousness.

(d) Fourth and last basic idea to be held is that expressed in the Great Hermetic Axiom. It really sums up and synthesizes all the others.

As is the Inner, so is the Outer; as is the Great, so is the Small; as it is above, so it is below: there is but One Life and Law; and he that worketh it is One. Nothing is Inner, nothing is Outer; nothing is Great, nothing is Small; nothing is High, nothing is Low, in the Divine Economy.

No matter what one takes as study in the S.D. one must correlate it with those basic ideas.

I suggest that this is a kind of mental exercise which must be exceedingly fatiguing. H.P.B. smiled and nodded. One must not be a fool (she said) and drive oneself into the madhouse by attempting too much at first. The brain is the instrument of waking consciousness and every conscious mental picture formed means change and destruction of the atoms of the brain. Ordinary intellectual activity moves on well beaten paths in the brain, and does not compel sudden adjustments and destructions in its substance. But this new kind of mental effort calls for something very different—the carving out of “new brain paths,” the ranking in different order of the little brain lives. If forced injudiciously it may do serious physical harm to the brain.

This mode of thinking (she says) is what the Indians call Jnana Yoga. As one progresses in Jnana Yoga, one finds conceptions arising which, though one is conscious of them, one cannot express nor yet formulate into any sort of mental picture. As time goes on these conceptions will form into mental pictures.

This is a time to be on guard and refuse to be deluded with the idea that the new found and wonderful picture must represent reality. It does not. As one works on, one finds the once admired picture growing dull and unsatisfying, and finally fading out or being thrown away. This is another danger point, because for the moment one is left in a void without any conception to support one, and one may be tempted to revive the cast-off picture for want of a better to cling to. The true student will, however, work on unconcerned, and presently further formless gleams come, which again in time give rise to a larger and more beautiful picture than the last. But the learner will now know that no picture will ever represent the Truth. This last splendid picture will grow dull and fade like the others. And so the process goes on, until at last the mind and its pictures are transcended and the learner enters and dwells in the World of No Form, but of which all forms are narrowed reflections.

The True Student of The Secret Doctrine is a Jnana Yogi, and this Path of Yoga is the True Path for the Western student. It is to provide him with sign posts on that Path that The Secret Doctrine has been written.

(Later note: I have read over this rendering of her teaching to H.P.B. asking if I have got her aright. She called me a silly Dumskull to imagine anything can ever be put into words aright. But she smiled and nodded as well, and said I had really got it better than anyone else ever did, and better than she could do it herself.)

I wonder why I am getting all this. It should be passed to the world, but I am too old ever to do it. I feel such a child to H.P.B., yet I am twenty years older than her in actual years.

She has changed much since I met her two years ago. It is marvellous how she holds up in the face of dire illness. If one knew nothing and believed nothing, H.P.B. would convince one that she is something away and beyond body and brain. I feel, especially during these last meetings since she has become so helpless bodily, that we are getting teachings from another and higher sphere. We seem to feel and Know what she says rather than hear it with our bodily ears. X said much the same thing last night.

(Signed) Robert Bowen,

CMDR, R[oyal] N[avy]

19th April, 1891

 

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The Three Fundamental Propositions

From the Proem of The Secret Doctrine

(a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable Principle, on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought—in the words of Māndūkya Upanishad, “unthinkable and unspeakable.” [Verse 7.]

To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is one Absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause—dimly formulated in the “Unconscious” and “Unknowable” of current European philosophy—is the rootless root of “all that was, is, or ever shall be.” It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is “Be-ness” rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is beyond all thought or speculation.

This “Be-ness” is symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that Consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolizes change, its essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the one Reality, is also symbolized by the term “The Great Breath,” a symbol sufficiently graphic to need no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical One Absolute—Be-ness—symbolized by finite intelligence as the theological Trinity . . .

(b) The eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically “the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing,” called the “manifesting stars,” and the “sparks of Eternity.” “The Eternity of the Pilgrim” is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan). “The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb, flux and reflux.”

This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental Laws of the Universe . . .

(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul—a spark of the former—through the Cycle of Incarnation (or “Necessity”) in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic Law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth Principle—or the over-soul—has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyāni-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric Philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations.

From The Secret Doctrine (Wheaton: Quest, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 14–17.

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Root Races

In Theosophical literature, the term Root Race has a specialized meaning. In this context, the word race connotes something quite distinct from the standard dictionary definition. The popular definition of race involves minor physical and cultural variations within the human species.

In Theosophical literature, however, it refers to something altogether different. Specifically, the term Root Race, or race, refers to major developmental phases that occur over time within human consciousness. The first Root Race is said to be that stage at which the most basic level of perception was developed. During the second stage, the ability for active expression was evolved. This was followed by the third stage, characterized by the development of emotion. In the fourth Root Race, the analytical powers of the mind begin to appear. We are now said to be in the Fifth Root Race—the evolutionary phase in which the mind develops its synthesizing powers.

These stages, which are successive, are great evolutionary changes spanning eons of time. All of humanity is said to pass through each of the successive Root Races—with each individual soul incarnating many times at every stage of development.

This item on the Root Races was published with the 1960 TPH version of Bowen’s notes. It was based on the following sources:

The Peopling of the Earth by Geoffrey Barborka and Theosophy: An Introductory Study Course by John Algeo.

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Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Sorkhabi, Rasoul, "Zoroaster: The First Philosopher and His Theosophical Revolution" Quest 108:4, pg 23-28

By Rasoul Sorkhabi

Spiritual teachers may be categorized into personal teachers and teachers of teachers, whose influence permeate the intellectual history of humankind. Zoroaster, whose theosophical doctrines (from the Latin doctrina, “teaching”) and contributions are analyzed here, belongs to the latter category.

When I was a young boy growing up in Iran, we learned only briefly about Zoroaster as the prophet of a religion prevalent in ancient Iran (Persia) before the coming of Islam in the seventh century. Later, while living in India, I came across the Zoroastrian Parsi population, whose ancestors migrated from Iran to the western coasts of India in several waves over the centuries in search of religious and social freedoms. In 1879 H.P. Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott encountered an educated and entrepreneurial group of Parsis in Bombay, some of whom actually helped build the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in India. The vibrance and contribution of the Parsis have continued to our day: the late singer Freddie Mercury, of the rock band Queen, who came from a Parsi family, is probably the best known.

Nevertheless, Zoroastrians currently constitute a small minority in the world, numbering only 100,000 to 200,000. This, however, should not mask the significance of Zoroaster’s teachings. A large number of books on Zoroastrianism range from scholarly translations of the Avesta (Zoroastrian scriptures) to popular introductions to Zoroastrian beliefs and practices.

In this article, I focus on Zoroaster’s philosophical underpinnings in order to explore two specific questions: What was the social and cultural environment in which Zoroaster began his ministry? How did his teachings shape religious thinking?

These questions take us to the heart of Zoroaster’s teachings and uncover a great deal of forgotten history. My basic thesis here is not historical, but the realization that what Zoroaster taught some three millennia ago still pertains to the philosophical discourse, spiritual quest, and social struggles of our time.

Who Was Zoroaster?

Despite a series of Greco-Persian wars in the sixth through the fourth centuries BC, ancient Greek thinkers, including Plato, had high regards for Zoroaster. Zoroaster is a Greek name for Zarathushtra, probably meaning “the owner of golden or yellow (zarath) camels (ushtra).” Zoroaster’s family name was Spitama (“white”), after his ninth ancestor, possibly referring to their skin color. His father was Pourush’aspa (“owner of many horses”) and his mother was Doughdova (“milkmaid”). All these names indicate a pastoral lifestyle.

At age thirty, Zoroaster experienced a revelation that instructed him to be the messenger of divine teachings to his people. He experienced much hardship and rejection. At age forty, however, in the Iranian capital Balkh (in today’s Afghanistan), Zoroaster convinced King Vishtaspa (Goshtasp, “owner of swift horses”) of the truth of his religion. Zoroaster died at age seventy-seven.   

Many scholars estimate that Zoroaster lived in the second millennium before Christ in northeast Iran or Central Asia. Zoroaster’s hymns or the Gathas (Anklesaria, Poor-davood) are included in the Yasna—the oldest part of the Avesta. They have remarkable linguistic resemblance to the Hindu Rig Veda, composed by the “seers” (rishis) in 1500–1000 BC.

From Animism to Monotheism

Zoroaster grew up in a polytheistic and animistic culture of the Aryan tribes. As recorded in the Gathas (Yasna, 33:6), he was a high priest (zaotar). In those days, the population was divided into four classes (similar to the Indian caste system): rulers, priests, warriors, and common people (nomads, ranchers, farmers, and craftsmen). Zoroaster sided with the common people—the poor and the oppressed (drighu, Yasna, 34:5)—and criticized princes (kavi) and priests (karapan) for their violence, corruption, oppression, injustice, and cruelty to people, land, and animals (Yasna, 44:20).

Although Zoroaster knew about the psychedelic plant juice haoma (soma in Sanskrit), his Gathas do not favor its consumption—strikingly different from a large number of hymns in the Rig Veda, which extol soma. Similarly, Zoroaster is not in favor of sacrifices, even though animal sacrifice has been practiced somewhat by Zoroastrians.

The Avesta connects the slaying of the primordial Bull, which was the companion of the First Man (gayo maretan, “living mortal”), to the work of the evil force. From the slaying of the Bull, the Avesta reports, arose all the animals and plants on the earth. In the Gathas, Ga’ush Urva (“cow’s soul”) represents the soul of all animals and plants as well as the earth. Ga’ush Urva complains to God: “Why did you create me? I am crushed by all this anger and violence, and have no protector.” Her prayer is answered, and Zoroaster, “blessed with sweetest words” (poetry), is assigned to be her protector, but Ga’ush Urva objects that a weak man, rather than a strong ruler, is to protect her. Eventually, she agrees to it after learning that Good Mind (vohu manah) is behind Zoroaster (Yasna, 29:1–10). Vohu Manah (bahman in modern Persian) is the link between God and Zoroaster, like the Holy Spirit in Christianity and the archangel Gabriel in Islam.

Zoroaster reinterpreted all the animistic deities related to fire, earth, water, plants, animals, and metals as six archangels (amesha spenta, “immortal brilliant or holy beings”) or divine aspects or powers (yazata, “worthy of veneration”) of the One God. In the latter group, Zoroaster includes several gods previously worshiped, including Mitra (god of light, covenant, love, war, and farming, depending on various cultures and periods) and Anahita (goddess of sky, water, fertility, and purity).

This change from polytheism to monotheism was a paradigm shift in human thought. For one thing, it provided a sense of union and brotherhood among all humans. Zoroaster detached the forces of nature and their associated deities from the violence and brutality committed in their names.   

A number of philosophers and historians of science (Hooykaas, Jaki, and more recently Schellenberg) have noted that science has rapidly progressed in periods or cultures in which the idea of a single wise God is prevalent. Historical cases support this view. Rational philosophy in ancient Greece grew when philosophers were freed from intellectual shackles of the Pantheon gods. The Arabs embraced science and learning after the advent of monotheistic Islam. The founding fathers of the Scientific Revolution in Europe, like Isaac Newton, despite their opposition to the church’s authoritarianism, considered their scientific research as a rational way to understand God’s design in creation.

Why should monotheism promote science? Unlike the belief in many gods in nature, the idea that a single omniscient god has created and designed the universe is compatible with the basic assumptions of science: order, law, unity, and predictability.

Mind Is Deeper than Matter

	Figure 1.The Avestan faravashi (the ideal or spiritual human) is the best-known Zoroastrian symbol, dating back to the fifth century BC. The symbol is found on walls of archeological buildings in Iran as well as modern Zoroastrian fire temples. This illustration, dating from 1947, comes from the town of Taft in Iran.

According to Zoroaster, reality or existence has two aspects or modalities: mainyu (minu in modern Persian), mind, idea or consciousness; and geteh (giti), the physical or material world. The parallel concept in the Rig Veda is the purusha-prakriti pair, as elucidated by Richard Smoley in The Dice Game of Shiva.

The words mind and mental share the same Indo-European roots with the Avestan mainyu and the Sanskrit manas. Another Avestan term for the realm of mainyu is faravashi, the archetypal world where God created all things over 3,000 years before they were manifested on the earth.

Some scholars hold that Plato’s theory of ideal forms or universals was influenced by Zoroastrian teachings (Chroust, Kingsley, Panousi). Plato may have learned about Zoroaster through the Ionian Greek philosophers, particularly Pythagoras (Guthrie, Riedwig) and Heraclitus (Honderich, Preus), who had studied with Zoroastrian magi (priests). Aristotle in his Metaphysics (Book 1, 987) states that Plato had studied the philosophies of Heraclitus and Pythagoras, besides that of Socrates. Indeed, the first generation of Greek philosophers were from Ionia (the western coast of Anatolia in present-day Turkey), which was ruled by the Persian kings (the Achaemenid dynasty) from 540 to 335 BC, when the Persian empire itself was conquered by Alexander the Great. Greek philosophy up to Aristotle was largely developed during that period (Boyce 150–63).

Plato, from age twenty-eight, when his teacher Socrates was put to death in Athens in 399 BC, to age forty, when he returned to Athens to establish his Academy, was traveling and studying. In the Alcibiades, Plato mentions the name of Zoroaster. There are also reports that in the last days of his life, Plato received a Persian magus who had traveled to Athens to visit him (Kingsley). All these indicate Plato’s knowledge of Zoroastrian philosophy.    

The concept of mainyu or faravashi is similar to what contemporary physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking call the Mind of God. Although the scientists use this expression metaphorically, metaphors do indicate some hidden and valid points. Indeed, the relation of mainyu to modern physics goes deeper. Quantum physics has demonstrated that although there are tangible material things at the scale of our normal observation, at subatomic levels the universe is a unified field of vibrations or waves, beyond which we have no knowledge. As we go deeper, matter disappears into “effects” of underlying and mysterious realms. This is also true as we go back in time, to the moment of the big bang. The physical universe thus appears to be an evolutionary manifestation of a fundamental and universal mind. Zoroaster called it spenta mainyu (“benevolent mind”), which is the creative principle of God (Yasna 43:6; 44:7; 51:7).

In The Mysterious Universe, first published in 1930, pioneering astrophysicist Sir James Jeans writes: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter” (Jeans, 186).

Jeans was not and is not alone in this view. In his own generation, physicists like Max Planck, Einstein, Arthur Eddington, Erwin Schrödinger, and Werner Heisenberg were on his side. Science itself has demolished the myth of materialism in the sense that the boundary between matter and nonmatter has become finer and blurred (Davies and Gribbin). Many eminent physicists, philosophers, and neuroscientists today suggest that at the very source and foundation, and in the very fabric of the physical world, lies consciousness or mind. In other words, consciousness does not blindly arise from the accidental assembly of unconscious bits of matter. It is embedded in all of existence and is manifested at various levels in myriad forms and modes. This philosophical view can be traced all the way back to Zoroaster and the Rig Veda.    

For Zoroaster, however, the world is not merely a machine inhabited by a ghost. He felt a sense of immense reverence toward nature. In his religion, the four elements (akhshij)—earth, water, air, and fire—are all sacred and should not be polluted. Writing in the fifth century BC, Herodotus notes: “Persians have a profound reverence for rivers; they will never pollute a river with urine or spittle” (Herodotus, 64). Today, even secular biologists like E.O. Wilson acknowledge that without deeply felt care and reverence for the Creation (Wilson), we cannot solve our ecological crisis.

Lord of Wisdom

Like Sufis, who have ninety-nine names for God, the Avesta lists 101 names for various attributes and aspects of God. Of these, the single name that Zoroaster chose to represent his notion of God is Ahura Mazda (“lord of great knowing or wisdom”). This was indeed a paradigm shift in religious thinking three millennia ago; to this day, it has a modern tone. Astronomer Carl Sagan once said that he would accept the notion of God if God is defined as “the sum total of the physical laws of the universe,” because the fact that “the same laws of physics apply everywhere is quite remarkable” (Sagan, 149–50). Fifty years before Sagan, Einstein had remarked that “the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility . . . The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle” (Einstein, 292).

Of course, Zoroaster did not have a modern understanding of the laws of nature, physical constants, and scientific theories. However, through meditation, he had realized the amazing wisdom underlying and permeating the natural world. Zoroaster praised and celebrated this wisdom. In his Gathas, there are over 200 references to the name of God as Mazda, and indeed the original name for Zoroastrianism is Mazda-yasna (“wisdom celebration”). As Pliny the Elder remarked in his Natural History (8:30), one wonders if this term was the inspiration for the Greek word philosophia (“love of wisdom”), coined by Pythagoras (Kenny, 14).

What is the One that underlies the myriad phenomena in the world? Greek philosophers variously chose one of the four elements as the “first principle” (arche in Greek). Zoroaster did not stop at material monism, and instead underscored a universal benevolent Mind (spenta mainyu) emanating from Ahura Mazda as the primary principle of creation.

We see the influence of Zoroaster’s thinking on Heraclitus of Ephesus, an Ionian philosopher of the fifth century BC who rejected the gods of the Greek pantheon and instead believed in one God, whom he called to sophon (“the wise one”; Kahn). Heraclitus also posited logos (“word, reason, order”) as the creative principle of the world, represented by “ever-living fire” (a Zoroastrian motif) as the first material element, which gives rise to other elements (starting with smoke or air and then water and earth) as well as “warm” life. We similarly find a “central fire” in the Pythagorean cosmological scheme. In the third century AD, the Roman-Egyptian philosopher Plotinus, father of Neoplatonism and author of the Enneads, suggested a similar view: nous or logos (“consciousness” or “mind”) was the first emanation from the One God, from which proceeded the rest of creation.

Figure 2. A sketch of a Zoroastrian fire temple near Baku (now capital of Azerbaijan) included in Thomas Hyde’s 1700 Latin book, Veterum Persarum et Parthorum et Medorum religionis historia (“The History of the Religion of the Ancient Persians, Parthians, and Medes”). Fire is the most sacred Zoroastrian symbol of divine light, wisdom, love, and life; it has a central place in Zoroastrian temples. Moreover, Zoroastrians pray five times a day toward the direction of the sun. This does not, however, mean that they worship fire or the sun, as is wrongly assumed.

In the twelfth century, the Persian Sufi master Sohravardi integrated the Zoroastrian and Neoplatonic ideas in his philosophy of Illuminism (hikmat al-ishraq). He envisioned various levels of “being” as various degrees of “light.” God was the Light of the Lights, and Bahman (vohu manah) was the First Intellect or the First Ray emanating from God. This shows the undercurrent of Zoroaster’s philosophical influence down the ages.     

Zoroaster’s praise of wisdom was not lip service; he truly believed in its power and significance, not only in the universe but also in religion. He recommends, “Listen with your own ears, and with a bright mind choose truth from false creed—each person for his own self, before the Final Judgment comes” (Yasna 30:2).   

Imagine that you are a person living in a restrictive tribe three thousand years ago who hears that you are an intelligent human and free to think and choose. What a sense of dignity and empowerment you might have gained from these words!

Zoroaster uses two terms for the individual mind and wisdom: khratu for rational thinking (reason) and chista for penetrative knowledge (insight). These faculties, bestowed by Ahura Mazda upon all humans, are valuable companions in life, but they must be nurtured through learning and experience.   

Religion Is Goodness

There is a beautiful story about Hillel the Elder, a Jewish sage of the first century BC. He was once challenged by a skeptic if he could teach the entire Torah in one sentence while standing on one foot. Hillel answered: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to another; this is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study” (Talmud, Shabbat 31a).

If you put this question to a Zoroastrian, he or she would say: hu mata (“good or noble thought”), hukhta (“good speech”), and hu varashta (“good action”). Zoroastrians call their religion Beh Dini, “good religion,” not because they consider other religions to be bad, but because a true religion means being good. In the same vein, the Dalai Lama has often said, “My religion is kindness.”

Like in other religions, compassion (mehr, derived from Mithra) is highly praised in Zoroastrianism. Moreover, there is an organic relationship between compassion and goodness. Without good morals and behavior, compassion remains unrealized, abstract, and even perhaps an egoistic claim. Good thought, good words, and good deeds are thus an elegant garment that Zoroaster wishes to put on compassion.  

What is the source of goodness? How do we know what is good? According to the Avesta (Yasna 26:4), the human body (tanu) is born with five internal forces: (1) ahu, life force; (2) daena, knowing through the spiritual eye or conscience; (3) budha, knowing through the senses and mental processes including reason and meditation (comparable to the Sanskrit buddhi); (4) orvran, the soul which is cultivated in life, for better or worse, and is subject to the Final Judgment, and (5) faravashi, the ideal or spiritual human accompanying the body as the guardian angel.

Of these qualities, daena, conscience, in particular guides all humans to know what is good, to be done, and what is bad, to be avoided. Like the body itself, daena, if left unprotected and exposed to destructive forces, cannot fully function. It needs to be nourished through customs, community, practices, and teachings.  

Goodness is closely related to the concept of asha, perhaps the most important Zoroastrian word after the name of God. Asha, which appears 162 times in the Gathas, means “truth” in two different domains. Asha in the universe refers to law and order, which is explored through science. Asha in human affairs refers to righteousness and justice, which is realized through spirituality and social law. The opposite of asha is druj, literally, “lie or false” in a broad sense of the term—dishonesty, injustice, incorrectness, lying, harming and so forth. Druj is to be avoided. Herodotus (63) reports: “Persians consider telling lies more disgraceful than anything else.” In an inscription from the fifth century BC by the Persian emperor Darius I in his capital, Persepolis, we read this prayer: “May Ahura Mazda protect this country from enemy army, from famine, and from the Lie!”

Asha and druj stem from two opposite forces or qualities operating among humans ever since their appearance on the earth: the good force is Spenta Mainyu (benevolent mind), associated with Ahura Mazda, and the evil force is Angra Mainyu (“hostile mind”), personified in Ahriman (the Devil or Satan in Judaism and Islam). Humans, endowed with wisdom, conscience, teachings, and freedom, are engaged in the battle between goodness and evil.

Some may criticize Zoroaster’s thinking as dualistic and polarizing, but there is a sense of social realism in his teaching. The world is a blend of good news and bad news. We see both compassion and cruelty. Which side do you want to be on? This is Zoroaster’s question. In the face of all the ill and evil which we witness and which can indeed be overwhelming, Zoroaster insists that humans are not helpless or powerless: they can take life in their own hands and be on the side of good and light. This progressive way of thinking was indeed a liberating force in Zoroaster’s time; it always is. In his masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche develops this concept as “the will to power.”

The duality of good and evil does not mean that Zoroaster believed in two gods, as is sometimes claimed. Ahriman is not a god. Time and again, Zoroaster uses the analogy of light and darkness for the relationship between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. Darkness is the absence of light.

Dialectical thinking about the operation of opposites and the war of good and evil can be psychologically exhausting and depressing. Heraclitus, who viewed the world as a state of flux and change through the action of opposing forces, was known to be “the weeping philosopher” because of his melancholic views of life and humans (whom he avoided by living on mountains).

Zoroaster, by contrast, maintains an optimistic attitude toward life. He believes in the power of wisdom and work. He believes that truth and goodness eventually win because they are primordial and essential in human nature and have divine origin. Legend has it that when Zoroaster was born, he did not cry but laughed—a gesture of joy and optimism.

In Zoroaster’s life, we find the elements of what Joseph Campbell formulated as the Hero’s Journey. Zoroaster returned from this journey not only as a messenger, but also as a social reformer, poet, and philosopher. Zoroaster calls for both wisdom (mind) and goodness (heart), not separately but in combination—“the path of Good Mind” (Yasna, 34: 13).

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Sources 

Anklesaria, D.T., trans. The Holy Gathas of Zarathustra. Bombay: Rahnuma-e Mazdayasnan Sabha, 1953.

Boyce, M. A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 2: Zoroastrianism under the Achaemenians. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1982.

Chroust, A.H. “The Influence of Zoroastrian Teachings on Plato, Aristotle, and Greek Philosophy in General.” In The New Scholasticism 54, no. 3 (1980): 342–57.

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Rasoul Sorkhabi, PhD, is a professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. His life spans both East and West, as he has lived and studied in Iran, India, Japan, and the USA. This is his fourth article for Quest.

 

 

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