Being Truly Human March 2004 Newsletter

From the Editor

Another complete collection of Phiroz’s talks, consisting of about 900 CDs in all, was delivered on 4th February as a gift to the Campbell Theosophical Research Library in Sydney, N.S.W., Australia.

This was arranged through the hard work and good offices of Ursula Smilde-Hiatt of Leura, N.S.W., to whom the Trust is extremely grateful for having found such a suitable home for Phiroz’s talks.

This now means that two complete collections of CDs are available outside the United Kingdom, the other being at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

From the Editor

Our Summer School this year will take place in Oxfordshire from the afternoon of Monday 16th August to the morning of Friday 20th August (four nights).

The cost will be £29.50 per person per day for accommodation. As we are on a self-catering basis, our meals will be prepared by our very proficient cooks, with some help as required from members. The cost of food will be about £5.00–£6.00 per day. We shall be asked to bring our own sheets, pillowcases, and towels. There will also be one specified day when people can attend for that day only. For a booking form and all further information, please contact the Trust. Please send no money at present.

The Summer School will take place in a beautiful, peaceful setting in the Oxfordshire countryside, which should be an ideal location for the study of Phiroz’s work.

From the Editor

A printed list of titles of all Phiroz’s recorded talks from 1959–1994 is available free from the Trust.  There are about 900 talks, but titles only are given, not details of contents. Please advise the Editor if you would like a copy.

The same list can be searched from the talks section of our website.

A talk given by Phiroz Mehta at Bombay, India on 14^th January 1986

ASHO ZARATHUSHTRA!

I should like to make it clear that I am not presuming to teach you anything. Who am I to arrogate to myself the exalted title of Teacher? Please regard me quite simply as your servant, whose happy duty it is to try to place before you for your consideration that portion of Truth or Vision which has become clear to me during the course of my life. If it so happens that you do learn something of value to yourselves through my words, something which may promote your own well-being and true happiness, your haurvatāt and ameretāt, your own wisdom and spiritual power, i.e. your vohu manah and khshathra, then such learning by you confers teacherhood upon me. Unlike a university degree, which is a small thing, the honour you do me by your benefiting through my simple service is indeed a very great thing, of serious import to you, and of profound satisfaction to me.

Underlying any meaningful word, there is a reality material and spiritual. ASHO ZARATHUSHTRA! Those two words, and their divine root-source, AHURA MAZDA, are the three most meaningful words, for those of us who are Zarathushtrians. They are the holiest of holy names in the Zarathushtrian religion. A Name represents the vital, informing principle which can continue to live as a Word of Power in the throbbing hearts of men, long after this mortal body is just dust and ashes.

So let all of us, together, consider these meaningful words, these Holy Names, But first, carefully bear in mind the deep meaning of the word ‘consider’, probably derived from the Old English con meaning to regard studiously or examine carefully, and the Latin sidus, meaning a star or a group of stars. Now a star is a self-shining light. Thus, to consider means to look intently at the self-shining light. For us, this self-shining light concerning God and man is the hidden Light that shines constantly within our own imperfect self, in the darkness of our own existential being, i.e. in our own psycho-physical organism which is known in the world by the name given to us by our parents after our birth. Most of us are blind to this hidden Light which is Ahura Mazda himself, embodied in us. Our personal task is to enlighten ourselves and dispel the darkness by living the pure Zarathushtrian life, the asho life of stainless Virtue. Living thus, the Light of Truth will burst forth with dazzling radiance, transforming our consciousness through and through to its innermost depths where Ahura Mazda lives. Then indeed we can consider everything faultlessly for we shall be free of the tendency to make errors due to our ordinarily impure and imperfect psyche. Out of the prison house of the dregvant we shall emerge into the blissful beatitude of the ashavant, for we too, like Zarathushtra, shall have become asho, Virtuous, Holy.

Let us now turn our attention to the Divine Name, Ahura Mazda. The word ahura is the Avestan equivalent of the Vedic asura, which originally meant living, spiritual, divine, and as such it represented the Spirit, the Lord God, the Supreme Being. But later on it came to designate the demons. Asu means life.  So asura, and more emphatically so the Avestan Ahura, means the living Lord or Lord of Life. Coupled with Mazda, wisdom, we have the concept of Ahura Mazda as the Lord of Life and Wisdom. That distinguished scholar, the late Dr. Irach Taraporevala, translated Maz-da as ‘the Creator of Matter’ in his great work, The Gathas (p. 64). In the light of modern scientific knowledge, and in accord with Zarathushtra’s own statement in Ys.31.11., this translation could be acceptable. I myself have chosen Wisdom, rather than Creator of Matter, as the meaning of Mazda, because of the pre-eminent place given to Wisdom in religious teachings for many centuries afterwards.

The early Indo-Iranians venerated two other Ahuras, Mithra (the Vedic Mitra, the Avestan Meher Izad) and Varuna (the Avestan Apam Napat). Zarathushtra exalted Ahura Mazda above these two and swept aside all the lesser gods and godlings of the Rig-veda. Zarathushtra not only proclaimed Ahura Mazda, whom he venerated as the master of Asha (order, righteousness and justice), as the greatest of the Ahuras, but also as the One, self-existent, uncreated God, living eternally, creating all that is good and including all beneficent divinities. We must note carefully that in Zarathushtra’s teaching, Ahura Mazda creates only the good and the beneficent, NOT the evil and the maleficent.

In Sanskrit, we have these two interesting words: sumanas, meaning good-hearted, gracious, benevolent and cheerful, and sugata, which means having fared well, happily attained the goal. Sugata is also a Pali word, having the same meaning as the Sanskrit word, and is often applied to Gautama Buddha who was the Lord of Compassion and Wisdom. Look, now, at the word HU-MAN, remembering the interchangeability of ‘h’ and ‘s’. We know that hu-mat, hu-khta and hvarshta mean good thought, good word and good deed. The prefix ‘hu’ in human stands for good, good in the profound meaning and transcendental sense of asha, the divine Law, the Truth in the supreme degree. What of the ‘man’ part in human? The dictionary says that the root ‘man’ means to think. ‘Think’ is indeed a very poor word in this context. What we in our ordinary, imperfect state call ‘thinking’ is merely silent talking, inaudible chatter. Does God chatter? Of course not. Now consider that Trismegistic teaching — the discourse by the divine Pymander, the Shepherd of men and the Teacher (and ideal Archetype of all mankind), delivered unto Hermes Trismegistus. He says, “I am Pymander. I am the Light, the Pure Mind”, (the nous or Buddhi, the vohu manah, the loving Mind of God). The Word of Light from vohu manah is the Logos (the Zarathushtrian Ahunvar or Creative Word. This Creative Word, or Logos, is called in the Trismegistic Teaching “the Thought in the Mind of God”. We begin to see, then, the rootless root of what we mortals call thought and thinking, and to sense very subtly the deep meaning of the Sanskrit root man. In my book, The Heart of Religion, I put it in these terms: It is Creative Action in Eternity; or in other words: it is Transcendence thinking the Thought which is the Archetypal Man. This Thought in the Divine Mind is not a stream of words. It is transcendent Creative Energy. God’s speech is pure wordless Revelation.

So, coupling the root ‘man’ with ‘hu’ we see that the word HU-MAN, in its profoundest sense, means the blissful creator, which, of course, is just what Ahura Mazda himself is. And in relation to this it would be useful to consider a further point in the discourse to Hermes. God is presented as “All-Father Mind”. In Zarathushtrian terms, the vohu manah aspect of God is given precedence. Zarathushtra himself declares (Ys.31.8): “When I beheld Thee in my very eyes, then I realized Thee in my mind as the father of vohu manau. In Ys.43.4 he affirms, “When the full power of vohu manah came upon me, then did I realize Thee as the Mighty and Most Bountiful One, O Mazda”. And in Ys.43.11, “Then did I realize Thee as the Most Bountiful One, when the Good Mind (vohu manah) encircled me completely”.

Now let us hear some supremely significant words of Pymander: “All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man, co-equal to Himself, with whom he fell in love, as being His own child, for he was beautiful beyond compare, the image of his Father, and on him did bestow all His own formations”. In Zarathushtrian terms, Ahura Mazda bestowed on him all the Amesha Spenta. Note also the Old Testament statement in Genesis, 1.26 and 27: “And God said, let us make Man in our image, after our likeness. And God created Man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he him”. Vedic literature has its own Creation accounts. We see, then, that the religions of the world present Man as being created by God, and in at least two cases Man is portrayed as being like God. The Atharva Veda has two hymns of exceptional interest: the second hymn of book 10 and the eighth hymn of book 11. In these hymns there is the unequivocal, positive affirmation that Man is of divine origin, and in him the Supreme is wholly embodied.

God, Brahman, Ahura Mazda — use any name you like, personal or impersonal — is the all-powerful Creator. Mankind has believed this, in some form or other, primitive or sophisticated, for many thousands of years. This creative Power of the Creator, in Zarathushtra’s language, is khshathra. Since we live in a scientific age we may be allowed to regard this as follows. Ahura Mazda’s khshathra, his Creative Power, if and when quiet and restful, is possessed of stored-up energy. It is potential energy. When this Power is active, that stored-up energy is set in motion. It is kinetic. In its potential state it holds the possibility of the entire cosmos, material and spiritual which can emerge out of it. The manifested universe is dynamic; it is in ceaseless motion. The Origin, the Creative Source, can be regarded as the Primordial, Undifferentiated Creative Energy both in its quiescent state and also in its active state. This Creative Source is Infinite and Eternal. It includes all forms of energy known to science, and much more besides. It is omniscient; it is Absolute Pure Consciousness in a transcendent sense, not restricted to the type of limited consciousness that characterizes the whole of the animal world, including the human species. This Primordial Creative Energy is self-replenishing, inexhaustible and Immortal, and functioning in the context of Infinity and Eternity. This Energy which is the creative Origin as well as all Creation, both that which is manifest to us as well as that which is not manifest to us, constitutes the One Total Reality, the Unitary Whole, held within the divine Consciousness of the Creator, whoever or whatever that Creator may be.

There is good reason for making these statements. Let us first consider the following question. What is the outstanding difference between animals and human beings? It is the difference in the kind of consciousness that functions in us humans as contrasted with that of animals. The entire animal world, including man, has two main drives, namely self-preservation and the preservation of the species. These two drives are interdependent, for unless individuals preserved themselves the species would become extinct. Now whilst all animals, including us, are conscious creatures, we humans are conscious in a markedly different way, and to a different degree from all other animal species. We can contemplate ourselves — our nature, our birth, growth, experiences, environment, the purpose(s) of our existence, our death, and what may be an after-death state for us. We can contemplate whether Life has, or has not, any meaning or significance or purpose for us or for the world; whether there is or is not something transcendent to us, either realizable by us or utterly beyond us — such as God; whether there is or is not a relationship between that Transcendence and us, and if there is one, what is the nature of that relationship, what does it entail for us as regards the kind of life we should lead, not only in relation to God but also in relation to our fellow human beings, to the world, to all creation. Animal species other than the human cannot do all this. Nor can they reason as we do, nor develop and live by a social, political and business morality, or by a religious ethic which could lead them to a full and true fruition and fulfilment of the purpose of their existence. And yet, animals do live instinctively in accordance with the laws of their own being in tune with Nature, as if they had an unconscious sense of asha. The hungry lioness who pounces on me and feeds her lazy, lordly master and her cubs and herself on my carcass is an asho lioness! Surely, it is my duty to respectfully observe the right distance between the queen of the forest and an intrusive human like me!

As we live the good life and grow in sensitivity, refinement, perceptivity and understanding, our consciousness goes through a process of development. It evolves. This evolution is not like the biological evolution of the organism, but I use the word simply for convenience, to suggest a process of inward awakening to a clearer and clearer understanding of the Truth. It involves a progressive change in our mode of awareness of everything. As we are at present, we are aware of the world as composed of separate things and creatures. I am myself and not you, nor am I anything outside this body. By a process of conditioning from infancy I may be made to believe that I am not my body or feelings, etc., that I the real self am an invisible, intangible and immortal soul or spirit, urvan or fravashi. Hence I am not conscious of the intimate relationships between myself and the whole world, apart from a nominal acknowledgement that these are my parents, relatives or friends, my dog or horse, my house or property, etc. This separative and isolative self-consciousness is extremely vivid, powerful and fixed. It is the self, me myself. The rest of the universe is the non-self. Such is the fundamental ignorance afflicting mankind. It is the root of the endless conflict between each person and every thing and every one else. It is the root of all our sorrows and disease, confusion and disharmony.

But the fact about the universe is that it is a unitary whole, characterized, amongst other characteristics, by an infinite variety. The multitudinous particulars composing it are completely inter-related and inter-active with each other. Science discovered this very early in this century, so much so that Sir James Jeans in his book The Mysterious Universe declared that the slightest action here affects the farthest star. In this connection you will find the modern work of Rupert Sheldrake most fascinating. Because of this inter-relatedness and inter-action, the whole world is a universe. This word, universe, is derived from the Latin unus meaning one, and vertere meaning to turn. Thus universe means turned into one, a unitary whole, as I said a few moments ago. And that other name for the universe — Cosmos — comes from the Greek word which means order — Order, that is asha! Can anything be more appealing and agreeable to Zarathushtrians? You may well ask me, “Why, then, do we see such disorder, conflict, destruction and evil in the world?”

A very pertinent question nowadays. The operative words in this question are “we see”. We, since we are isolatively and separatively conscious, are aware of the world process only in terms of separate, finite particulars and temporal events. Being unable to see the relationships between all the parts constituting the whole, our consciousness breaks up the whole into countless bits which we are unable to put together again, like a small child who takes a watch to pieces and cannot correctly put the pieces back again because he is ignorant of their proper relationships and functions.

But now, see what happens as consciousness evolves. By living the Holy Life this evolution of consciousness culminates in Pure Holistic Consciousness, that is, your isolative and separative, imperfectly functioning consciousness is transmuted into the divine Consciousness. The consciousness of me the ordinary, imperfect man, still at the sub-human stage, which is an exclusive consciousness, has now flowered out into the Perfected, all-inclusive, godly Consciousness, the Holistic Consciousness. All the Perfected Holy Ones, all the truly spiritual Teachers, realized this God-consciousness which functions in the context of Infinity and Eternity, and hence of Immortality, whereas we ordinary mortals are restricted to the context of finitude and temporality, and hence mortality.

Zarathushtra was probably the first great monotheistic Teacher, the Prophet sent by Ahura Mazda, to realize such Holistic Consciousness. I have quoted several of his affirmations of such realization in chapter 2 of my little book, Zarathushtra: The Transcendental Vision, and explained them as well as I could in other chapters. Zarathushtra, who realized Holistic Consciousness, stood on the supreme peak of human fulfilment. He was the Perfect Human. He was the very embodiment of asha. To me, that is the meaning of Asho Zarathushtra.

It is very difficult, if not impossible for the human brain to comprehend what is meant by, and implied in, the statement, “He was the very embodiment of asha”. Usually, we translate the word asha as order, truth, justice, the divine Law, Virtue, etc. Each of these words has a limited meaning for each brain — and there are more than 5,000 million brains in the world today. It is an astounding fact that each human being is different from every other person in the world. Correspondingly, the actual meaning and significance of order, truth, justice, etc. in each man’s brain will be different in some measure or other from the actual meaning and significance of truth or virtue, etc. in any and every person.

This is so in the finite and temporal context, the ordinary, worldly context of division and measurement and of all the dualities — more-less, pleasant-painful, beautiful-ugly, etc. But when one’s ordinary consciousness has evolved into Holistic Consciousness, one discovers that there is no division and measurement in the context of the Infinite and Eternal. Here, distance, position, direction, past, present, future, pleasure, pain, success, failure, good, bad, etc. have no meaning or manifestation whatsoever. This is not nihilistic doctrine. Let your brain be peaceful and silent, and let the feel of Transcendence permeate your whole being. In that state of blissful beatitude your inner consciousness will awake to the Transcendent Holy and you will experience for yourself the Transcendental meaning of asha, and it will be embodied in your whole being. You, like Zarathushtra, will become asho, although your brain will not comprehend that ashoi in thought or feeling or word. All our dictionary meanings and petty little concepts of asho vanish in the transcendent Holy Consciousness of a Zarathushtrian who has himself become the Golden Star — Zarathushtra the Asho.

A talk given by Phiroz Mehta at Zoroastrian House, Camden, London on 22^nd April 1979

How do we preserve our Faith?

The answer is very simple — by living the life, there is nothing else you can do. Supposing for instance a man is a very unhappy, miserable man, or he is a criminal or a sinner or something like that. If he were to give lectures about the life beautiful, the life perfect, do you think that what he says will influence the other person, the listener? It is what you are that matters, and if in your own being you are true to the Truth and the vision of the Truth as you see it, it will be such an influence around you without your having to say a word about it that it will interest the other person and make him enquire how, why is it that your features show that you are at peace, that you have realized something of superlative worth. It is because you are that, and that is what matters. The Faith is not merely preserved like a fossil in a museum, but it is a living power to influence for good everybody and everything around you. You may say, “But I don’t see the results of it.” It is not for me to see the results or to want to see the results. That is just personal vanity and personal egoism. “I want to see a result.” Why? Eternal God sees the result and knows the result, is that not good enough?

How can one concentrate on the meaning of every word of the prayer when one does not understand it?

Study! Learn the meanings, who is stopping you? No one, only your own laziness or your own disinclination or your own short-sightedness intellectually, and perhaps morally. So, study. If you really care for something, you know how you give all your energy to it, don’t you? If you are really in love with somebody, would you say, “Oh, I am too tired to go and see my beloved today.” You move heaven and earth! That is the way to do things.

How can one preserve the Zoroastrian community from dwindling?

This is more a Family Planning Association’s question! Live the Zarathushtrian life, live in the spirit of armaiti, that loving devotion in which one gives the whole of one’s being unreservedly to the partner. This has to be reciprocal, of course. Both must be like that, and let us see in the next 150 years what happens! I see hardly anybody smiles because we will not be alive in the next 150 years! But leave it to the Divine, to that Divine Creative Energy which knows just what it is about. And do remember, wheresoever a group of people, a nation, a culture fails in fulfilling at least sufficiently the trends of life which move all people towards their final culmination, then life in itself has no compunction in wiping out that particular species. Think of the dinosaurs. They had a long innings, 150 million years, and it will be wonderful if we can do the same as human beings, although, if the Earth, and the condition of the Earth remain what they are and are not tampered with by the folly, the greed, the violence and the stupidity of man, then we probably have just a couple of thousand million years in which to fulfil our functions.

You said about some beautiful phrases in our Sraosh Baj and Ahmai-raeshcha and also Hazanghrem.  Then why is it that our most common Kusti prayer has not incorporated these prayers instead of the Kem-na Mazda, Ahurmazd Khodae and Jasa Me Avanghe Mazda which we normally pray?

The ordinary Kusti prayer is surely specific to that purpose. The others are added on as and when required. There is nothing to prevent you from adding on the other prayers. All the Yashts, the Nyaeshes are full of the profoundest teachings, they are very wonderful and they will all help. The Kusti prayer is the affirmation of yourself as a member of this religious group, the Zarathushtrian group, that is what it is. It is your affirmation, your statement of fidelity to that to which you have given your free and willing consent.

I do pray my Kusti prayers and sometimes even the hard ones with a book of course, but I always feel in the latter case, especially when I pray the Gathas, my pronunciations are not correct though I do concentrate and try my best. Does this make any difference, in other words, does it matter?

This is why I feel it is very important to know the meanings. I suppose all Parsis, all Zarathushtrians, can read Gujarati. There are Gujarati translations of the whole of the Avestan Scriptures, Gathas included of course, and they are quite good translations. I myself have used the three volumes of Kanga in the Gujarati translations which my parents used and had. The date of publication shows that some were published shortly after I was born, but they were originally translated before I was born. They are very good translations, I find, comparing them with other translations. There are some translators who get the spirit of it. They get the spirit of it, and they themselves by living the life have the necessary insight to use the right phraseology. This is very important. The best we can do is that we can use words which are less misleading than the words of others. Those who have lived the life and have this spirit of armaiti, this loving devotion, they have the imagination to choose the right word. And so those translations are more valuable than the purely dry, intellectualist translation of those who have Ph.D. and all the rest of it after their names. So get good translations, not only in Gujarati but in other languages. Compare them. I myself, because of my training as a scientist in Cambridge, am accustomed to look at the different versions which have been produced by different translators. And then I choose the version which accords best with what has actually come through into my own inner consciousness through trying to live the life, that is the important thing. And finally the one which you must choose is the one which accords best with your own living experience and with your own insight, and keep your mind completely open. There is no end to the process of the growth of the mind. You take the lives of the great teachers themselves. Don’t think that at the age of 30 or 33 or 35 they reached perfection and then — full stop — they reached perfection and then they taught for the rest of their days the same old stuff. All you had to do was to put the penny in the slot, turn on the machine, and out it would come! Not at all. They themselves continuously kept growing, and this growing is an intensifying of the deeps of your consciousness. So there is no end to learning. One is everlastingly the learner, if one is earnest and sincere about it. So, good luck to you and all the best attend your efforts.

Zarathushtra does not enjoin self-renunciation like Buddha. He does not forbid the good things in life.  Is that correct please?

Let me start by disillusioning you about what the Buddha taught. The Buddha clearly taught the discipline of the sense-functions so that one did not fall into bondage either through attraction or through aversion. He also taught quite clearly that in the process of living the holy life, happiness in the true sense would always emerge quite naturally. As regards putting aside what we call the pleasures of life, is not mankind the slave of pleasure, the pleasure-drive, and is not this pleasure-drive to a considerable extent only an animal drive, unredeemed by the finer aspects of our humanity? If one is going to be enslaved by them, how can you pay attention, how can you have the intelligence and the power to perceive the deep and the true things which make for true human happiness and true fulfilment? And consider another thing. If living the religious life is important to you, would you not be prepared to naturally, not forcibly (at first you may have to compel yourself), but naturally to put aside whatsoever interferes with the truth that you seek? Take your great creative artists, your scientists, your philosophers, your philanthropists and so forth. When the urge for the better, the really good and wonderful fills their being, they devote all their energies to that and they put aside the unimportant things. This is the meaning, the true meaning of asceticism, not torturing the self. Let me quote something the Buddha said, “He who lives without harming or hurting himself, without harming or hurting anyone else, lives with the self become Brahman,” (the Supreme, the Absolute-All.) Just think of that! Without hurting yourself, without hurting anybody else. It is a case of whatever is the Divine urge in you (or if you haven’t got a Divine urge, whatever is the urge in you!), you will naturally devote yourself to that and put aside what interferes with it.

By Phiroz Mehta

Nature never repeats herself. There is a similarity due to type but there is no repetition in detail of the actual past. Nature has no corpses whatsoever. Everything is immediately transformed. Nature is perpetually alive.