History of Zoroastrianism/Chapter 60
CHAPTER LX
PARSI THEOSOPHISTS
Inquiring minds seek a deeper meaning of life. At this period of transition, when the old practices seemed to have spent their force, and the younger generation was drifting towards indifference in religious matters, there were other forces at work which heralded the rise of a new class of dissenters. Those of a prosaic and matter-of-fact turn of mind in the community had steadily doubted the statements that did not admit of a rational justification, and refused to believe in anything mysterious and mystical in religion. But human life cannot altogether be stripped of mystery. Rationalism is not the whole of human nature. Besides, the state of doubts and disbeliefs that prevailed in the community could not last long. Man is essentially a religious being. He feels an inherent need in himself for some form of religious belief which would satisfy the yearnings of his spirit—that irrepressible heart-hunger of the human soul.
The Parsi priesthood, as custodians of the conscience of the community, zealously guarded and conserved the dogmatic teachings and traditions, but they were unable to work for the adaptation of the traditional material to the contemporary situation. They were incapable, at the time, of helping the community in its religious crisis. Persons who thought that the rationalism of the new school ignored an essential part of human nature when it discarded the emotional side of man, to which man was indebted for some of his noblest virtues, yearned for new light. If that light did not come from within, they would welcome it from without. At this juncture the Theosophical Society opened its propaganda in India, and a number of Parsis eagerly embraced the movement.
Parsi theosophists. In the early eighties of the last century the Parsi members of the Theosophical Society entered the arena of religious controversy and gave new zest to it. They became a potent factor in shaping the religious beliefs of a section of the community through their active propaganda. Hitherto ritual observances, theological dogmas, and ecclesiastical usages had occupied a most conspicuous place in the religious controversies. The Parsi theosophists introduced metaphysical themes such as the nature of Being, a personal or an impersonal God, creation or emanation, reincarnation, and such like for discussion. This is significant as an indication of a higher phase in religious polemics. They showed a strong tendency towards mysticism in religion. They did not flee from the sight and sound of man and withdrew themselves to the fastness of the jungle, nor did they mortify their flesh, but their code of ethics comprised the ascetic virtues, tempered by the spirit of the age.
Custodians of the only key to Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster and his disciples, the theosophical interpreters said, wrote in a mystic language which conveyed a double meaning. The exoteric, or surface meaning, was intended for the vulgar, and the esoteric, or inner meaning, was designed only for the initiates. The adepts of various periods were the ones who possessed the mysterious key to the chamber of hidden truths. The last of such Parsi adept was Azar Kaivan, who died at Patna in 1614. With his death this key was lost. Occult science alone, it was asserted, could explain and vindicate the allegorical teachings of Zoroaster. Providence had blessed the founders of the Theosophical Society with the possession of a master-key that opened the secret chambers of the hidden knowledge of all religions. The Zoroastrian theosophists applied this key to Zoroastrianism to unravel the mysteries of its exoteric teachings. They aimed at an adjustment of the fundamental Zoroastrian concept according to the standard philosophy of their society, which was an eclectic system drawing its materials mostly from Hinduism and Buddhism.
The theosophists summarily rejected the method of the philologist adopted in interpreting the sacred texts. In their zeal for discovering great truths buried under the seemingly simple texts, but alleged to be pregnant with deep meaning, these esoterics often invested legends and myths with a symbolic significance, and included much in the sphere of serious literature that could be relegated to the realm of poetry. They alleged that the philologists, being bound by the fetters of literalism in the interpretation of the sacred texts, generally took a statement at its face value and adhered to the surface meaning. The theosophists chose to lean upon the miraculous and mysterious, rather than to follow the recognized canons of the method of reasoning. Consequently, the sense of proportion, critical acumen, the historical sense, accurate thinking, and such preliminary requisites of modern scholarship became conspicuous by their absence in most of their interpretations. Flashes of vague thought came to be regarded as inspiration, and visions as verities.
Passage after passage in the Zoroastrian scriptures was explained to signify what it did not mean in the original. The following may be adduced as a specimen: The pastoral people in Ancient Iran had found a faithful sentinel in the dog, and that animal, as shown by the Avesta, occupied an exalted place among the Iranians from the earliest ages; three chapters of the Vendidad in fact were devoted to this indispensable companion of the household. All scholars in accord with the traditional interpretation have naturally taken these passages as the fragments of an old Iranian canine literature. But the theosophists branded this explanation as absurd, and discerned in the chapters an allegorical description of conscience and its workings. Space here precludes the citation of other examples of this kind.
When the linguists challenged such interpretation of the ancient texts, they were informed that their inability to reconcile themselves to the new esoteric explanations was due to the fact of not having yet sufficiently developed their spiritual faculties. They were dubbed 'mere philologists,' 'dry-as-dust' grammarians. Highly pungent bitterness was marked in the controversy carried on between the two parties. The theosophists in this controversy denounced the philologists, and the philologists denounced the theosophists.
Parsi theosophists as champions of the cause of orthodoxy. The advocacy on the part of the theosophists of the revival of the past, and their seeing in such a revival the sole panacea of communal ills, whether real or imaginary, their readiness to allege religious sanction for the time-hallowed customs, matched with their zeal for ritual, and their eagerness to vindicate the sacred ceremonies by giving strained allegorical interpretations to explain them, won for them the applause of the orthodox party, who cast in their lot with them. Inasmuch as the Parsi theosophists declared .that they were working to bring out the youth of the community from the trough of materialism, and endeavoring to defend Zoroastrianism against innovations of the reformers, they were regarded as the pillars of faith and the guardians of the edifice of ceremonialism.
Avestan prayers, however unintelligible, were declared the most efficacious owing to their occult significance. We have already seen the arguments advanced by the reformers against addressing to God prayers in a language unintelligible to the suppliant, and we have noted the discussion that followed. We now need only notice the part that the theosophists took in the controversy. The syllables composed in the Avestan texts, they averred, were so mysteriously adjusted to each other in the prayers, that they produced vibrations on the ethereal plane, when pronounced. The potency of such rhythmical sound was so great that, like every good thought that flashed out with strong occult force and sent forth a good "elemental," it created forms in the ethereal world, attracted good "elementals," and repelled evil ones. Every single sentence conveyed an occult meaning, and the prayers composed in the celestial tongue of the prophet and other seers had an unspeakable efficacy conducing to the welfare of the individual concerned, but their renderings into any modern vernacular would make them totally ineffectual as prayers.
Zoroastrianism in the light of theosophy. These followers of an eclectic philosophy, and interpreters of the divine scriptures through a claimed knowledge of occult and hidden meanings, applied the theosophic principles of explanation to the teachings of Zoroaster, and adapted them to the Zoroastrian theology. Such an interpretation, however, led them to credit the religion of Zoroaster with ideas that in no period of its religious history were ever included in its sphere.
When these theosophic interpreters of Zoroastrianism were reminded that the thoughts they claimed to read in the canonical Zoroastrian works were not there, they argued with a doubtful historical perspective that if they did not meet them in the plain words, in the authentic texts, it was because the twenty-one Nasks of the prophet had not been preserved. If the bulk of the Zoroastrian canon had not been irrevocably lost, they should undoubtedly have found such doctrines to be indissolubly associated with the cardinal texts of the Zoroastrian faith. Every Iranian student knows that the historical sources and records of the teachings of the prophet that were in vogue at any particular period of Zoroastrian history have not perished altogether. Something of every period, whether the Gathic, Avestan, Pahlavi, or the later periods, has fortunately survived the vandalism of the conquering hordes and the ravages of time, and consequently has come down to the present day. For instance, in the controversy regarding the rebirth theory, to which we shall advert below, the theosophic interpreters, having recourse to similar arguments, stated that we should have found the theory of transmigration of souls taught in the Zoroastrian works, if these had reached us intact. It might be pointed out, however, that the fragmentary works of all periods of Zoroastrian history have come down to us; they contain the authentic teachings on the life after death, but they all persistently and systematically speak of only one bodily life on the earth, and never once suggest the theory of rebirth.
Zrvan Akarana as an impersonal God in the theosophic light. The theosophists attempted a readjustment of the Zoroastrian doctrine of a personal God, or rather in accordance with their theory of an impersonal God. Personality, they alleged implied limitation and was a characteristic of the finite. A personal God meant that the godhead was a limited God, and therefore an incomplete God. In Zrvan Akarana, or Boundless Time, the Parsi theosophists saw this impersonal neuter being of whom nothing could be predicated. This supposititious being was the rootless root from which issued Ormazd. Ahriman was but Ormazd's manifested shadow. Zrvan Akarana, the primeval impersonal principle, according to their interpretation, was like a central fire from which all creation had emanated. The individual was only a vital spark, and his final resting-place was in it. Passionately loving the light, the moth finally immolated itself in the flame; in like manner the individual had to throw off the illusory shackles of personality and be merged in the Universal, the One. This doctrine is certainly not Zoroastrian, because through the whole history of the religion individuality is not an illusion. It is ever a stern fact. Personality is not an imperfection, but it is the highest expression of life, that ultimately strives for the divine. Not the losing of individuality and the loss of the personal self, and not the weakening of personality, but the gaining and strengthening of it, is the Zoroastrian ideal. This has been the truth taught by Zoroastrianism in the striving for the highest aims comprehensible to mankind from the remotest antiquity.
Zrvan was extolled above Ormazd, who was ranked by them as a mere manifestation of Time. The one was elevated by debasing the other. The personal God who could be loved and feared, who responded to the gentle aspirations of the human heart, was dethroned to make room for a monistic principle that might answer the stern canons of cold intellectualism, but which evaporated into an unthinkable abstraction and mercilessly left its hapless votaries without a word of solace or hope. Affection, love and devotion, however, can centre about some personality only. We find in the authoritative teachings of the Zoroastrian Church that Ormazd knows no peer, and he always sits supreme at the head of the divine hierarchy.
These modern votaries of Zrvan were, however, not to be confounded with the Zarvanite sect of old, which looked to Zrvan Akarana as a personality as much defined as Ormazd. We have already seen that, in postulating impersonated Time as the originator of Ormazd and Ahriman, the sect aimed at supplanting Zoroastrian dualism by monotheism, in order to save their religion from the so-called stigma of dualism. Not so the theosophists, who grafted this new feature on the pure teachings of Zoroaster. They did not personify Time, but reckoned this abstract principle of Time as higher than Ormazd himself, because, in common with all mystic schools, they held the idea of an impersonal God as the highest category of philosophical thought.
Zoroastrianism declared by the theosophic claim to be incomplete without the doctrine of transmigration of souls. From first to last Zoroastrianism, like Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, shows no sign of this theory of rebirth. But this dogma occupied a pre-eminent place among the theosophists, being, in fact, one of the most conspicuous characteristics of their doctrines. To teach man to attain liberation from the bondage of rebirth was the ultimate aim of their ethics. It was not regarded by the theosophists as one of the many solutions put forward by the human mind to solve the mysteries of the life after death, but as the only rational explanation that satisfied human instinct of justice, and the only solution of the anomalies in this world. They persuaded themselves that the theory was fast becoming a recognized truth in the West, and that, at no distant date, it would be hailed as an inexorable law of nature proved with scientific certitude. With a view to investing their statements with scriptural authority they tore one or two passages from their context, and basing their arguments on these, they declared that they had unearthed the theory from the labyrinth of Zoroastrianism. When the Dasturs and other Parsi scholars asserted, in accord with all Iranian scholars of the West, that in no period of the religious history of Iran was metempsychosis ever hinted at in the remotest form, and that the passages referred to had no bearing upon the question, they retorted that the scholarship of the scholars must be at fault, for so great a master as Zoroaster simply could not fail to have taught this fundamental truth.
But this was not all. Enthused by a zeal for the theory, they went a step further and alleged that Zoroaster himself was an Amshaspand incarnate. This is contrary to the spirit of Zoroastrianism. The sacred books speak of the prophet as the greatest of the mortals, the most brilliant among men, even as the star Tishtar is among the infinite stars,[1] and as the noblest soul whose ideal is a leaven of righteousness to humanity. He is the highest and the greatest ideal of human perfection, the very embodiment of piety. The Gathas give a distinctly visualized image of the personality of Zoroaster. His life is surrounded by a nimbus of miracles in the later period, and most extravagant legends are woven about his personality, but after all that the human language can sing in his praise, he is simply a man, and not an archangel incarnate. So was he during life, and so he is after death.
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These modern successors of the Parsi Yogists of the seventeenth century have caused several members of the community to drift towards a growing fondness for occult mystery. Many men and women, with or without higher education, are seen to-day running after any form of occultism that they come across. These continue to interpret and explain the sacred texts on the allegorical basis. With overweening presumption, common to the occultists of all ages and places, they claim to be the only correct interpreters of Zoroastrianism and are busy producing a novel type of Zoroastrian ideological literature.
- ↑ Yt. 8. 44.