Understanding Existence

Zoromithrites struggle to understand the nature of existence so that they understand what it is they should be aiming for in life, and how exactly to go about it.

THE DANCE OF LIFE

The processes of life are patterns of energy continuously moving, if often repeating . In natural circumstances living beings are continually presented with situations of stress which demand their attention and stretch their abilities, followed by situations of comfort which allow them to relax and recover.

A good life does not come from achieving a permanent condition of comfort and idleness but by the right situations presenting themselves at the right time to give the greatest potential and stimulus for activity of different kinds as most suits a person at any particular time.

As a general rule it is important for living beings to have a regular pattern to the situations they face. This sets up corresponding patterns of expectation within a person and allows them for instance to prepare themselves in advance for future activity. Harverty is a Zoroastrian word for wholesomeness or health. Health of body and soul come from good experiences and in turn they enable future good experiences. Amorty is another Zoroastrian word for non-dyingness or immortality. Where a person receives good experiences they are not injured in body or soul and thus have no cause of decay which might lead them to die before their time.

HEALTH OF THE BODY

Of course the health of the body and the health of the soul are inextricably interlinked. A soul will be restricted by the body it inhabits, while a soul in disorder will have an impact on the body.

Zoromithrites strive for good bodily health. They seek to ingest food that is wholesome, with ample nutrients and free from toxins. They pay attention to the water they drink that it is free from harmful substances. They consider the air they breathe that it is free from harmful contaminants or disease-causing organisms beyond that which the body is able to cope with. They consider the kind of physical exercise they take and the emotional stress they are under. They try and avoid allowing the body to be physically assaulted beyond its ability to recover. They don’t normally accept to having foreign substances injected directly into the bloodstream.

Whether people are healthy depends much on the physical environment they are living in , the way that their food is produced and the kind of life that they lead. So Zoromithrites seek to create good systems of living where physical health comes naturally.

HEALTH & HAPPINESS OF THE SOUL

The soul is the true body of a person. It is a complex organism within which the spiritual energies of a person flow. The nature of the soul directly shapes how a person feels and acts. The Zoroastrian word for soul is Urvan or Ravan – a word which implies movement.

The flow of spiritual energy is what living is about. Where the spirit roams free then we are filled with purpose and happiness. Zoroastrians use the word Ushta (Light) to refer to this flow of the spirit. Ushta is often translated Radiant Happiness.

Whether the spirit flows free or not depends on the landscape it inhabits – the contours of the mind and soul. These contours are shaped over time in reaction to the experiences a person has.

Emotions are perhaps the most basic kind of spirits. They arise in us automatically in response to the situation one perceives oneself to be in. They serve an important function to energize a person to do what they need to do at a particular time. However they are only a rough and ready guide to action and sometimes it is best to overrule them. If emotional energies are aroused but not expressed then there is a potential cause for ill-health unless some other way is found to dissipate them.

Emotions arise in response to the situation that one is paying attention to. For them to work beneficially a person needs to give an appropriate degree of attention to different situations they face depending on their importance and to have an accurate mental picture of those situations. But if say they pay a lot of attention to something that doesn’t affect them or which they can’t do anything about or else they misunderstand what is going on then emotions will be aroused uselessly.

Emotional ill-health can be caused when the situation one perceives oneself to be in is not straightforward but sets up a conflicting or disordered reaction pattern. Perhaps different conflicting emotions are aroused, or else because of anxiety or otherwise emotions cannot be expressed. If emotions such as anxiety are aroused to an intensity beyond which a person can cope then the soul can be wounded. A wounded soul is likely to act in a distorted way in all future encounters with life, unless some way is found to heal the wound.

Healing of emotional wounds comes by receiving an antidotal energy – one that is the opposite of that which originally caused the wound. However a wounded person may not easily be open to receive healing energies – as they fear further wounding. This fear may be exaggerated but the risk of further wounding may still be real. Also there may not be anybody around them to help heal them. So the healing process depends on setting up an environment where wounded persons are likely to receive healing energies and not harmful ones, and where they can move step by step from a position of possible initial unreceptiveness to that of greater receptiveness.Emotions are not the only kind of spiritual energy. Whereas emotions are reactions to a situation, desires are wishes for a situation to occur that is not yet occurring. On the whole desires are not as automatic as emotions, although often they can be triggered off by circumstantial possibilities, or by the needs of the body or the soul.

When desires are aroused within a person then they reach out to make their wishes come true. Many of what are called ‘human needs’ have desires associated with them. The need for food can stimulate the desire for food – and thus the behaviour of going searching for food. The need for challenging circumstances to stretch a person can stimulate the desire to seek out adventure.

Beyond desires there are still other kind of spiritual energies – usually called ‘higher’ ones as they are less connected to the business of day to day life and may be more complex and refined. The soul can be energized and vibrate to a higher level as a result of engagement with a carefully crafted composition of music for instance. However whenever we are sufficiently relaxed and are subjected to patterns of stress and release in a rhythmic way it is likely that our soul will vibrate and the spirit will flow.

HEALTH OF SOULS IN ASSOCIATION

The health and happiness of individuals is largely shaped by the way that they come into interaction with other beings and the material world. Thus when considering how to improve the well-being of individual people it is necessary to consider the wider picture of the way a whole society is patterned.

We use the word Kasatra to refer to the pattern of settlement and activity of people, and to the conscious practice of shaping it.

To achieve a good life for all then the activities of each must contribute to the making of the collective pattern of the life of a society. The dynamic situation which each individual finds themselves in results from the action of others. How they react or act in the situations they encounter helps creates future situations for themselves and others. Those who are unconscious of reality will tend to react automatically to the situations they face. If they are lucky and the situations they face are suited to their needs then this may not be a problem. However if they are unlucky and situations are not suited to their needs then they will not be able to do anything about it.

Those who are conscious of reality are more able to influence the unfolding patterns of life than those who are unconscious. If some people in a population are conscious and others unconscious then the conscious will have the potential to shape the life experience and behaviour of the others.

Full consciousness or enlightenment is the same thing as full intellectual maturity or adulthood. It is something for people to strive for in life, even if the final goal is never completely attained.

ENCLOSURES

An enclosure is a space within which life processes can enfold autonomously without distortion or interference from outside activity. The existence of enclosures in a world allows a variety of patterns of life to develop independently. Where human living enclosures are relatively small compared to the population inhabiting them then it makes it easier for individuals to mentally grasp the whole picture of life within the enclosure and thus to shape it.

Enclosures are built with walls which are barriers to communication and action. These walls may well be made of physical material, but also can be built in people’s minds where they understand that some places or activities are off-limits to their attention or action. This may come from a conscious respect from the integrity of the life of others. Alternatively an enclosure may be brought into existence where a space is invisible to those outside it and their normal movements mean they don’t stumble into it.

HOLISTIC LIVING

Holistic living is living in consciousness of the whole system of life of which one is a part and being in a position to shape it. It is not easily possible for an individual to engage in holistic living on their own – as normally they wouldn’t be able to live without help from other people. Instead an association of people can try and engage in holistic living if they are able to secure territory that is sheltered from outside disruption.

Holistic living will only be a practicable possibility at a deep level for an association of people, where they live in a relatively small enclosure sheltered from outside pressures. Otherwise if the enclosure is very large (e.g. planet-sized) then the processes of life will likely be too complicated or difficult to see for holistic consciousness to develop in any degree of detail. Also any thing they try and do will likely be obstructed by the actions of others.

BUILDING A SOCIETY

A society is an association of people who have come to live interdependently with each other without necessarily having strong personal bonds. A society needs firstly territory over which it has sufficient control, with the physical resources for living. It needs a sufficiently agreed way of organizing itself and allocating different roles and responsibilities to different people. It needs ways of bringing up and educating the young so that they develop the characteristics necessary to make the society work. They need to be able to do the tasks required of them, while also being able to step outside them to see how things could be done better.A good social system will be flexible – so that to some extent people are educated to the tasks that need doing, but that also tasks are adapted to what people can best do and enjoy. A good pattern of living will provide opportunities for a range of different activities to stretch and delight the souls of those engaged. Some of these will have a focus on external requirements, others will focus on the needs of those engaged in the activity.

The pattern of the society needs to be one that sustains itself. In particular there need to be sufficient people in a position to keep the society on track and working for the general benefit. A society is weakened if too much of its economic output is diverted by criminals to their private ends. This especially becomes a problem where the criminals use their ill gotten gains to influence the conduct of the government. In the worst case ruthless criminals can take complete control of a society and replace it with a prison- work-camp or slave plantation.

WIZARDS

A wizard is a professional wise person. Wizards typically have a broad outlook on life and are able to apply their wisdom to practical effect. Good Wizards are often especially persecuted by those who want to dominate a population for their own benefit, so other good people should assist them if the occasion arises.

CULTURE

Culture are the patterns of human life which are potentially transmissible from one person to another. They are the good patterns of thinking and acting which enable individuals to interact happily with each other and their environment. Culture is the programme which sets up and maintains ongoing patterns of collective life.

However it is difficult to develop such good culture. Typically only some people are able to develop new patterns at all and even then they usually only make small adaptations to what has gone before. Thus it takes a lot of time and effort for a community of people to develop good culture. Thus it is important that existing culture is kept in remembrance and not allowed to disappear entirely. People and their predicament vary over time and the mainstream culture needs to adapt accordingly . However situations that have occurred in the past can easily re-occur in the future. Thus cultural patterns that have been found valuable once, may well have a future use, even if there relevance is not apparent to the current generation. So strenuous efforts should be made to keep the full richness of a community’s cultural heritage in remembrance by some part of the community, even if it is of no visible practical application at the time. Cultural patterns vary in their nature and the way they are transmitted.Some are relatively robust – because they can be encoded on a written page or because people are always very keen to keep them alive. Other cultural patterns are more fragile – perhaps because only a small proportion of a population has an interest in them or they rely on direct person to person transmission, and there is a generation that doesn’t see the value of them, thus breaking the chain.

Stories are an important form of culture. They paint a landscape populated by particular kinds of beings with particular goals and motives, who try to do particular kinds of things, and end up with particular kinds of results. The idea is that when a story is told we should see parallels in our own existence and thus find our own life illuminated. Good stories are engaging to the listener and have meaning on several levels. Good stories are easily passed on from one teller to another and the wisdom contained within goes with them – without every storyteller necessarily having to understand the full meaning of them themselves.

Rituals are another form of culture. In origin a ritual is the symbolic acting out of a drama , perhaps to strengthen people’s sense of how society or the world functions or else perhaps to provide release for energies that cannot easily be released in daily life, or else as a self-contained community activity in its own right.

The way people associate with each other in general is shaped by culture. The cultural patterns people are exposed to, and the status or degree of attention given to them, will influence what they think of as acceptable or normal behaviour and what is not. For instance people may be given different roles or stations in society which shape the expectations that others have of how they will behave and thus their own sense of how they should conduct their lives and relate to others.Culture will shape what are seen as normal or acceptable things to think or to talk about in different kinds of situations with different kinds of people. Cultural patterns may be developed under favourably conditions – where innovation is encouraged and prominent developers and promoters of culture are motivated by desire to increase the general well-being. However less favourable conditions are where the ruling authority wants to keep a tight control over cultural patterns and is able to reach into every part of a society in order to ensure this happens.

PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy is the practice of making sense of the underlying patterns of the world. The Sophist Way prepares us to do this efficiently, but actually doing it is Philosophy.

SCIENCE

Science is a practice of natural philosophy which emphasizes the importance of making careful observations about the world. A scientist may create special circumstances in the world (“a scientific experiment”) for the purposes of observing phenomena which wouldn’t occur in the normal course of things.

The wizards of the ancient Iranians and other peoples would make careful observations of the movement of the planets and stars apparently continuously over a period of many centuries. Only by such long-term and continuous careful work would some aspects of the order of the cosmos reveal themselves.

It is said that the flame of the scientific method was preserved by the Persian sufis at a time when the European lands to the west went into a dark age of authoritarian rule of a few over a superstitious majority. However some westerners such as Roger Bacon studied with the eastern sufis and introduced the scientific method to the west.

THE WORLD ORDER

The boundaries of a community come where channels of influence stop.

Where an association of people are attending to each other, but not to those outside then we can say we have a closed community.

However in our current period of history with our current state of technology, it is possible for people anywhere on the globe to gain the attention of others anywhere else.

And in practice this is happening more and more as previously closed communities and societies have become open to be influenced by people who are living remotely from them.

In our age the whole of planet Earth acts as a single enclosure in space as on this planet it is quite difficult to create smaller enclosures which are genuinely self-contained - self- supporting and self-governing.

GOOD WORLD ORDER

Conceptual approaches to improving the order of things need to take this whole-earth view to have success. Thus a religious movement interested in social change needs to think and act on a global scale to be likely of having any effective lasting impact. It can do this by preserving and strengthening the Global Humanah – the Global Good Mind – which can be seen as the life-supporting aspects of all the individual minds of the world imagined together as a single collective being.

The activity of supporting Humanah can be explained in three aspects:

1. The preservation of the practice of good thinking and the record of the wisdom traditions of the world in multiple sheltered autonomous enclosures which are protected from the momentary whims of any external ruling authority.

2. The encouragement of the good mind among the general population.

3. The encouragement of the good mind among those who govern the affairs of the world.

October 2009 CE / 4009 HE