Sense of Soul - Zoroastrianism Ancient Wisdom of Ahura Mazda

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Today on Sense of Soul we have Pablo Vazquez he is a scholar of religions, author, translator, international lecturer, and essayist, MA Religions of Asia and Africa alumnus from SOAS University of London where he affiliated with the Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies and graduate MDiv student at Starr King School for the Ministry. His dissertation at SOAS was a religious ethnography of modern Kurdish Zoroastrianism. Current main interests are Zoroastrianism, New Religious Movements, Esotericism, Pilgrimage (particularly in North America), and Comparative Theology. Pablo is the author of The Sacred Gathas of Zarathushtra & the Old Avestan Canowhere he sheds new light on these sacred texts of eternal wisdom in a way that makes them accessible to a modern audience. Visit his website and follow his journey.  http://www.mazdayasni.com www.senseofsoulpodcast.com

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, I have a special guest. He is a Zoroastrian.

He is also the author of the Sacred Gathas of Zarathustra and the Old Avestan Canon. If you don't know what that means, then stick around, because today we're going to be enlightened by Pablo Vasquez, who's going to share his modern translation of ancient wisdom with us. So please welcome Pablo. Hello. Hello. How are you today? I'm great. How are you doing? Doing pretty good. Glad to be here. Yes. I'm super excited to talk to you. I've been really looking forward to this conversation. Yes, so have I. I'm glad we were finally able to arrange a time to finally meet

and talk. I'm super excited to ask you some questions about the similarities. And I also grew up Catholic. Don't you have a little bit of a Catholic background? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I grew up Catholic in Latin America, for sure. Okay, where at? In Panama and Puerto Rico. Yeah, so I very much had that sort of like full Catholic, sort of Latin background and definitely developed from there forward for sure. But it always remains a slight part of me, you know, how it is for sure. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Whenever I lose something, I sure am praying to St. Anthony. Hey, if it works, it works, right?

Right. Last night, I had a dream. Oh, do tell. So my dream world is a huge part of my journey. I'm not really sure how it works, but I usually receive a lot of things I don't know in my dream. And then I find out, whoa, this is a thing. Or years later, it starts to make sense. So in the middle of the night, I woke up.

There was no room to think. I knew I was going to have you on. I think I was thinking a lot about some of this stuff before I went to sleep. And it was really important that I woke up and I wrote it down. There was a knowing that it was very important. And this all just happened. I mean, I just woke up not too long ago. So I haven't had

so much time to sit with it and think, but I feel like it was an allegory. So I'll read it too. A man who I thought was kind of like a teacher or rabbi or maybe like a Jesus, okay, wasn't specific though, was handing out like lumber, like wood to people in a line. And then another man who was like, I guess his friend had asked him, why are you giving them wood? And he answered, they will help build the temple. Then that same man who was very doubtful said, they're just going to steal the wood for their own. And the man answered and said, then he will not have made his own seat in the temple, but will sit upon wood that is not his own.

And then he asked the man, do you want some wood of your own? Oh, fascinating. Isn't it? Yeah, no, that's definitely interesting. And I look forward to your thoughts once you sit on it a bit more, for sure. Yeah. For me, what I received right away was because of my own journey, there's so much of what I have been told to believe. And it was really everybody else's wood.

That was the foundation of my beliefs, was everybody else's, what they told me to believe. And then on my journey, I've learned to build this for myself and to make it my own. And that is so important to be able to experience your truth. That's very insightful and excellent because not many people seem to realize how important it is to interrogate one's truth and where it leads them and sort of how their beliefs, their practices, their focuses, where it's taking them. Some people just hang on for the ride, you know, which can be rather dangerous, of course. I like that. Thank you for sharing, for sure. I had to because I just woke up to this and I felt like it was specific to our talk, to be honest. I felt like it needed to be shared. And so I'm not sure where we'll go with this and

how the history and theologies of Zoroastrians will merge with what I received in my dream, but I have a feeling that it will. I have a feeling it will too. And I'm curious to see where you find the connecting points. Those are always really fascinating to me. Yeah, I'm sure I will. I'm quite the seeker. I've become quite the seeker, I think because I never felt like I had the space to do so otherwise. I felt that my box was pretty confined to the beliefs that were deeply rooted. Actually, it's funny because my mom has been around during this journey through the Gnostic Gospels. I think she's come to love the idea of Sophia or a feminine aspect of God, which I'm very

curious to know what that looks like with the Zoroastrians. Is that how you say it? Zoroastrians? Yeah, Zoroastrians. Basically, a singular person who believes in the faith would be called a Zoroastrian. Plural is Zoroastrians, and the faith is known as Zoroastrianism. The native term for the faith is Mazda Yazna, which is from Old Avestan, which is one of the oldest forms of the sort of Indo-European and Indo-Iranian language, which is what modern Persian is based off. And Mazda Yasna itself means worshiper of wisdom or lover of wisdom as well. And it is very tied to the Greek word philosophia, which also basically means the same thing. And Zoroastrianism had a huge influence on early Greek philosophy, which helped build the concept of Sophia as well in this future Gnostic context. Because

Zoroastrianism dates from basically possibly around 2000 to 2500 BCE, making it one of the oldest continuously practiced religions in the world. And it's had an influence on various different religions, including on Gnosticism itself. So when we get to the concept of Sophia, you develop this interesting sort of like theological innovation, because in Zoroastrianism, wisdom is the ultimate point of worship and veneration. Mazda, which just means wisdom, is the highest divinity in Zoroastrianism. So the name Ahura Mazda, which is the full title of this divinity uh ahura means sort of lord or sovereign and thus uh the name ahura mazda can mean wise lord or sovereign wisdom and as such is both the manifestation of wisdom and the totality of wisdom ahura mazda was viewed as not being solely one gender

and in fact manifested into the world in what was known as the Amesha Spenta. These are sort of like the best way to declare them is sort of divine manifestations that are direct from Ahura Mazda and are divided into seven forms. And so whenever you hear about something like the god of the seven rays or a seven-fold god. Eons. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And so these divinities were divided into three female, three male, and one agendered. And so in this sort of sense, what you then develop is a god form that has the multiplicity of gender already built into it. And so Sophia and this idea of sort of feminine wisdom is already built into Zoroastrianism, especially when you see it towards some of the Amesha Spenta, for example, like Armaity, which is tied to sort of like holisticness and wholeness. And you also have the Yazata, which are – Yazata literally means those worthy of worship. And it's sort of any god out there, any spirit that is worth veneration. And one of the ones that the ancient Persians used to take on in Zoroastrianism was Ashi, which was this goddess of fortune, of blessing. And part of the fortune and blessing that she would bestow is knowledge, for sure. And this all comes because they believe that there is a light force that is permeating through all existence known as Asha. And Asha is what sustains reality as we know it.

And also brings enlightenment to those who follow the path of Asha enough. So yeah, exactly, exactly. And so in that case, wisdom and the gaining of wisdom and sort of the interrogation of wisdom is a very important part of Zoroastrianism, for sure. You know why I love that? Because it empowers me to know that it is something to be seeked. Absolutely. Zarathustra in the Gathas, for example, in my translation in the Sacred Gathas of Zarathustra in the Old Vestan Canon, Zarathustra states in one of the verses that one must basically seek out wisdom and knowledge wherever they may find it. So it's a call for all conscious beings to go out and collect, learn, interrogate all knowledge that they can come across. Find their philosophers.

Exactly. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Or like in the book of Thomas, it says, those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed, which I was. When they are disturbed, they will be marveled and reign over all. Excellent parallel you brought up there because those two lines definitely

work exactly in the same way. It's a call to go along this seeking path to basically throw oneself over the metaphorical abyss to try to find the knowledge and wisdom that will help sort of enlighten us and build us up into not just smarter beings, but better beings. Yes. And this is an individual inward journey. Absolutely. There is a communitarian element as well, in which Zoroastrianism recognizes that no one person is an island, really. arm is wounded, the whole body is technically wounded in that sense. And so if one person suffers, thus the whole community suffers as well. Sounds like Jesus, something he said too. Absolutely.

Well, the largest religion in his time was Zoroastrianism, actually. So it wouldn't be unlikely that he may have come across it as well. What happened? This was one of the largest. How do we not know? So basically, Zoroastrianism used to be so quintessentially important in the ancient world. You even see it in the infancy and nativity narrative of Jesus. Oh, I just got done reading that.

Yeah, the Magi who come to visit Jesus and the Magi themselves. So the term used in that text is Magoi, which refers to the Magi or the Magus, which they were the sort of priestly caste of the Persian empire of the Zoroastrian kings and queens of that time. And so the inclusion of the Magi as these sort of powerful priests. So Magi is also where we get the term magic from, especially viewed the Magi as masters of magic, astrology, astronomy, divination, and so forth, all dating back from Zarathustra, who was viewed to be sort of the founder and developer of magic. The inclusion of the Magi into the infancy narrative of Jesus was a way, a sort of way to legitimize the birth of what would be considered then later the Christian savior by attaching him with not just the largest religion at the time, but also with these concepts of revelation, enlightenment, magic, and so forth. That would later go on to influence how we view the conception of Jesus throughout time as well.

Was someone like Simon Magus, right? Isn't that also kind of, I mean, he was considered like a Magi, was he not? Yeah. So the development of Jesus in this sort of time, especially in these areas of border regions between the Persian Empire and Rome, there were a lot of Messiah-like or Messiah-claimant figures that develop alongside and parallel to Jesus. One of the most famous ones besides Simon Magus was Apollonius of Tyneia, also as well, who was himself a well-followed and well-respected figure. manichaeanism that developed from the prophet mani who came from persia uh yeah exactly all the isms were developing at this time

but to answer your previous question about what happened to zereshianism basically it was the most important theological spiritual and magical force at its time until it was conquered, until basically the Zoroastrian regions of the world, which is basically from the eastern Mediterranean to the border with China, east to west, and the modern-day Central Asian steppes all the way to northern India, this area was all conquered eventually in the 800s or so and further on by a new appearing religion, which was Islam. Islam had developed around this time and had spread forward rapidly in its new developing message and theologies, which became popular with a lot of people, in particular sort of ruling classes and the like. This led to persecutions. This led to movements of Zoroastrians. Large groups of Zoroastrians moved in particular to two areas. One to what is now today Gujarat in India. Many fled around the 900s to modern day Mumbai and basically developed the Parsi Zoroastrian community there, which still exists to this day.

It's one of the largest Zoroastrian communities in the world. And they mixed in with the local population, particularly with the Hindu population. And Zoroastrians have been a crucial part of India's history since then. And then another group went over to China, where in Western China, they mixed in with the local Taoist population and created a sort of Taoist Zoroastrian mix that existed until the Cultural Revolution. And then sadly, mostly we've lost contact with this sort of hybrid mixture. But yes, that's basically what happened to Zoroastrianism. There are about maybe at most now, anywhere between 100 to 200,000 Zoroastrians in the world right now, with a majority of them being in Iran, India, and North America. So they also do have a love for the elements I saw. I don't know if I read your book.

You know, I did read some of your book. I mean, it's really beautiful. And actually reading the Gathas, maybe that's what happened to me. You know, I've been reading them for the past few days preparing for you. So maybe that's what happened in my dream. I'm not really sure. Tell me about the magic behind the Gathas. So the Gathas are the oldest composition that we have in Zoroastrianism, thus making them one of the oldest spiritual metaphysical texts in all of human history.

They used to be recited completely orally for almost about 2,000 plus years before they began being written down in a special magical language script that was created specifically for the gothas and the rest of the Avestan texts. Oh, like a codex text. Exactly. Basically, the way it's written was that so priests and other ritualists could look at the text and know how to inflect their voice at certain points.

Yeah. Almost like music notes. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. This also fits with the idea because the Gathas are meant to be not just read, but also sung in ritual. Exactly. Tone is very important. And this ties to the metaphysical idea that Sosastrians don't particularly believe in heaven. What they believe

is that in the afterlife in particular, the divine ones, including those who live righteous lives, reside in the house of song. Well, they'll join sort of this celestial symphony to help basically compose the music of existence. So music and song is very important for sure. Oh my gosh, I love that. That's so interesting. It reminds me of King David and his lyre. Oh, absolutely. And actually, one of the most famous Zoroastrians, I would argue more famous than even Zoroaster

himself, Freddie Mercury of Queen, was very influenced by this idea of song and music as a spiritual concept as well. No wonder why I freaking love him so much. Well, same here for sure. Wow, that's fascinating. I'm just blown away. So hold on. Okay. So I have learned throughout this journey I've been on of seeking myself that yes, that resonance, that vibration is such a huge part of everything, you know, where your vibe is, you know, you know, what you're able to receive. And I feel like the

more that I was within certain vibrations, the more I was lighting up. Absolutely. Absolutely. So along with sound and the sort of, especially because a lot of modern Zoroastrians do think that sort of the vibratory notes in the recitation of certain mantras and prayers and everything helps connect them to nature. As you were speaking about regarding sort of veneration of the elements in the Gathas, particularly in this section known as the Yasnahabdangaydi was the original liturgy of the first Zoroastrian community. And what they do there is basically pay deference

and worship to the elements, to the waters who are personified as feminine, to the wind, to the earth, who is also personified as feminine, to the wind, to the earth, who is also personified as feminine, to fire, to basically the minerals, to the animal kingdom and nature in general, the trees. Basically, Zoroastrians believe that all natural elements are ensouled in some way or another, and thus should be treated with utmost respect and veneration. Water and fire became so essential in Zoroastrian worship that one of the colloquial names given to Zoroastrians was as fire worshipers. So the central idea of fire in Zoroastrians comes from the worship of a divinity known as Atar. Atar is supposed to represent the metaphysical nature of fire and is also the fire. When speaking about divinities in these ancient faiths, it's very

easy to have mysteries upon mysteries tied to them. And so with fire, it is sort of that way. Fire is viewed as pure. It elevates prayers along with its smoke towards the heavens. So Zoroastrians are called to pray in the presence of any light, which is viewed as being connected to fire in some sense. But fire isn't just, as we would call, sort of the physical fire, the physical atar, which you would find in almost any Zoroastrian temple. Fire is viewed as being multiple things. It can be electricity, it can be sort of, you know, the light of the sun and the moon and so forth. But in particular, Zoroastrianists place an emphasis on what's known as the inner fire, which burns within us unceasing. And this carries us through not just this life, but in the possibilities of any other lives as well, which burns to give us not just strength, but also increases in its purification of our souls,

the more we become enlightened. Well, that also reminds me of kind of like alchemy. And yeah, I was just actually, my friend asked me to do a session on her while she was sleeping. And I kept seeing a flame. This is just like three days ago. I kept seeing a flame. And so I woke up the next day and I was like, I pulled the book, The The Initiates Flame by Manly P. Hall. Oh yeah, yeah. And I found so much wisdom in there that really related directly to her. And so the flame has been coming up a lot. Of course you know Gnostics they talk about the divine spark within.

Absolutely. You know Sophia even being lost and then finding that flame or finding the divine spark within. Absolutely. But, you know, Sophia even being lost and then finding that flame or finding that divine spark within. The lesser Sophia is just Sophia. Yeah. So that's been mainly my study is the lesser Sophia. I think then the more you dive into the Gathas,

you'll find those connections for sure because there is definitely this sort of tie to the flame as a, as you know, a conduit of wisdom as well. And in metaphorical and literal terms, and also how one can use the inner fire to sort of, you know, burn away sort of metaphysical impurities and thus develop into an understanding that sort of transcends our basic ideas of viewing our lives, the world, existence in general. That's amazing. You know, this flame thing has just come up recently for me. It was not before. Oh, fascinating. Where it started was Margaret Storm.

She was an author in the 1940s, 50s. She wrote about Tesla. She knew Tesla. She wrote about his disciples. She wrote a lot about root races and like the seven flames. And at the very end of her book, though, her book is called Return of the Dove. But at the end of the book, she said she's going to follow up with another book called Flame of the Dove. But she never did because Margaret Storm went missing. The only place you'll find her is in the CIA files of Tesla. Her books actually were all purchased off the shelf by somebody, and all you'll find now is a copy of a copy. That's fascinating.

But the Flame of the Dove has really bothered me lately, and it's been coming up for like the past month. I've been searching for what this means, because I feel like since it never came into existence, I for some reason feel like it is now. The ties of wisdom and flames to winged figure that comes down and inhabits then this area right above the mind. And so thus then bringing down the blessing onto a person. However, it can also leave at any moment when you inhabit a sort of, when you begin to use the blessing for non-righteous means. But not just this, in the mythologies, there is talk of a great queen of the birds, the Simorgh, who then the Simorgh figure

is viewed to be wholly wise as one of the wisest beings to have ever existed. And so the great heroes and mystics of old Zoroastrianism would travel up the great holy mountain, which is Haihara, and they would climb Haihara and speak to the Samurg, who lived, who had its nest at the top to learn its ways to train under the Samorg to become enlightened and then thus leave the holy mountain, having learned from basically this wise bird who kept a sacred fire on this mountain as well. And some of the sort of great heroes and mystics would go up and take a piece of this fire after they had finished learning and bring it back to the temples, to their homes and their communities and so forth.

So there is definitely that connection of sort of flames, birds and wisdom for sure. That then continues because the very image that we're shown, especially sort of in Catholic iconography, is the idea of the Holy Spirit as a dove that comes basically right above the head. The nativity. Absolutely. With Joseph's staff. He comes out of his staff and lands on his head. Absolutely. Absolutely. And can trace an entire line of this all the way back to some of the earliest stories of Zoroastrianism. Yes. Wow. And also in Sumerian texts, they talk about the dove. Absolutely.

And I had so much synchronicity with the dove. There was a moment where I was out in my backyard and it just happened to be one of those days where I'm just sitting there and the moon, it's a new moon, like a waning or waxing moon. I'm not sure which one it was. And the sun, they're equal in my backyard, just aligned. And it was almost like the rays of the sun was like crowning the moon. You know, you could see this. I mean, it was gorgeous. And I didn't have to move my head.

And all of a sudden, I just had this knowing. I was like, I get it. You can't have one without the other. You know, you can't have light without dark, feminine without masculine, you masculine. And they were just like, I can't even give words to it. I actually did write about it. I threw up all over a page of paper because I couldn't stop writing about it. But what was so divine was in that moment, a white dove came above my head and circled. And it was the whitest dove that I've seen around here. What an experience to have, for sure.

Oh, yeah. Sharing that. I mean, I almost fell over. It was like, what are those moments? You know? I bet, yes. Yeah. You know, there's, you know, when you're able to be present, my backyard is like my sanctuary.

It like visually doesn't look like a sanctuary, but to me, birds especially, I feel like I'm a bird lady all the time because I have so many stories with the birds. But also, I've never really been a sun person. I've always been a moon person, but lately the sun has really been calling me. And so again, that flame energy, that actually doesn't feel like I have embodied much in my life. Does that make sense? It does make sense. Yeah, no, I get that fully. It's important to sort of embody all these elements in their totality. spent to these manifestations of the highest as not just guardians of different elements of existence, but also as personality traits of the highest divine that we must embody ourselves. And so part of that is that we must become one and also simultaneously protectors of, say, the animal kingdom, plants, the trees, the waters, fire, and so forth, and know how to

not control them, but work with them. Yeah, because you are one with them. Exactly, exactly. I love that. This sounds very Buddhist, but yet very Gnostic, which is funny, because reading the Gnostic Gospels, I was like, who the hell is this Jesus who sounds like a Buddhist Zen master? Well, like I said, I mean, Zoroastrianism has had an influence on almost every major religion you can name that has interacted with that area. I mean, there's this concept in academia, definitely, of the importance of the Silk Road in the development of so many different religious ideas and traditions. And right where Zoroastrianism developed was right in the middle of the Silk Road. Buddhism, actually, the reason Buddhism exists even as we have it nowadays,

is because of Zoroastrian kingdoms and communities that actually sponsored, supported, and helped protect the early Buddhist communities and helped translate their works and whatnot. This also developed in the sort of sense of like, I assume you're familiar with the concept of the Maitreya. And so the Maitreya is viewed to be as the coming Buddha, the next Buddha. And the Maitreya is directly modeled, even in name, after one of the most important divinities in Zoroastrianism, which is Mithra. And Mithra is where we get the concept of Mithras from and everything like that, and is viewed that Mithra, once again, going back to sort of ideas of fire, Mithra is tied to the idea of being the one who brings the light of the sun upon the world. So there is that sort of idea. And also Mithra is a divinity of compacts,

of agreement, of friendship, and of love. So there is a sort of tie also to the Maitreya of being also a Buddha of friendship, of love, of understanding, and of enlightenment. So there is definitely that heavy influence on there from Zoroastrianism. Wow, I just see so much of that. So is Zoroastrian almost like a founding religion, or at least foundation, like in my dream, like they were building with the wood yeah see this is what i thought you would make the connection to when you brought up that dream and everything because it is definitely i would consider zoroastrianism to be probably all over on the face everywhere

oh i have no doubt it is foundational tradition, the foundational metaphysical system of most of the world's major religions, of most of the world's magical traditions that developed in Asia, Europe, and possibly even after colonization in North America. The figure of Zoroaster can be seen all throughout Western philosophy, practices and beliefs, and esoteric developments can be found in Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, ancient Greek religion, Western philosophy, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and more so. And so it is incumbent, I would say, on anyone that wants to understand sort of the metaphysical truths and realities of our current beliefs and practices, even in what some would label as the sort of the new age movements, which these themselves were heavily influenced by writers who themselves were influenced by Zoroastrianism. Figures like Blavatsky, Crowley, Timothy Leary, so on and so forth. All these figures held Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism as very important to their understandings.

Helena, I had no idea who she was. She just landed in my lap in every which way. In fact, I often say if I ever felt like I had spiritual guidance, I felt like it was coming on strong with her. I mean, some of the earliest members and the founders like Blavatsky and Led Better and other types who were involved in the early creation of the Theosophical Society and Theosophy as a movement, when they set up in India, some of their earliest members and also some of the people that they learned from and trained under were themselves Zoroastrian priests and knowledgeable Zoroastrians as well. This even goes towards one of the most famous figures to come from India, Mahatma Gandhi. When he was a lawyer in London, he joined the Theosophical Society there and simultaneously learned Hinduism and interpretations of Hinduism from the Theosophists at the, basically, the sponsoring

and financial support of Dada Dab Nairoji, who was one of the major Zoroastrian figures at that time in the United Kingdom, one of the first Indians to serve in the Houses of Parliament at that time. And so you have a figure like Mahatma Gandhi who ended up becoming an important political, social, and spiritual influence on the world, receiving sort of this knowledge that has its basis in Zoroastrianism as well. Okay, so I'm seeing another theme

because you said that they helped Buddhists keep their space in the world. Is that right? Did you say that? Yes. Zoroastrians have always been protectors of wisdom, for sure. Okay. But that wasn't theirs.

You know, most people are like, oh, you don't believe what I believe. Why would I protect you? Or why would I help you? Right? Well, when we think about like a democracy or a government in some way, you know, having to be just and fair and also supportive, they seem like that was a big deal for them. Yes, yes. It really influenced one of the most important dynasties in sort of ancient history, which was the Achaemenids. The most famous figure of this is Cyrus the Great, who himself is listed in the Jewish Bible as a Messiah-like figure who helped liberate the Jews from the Babylonian captivity. And Cyrus and the other Achaemenid rulers, who all of them were Zoroastrian, had this idea of their empire shouldn't be one of brutality and

exploitation, but instead should be like a garden. And so each community, each religion, each land should be tended of as if they were the most fragile of roses and should be allowed to flourish and develop in their own ways under their protection and support, as long as they were not committing sort of what would be considered, you know, like anti-enlightenment, you know, unrighteous acts. So that's why you see them support sort of the early Jewish community, the Buddhist community, various different polytheistic and pagan communities as well, and would even go on to provide support for the development of Manichaeanism, the early Christians, and more so. And so even the term that we use for ideas of heaven, paradise, comes from the Persian term

paragiza, which actually means a well-kept garden. And so because it comes from this old conception of Achaemenid times of a well-kept garden, this idea of gardening as a spiritual practice would influence then how the empire was run as like a well-kept garden. And so people began viewing rule under the Achaemenids as being a sort of paradise in itself. Yeah. Can we get some of those in our government around here? Absolutely. That's so interesting. So I think at first I was thinking of just almost like monks or like just holy ones, almost like a Buddhist monk, right? Who they're not really messing with the governments or the powers to be. That exists as well. You know, the idea that we

have nowadays of the holy dervish that wanders around and sort of spreads wisdom and hangs out in caves on mountains and forests and the like. The dervish came out of the old Zoroastrian idea of the Darvish, which is basically the Darvishes were a community. They didn't give up food or shelter or anything like that, but they believed in a middle way in which not too much excess on either side. That's the life I try to live. Exactly. It's considered to I try to live. Exactly. It's considered to be the most righteous life.

One where there is not too much excess in riches and golds and fleeting pleasures and also not giving into the excesses of fasting or the excesses of deprivation or ignoring the beauty and pleasures of life. And so they would wander. Exactly. They would wander and they would learn from wherever they went and people would come seek them in forests and cities, wherever they were, to learn from them. And they would also, you know, mentioning sort of the Buddhists, they would go study sort of like in Buddhist communities or in Vedic communities and other locations and religions and traditions. And the whole idea was, unlike, say, the monk that hangs out in the desert and never leaves, these dervishes, these early dervishes were meant to go out, bring wisdom and

bring it back to the people and spread it to them so that they too would have an easier chance at enlightenment. That's my purpose. That's what I always say. It's a lovely thing. I'm gathering all of you amazing people so we can share wisdom with people. I love that. That's what I think. Actually, I think that's really what life is about. I think that's the purpose of our life. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Wow. That's so amazing. So first of all, I have to ask you, which I should have asked you at the beginning, who is the founder? And can you tell me a little bit about this man and was this a practice that was created by him or was he just the founding one that brought it out yeah so zarathustra uh

who's known in the in the west as zoraster he was a figure that lived sort of somewhere between probably 2000 to 2500 BC. He was born into sort of already a priestly mystical family. And he was born already into an existing religion. Mazda Yazda is an older religion than Zoroaster. But it was disparate. Some people had sort of lost the messages and everything, because Mazda Yadza, according to Zoroastrian theological speculations, is thousands of years older than Zarathustra himself. So when Zarathustra went to collect some water and engaged in what was known as this mystical meditation practice known as the Tushna Mate. And so the Tushna Mate is where one dives in and sort of surrounds themselves either with a specific sort of matter or with a situation. So it's sort of like an immersion meditation he did it by immersing himself in the waters of a

river and meditating under the water basically and sort of just picking up the sounds of the waters and the feelings and the energy of it all and thus was able to channel the enlightening messages of the gathas and communications with Ahura Mazda and other divinities this way. And then he went out, worked to spread his message with, of course, as with any such teacher, with great difficulty at first. But then people began listening to his message, and it started with members of his own clan and family. And then eventually, he was able to convince the king Vishtaspa about the righteousness of his message. And so this king sponsored his works.

And then Zoroastrianism grew. It grew first in the native regions of Zoroastrianism, which is today sort of areas that we would consider like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, so Central Asia, and spread south towards what is modern day Iran. And so, yeah, Zarathustra is viewed as a great reformer. He grabbed an already existing religion in which people were losing their way and sort of focused on these ideas of charity, enlightenment, seeking and spreading knowledge of community and fraternity, of love and understanding, but also of fighting against injustice and tyranny, sort of willful ignorance whenever and wherever possible, so that we can eventually reach what is known as the frascio caretti, which means the great renovation, the making perfect, which is Zoroastrians don't view their

highest divinity as being one that commands obedience or love or respect. Instead, he is viewed as a coworker, as a friend in the perfecting of existence, of making everything better. Ancient Zoroastrians used to greet themselves by grabbing each other's hands like this and saying Hamazor. Hamazor means of the same strength. It underlies sort of the connectivity of all people and things, eventually connecting them to the highest divinity, who is thus of the same strength as we are. And so the more enlightened we become, the stronger Ahura Mazda does get. And wisdom increases until we reach like a state of the frascia pareti, where things are made well, our darkest impulses are thus better controlled and channeled into proper fruition. So our destructive impulses are

brought into more creative levels uh instead of just used for destruction for destruction's sake and yeah and so this was the message that sadthustra preached and part of this was also finding out a way to not just liberate ourselves from this idea of an endless cycle of creation and destruction, but finding a way in which both could be subsumed into a greater metaphysical purpose. That just reminded me of Gnostic's too, you said this endless cycle. So do they believe that we keep returning here until we reach that point? So Zoroastrianists try not to speculate too much on whether we reincarnate or whether we are incarnated once. A lot of the faith is left up to personal wisdom and interpretation. But there are

some Zoroastrian communities in India that do believe that we return in cycles of reincarnation until the Fraschokreti. And there are some that believe that we have one incarnation in the physical realm, and then we continue on to our incarnation in the spiritual realm, where we continue to help others as sort of divinities ourselves. So it's not so much like the Gnostics and the purity and trying to stop the cycle of returning into this hell that we live on. Yeah, so Zoroastrians actually love existence. They just think that we've been trapped in sort of our own nonsense and illusions for too long. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

That we let the beauty around us decay and suffer. And we get denser and more matter than we do of that light, that flame. Exactly, exactly. And so to Aesir Ashton, the idea is not to be rid of matter, but to even liberate matter itself from the sort of illusions and darkness that have been attached to it. And thus to bring this sort of fire back this idea of trying to stop the endless cycle of destructive and decaying illusion, but it's not something that can be destroyed because destruction is part of us.

We create and we destroy, but it's more of bringing the balance back to that instead of letting our darker impulses sort of take over. Reminds me of the song to get back to that harmony. Absolutely. Harmony is essential. And so that's the main idea in Zoroastrianism, to rebuild that sort of cosmic harmony once more. I love this.

What a beautiful thing that has gone missing or untold to the world for so long. And how awesome are you for bringing it back? I often feel like sometimes I'm alone when it comes to me spreading the word of my own journey, which is very similar, but seeking and finding wisdom within. Absolutely. And in that is very similar, but seeking and finding wisdom within. Absolutely. You know, and in that is the sovereignty, right? Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Yeah. I mean, it's something that can never be taken from me. Yes. And that's important to always hold on to that for sure. Yeah, it's amazing. So why did you write this book and what is your hopes? You know, I really want people to read it. Yeah. So I found, especially because not only have I lived and explored and gotten my own levels of wisdom from this tradition, but it's also my, one of my main academic fields.

And one of the things that i noticed uh when reading translations of the gathas and the old divestin corpus was that uh so much of it was either dryly literal academic sort of stuff written in a english that's more suited for Victorian times, or it was too free verse, they forgot the message and meaning for the sake of the poetry and so forth. And so I wanted to find a good medium to that so that people not only could find reading this as accessible as possible, but without losing the meaning and obfuscating it in too much confusing jargon or unnecessary vocabulary. And so I looked at 25 plus different translations, learned the original language of Avestan, and basically got to work. I thought it was going

to be a 10-year project, but I never thought to myself, you know, there's going to be a time in which I'll have a few months in which the world is literally doing nothing. Who would ever think that? Yeah. Guess what? It happened to me. So it happened to all of us. So I was able to take that time to translate this text and worked day and night on it. Yeah. worked day and night on it yeah thankfully it came out and it was published through a Watkins book

imprint known as Mantra Books which was very lovely of them they worked very well with me in getting it out there and I'm a big big fan of not just the way that it's been received, but also in the way that it's been discussed sort of like by hosts like you and whenever I've done sort of lectures in person and everything like that, because I don't want people to just read this and say, oh, okay, this is just everything I've been looking for. I don't need to think anymore. I want people to look at this and grab this and say, wow, you know, there's so much I can learn here. There's so much I can interrogate. Time to find the connections and to search further.

Because even Zarathustra in that very text says, you know, your job isn't done. Your search for knowledge isn't over. You have to go further and keep searching. It's an endless quest. Actually, let me see if I pulled it. There was, I think it was one of the first in your book yasna 28 maybe not the first one but it says we plead now for the thought we plead now for the word we plead now for the deed all of which are uh eshavan zarathustra may the amish spenta welcome the gothas

oh eshavet gothas all reverence is due to you what i found was so crazy about this in the gospels through i think it's the trimorphic pertinoya. Are you familiar? Where it says that Sophia is the thought and Jesus was the word. Yes, yes, yes. So when I first start reading this and it says

we plead now for the thought we plead now for the word. I mean, I must have read that like 15 times over and over. I actually don't even think I went further because I was so, and that's what that is. I have found myself with so many different scriptures and I think everyone should. Don't just read it, receive it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. this is a book that could last you your whole life yes no definitely i find myself coming back to it consistently and learning new things because a lot of it is not just reading it literally one must always read between the

lines between the words and seek out new ways of understanding certain passages and whatnot, because I can assure you reading at one time, you will not get the totality of the wisdom that's definitely built into it. Right. And what else is so amazing? It is like that living word where you could read something one day and it means something and it means something totally different the next time you go back. Like once you moving up you know the ladder of wisdom jacob's ladder or whoever's and you know you start to get deeper you see so much more just in one sentence absolutely it's so amazing and trust me if you're saying that just in that one verse you're going to be seeing it so many different times throughout the text itself, for sure.

Yeah. No, I think it's very beautiful. I love this kind of stuff. I feel like, you know, these are the things, this is like the wisdom, you know, that I feel that has been kept from us. Definitely. kept from us and you know and that if you're open to receive it you know is actually the healing that you may need and that the world needs yeah no i fully agree i fully agree and that part of my goal was to definitely bring that out there into the open and make it accessible not just to sort of uh scholars behind paywalls or anything like that, but also fully to the

general public. Man, I can totally see why you've actually converted, right? Yes, exactly. Amazing. And I'm sure you know, you've studied a lot of different religions. So I continue studying for sure. It doesn't stop. I run into people all the time who are just like, oh, well, if you already chose, you know, your main faith or anything like that, you know, why do you keep studying? service to my own humanity to not actually learn more about one of the most crucial forces in human history, which is spirituality and religion for sure. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Pablo. It's been a pleasure to meet you. I just love what you're doing. You're 10 times, you know, what I was hoping for. So thank you so much. And I had, I was so excited. Well, it's been a pleasure to be here. So thank you for having me. It's been absolutely lovely, a great conversation for sure. Sure. Tell everybody where they can find your book and

if they want to follow you. Yeah, definitely. So the Sacred Gathas of zarathustra and the old divestin canon uh i know that's a mouthful but if you type that in uh with any major online bookseller or on amazon you can just type in gathas g-a-t-h-a-s so sacred gathas and you'll usually find it that way. And yeah, it's readily available. Most online booksellers and even in person in some places as well. If you want to follow any of my work, you can go to mazdayazni.com. That's M-A-Z-D-A-Y-A-S-N-I.com. And I post sort of my Zoroastrian research articles, videos, you can see videos of some speeches and lectures I've done as well. And yeah, so if you want to keep in touch with my work,

that's there as well. Awesome. I definitely will be. Thank you so much for what you're doing. It's beautiful. Thank you so much for what you're doing as well. All right. Nice to meet you. A pleasure. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com, where you can work with me one-on-one or help support Sons of Soul Podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.