Secret history Zarathustra Jiang

Here is the text in its original English, transcribed and formatted as requested:

We've done the Greeks and we've done the Israelites and today we discuss the Persians and today I introduce to you the most influential person who has ever lived and his name is Zarathustra. Okay. And Zarathustra will create the world's first great religion called Zoroastrianism. And this will lead to the rise of the world's first great empire called the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Okay. So to understand Zarathustra, let's go back and understand how we humans have traditionally understood the world.

Intuitively we've understood that the world is one of consciousness. The universe is conscious. It's constantly vibrating. These vibrations are infinite. And the lower that the vibrations go, the slower they are and therefore they give rise to matter. And that gives rise to humans. So we both inhabit the material universe but our minds inhabit the spiritual universe. And as a result when we vibrate as well our consciousness returns to the universe. We're in constant dialogue with the universe. Now this is hard to understand. So we've used metaphors or stories to explain this system. All right. So this is God. The God is called the monad or the one or noose. But there are different names for this God. And this God is perfect. The problem with perfection is that you lack imagination. You lack creativity. And that's why when God emanates, he created us. Humans. Why? Because we are material. We have bodies and therefore we are imperfect. What this means is that when we hit a wall, we feel pain. We can fall down. We can die. We can suffer. We can make mistakes. At the same time, it is through constantly making mistakes, disobedience, fallibility that we are able to be creative. And as a result both God and we are in the process of becoming—we are becoming into perfection, we are becoming into eternity and infinity, and so we are co-creators with God.

Now there are certain characteristics about the system that you have to remember. First of all, in the system we need to have free will, because only by having complete freedom can we be truly creative. If the monad is controlling us, then there can't be any creativity. It's all intentional. It's all planned. So free will is very important. Another very, very important idea is the individual. How the system works is that what matters is what happens inside of us. Because only us individually can give rise to creativity. And so it is our interactions with the monad that is important. Another way of saying this is using a metaphor: a candle. We are all mirrors surrounding this candle and the candle is reflected in us. So the monad is in us and we are all part of it together. So what happens is what happens to us individually.

Another very important part of this is eternity. Reincarnation. The idea here is that when you die, you just don't disappear. Your consciousness returns to the spirit world. Why? Because maybe in this world, you made a lot of mistakes. And because you made a lot of mistakes, you can't really appreciate all the pain you've caused. So when you return to the spirit world, then it's a time for you to reflect and understand your significance in this world. And so the idea is that if you've done a lot of good in this world, if you've been virtuous, you ascend to a higher plane. And if you did a lot of bad things, then you stay in the lower realm. And this is the idea of heaven and hell. Why? Because if you did a lot of good, first of all, you can appreciate all that you've done. You can be closer to the monad. If you've done a lot of bad, then you will see for yourself all the hurt you've caused in the world, and you will be further down from the monad.

So this is how intuitively we've understood the universe to work. When we're born, we're born almost with an intuitive understanding of this. The problem is that as our populations continue to grow, eventually we have war. And war gives rise to patriarchy and property. Why? Because how do you incentivize people to go fight? Well, you promise them, "This wife will be yours. You'll be the master of the household and whatever you win, whether it's gold or whatever, it will be yours forever." And so these three things—war, patriarchy, and property—are all interlinked. And this, you can argue, gives rise to the idea of capital. Remember when we last discussed the Bronze Age? The Bronze Age was the height of capital and therefore it was the height of war, slavery, corruption, violence, and evil in this world. And in this time there will emerge prophets, the poet prophets, who come and tell us that what we're doing is wrong. And we must remember who we came from originally. We must remember that we are part of the monad and that we're here to celebrate life, not to destroy life; to be creative, not to be destructive; to love, not to make war.

During the Bronze Age emerges a man named Zarathustra. He is a poet prophet, just like Homer and the Yahwists, and he is dealing with a situation where we've entered a system where war, patriarchy, and property are prevalent, and we can't imagine a world without these things. So now he has to create a new system. He has to present through his poetry new ideas that help us return to the monad. And so he creates the beginnings of a new world religion called Zoroastrianism. Let's go over the basic ideas. Remember that this is a polytheistic world where you fight for your god. And the gods don't really care about what's good and what's evil. All they care about is themselves. So you celebrate them, you make sacrifices to them. If you give them enough money, if you bribe them well enough, then you win wars. That's a system that we call polytheism.

So what Zarathustra does is that he reimagines the system and creates a new hierarchy where Ahura Mazda is the top God. You can call him a monad as well. For Zarathustra, Ahura Mazda is the Lord of Wisdom. It literally translates into "Lord of Wisdom" and he is represented by the idea of fire. What is Zoroastrianism in Chinese? It's "the religion of white fire." It's a religion of wisdom. And what he also says is that the war of heaven and hell is within us. There are two forces that tear at us, that divide us. The first is a force of *Asha*, the second is the force of *Druj*. These ideas are hard to translate, but Asha just means "truth" and Druj means "the lie." The Greeks really admired the Persians. And what they said about the Persians is that the Persians are good at three things: they're good at horse riding, they're good at archery, and they're good at telling the truth. The Persians find it abhorrent, hateful, to lie. So they're always telling the truth. But that's a very simplistic understanding. Telling the truth is not what Asha is. What Asha really is, is a system of virtue. By being virtuous, by doing good in the world, you become closer to Ahura Mazda. You become his representative on Earth.

To better understand this idea, I'm going to introduce to you another concept called the categorical imperative. Immanuel Kant—we don't know when Zarathustra lived, but he lived about 3,000 years ago. Immanuel Kant is from the 18th century, so he's closer to our time. And he introduces a concept called the categorical imperative. For him, the categorical imperative is the highest moral law, the highest moral good, which we all should strive for. And what I will show you is that it's very similar to the concept of Asha. There are three principles of the categorical imperative. The first, and most important, is the law of universality. What this idea states is: to know what is good, imagine this. Imagine that whatever you do, whatever you say, everyone in the world will immediately do as well. So if you get angry, everyone gets angry at the same time. If you are violent, everyone's violent at the same time. If you curse God, everyone curses God. Do you want to live in a world like that? Obviously not. So that is what the categorical imperative is: act, do, and think as though everything you do will be reflected throughout the universe and you are the universe itself.

This idea has been misunderstood as the "Golden Rule"—do unto others as others would do unto you. But actually, no, it's a much higher concept. The higher concept is: imagine that you are God yourself, and everything you do will be reflected throughout the universe. Then how would you behave? Well, you would behave with the highest virtue. Because you want to make the world a better place, because if you do bad things, people are going to do bad things to you. So that's the first idea. It's a very important idea. The second idea is free will. So whatever you do cannot be coerced. Whatever you do must be out of your own desire, your own will, your own volition, your own choice. Otherwise, it's wrong. I cannot make you do good. You should only want to do good by yourself. If you want to do evil, you should do evil because it's your choice. Even though it leads to a worse world, it's important to maintain the principle of free will and free choice.

Now, last is the idea of humans as the end. You have maybe heard the phrase "the means to an end," right? So, maybe I'm a king and I need to build a better world, so I need to start wars, conquer the world, so I need to sacrifice a billion human beings in order to create a perfect world. That may sound good in theory, but what Kant and Zarathustra would say is that's wrong because humans are the end unto themselves. Every life, every human life, is as valuable as all human life together. You cannot sacrifice one person for the sake of the others. That is fundamentally wrong. Do never do that. That can only lead you into hell.

So these three things together give us the concept of Asha. You can see immediately how complicated it is, but at the same time you can also understand how revolutionary it is. Because now Asha presents to us three new concepts that will revolutionize human history: the individual (what matters is what happens inside of you), free choice (don't ever feel as though you're being forced to do something, do something because you will it), and truth (why do you do this? Because the monad will know, because Ahura Mazda will know, because you will know). So what your family says, what your community says, what your nation says does not matter. Only what you feel in your heart matters. And let's introduce a new concept in human history: monotheism. And guess what, guys? Zoroastrianism will give birth to three new religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And this together is two to three point billion people on Earth. And that's why I say Zarathustra is the most important individual who has ever lived, because he will create the structure for monotheism.

Something else I want you to understand is that Zarathustra had a major impact on the Greeks, especially Greek philosophy. In fact, the Greeks didn't consider him just a poet. They considered him the first scientist, the first astronomer, the first philosopher, the first magician. The Greeks had reverence for him. And Plato will take a lot of his ideas and create a very powerful metaphor that helps us understand Asha better: the allegory of the cave.

So imagine this. Imagine that we are in a cave. We're all prisoners inside a cave. We are chained to the ground, so we can't ever get up, we can't even move our necks. We only stare at the wall in front of us. Now behind us is a fire, and this fire is projecting shadows onto the wall. And we give names to these shadows, and this is what we call reality. But it's a shadow reality. It's all fake, it's all false, it's all what we imagine it to be. One day, for whatever reason, one of us—the chains disappear, and so we stumble upwards out of the cave. And now we're suddenly in the light, right? We see the sun. The sun of course is Asha—truth, or Ahura Mazda—and we're blinded because our eyes are used to seeing the dark. We can't see, we feel nothing but pain for a long, long time. But over time, we start to see more clearly and we see the world is beautiful. We see the birds flying in the sky, we see the trees around us, we see the animals, and we're like, "This is beautiful. I found heaven. I found the truth. I found Asha. I have found Ahura Mazda. This is what life is really about."

But after some time you're like, "But this is not enough. I have found the truth, but the truth is not complete because I know there are my friends, my family, that are stuck inside the cave. Therefore, for me to fully achieve Asha, I must go down and tell them the truth. Tell them there is an Asha and we can all break through our chains, escape into the light, and see the truth for ourselves, and then we will be truly happy and free and wise." That's what Asha is. Asha is not just breaking through your chains and seeing the truth for yourself, but it's a responsibility to go and spread this virtue to everyone around you. If you see injustice, speak out. Another way of saying this is: let's use a metaphor, a choir. How does a choir work? Well, Ahura Mazda, the monad, he's singing a song. We have to sing along with him. If we do that, the world is harmonized, the world is perfect, the world is beautiful. But if most of us are out of tune, then we need to get into tune. So that's what Asha is. Asha is not just self-realization, self-truth; it is helping others see the truth for themselves. So if you yourself see the truth, you now have a responsibility to teach this truth to others. But the problem is of course if you go down and tell everyone, "Hey man, this world we're living in is a shadow world, it's a prison, we need to break our chains and escape into the real world," everyone's like, "You're crazy, man. Get out of here." And they're like, "No, no, no, we have to go." And they're like, "Okay, well then describe this world to us." And you're like, "Um, it's hard, it's kind of hard to describe." "Well, you're crazy then." So, that's Plato's allegory of the cave. It gives you a better understanding of the idea of Asha. If you move towards the truth, you're moving towards Asha. If you're moving away from Asha, you're moving towards the Druj.

So that's the basic premise of Zoroastrianism. This is the idea that Zarathustra brought to the world and will forever change the world. We'll go into the specific history next week, but first what I want to do this week is just go into his ideas. Zarathustra—we don't know when he lived, but we estimate anywhere between the year 2000 B.C.E. to about 1000 B.C.E. That's the Bronze Age, right? I suspect he lived towards the end of the Bronze Age. Why? Because when the Bronze Age is coming into its form, people are in love with capitalism. People want to get rich. But after the system matures, there's slavery, there's debt, there's corruption, there's misery, there's suffering, and so people want to hear another voice. Zarathustra himself was a priest and was disgusted by the corruption of priests, because remember: being a priest means being a teacher leading people into the light, leading people into Asha. But once the Bronze Age becomes more mature, then priests are corrupt. They want a lot of money for helping you achieve immortality. They sort of spread false teachings. They become very corrupt, and so Zarathustra becomes disgusted and he wanders around spreading his new message of Asha.

Now what's important to understand is that we don't know where Zarathustra worked specifically, but we suspect northern Iran. Why is this important? Because during the Bronze Age, the main centers of wealth were Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant. So this is more like a colony where there's a lot of mining going on. What's going on here is basically the most human suffering in the world. So imagine maybe the Congo, where they're using child slaves to dig for rare earths. It's a margin empire where war is a very common thing. Violence is a very common thing. People are being kidnapped and forced to work in the mines in order to get tin for the Bronze Age economy. As you can see, Zarathustra is about here, either northeast Iran or northwest Iran. And as I mentioned, the global economy is around here—this is where most of the wealth is. These people are poor, they're enslaved, and they're extremely violent.

Zarathustra comes and he's a poet prophet. He's a priest and he's singing songs to help people better understand the world around them. He's trying to remind them of who they really are. They really are parts of God. So he says, "Listen with your own ears, with a bright mind. Choose truth from false creed. Each person for his own self before the final judgment comes." So the idea of the individual: what matters is yourself. What you do, what your family does, what your clan does, what your tribe does—it does not matter. What matters is what *you* do. Because when you die, you will face Ahura Mazda, the final judgment. Not your family, but you yourself. And so what you must do is choose Asha, the truth. What is the truth? Being virtuous, because you yourself are virtue. He wrote in a language called Avestan and it's a beautiful language. If you are a Zoroastrian priest you can memorize all this, but I am not, and I don't want to butcher the language, but it's poetry, it's beautiful. "Asha is the best of all that is good, and Asha is happiness. Happiness belongs to the one who follows the righteous path for the sake of the best righteousness." So how do you know you're doing Asha? Because you are happy. Do you understand? The metaphor is: imagine that you live in a world of, like, fat people who don't exercise and all they do is watch TV, right? And but you decide to go and work out and you become more fit. How do you know you're on the right path? Because you feel happier about yourself. But the problem of course is that you lose all your friends. You lose all your family. That's why people don't do this. Not because they don't know the truth, but because they fear the truth.