PART TWO: ISAIAH TO ZHU XI
The Romance of the Soul
Chapter 5. Sacrifice, Soul, Saviour: “the Spiritual Breakthrough”
Sacrifice
“Of all the beliefs and practices in ancient religion, sacrifice – both animal and human, and even of kings – is the most striking, certainly from a modern standpoint.” (page 99)
“A sacrifice is, at its most basic, two things. It is a gift and it is the link between man and the spiritual world. It is an attempt either to coerce the gods, so they will behave as we wish them to behave, or to propitiate them, to defuse their anger, to get, get rid of, to atone…Did ancient people see sacrifice as cruel?” (page 100)
Soul
“If one accepts the existence of souls, it follows that there is a need for a place where they can go, after death. This raises the question of where a whole constellation of associated ideas came from – the afterlife, resurrection, and heaven and hell.” (page 104-105)
Saviour
“The final – and conceivable the most important – aspect of this constellation of core beliefs is the simple fact that, around the time of the rise of the first great civilizations, the main gods changed sex, as the Great Goddess, or a raft of smaller goddesses, were demoted and male gods took their place.” (page 106-107)
“Man, as we know him today, came into being.”
- Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History
“Jaspers saw man as somehow becoming ‘more human’ at this time. He says that reflection and philosophy appeared, that there was a ‘spiritual breakthrough’ and that the Chinese, Indians, Iranians, Jews and Greeks between them created modern psychology, in which man’s relation to God is as an individual seeking an ‘inner´ goal rather that having a relationship with a number of gods ‘out there’, in the skies, in the landscape around, or among our ancestors. Not all faiths created were, strictly speaking, monotheisms, but they did all centre around one individual, whether that man (always a man) was a god, or the person through whom god spoke, or else someone who had a particular vision or approach to life which appealed to vast numbers of people. Arguably, this is the most momentous change in the history of ideas.” (page 107-108)
“The crucial importance – and the mystery – of Zoroastrianism lies partly in its introduction of abstract concepts as gods, and partly in its other features, some of which find echoes in Buddhism and Confucianism, and some of which appear to have helped form Judaism, and therefore Christianity and Islam. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Zarathustra was the source of the ‘profoundest error in human history – namely the invention of morality’. Zarathustra envisaged three types of soul: the urvany, that part of the individual which survived the body’s death; fravashi, who ‘live the earth since the time of their death’; and daena, the conscience. Either way, Zoroastrianism may well have been the fundamental set of ideas that helped shape the world’s major faiths as we know them today.” (page 113)
“This is a crucial aspect of Zoroastrianism: man is invited to follow the path of the Lord, but he is free in that choice – he is not a slave or a servant.” (page 114)
“Like the Buddha, like Plato and like Aristotle, he (Confucius) looked beyond the gods, and taught that the answer to an ethical life lies within man himself, that universal order and harmony can only be achieved if people show a wider sense of community and obligation than their own and their family’s self-interest.” (page 120)
“In all cases, then, we have, centering on the sixth century BC, but extending 150 years either side, a turning away from a pantheon of many traditional ‘little’ gods, and a great turning inward, the emphasis put on man himself, his own psychology, his moral sense or conscience, his intuition and his individuality…They (the new ethical systems of the Axial Age), as we shall see, developed the idea of one true God, and that history has a direction, whereas with the Greeks and in particular with Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, the gods stood in a different relation to humans as compared with the West. In the East the divine and the human came much closer together, the Eastern religions being commonly more inclined to mysticism than Western ones are. In the West, more than the East, the yearning to become divine is sacrilege.” (page 122)
“Of all the beliefs and practices in ancient religion, sacrifice – both animal and human, and even of kings – is the most striking, certainly from a modern standpoint.” (page 99)
“A sacrifice is, at its most basic, two things. It is a gift and it is the link between man and the spiritual world. It is an attempt either to coerce the gods, so they will behave as we wish them to behave, or to propitiate them, to defuse their anger, to get, get rid of, to atone…Did ancient people see sacrifice as cruel?” (page 100)
Soul
“If one accepts the existence of souls, it follows that there is a need for a place where they can go, after death. This raises the question of where a whole constellation of associated ideas came from – the afterlife, resurrection, and heaven and hell.” (page 104-105)
Saviour
“The final – and conceivable the most important – aspect of this constellation of core beliefs is the simple fact that, around the time of the rise of the first great civilizations, the main gods changed sex, as the Great Goddess, or a raft of smaller goddesses, were demoted and male gods took their place.” (page 106-107)
“Man, as we know him today, came into being.”
- Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History
“Jaspers saw man as somehow becoming ‘more human’ at this time. He says that reflection and philosophy appeared, that there was a ‘spiritual breakthrough’ and that the Chinese, Indians, Iranians, Jews and Greeks between them created modern psychology, in which man’s relation to God is as an individual seeking an ‘inner´ goal rather that having a relationship with a number of gods ‘out there’, in the skies, in the landscape around, or among our ancestors. Not all faiths created were, strictly speaking, monotheisms, but they did all centre around one individual, whether that man (always a man) was a god, or the person through whom god spoke, or else someone who had a particular vision or approach to life which appealed to vast numbers of people. Arguably, this is the most momentous change in the history of ideas.” (page 107-108)
“The crucial importance – and the mystery – of Zoroastrianism lies partly in its introduction of abstract concepts as gods, and partly in its other features, some of which find echoes in Buddhism and Confucianism, and some of which appear to have helped form Judaism, and therefore Christianity and Islam. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Zarathustra was the source of the ‘profoundest error in human history – namely the invention of morality’. Zarathustra envisaged three types of soul: the urvany, that part of the individual which survived the body’s death; fravashi, who ‘live the earth since the time of their death’; and daena, the conscience. Either way, Zoroastrianism may well have been the fundamental set of ideas that helped shape the world’s major faiths as we know them today.” (page 113)
“This is a crucial aspect of Zoroastrianism: man is invited to follow the path of the Lord, but he is free in that choice – he is not a slave or a servant.” (page 114)
“Like the Buddha, like Plato and like Aristotle, he (Confucius) looked beyond the gods, and taught that the answer to an ethical life lies within man himself, that universal order and harmony can only be achieved if people show a wider sense of community and obligation than their own and their family’s self-interest.” (page 120)
“In all cases, then, we have, centering on the sixth century BC, but extending 150 years either side, a turning away from a pantheon of many traditional ‘little’ gods, and a great turning inward, the emphasis put on man himself, his own psychology, his moral sense or conscience, his intuition and his individuality…They (the new ethical systems of the Axial Age), as we shall see, developed the idea of one true God, and that history has a direction, whereas with the Greeks and in particular with Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, the gods stood in a different relation to humans as compared with the West. In the East the divine and the human came much closer together, the Eastern religions being commonly more inclined to mysticism than Western ones are. In the West, more than the East, the yearning to become divine is sacrilege.” (page 122)