If Artists don't plan, but create...

Dear George

I think the point here is that planning is a human activity precisely because our limitations force us to plan. If we were more intelligent and more physically versatile, we would not have to plan. I believe Clint's point that to limit Ahura Mazda to human characteristics is not only unfair, it is also evidence of a lack of imagination. So better then to assume that the dominant characteristic of Ahura Mazda is not to plan but to create. I can't find a single trace of a planning God anywhere in The Gathas, but Zarathustra is clearly obsessed with Ahura as being creative, which is why Ahura is so often referred to as Mazda (Ahura Mazda) and Zarathushtra is obsessed with CREATING WITH this divinity of his. The metaphor of "The Wise Maker" is tedious and deeply flawed. But a "creative maker" is an entirely different and much more Zoroastrian concept. That's my ten cents on the issue.

Ushta
Alexander

2009/11/10 Georgios



Dear Clint,
How can we be sure about A.M. not planning? To plan is human of course, and we use human languages and concepts in order to communicate with each other. Obviously human concepts may not be sufficient to describe A.M.
It seems to me that there are many people who think they know how A.M. functions. Science or philosophy are human creations and are limited to our knowledge and imagination. What was considered as science a few centuries ago may be nonsense today. We have to understand that the laws of the universe are not set at our convenience. What looks logical to us may not be true in science. Passing through a wall is unthinkable for us, but it happens in quantum physics. So applying experiences/ideas from our experience/logic/imagination to the universe or A.M. will certainly lead us to wrong conclusions.

George.


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> Reverend Mobedyar,
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> I know you're asking Alexander, but I just want to say something very brief. Ahura Mazda does not "plan". We make plans, we break plans, we create and fashion, we destroy. Whatever Ahura Mazda does is by AM's very nature much bigger, totally different, more interesting, and on a infinitely larger timeline than our words "planning" or "creating" can ever express.
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> Second of all, even humans do not have to have a design to create something. It is US, Zaneta, who discover patterns, it is our Good Minds that discover periodic tables and the Phi-spirals and all those gorgeous things because they are ISLANDS of order in a SEA of chaos and entropy and random events. Ahura Mazda is as much the latter as s/he is order and elegance.
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> I for one see blessings every time another Island in that Sea is discovered. I am blessed by beauty every time I see it, and by blessed, I mean that I am empowered to create, to work with others, to be more compassionate, to enjoy beauty, to communicate my little spark of the Good Mind to others. These Islands in the Sea are not Creations or Designs of Ahura Mazda, they are at one with Ahura Mazda's own Self, and the means by which the whole Universe is improvised and moved and created and sometimes even destroyed. Because these are at One with Ahura Mazda, they bless us too. They are signs of Ahura Mazda's presence in the Universe, not separate from Ahura Mazda, not creations of Ahura Mazda, but are those things which we speak of when we say the ancient prayers "And we worship your Body, Ahura Mazda".
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> --Clint