End of Days by Sylvia Browne

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 9th, 2022 in Stories

The late great reggae musician Bob Marley is generally credited with bringing the Rastafari movement to mainstream culture following his conversion to it in 1967. You’re probably more familiar with his music than you might think—the song for the television commercial “Come to Jamaica” that begins “One love, one heart” is a Bob Marley composition called “One Love.” In it are lyrics that beautifully capsulize the Rastafarian view of the end of days:

Let’s get together

to fight this Holy Armageddon,

so when the man comes

there will be no, no doom.

Zoroastrianism

It was around 8000 BC that a man named Zarathustra was born in an area of the world we now know as Iran. His followers are called Zoroastrians, and a legion of theological scholars considers Zoroastrianism to be the predecessor and core of contemporary world religions. With good reason, I might add.

Zarathustra is credited with being the first prophet to embrace and advocate the concept that there is one and only one God, or monotheism. His name for this one God, this Supreme Being, was Ahura Mazda, a combination of words that translate to “Lord Creator” and “Supremely Wise.” He also believed, several millennia before the birth of Jesus, that a messiah was coming who would be born to a virgin.

Zarathustra believed that Ahura Mazda, or God, created humankind with the freedom to choose throughout life between good and evil, and with the obligation to face the consequences of those choices. In other words, we humans are the cause of the good and the evil in our lives. No more blaming it on Ahura Mazda, and certainly no blaming it on an evil being of some kind—Zarathustra didn’t believe in Satan, or the devil.

He believed that our purpose in life is to participate in renewing the world as it progresses toward perfection. Just as the way to combat darkness is by spreading light, and the way to fight evil is by spreading goodness, the way to fight hatred is by spreading love and reflecting the essence of God that is our birthright. Each of us possesses the divine within ourselves, he preached, and it is our obligation to honor and act on our own divinity by respecting the natural and moral laws of the universe.

Asha is the fundamental law of the universe, the natural course and pattern of heavens, the four seasons, the reliable repetition of such phenomena as the tides, the setting of the sun, and the rising of the moon. Everything in physical creation is governed by that fundamental law, Ahura Mazda’s divine plan and order. To denigrate that law is to denigrate what Ahura Mazda created, which is to denigrate Ahura Mazda Himself.

The Zoroastrian concept of the battle between opposite forces on Earth isn’t limited to the classic good versus evil conflict. The battle of opposites that disrupts the order of Ahura Mazda’s creations, which is called druj—the ongoing battle of asha versus druj, in other words—extends to lies versus truth, chaos versus order, the destruction of the planet versus creation, love versus hate, war versus peace, and so on.

Zarathustra taught that when we leave life on Earth, our essence departs our body on the fourth day after death. If we’ve made good, God-centered choices throughout our lives, treating ourselves and others with love, compassion, and thoughtfulness, our essence goes to the House of Songs, often called the Realm of Light. If we’ve lived in opposition to the natural and moral laws of the universe Ahura Mazda created, our essence is destined for the Realm of Darkness and Separation. Zarathustra didn’t believe the Realm of Light and the Realm of Darkness and Separation are actual physical places but instead that they’re eternal states of either oneness with or separation from Ahura Mazda.