Today, I attended a Parsi prayer-service for a local Parsi psychiatrist. He was recently diagnosed and is being treated for Acute Leukemia.
I had a chance, during lunch to talk with the officiating Parsi priest about Zoroastrianism and his (modern) views about the existence of God and life-after-death - a.k.a the soul. The individual is a part-time priest and a full-time environmental engineer in New Jersey. The Parsi priest gave me an interesting perspective. According to him, "to understand the issue of life-after-death and existence of a God, one needs to understand the language of religion and look at concepts in that context." He continued, "as an analogy to understand complex physics, one needs to understand the language of mathematics." The never-ending discussion we see on goanet (and elsewhere) may be often linked to this analogy that this Parsi priest has given. While we all write in English on goanet, we have a difficult time to read, understand and digest what is written; because the two individuals may not know the language of the subject; of which one is / has likely become an overnight expert. I also found it interesting that the prayer-service was for / by a psychiatrist. This branch of medicine comes closest to scientifically understand the perceptions of / by the mind. Neurology understands the organic working of the brain and nervous system, while psychiatry deals with neuro-cognition and cognitive-dissonance disorders of perceptions etc. Of course the two are overlapping fields. Regards, GL
