Robert Charles Zaehner
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/* Zaehner Bibliography */
'''Robert Charles Zaehner''' ([[1913]] - [[1974]]) was a British academic who specialised in [[Eastern religions]]. He was also an intelligence officer.
==Life==
Born April 8th 1913 in Sevenoaks, [[Kent]], the son of [[Switzerland|Swiss]] immigrants, Zaehner was educated nearby at [[Tonbridge School]]. Later admitted to [[Christ Church, Oxford]], he studied [[Greek language|Greek]], [[Latin language|Latin]], [[Persian language|Persian]], and [[Avestan language|Avestan]], gaining first class honours in Oriental Languages. In [[1936]]–[[1937|37]] he studied [[Pahlavi]] with Sir [[Harold Bailey]] at [[Cambridge]], where he began work on his ''Zurvan, a [[Zoroastrian]] Dilemma''. During [[World War II]] he served starting in 1943 as a British intelligence officer at the [[United Kingdom|British]] [[Embassy]] in [[Tehran]]; thereafter he filled a diplomatic role there until 1947. It was in Iran that he became a [[Roman Catholic]].<ref>See below at ''External Link'', the "Gifford Lecture ''Biography''."</ref>
Back in Britain he pursued his academic research while also working as an [[MI6]] officer. During 1949 he was stationed in [[Malta]] for the training of anti-Communist Albanians. In [[1950]] he secured appointment as Lecturer in [[Persian literature|Persian]] at [[Oxford University]]. He returned briefly to Iran to perform government service. Back at Oxford in [[1952]] he was elected ''Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics''. He served in this academic post until his death in 1974. He delivered the [[Gifford Lectures]], 1967-1969.<ref>See below at ''External Link'', the "Gifford Lecture ''Biography''."</ref>
When in Tehran during [[1951]], he held the rank of [[Counsellor]] for a period of one year. In fact, he continued as an [[MI6]] officer, now in an effort to protect [[Shah Reza Pahlavi]]'s hold on the [[Peacock Throne]] from the republican, left-leaning Premier of Iran, [[Mohammed Mossadegh]]. He also was assigned to preserve Iran's oil production for a British government-controlled entity, the [[Anglo-Iranian Oil Company]]. In the 1960s, [[MI5]] [[counterintelligence]] officer [[Peter Wright]] questioned Zaehner about allegations that he had been a spy for the [[Soviet Union]], harming British intelligence operations in [[Iran]] and [[Albania]] during the period following the [[World War II|War]]. Wright wrote in his 1987 book ''[[Spycatcher]]'' that Zaehner's denials had convinced him that the Oxford don had remained loyal to Britain.<ref>Peter Wright with Paul Greengrass, ''Spycatcher'' (Toronto: Stoddart 1987).</ref>
He died on November 24th 1974. He never married.
==Academic works==
His reputation rests primarily on his studies of [[Zoroastrianism]], notably his 1955 book, ''[[Zurvan]], a Zoroastrian dilemma'', an original discussion of the later Zurvanite deviation from the reigning dualist orthodoxy (probably the original Zoroastrian doctrine). Zaehner also wrote the more accessible ''The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism'' (1961), which explores the era of the founding of the religion by its prophet (for whom Zaehner gives traditional sixth century dates), and later its decline, when there arose the doctrines of the ''Zurvan i Akanarak'' [Infinite Time].<ref>Zaehner, ''Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism'' (New York: Putnam 1961) at 33; 181.</ref> Facets of his interpretation of Zoroastrian religious history are novel.<ref>Sometimes Zaehner will differs with, e.g., [[Mary Boyce]], i.e., for discounting the [[Parthia]]n period, as not known to be authentically Zoroastrian. Compare: her ''Zoroastrians. Their Religious Beliefs and Practices'' (1979, 1985) at 80-82; and, Zaehner, ''Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism'' (1961) at 22, 175. Boyce also favors an earlier dating (1400 to 1000 B.C.) for the prophet [[Zoroaster|Zarathustra]] in her ''A History of Zoroastrianism'' (Leiden/Köln: E.J.Brill 1975) at 190.</ref>
Zaehner wrote extensively on [[comparative religion]],<ref>He focused primarily on Hinduism and Islam. E.g., in ''The Comparison of Religions'' (1958). Yet he demonstrated wide learning across many areas, e.g., in his ''Christianity and other Religions'' (1964).</ref> as well as on [[mysticism]]. He criticized the simple idea of the mystical unity of all religions, basing his contrary ideas and proposals on accepted texts which describe the experience of mystics from different traditions, and their interpretive theology.<ref>E.g., Zaehner, ''Mysticism. Sacred and Profane'' (Oxford Univ. 1957, 1961) at 168.</ref><ref>Zaehner, ''Hindu and Muslim Mysticism'' (Univ.of London 1960, reprint 1969) at vii-viii.</ref> In his book comparing the mystical literature and practice of [[Hinduism]] and [[Islam]], he began by describing and discussing four different types of mysticism found in the history of the Hindu tradition, and a fifth from [[Buddhism]].<ref>Zaehner, ''Hindu and Muslim Mysticism'' (1960, 1969) at 6,, in connection with S. N. Dasgupta, ''A History of Indian Philosophy'' (Cambridge 1951), and ''Hindu Mysticism'' (Chicago 1927).</ref> During the 1940s which he spent in [[Iran]] he had returned to the Christian faith, converting to [[Roman Catholic Church|Catholicism]]; accordingly, he also published several comparative works expressly from that perspective.
Zaehner gave the [[Gifford Lectures]] during the years 1967-1969. In these sessions he presented a grand historical overview of how the different religions have nurtured and interpenetrated each other, with an historically obfuscated result that neighboring religions would develop the other's theological insights, as well as employ the other's distinctions to accent their own doctrines. Zaehner also provided a suggestive commentary.<ref>The Lectures were later published by Zaehner as ''Concordant Discord. The Interdependence of Faiths'' (Oxford Univ. 1970).</ref>
==Popular Works==
Like [[Aldous Huxley]] he had taken [[mescalin]], but he came to a different conclusion. In his 1957 book ''Mysticism. [[Sacred and Profane]]. An Inquiry into some Varieties of Praeternatural Experience'', he aims to uphold a distinction between monism on the one hand and theistic mysticism on the other. In part he relies on the personal experience of [[Martin Buber]] (Preface). He thus sets himself against Huxley's idea of the [[Perennial Philosophy]].
In his ''Our Savage God'' (1974), especially in his essay "Rot in the Clockwork Orange" at pages 19-73, he argued against aspects of an oriental monism which he saw as leading logically to the excesses not only of [[Timothy Leary]], or of [[Aleister Crowley]], but ultimately to those of [[Charles Manson]]. On this later, he seems to follow the book by Ed Sanders, ''The Family'', with its melodramatic philosophical take on the murders.
===Quotes===
The whole ascetic tradition, whether it be Buddhist, Platonist, Manichaean, Christian or Islamic, springs from that most polluted of all sources, the Satanic sin of pride, the desire to be "like gods".<ref>Zaehner, ''Our Savage God'' (1974) at 235.</ref>
There is indeed a sharp division between those religions whose characteristic form of religious experience is prayer and adoration of Pascal’s God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob on the one hand, and religions in which sitting postures designed to find the God within you are thought to be the most appropriate ways of approaching the deity.<ref>Zaehner, ''Our Savage God'' (1974) at 234.</ref>
==Notes==
<references/>
==Zaehner Bibliography==
*''Zurvan. A Zoroastrian Dilemma''. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1955.
*''The Teachings of the Magi. A compendium of Zoroastrian beliefs''. George Allen & Unwin, 1956.
*''Mysticism: Sacred and Profane''. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1957.
*''The Comparison of Religions'' London: Farber & Farber 1958.
*''At Sundry Times. An essay in the comparison of religions''. London: Farber & Farber 1958.
*''Hindu and Muslim Mysticism''. University of London, Athlone Press, 1960.
*''The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism''. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1961.
*''Hinduism''. Oxford University Press, London, 1962.
*''The Convergent Spirit. Towards a dialectics of Religion.'' London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1963.
*''Matter and Spirit. Their convergence in Eastern Religions, Marx, and Teilhard de Chardin''. Harper & Row, New York, 1963.
*''The Catholic Church and World Religions''. London: Burns & Oates 1964.
*''Christianity and other Religions.'' New York: Hawthorn Books 1964.
*''Concordant Discord. The Interdependence of Faiths.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press 1970.
*''Evolution in Religion. A study of Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.'' Oxford Univ. 1971.
*''Dialectical Christianity and Christian Materialism.'' London: Oxford Univ. Press 1971.
*''Drugs, Mysticism and Make-believe''. Collins, London, 1972.
*''Our Savage God. The Perverse use of Eastern Thought.'' Sheed & Ward, New York, 1974.
*''Foolishness to the Greeks.'' Paris: Desclée de Brouwer 1974.
*''The City within the Heart.'' Crossroad, New York, 1981.
EDITOR OR TRANSLATOR:
*''Hindu Scriptures.'' Translated and edited by R.C.Zaehner. London: J.M.Dent 1966.
*''The Bhagavad Gita.'' With commentary based on the original sources. Oxford Univ. 1969.
*''The Concise Encyclopedia of Living Faiths.'' Edited by R.C.Zaehner. Hawthorn Books, New York, 1959.
==Other material==
*Mary Boyce, ''Zoroastrians: their Religious Beliefs and Practices''. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1979.
*Peter Wright with Paul Greengrass, ''Spycatcher''. Toronto: Stoddart 1987.
==External Link==
[http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=185 Gifford Lecture ''Biography'']
==See also==
[[Sacred-profane dichotomy]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zaehner, Robert Charles}}
[[Category:British academics]]
[[Category:1913 births]]
[[Category:1974 deaths]]
[[Category:Academics of the University of Oxford]]
[[Category:English diplomats]]
[[Category:English philosophers]]
[[Category:Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford]]
[[Category:Special Operations Executive personnel]]