Define manicheaism, zoarastrism and neoplatonism. Explain in your own words

Zoroastrianism is the pre-Islamic religion of Iran. It still exists today, although the religious community is largely based in India, rather than Iran. Its founder, Zarathustra, was said to be a priest of the god Ahura Mazda, and the religion may originally have been a cult of this particular god.

The details of Zoroastrian cosmogony changed over time, but even the earliest sources (Zarathustra’s hymns, the Gathas) describe a dualistic universe, with Order on one side and Chaos on the other. Order, as embodied by Ahura Mazda, is associated with goodness, creation, and life, while Chaos, as embodied by Ahura Mazda’s nemesis, Ahriman, is associated with evil, destruction and death. Both the physical and spiritual realms exist in a state of constant tension between Order and Chaos, and it is the duty of every person to “fight” for Ahura Mazda to help the god overcome the forces of Chaos.

Man is seen as a microcosm in which the battle between Order and Chaos must be fought every day. Unlike Manichaeism, though, Zoroastrianism does not condemn the physical world in favour of the spiritual; rather, it sees both as equally valid modes of existence. When a person dies, the soul lives on after the body, and will be judged according the person’s deeds during their lifetime. Those whose good acts outweigh their evil acts cross a bridge and enter Heaven, while those whose evil acts outweigh their good acts cross the same bridge but enter Hell. Interestingly, Zoroastrianism also accounts for the concept of Purgatory, for the souls of those people whose good and evil acts precisely balance each other.

Zoroastrianism is eschatological, that is, it believes in a final apocalyptic confrontation between Order and Chaos, after which all evil will be vanquished and Ahura Mazda will reign supreme. It is also messianic, in that Zarathustra predicted successors, or “sons,” of his who would be born into the world at key moments in the battle between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman to tip the balance in favour of Ahura Mazda and thus save creation from Chaos. There will be a final judgment of souls after the last battle between Order and Chaos, and a final punishment and purification of the “evil” souls, after which all people will live in bliss and harmony. The influence of Zoroastrian thought on the later monotheistic religions, especially Christianity and Islam, was significant.

Manichaeism was founded in Persia in the 3rd century A.D. Its founder, Mani, had visions of angels who exhorted him to preach the spiritual truth he received from them. Mani believed he was the ultimate successor to all previous spiritual leaders, including Buddha, Jesus, and Zoroaster. His mission was to combine the wisdom handed down from these previous "prophets" and add to it the wisdom that he had been given by the angels, for only he, Mani, had complete knowledge about God and the nature of the soul.

Manichaeism was a syncretistic religion, in that it deliberately combined elements from different spiritual traditions in an attempt to create a "complete" truth. Other traditions had fragments of wisdom, and these could not be ignored, but the fragments had to be bound together with Mani's superior wisdom in order to provide a true path to God.

Manichaeism was strongly dualistic. A central tenet of the religion was that the universe was, in its essential state, comprised of opposites, e.g. Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Soul and Matter. Somehow, these opposites had become blended, leading to the current corrupt state of the world. Spiritual purity would not be reasserted in the universe until the opposing elements were separated once again. According to this view, man's existence was that of Soul trapped in - and corrupted by - Matter. The physical world was evil and the man who would be pure must avoid the physical world as much as possible, by living a strictly ascetic life and devoting himself to gaining spiritual knowledge.

Manichaeism’s emphasis on dualism was influenced partly by Zoroastrianism, while its emphasis on asceticism was influenced by Buddhism. Its most profound influence, however, was Gnosticism, which combined a dualistic worldview with the belief that the Soul must do everything possible to free itself from the gross physical world by avoiding any satisfaction of physical appetites, and pursuing wisdom as the highest good. Those who lived by Manichaeism’s precepts would finally free their spiritual selves from the corrupt physical realm, while those who would/could not give up their attachment to the physical realm were doomed to be reincarnated until they learned how to break the cycle.

Neoplatonism was not a religion, but a philosophy. It was the organic outgrowth of earlier schools of Greek philosophy (primarily Platonism, as indicated by the name), and was given its final shape by the philosopher Plotinus in the 3rd century A.D., making it coexistent with Manichaeism.

Neoplatonism was not dualistic in the sense that Zoroastrianism or Manichaeism were; it did not separate the universe into opposites, but rather, a hierarchy, from “existence” to “non-existence,” or “reality” to “unreality.” In keeping with the teachings of Plato, the Neoplatonists believed in an ideal reality, of which the physical world was a mere reflection, an imperfect “emanation” of the ideal truth of things. The ultimate reality was The One, the first principle of the universe, from which all things come and to which all things will return. The One was the source of nous, or demiurge, the archetype of all existence. The nous was, in turn, the source of the world-soul, which linked the perfection of the nous to the physical world. People’s souls joined the world-soul after death, and could either ascend to the nous, sublimating their identity in its perfection (an idea similar to the concept of nirvana), or return to the physical world through reincarnation.

Beneath the world-soul was the level of the physical, or “phenomenal,” world. The physical realm was not thought to be evil, but it was so far removed from The One that imperfections had crept into the emanations there. The perfect ideals present in the nous were only murkily reflected in the physical world. This murkiness could not rightly be called “corruption,” because the Neoplatonists did not believe in evil as an active force in the universe. Instead, imperfection was simply a result of too much distance from perfection; it was an absence of perfection, rather than an active destructive principle. Think of the way that a trail of paint left by a paintbrush will get thinner and thinner the further along the canvas the paintbrush is dragged: the paint gets thinner as it gets further from the source of the brushstroke. So too does “reality” get thinner, less perfect, the further it gets from The One. Alternatively, think of the game “Telephone”: the original message Person A whispers in Person B’s ear gets progressively more corrupt the further along the line it is passed, so by the time it reaches Person Z, the original message has been lost, possibly in its entirety. This does not indicate a destructive force in the universe, merely a natural loss of perfection through transmission.

The aim of the Neoplatonists was to try and reattain the perfection that had been lost in the physical realm through contemplation of the source: the nous and The One from which all things emanated. There was no battle between Good and Evil, or Order and Chaos, to be fought, and it was not necessary to wait until the death of the body to achieve perfection. The soul could be perfected in the physical world through constant contemplation of the ideal world.

After death, the soul would join the world-soul, and according to the level of perfection it had reached in its physical life, the soul could either ascend to the nous or be reincarnated to “try again.” The final destiny of all creation, however, was to return to The One.