Mazdaznan

Mazdaznan is a neo-Zoroastrian religion which held that the Earth should be restored to a garden where humanity can cooperate and converse with God. Founded at the end of the 19th century by Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish, the religion was a revival of 6th century Mazdakism. Adherents maintained vegetarian diets and practiced breathing exercises. Concerned with the nature of thought, emotion and behavior, Mazdaznan taught that the practical aspects of personal health could be achieved through conscious breathing, "Gah-Llama". The word Mazdaznan is said to derive from the Persian "Mazda" and "Znan", and is supposed to mean "master thought".

Although the movement originally consisted of public lectures and group exercise, popular demand made a book called The Power of Breath available. This book propelled Mazdaznan into being promoted as a dietary (vegetarian) movement with breathing, vowel and glandular exercises for physical, spiritual and mental development.

Its lack of lasting popularity can be attributed to the fact that besides emphasizing the importance of the individual decision, it proclaims personal responsibility for one's own fortune. Its success as a word of mouth movement that spawned similar groups can be attributed to its "tried and true" traditions of the way different physical postures and ways of breathing produce predictable and controllable mental states, which today recognized as a basic aspect of behavior in Behaviorism, introduced by B.F. Skinner.

The context of its relationship to Judeo-Christian and other religions can be deduced from its emphasis upon three historical characters: Ainyahita, Zarathustra and Jehoshua. Ainyahita, daughter of the divinely created couple (may be related to Anahita), lived 9000 years ago and is supposed to be the origin of the white Aryan race, which includes the Jews and therefore Jesus of Nazareth. The traditional God character of most religions has its Mazdaznan component in "Gah-Llama" which is referred to as "intelligence," and "In the air you breathe." The Power of Breath discusses Gah-Llama in breathing exercises, where the main goal is self-control and mastery of your body through, effectively, "breathing intelligently" and breathing "intelligence" or "Gah-Llama". It is in all respects a non-theistic tradition, in that all words for the unknown are recognized as linguistic and semantic peculiarities, with no rules except for suggestions for health, which are accompanied with a note that you know what's best for yourself.

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