Copyright: @2013 Ardeshir Farahmand. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Zarathushtra calls himself a seer/prophet in his poetic gathas, but NOT infallible. After all the ancient seer/prophet teaches about the odyssey of consciousness; and how Mind/Spirit is in a progressive journey of learning, discovery and experimentation.

In the past 20 years or so we have witnessed the emergence of a so-called gatha restoration movement. The author of this movement is mr ali akbar jafarey. Mr jafarey shall be credited for re-emphasizing to Zoroastrians, the supreme and paramount importance of the poetic gathas in their ancient traditions and beautiful religion.

Yet, beside that, very little of mr jafarey’s opinions seem to agree with the original text of the poetic gathas. Although, mr jafarey talks about the gathas as if he knew Prophet Zarathushtra personally, the GREAT MAJORITY of what mr jafarey has penned under the gathic message appears to be his own far-fetched, unsubstantiated speculations.

This so called gathic movement is in all reality a mix of science ideals of the 1950s and a BAHAICIZED form of neo-Zoroastrianism, and has very little, to do with the poetic gathas of Zarathushtra.

A word by word analysis of the original gathic poetry, comparative study of other Aryan belief systems and languages such as Vedic, Old Norse and Old Church Slavonic give a very different picture of the poetic gathas and their original message/meaning than that purported by mr ali akbar jafarey.

To debunk the personal speculations/professional works of mr jafarey does NOT amount to personal attacks. If this was the case, we may not question or object to the academic works of zaehner, mary boyce, hegel, spinoza, carl jung, freud, einstein and……….

But the appointed successor of mr jafarey, mr ronald delavega disagrees vehemently with any objective questioning of mr Jaffarey’s work on the gathas.

Mr delavega writes quote about “ceaseless and unwarranted attacks on Dr Jafarey who cannot defend himself because he is not here and he is not here because he is 92 and and is already working several hours a day in books, articles and memoirs he is writing. Now you don’t have to like me, you don’t have to be my friend, but if you are truly like you post , you have to be fair and this is not fair, no sir not fair at all.”

mr delavega further writes : “He (meaning ardeshir farahmand) savages a scholar who has more knowled in one fold of his behind thasn this … ‘person’ with excused to all persons, will EVER accumulate ein 1million lifetime of ‘studying Sassanian era commentaries on the Gathas and then he has the gall to call me a bigot But that’s OK my actions and his will speak better than his attacks I will stop addressing him even indirectly ……., whom I do call an Ayatollah since he behaves like one, …….Well enough say let them blab on”

Delavega who is mr jafareys successor further states: “Then, when some posts something that disagrees with what the Ayatollah says he starts insulting people, attacking others that are not present to defend themselves, calling people with different opinions heretics and you … while the Ayatollah foams at the mouth spewing hatred and BS, ……and quote your Ayatollah, who is a bully, and a bigot.”

It is evident that the following approach is used by mr ronald delavega and his likes:
1. After the exposer has exposed they will try to divert to secondary and totally peripheral and irrelevent side-issues.
2. The exposer is then painted as someone with an axe to grind, biased, deluded (while they, still have not responded to the main issues exposed)
3. Next they relate bigotry and prejudice to the exposer

The jafarey movement shares a lot of ideals with the bahai religion. In fact, a great deal of ideas that are sold ERRONEOUSLY as gathic; have NOTHING to do with the poetic gathas, but could easily be traced back to bahai core beliefs and ideals.

The following quote by mr delavega on a bahai blog is most helpful in understanding their perspectives:
“HEllo, Happiness Unto You! I have read the blog now for some time, and I see frustrations by a lot of Baha’is (spelling?) In full disclosure, I am not a Baha’i, but a Zarathushtrian. However, the Gathas are, in their own way, as Universal in character as its Baha’i faith, the Ratu or Guide, as seen by Zarathushtra in the Ahunavar, is roughly the same as the Guardian, (It means Spiritual Guide) and Vohu Kshathra Vairyo or the Loving Good Kingdom of Choice, which was meant by Zarathshtra as both an Earthly governing body with a temporal Leader, (Ahu)and a Spiritual Guid,e (Ratu) all to be chosen seems, to me, to be a fairly close equivalent, albeit partially so, of your International House of Justice. So I have been puzzled by the similarities and…….”

The truth is that the poetic gathas of Zarathushtra are original, spiritual, intuitive, sacred, verse. They are poetic visions of a TRUE ancient Prophet. Gathas have NOTHING to do or have in common with the bahai faith.

A great part of what the so called gatha movement (misnomer) has produced can be characterized as: hallow rhetoric, long-winded articles and pseudo-rationalistic babel that will not pass the test of philosophy 101.

Time has come to separate the real gathas of the Prophet of ancient Aryans from the far-fetched speculations of people that are only interested in the gathic label and banner, while expounding very different views than the real gathas.

ardeshir