Ilm-e-Khshnoom - Traditional Zoroastrianism: Tenets of the Religion

WHAT IS ILM-E-KHSHNOOM AND WHY?
ERVAD SAHEB MANEKJI BHATHENA'S
TESTIMONY ON BAHERAMSHAH SHROFF
AND ILM-E-KHSHNOOM.
"LACK OF MORAL COURAGE IN SCHOLARS AND
DASTOORS WHO KEEP THEIR EYES CLOSED TOWARDS
THIS GOD-SENT KNOWLEDGE."
A simple minded, unscholarly in the modern sense but a keen-sighted, truth-loving and spiritually
oriented Mobed was Ervad Saheb Manekji Burjorji Bhathena! What heart rending words he wrote, 72 years
back, on how the parched sands of time we call the 20th century, swept over the humans on the small globe
and how in the midst of those hot winds, the cool breeze of IIm-e-Khshnoom started blowing on the tiniest
cluster of humans called Parsis, through Baheramshah Shroff. It is amazing to observe that the truth of those
words has surfaced up with tremendous thrust at the end of that satanic century. The human species cast a
blind eye to the devilish changes that the century brought on, Ervad Manekji wrote; and yet there was a small
truth-seeking class amongst Parsis whose spiritual thirst was satiated by IIm-e-khshnoom and who were
convinced about its truth, genuineness and authenticity.
We now observe at the end of the century that the threat of extinction of this proud species-the humans
(egoistically or is it eCoistically - called homo sapiens) is in the air. Really in the AIR! Is not the smell of the
smog, the smell of a healthy economy? (I saw this ironical question in a wonderful book, "The Cartoon Guide
To The Environment" by Jarry Gonick and Alice Outwater - Harper Collins 1996). The greed in the humans is
turning the green earth to a barren tree-less desert. And greed is defined by all Saints and Saoshyant's as
one of the powerful enemies of the human psyche, a fatal weapon in the hands of Satan.
The God of the present times is Satan himself. That God which the Prophets defined is at present thrown
out of the human memory.
And that tiniest of the tiny - the Parsis? Alas! They are being swept away in the Satanic tide! Are they the
first of the human species marked out for extinction?
YET there is a real oasis - a very slender one - in the Satanic desert. That Oasis is Ilm-e-khshnoom!
Ervad Manekji Bhathena says, there were a number of truth-seekers, who accepted Khshnoom as a lamp in
darkness and silently infused it in their life. This phenomenon continues today. There are quite a number of
Parsis, here and abroad, who have placed their inherent faith in Khshnoom, thanks to the herculean efforts of
the great Chiniwalla brothers.
And as to the homo-sapiens, they are on their way to face a severe jolt followed by the saviours of all
Religions. When that comes, the desert of greed will disappear and the oasis of Khshnoom will expand into a
huge green garden.
But let us go back to Ervad Manekji Bhathena's tributes to Baheramshahji.
"When a person, whose schooling did not go beyond a few Gujerati standards, could keep attracted an
educated class for years together and could exercise a mysterious control over them, then any person
having common sense can say that here is the presence of some high divine element. This writer
says as a result of his own personal experience and humble study that the task which the educated
scholarly Dastoors could not do and the mysteries and riddles, which, those who are just a burden on the
community and the so called spiritualists and Avesta scholars, could not solve, that task and those
mysteries Baheramshahji could reveal and solve. And accordingly, as one Athornan Avesta scholar said
from a public platform, that in spite of the West having wasted 20 lakhs of Rupees to decipher the
Zarathoshti Din and Avesta Manthra, the result is still in darkness - because your so called philology is
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