Yazdan

Yazdan is what we worship, what we pay attention to. It is what we ought to pay attention to, what deserves to be paid attention.

Fundamentally Yazdan is Reality - but Yazdan is not 'everything that exists' , rather it is the 'Ground of Existence', and the 'Nature of Existence' and the 'Cause of Happening and Being', and the 'Cause of Life and the Good'.

Zartians recognize a differentiation in Yazdan, in God. Yazdan is involved with the causation of everything, whether that turns out to be Good or Bad, yet Yazdan is not neutral as to outcomes. Yazdan prefers the Good. In our practice we pay attention to all the causes of things, so that we can predict and influence the outcomes, yet we value more the causes of the good things, than the causes of the bad.

N.B. Yazdan is a Persian word for 'God', used especially by Zoroastrians. In origin it has a meaning similar to the English word God.

God

God is that which is of ultimate importance. We believe that there is something that is of ultimate importance, and therefore we believe in God. We believe that we should pay attention to and assign value (worship) that which is of ultimate importance, and thus we worship God.

Two things in particular are of ultimate importance. One is Reality. The second is The Good. In fact we believe these are not really separate because Good or Bad is not something purely subjective in the eyes of the beholder, but has a basis in Reality itself. Nevertheless there is a distinction because while Reality is something we must pay attention to, it is not always something to worship in quite the same way as the Good.

God may be seen as Reality and the Good. God may also be seen as that which connects humans to Reality and the Good. In this function God may change its appearance to suit the needs of different people.

God

God is defined as what we worship - and what we worship - i.e. pay attention to and treat as valuable and important - is all that is the foundation and producer of the good life for us and for everybody.

God is the source of life, but God had a complex nature. God is both in the underpinning of the Universe and in the Good Actors within the Universe. Thus Zartians resist any over-simplified unitary view of God.

Zartians recognise the tensions between the different aspects of God. God allows evil things to happen and this may not be fair at all for us as individuals, even if it is a consequence of our collective actions as human beings. However we believe that God desires the Good for He has placed such knowledge at the heart of our being in our innate distinction of Pain and Joy.

God has also given us the ability to progress towards the Good if we are sufficiently free and determined enough to do so. As Zoroaster teaches, existence unfolds according to rules that our minds can potentially discover. If we align ourselves with Truth then our actions will become the Right ones to create the righteous order of maximum happiness and joy.

God

God is the ultimate focus of our worship.

God is by definition that which is most worthy of being attended to. What is most worthy of being attended to is that which is the source of our existence in all its various manifestations.

God desires what is Good, which we know because Good and Bad have been built into the fabric of existence as Pleasure and Pain. Nobody who has experienced the extremes of Pleasure and Pain can doubt that former is better than the latter in an absolute sense. It is God who has set this distinction into reality and motivated us to seek one and avoid the other.

God as One

"The One which is also known as the Monad and the First Principle, is the ultimate and true unknowable Godhead. It has an utterly singularly unitary nature as one of its most defining characteristics is the sum of all things in existence. The One is utterly immovable, abiding in the solitude of its own unity. Plato tells us that even to give it a name or speak of it places limiting labels and definitions, writing that “you cannot say that it ‘has’ anything or that there is anything ‘of’ it. Consequently, it cannot have a name or be spoken of, nor can there be any knowledge or perception or opinion of it. It is not named or spoken of, not an object of opinion or of knowledge, not perceived by any creature”. This is because the One is not only the sum of everything, but transcends and lays beyond each thing as the ultimate source of the all, manifesting multiplicity through the overflowing emanation of its superabundant goodness, It is without beginning or end, and is even beyond the Gods which manifest from it."