True Crime Campfire - Enlightened: The Bizarre World of the Breatharians

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

For thousands of years, human beings have sought spiritual connection and enlightenment. A lot of us are seekers by nature, we want to know why we’re here and what—if anything—comes next. Sometimes it can seem like most of humankind is walking around with their heads in the sand, and we don’t wanna be one of those people. We want to chase after the secrets. We want to be plugged in. There’s a long tradition, as part of this search for truth, of self-deprivation as a spiritual virtue. Taking a vow of silence or poverty. Forbidding alcohol or dancing or sex. Fasting. Some people believe it strips away everything extra and leaves the spirit more open to connection with the infinite. Others prefer a more balanced approach to life, like the Buddhist Middle Way. But for those who choose to throw away worldly pleasures, the path can get pretty extreme. Today we’ll tell you about a group who claim they’ve given up one of our most basic needs—food—and have learned to live on nothing but light and air. Are these people just fully spiritually attuned, or are they just grifters?Free shipping and 365-day returns from Quince: https://quince.com/happycamperSources: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascended_masterhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JasmuheenCult Education Institute: https://culteducation.com/group/848-breatharianism/3279-prison-for-air-cult-discipless.htmlCult Education Institute: https://www.culteducation.com/group/848-breatharianism/3269-three-deaths-linked-to-living-on-air-cults.htmlABC News: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/International/man-eat-drink/story?id=10787036GQ Magazine: https://www.gq.com/story/breatharians-the-people-who-think-air-is-food Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-one-hundred-day-fast/YouTuber “Atrocity Guide”Skeptical Inquirer: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2020/01/living-on-air-the-crazy-ideas-and-consequences-of-breatharians/The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/gaunt-and-weak-the-sham-diet-guru-who-refuses-to-see-the-light-737972.html The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/sep/28/millennium.uk Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135324/Woman-starves-death-spiritual-journey-trying-live-sunlight-alone.htmlCNN: https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/21/media/breatharian-couple-news-outlets/index.html#:~:text=After%20it%20was%20contacted%20by,the%20New%20York%20Post's%20story.Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

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Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. For thousands of years, human beings have sought spiritual connection and enlightenment. A lot of us are seekers by nature. We want to know why we're here. here and what, if anything, comes next? Sometimes it can seem like most of humankind is walking around with their heads in the sand, and we don't want to be one of those people. We want to chase after the secrets. We want to be plugged in. There's a long tradition as part of this search for truth of self-deprivation as a spiritual virtue, taking a vow of silence or poverty, forbidding alcohol or dancing or sex, fasting. Some people believe it strips away everything extra. and leaves the spirit more open to connection with the infinite.

Others prefer a more balanced approach to life, like the Buddhist middle way. But for those who choose to throw away worldly pleasures, the past can get pretty extreme. Today we'll tell you about a group who claim they've given up one of our most basic needs, food, and have learned to live on nothing but light and air. Are these people just fully spiritually attuned, or are they just grifters? This is Enlightened, the bizarre world of the Bretherians. So, campers, what if you never had to eat or drink again? What if humans could train ourselves to survive on nothing but light and air?

You could eat now and then if you felt like it, but you wouldn't have to. This is the claim of the Bretherian movement, what they say they've achieved. Some of them, anyway. The rest say they're working on it. And I'm not talking about fasting here, okay, which is a temporary thing. These folks say we don't need food to live. When you Google Britharians, one of the most commonly asked questions that pops up is, how long can Britharians survive? Which, wow, you know, when I'm shopping for a new, like, spiritual path or whatever, I normally wouldn't even expect how long am I going to survive it to be on the FAQ? Like, I'd really prefer to take my survival as red, but I guess I'm just not nearly as gangster as these guys. These people know

how to party. They claim that given the right spiritual practices, we can learn to live on energy alone. They call this energy various things, cosmic dust being my favorite. But most of them seem to use the word prana. Now, the breatherians did not invent prana. It's a concept that's been around for a long time. Prana is a Sanskrit word that means basically life force. So light, energy, chi, god, prana. It all sounds very spiritual and elevated, but I don't buy it from these guys. From what I've seen researching this group, it's not life force they seem to be thriving on. it's smugness. Smugness seems to permeate the Brotharian culture, this more enlightened than now attitude, which is really something, considering that following their advice would

literally kill you. There are plenty of great mysteries in the universe. There's plenty of stuff we don't know. We know this one. Y'all, we have to eat to live. That is not up for debate. There might be some debate among scientists about how long we can go without food or water, but we know a ballpark, you know, which is about three to five days with no water and a couple months with no food, depending on conditions, you know, it can vary a little bit. But we know we got to have it. The Britharians also claim they barely sleep, by the way, another thing we absolutely know that humans have to do to live. Again, this shit is not opinion. This is fact. You will die if you don't eat, drink, or sleep. Them's the rules. But not according to the Brotharians.

Some of them claim they haven't eaten in decades, and they've never felt better. At the helm of the Brotharian movement that really got rolling in the 90s and continues to this day was an Australian lady named Ellen Greve. She doesn't go by Ellen anymore. She goes by the name Jasmine, because of course she does. Scratch the surface of any of this kind of dipshit woo, and chances are you're going to find some blonde white lady who goes by something that ain't on her birth certificate. Something that sounds vaguely spiritual.

Jess Muhin has made a lot of money over the years hawking her 21-day breatherian protocol that can take you from an unenlightened swine scarfing down Cheetos and despair to a higher being surviving on light and air like Gwyneth Paltrow. I get wanting to live a healthier lifestyle, but we've been blessed to live in a time when Doritos exist. Like, some, some, like, thread of fate made it so throughout the centuries of human existence. We can go to the store and get some cool ranch Doritos today, right now. It's like, for this one precious moment in time. One single chip contains more seasoning and flavor than a medieval peasant would ever experience. And we're just going to throw all that away. And it's not just about junk food.

They don't eat, like, potatoes either, which does not sound appealing to me. I love potatoes. You're not supposed to eat anything. Yeah. Anything. You're not supposed to eat, period. Okay? They literally claim to survive on light.

Yep. And air. Jas Maheen has done scores of seminars, books, and other educational offerings. She was a businesswoman before she started communicating by direct line with the ascended masters. She worked in finance until 1992 when she decided to put her business acumen to work hosting seminars on meditation. and she was off. Before long, Jasmine's book, Pronic Nourishment, Living on Light, was attracting thousands of curious followers and many more thousands of dollars.

Her husband's a convicted fraudster, by the way, just thought I'd mention that. Huh. In case I haven't already made this clear, Jasmine is enlightened, T.M. So much so that she hasn't needed to eat or drink in years. She does it sometimes, you know, just to be social, which is a convenient. thing for her to say because every now and again she gets caught ordering like a meal on an airplane or you know something like that but she doesn't need to do it and to be fair she is real skinny so she looks the part she's achieved all this by fine-tuning her vibrations through meditation and heart-to-heart

chats with various ascended masters now if you don't know who the ascended masters are then obviously you have a lot of spiritual growing to do and should probably not be wasting your time listening to a true crime podcast. But in case you're unfamiliar, ascended masters used to be ordinary humans, just like you and me, but then they went through a whole series of spiritual transformations ascending into

the sixth dimension. If that doesn't clear it up, I don't know what else you need for me. Jesus was one of the masters, as was the prophet Muhammad, Aleister Crowley, which, seriously, and this dude named Saint Germain.

St. Germain is one of the masters, Jazz Maheen chats with on the regular. In fact, some of her more recent writings came directly from him through her. Oh, good. As if Jazz didn't already tick every single box on the Woo list. Now we've got channeling to add to the mix. Now, we weren't sure who St. Germain was. We're not, like, Catholic or anything, so we Googled it.

Most of the results are about a liqueur of the same name, but a few Google pages in, we found a book called St. Germain, Mystery of the Violent Flame. He was a poet and he didn't even know it. A little more digging and evidently this violet flame is a mysterious high-frequency light that's supposed to dissolve negative energy and replace it with positive. Sounds definitely real and not at all made up. Used by mystics throughout the ages, according to the Amazon description of this book, And I assume St. Germain discovered it or some shit.

I don't know. We did not have all day on this, okay? I think we were like two more days before Whitney became just fully indoctrinated, you know? According to the blog, the lady named Jane Hallowell, who seems a little eccentric, St. Germain has lived many lives, including prophet, Samuel of the Old Testament, Sir Francis Bacon, St. Joseph, a high priest of Atlantis, Christopher Columbus, and Merlin, to name only a few. You know Christopher Columbus was like a giant asshole, right, Jane?

Apparently not. And Atlantis again. What is it with these people in Atlantis? I know. Mother God. Like, love is one. She was always on about Atlantis, too. Listen, it was a good movie.

I get it. I had a childhood crush on Milo, of course, but, and the girl. I don't remember her name. I had a huge crush on her too. But listen, it's not real. I had to let that go. Jane wrote, He is often pictured as the well-known alchemist known during the reign of Louis

15th, King of France. I have asked him if he was really the great Merlin as this is the way I see him. And he responded that his role in that particular body is unlike the stories and fairy tales we read about. he was King Arthur's spiritual mentor. Okay, gotcha. That all makes sense. For sure. So I think these people would be much happier if they just wrote fan fiction.

I think I truly think, like, go watch BBC's Merlin and write King Arthur slash Merlin fan fiction. Okay? There you go. It'll be well received. So, anyway, this is the guy that Jasmine. gets a lot of her info from. I will say Violet Flame sounds like a great name for a synth band.

Or like a second-rate Evil Caneval. Like, ladies and gentlemen, get on your feet for the Violet Flame. And like he still does tricks, but just slightly shittier, you know? So if all of this were true, it would be great, right?

It had solved world hunger because we wouldn't need to eat. But so far, the Rotherians haven't done a great job of proving their claims. Jasmine Hine, for example, has a shaky relationship with the concept of proof. She once claimed that her Ratharian practice had changed her genetic makeup. Her DNA had morphed from two strands into 12, she said, to, quote, absorb more hydrogen? Okay.

Question mark was me, by the way. She just said it like it was a fact. Can any geneticists chime in on this? It seems like simple math to me, like more is better and therefore 12 is better than two. But I am just a lowly podcaster. I don't know anything. But when the organization Australian skeptics offered her 30 grand to prove it with scientific testing, she said, I'll think about it.

And then ended up turning them down, saying she just didn't see what the relevance of that would be. Well, Honeybun, the relevance to you would be putting an extra 30 grand in your bank account. And we know you like money, judging by your luxury lifestyle. So why turn it down? Could it be because you know it's bullshit? Can y'all feel your individual strands of DNA? Like, how do you know how many of them are in there? How many do you feel right now?

Let's all do a check-in. Yeah, I got nothing. But I did eat some Flamin Hot Funions earlier. So I think my aura is out of whack or whatever. Definitely. I think that's a really, I think that's the lowest vibrational food. as flame and hot funnions on the list in 2005 legendary debunker james randy may he rest in peace also offered jasmine money to prove her breatherian claims a million dollars u.s and she turned him down

too she said that offers like this were an attack on her beliefs and that you can't measure spiritual energy under a microscope uh-huh That's convenient, isn't it? That there's no way to prove any of this stuff? Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit. You are not espousing a belief here. Okay, you're literally claiming that you don't have to eat to live. That is not a belief.

That is what we call a falsifiable claim, and you should easily be able to prove it if it's true. Yeah, 12 DNA strands is quantifiable. Like, these people love making radical claims and then hiding when somebody offers to prove it for them. It's super weird. Right? Yeah. Well, she did once agree to demonstrate her Britharian skills for the public, though, for the Aussie news show 60 Minutes. And it went great. I'm kidding. It was a disaster for Jazz Moheen.

To test her claim that she didn't need to eat, the 60 Minutes crew set her up in a hotel and kept eyes and cameras on her 24-7. You know, to make sure she wasn't sneaking chips-ahoy or anything. No food or water for seven days. Jaz Maheen said it was going to be a vacation. She could do it standing on her head. And I know this is going to shock y'all, but her body started falling apart almost immediately. She was slurring her words. Her pupils were huge. She looked gaunt and pale. The show had hired a doctor to monitor her throughout the experiment, and by day four, the doctor was saying, you have to call this off or she's going to be in real trouble. For her part, of course, Jasmine said it was all the show's fault. The place they'd set her up in was in the middle of the the city, far too much pollution in the air for her to take in the nourishment she needed. So 60 Minutes called her bluff. Kay, we'll go way out into the unblemished countryside then. And surprise, surprise, the results were the same.

Two days in, the doctor said she had to stop or risk kidney damage. Jess Maheen and her cronies wouldn't admit defeat, though. She said, I've done it for a long period, and 6,000 people around the world have done this without any problem. Really? We'll get more into that claim in a bit. But the Bretherian movement goes back further than Jasmoheen. In 1981, a guy named Wiley Brooks appeared on the TV show That's Incredible, claiming he hadn't eaten anything in 17 years, subsisting only on light and air. He demonstrated his robust health on the show by lifting 10 times his body weight.

He weighed about a buck 30, so that's pretty damn impressive. Wiley didn't invent Britharianism himself. It had been around a while already as a concept, but he'd written a book on it, created a program to follow, and was charging a pretty good chunk of change for day-long seminars about it. His book, which he co-authored with a woman named Nancy Foss, was called Britharianism, Breathe and Live Forever, The Healthy Diet for Eternal Beauty.

I love that title. It's like, damn, really cramming in as much gravy as you can there, aren't you? it'll make you immortal, healthy, and beautiful. How can you lose? Wiley and Nancy had a whole process you were supposed to follow to reach full Britharianism. Most food was pure poison, they argued, and responsible for turning perfectly healthy humans into gnarled old folks. You didn't actually have to age if you gave up all that gross food, they claimed. You could just get stronger and better.

The first part of their process was to limit yourself to yellow foods only, which, absolutely cracks me up to the core of my soul. Like, you could have corn on the cob, craft singles, mustard, I guess, lemons. Oh, and rum raisin ice cream. That was on the approved foods list. So, like, it makes you wonder, like, how yellow did it have to be? Because I don't really think of rum raisin ice cream as particularly yellow, you know? Like, did he provide you with a color chart or were people just winging it? Like, what about pastries? Those are sort of yellow biscuits? Yeah. Why?

Wait, hold on. I'm really good. Why yellow foods? Because of its vibrational frequency. Tuh. Jesus. You know, if you understood anything, you wouldn't even have to ask questions like that. It tells me a lot about your level of consciousness. Yeah, I'm on the same level as like a snail, I think. I just want to eat food that isn't yellow probably in snail around. Snail around. I want to snail around. I know. It sounds nice. So the yellow foods were supposed to clean your blood of all the toxins. And after eating like that for a while, you were supposed to taper off food altogether. Food is more addictive than heroin, Wiley said. Which like, hang on, if that's true, couldn't you say the same thing about breathing?

I mean, where's the line? I just don't get these people. There were other things in Wiley's protocol, too, of course, like always facing north while sleeping. Makes perfect sense. Especially after his appearance on that's incurs. incredible, Wiley attracted a loyal group of followers who ate up everything he had to say. I mean, they weren't allowed to eat anything else. This showed was actually advising moms not to feed their children.

Yikes. One of his early adherents, believe it or not, was Michelle Pfeiffer, the actress. She said the group was pushy and bossy and wanted her to pay a shit ton of money for every tiny part of the process. Eventually, she realized it was a col and she quit. Wiley still had plenty of people willing to pay for his seminars in books and whatnot, though, and some of his followers in L.A. took to living together so they could study Wiley's methods full-time. As the YouTuber Atrocity Guide put it in her excellent video on The Breatharians, Wiley's book attempted to intersect both the fad diet craze and the spiritualism craze of the 1980s,

two booming movements which became notorious for preying on the gullible. Yeah, still are. But Wiley had a naughty little secret. Donuts and pot pies and McDonald's quarter-pounders with cheese. Our boy, Mr. Bretherian guru extraordinaire, was a secret eater. One night in the privacy of his own house, after a hard day of teaching people how to live on air, Wiley tucked in to a chicken pot pie. He thought his girlfriend had already gone to bed, but nope, she walked in and caught him eating. Oh, no.

She was too stunned to say anything, so she just kind of looked at him, looked at the stover's tray in front of him, and went back to bed. Wiley apparently took her lack of reaction as permission to eat in front of her whenever he wanted. And she kept a secret for that moment, that is. I do find it interesting that his choices of food are possibly like the worst choices to consistently eat. Oh, it's always, it was always junk food. Yeah. It's like you're preaching about unhealthy food, how unhealthy food is. And you're like cram in a stover's pot pie, which are delicious.

Don't get me wrong. Oh, hell yeah. But like if you eat them every day, that's not great, you know. And, you know, this is what I find so interesting about the Bretherians with the most culty, woo-woo-m-m-goo stuff, you see that a lot of their leaders slash influencers, whether they believed it at the start is up for debate, but they eventually do believe it. Like, do these people buy what they're selling? What do they tell themselves as they pick up the fork? What kind of excuses do they make? It's just, it's unbelievable. Like, he's, like, within hours, maybe minutes of

like talking about how awful food is. He's like, okay, got to swing by the drive-through. Yeah, I think he was just trying to make money. Later, when another of wily's followers caught him coming out of a restaurant with a big bag of fried chicken and biscuits, the girlfriend spilled the refried beans. Oh, yeah. He eats all the time, she said. He'll polish off a dozen donuts at a time, which makes me really jealous, actually, because the guy's still skinny. He must have the metabolism of a hummingbird. Like, he's, yeah, I looked him up.

Yeah. And I'm like, oh, my God. He sounds very tall. Yeah. So that was part of it. But yeah. Well, I'm tall. I can't eat a dozen donuts.

Yeah. I don't mean neither. Oh, Wiley tried to deny it. Oh, she's just mad because we broke up. She's just out to get me, which is really hilarious if eating food is like one of the like little jabs you send back to your ex is so funny. But ex-girlfriend wasn't the only one. Plenty of people had caught him sneaking food. So after that, Wiley was pretty much persona non grata in the Brotharian movement.

never invited to give talks anymore or anything like that. He didn't go away, though. He just adapted his teachings, started claiming that the only food you should eat is McDonald's quarter-pounders with cheese and Diet Coke, that these are the only vibrational-attuned foods and that McDonald's restaurants are all built on spiritual portals and therefore are vortexes of pure light and love. Hey, it's as good an explanation as any for why their fries are.

so addictive. Yeah. Wiley Brooks is needless to say my favorite Bretherian by a long shot. He actually passed away just recently in 2022, I think. Sadly, not immortal, despite his impeccable McVibes. This man loved him some Mickey Dees. His ascended master was Ronald McDonald, which if you think about it, actually really makes sense. Like, Grimmis is the violet flame.

Feels like you might be in this too deep. Well, I haven't eaten in three weeks. Except for the Cheetos, your ascended master is Chester Cheetah. Hell yeah, he is. Wiley is my favorite, too, though. Doubling down on the bit by being like, well, hell yeah, I'm eating McDonald's, they're all built on vortexes is objectively funny. Like, you can't tell me that's not hilarious.

I have to give him props for that. Absolutely. That's just a good bit. Like, I feel like, I feel like that's an S&L skit. Now, Jasmine sticks up for Wiley, by the way, says the food in his house is probably just for somebody else. Somebody who still ate. Uh-huh.

That's what she said when a reporter found a bunch of food in her fridge, too. Oh, that's for my eating, friends. You know, I feel like the best way to handle these people is to just try and out crazy out, which would be tough with Wiley. but you could just be like, you still breathe? I haven't breathed since 1997, and I've never been happier. I'm surviving on photosynthesis alone. So I win. Most enlightened.

That's me. Yeah. If you see my chest rise and fall, that's a reflex. I'm not actually getting any oxygen from it. I'm just doing it to fit in with my breathing. Oh, and yeah, I have to breathe. So air passes through my vocal cords. So I can talk.

It's the only reason you're here. You're seeing me breathe right now. So Jasmine picked up where Wiley Brooks left off once he got caught snacking, and this hooey has been perpetuating ever since. Now look, I want to stop for a second and clarify something, because I can hear people getting mad. Although it is not something I find meaningful for my own life, I do not have a problem with you if you're into what we might broadly refer to as new age religion or new age spiritual practices, whatever. If you're into astrology or numerology or energy work, any of that stuff,

if you believe in ascended masters or angels or whatever, I don't share your belief, but you have every right to believe it. And if it enriches your life, that's great. Go with my blessing. I mean that wholeheartedly. Now, some of the language the Britharians use, some of the sea in which this stuff swims, is woven in with some of those belief systems. Like, they will share some of those beliefs. But I want to be clear that I am not trying to bag on the belief systems as a whole. We have a problem with the Britharians because they are lying and their lies are dangerous. In fact, they can be deadly. Let's talk about the deaths in the Britharian community.

The ones we know about, that is. I think there are probably others that we don't know about, too. In 1997, a German kindergarten teacher named Timo Dagan discovered Jasmuhin's big bag of bullshit on the internet and decided to give it a try. Almost two weeks into the Living on Light Protocol, Timo started having bled. vision. A week later, he was in a coma. One of his doctors told the press that when he came into the hospital, Timo looked like he'd been in a concentration camp. His circulatory system had all but collapsed. Timo was in the hospital for a month before he was well enough to leave,

but his recovery didn't last long. Shortly after his discharge from the hospital, still weakened he had a bad fall. He died soon after of head trauma. He was 31 years old. Then there's Australian Verity Lynn. In 1999, Verity tried Jasmine's 21-day protocol. She was found dead in the Scottish Highlands, lying nearly naked next to a lock. Her cause of death was dehydration and hypothermia. Her journal was full of notes about her determination to fast until she'd trained her body to live on light. She had a well-thumbed copy of Jasmine's book Living on Light.

She was 49 years old. When she found out about Verity, Jasmine claimed she cried for days. But then, she said she'd had a little chat with one of her ascended masters, and he reassured her that Verity had just found, quote, a very nice way to go out, so it was all good. Yeah, fuck you, you absolute psycho. She died scared, cold, starving, and thinking she wasn't enlightened enough because of you and your hogwash.

Shut the fuck up. I freaking hate Jasmoin. Ugh. Next we have Australian Lanny Morris, and I'm going to warn you right now, this story is fucking awful, okay? So if you're squeamish, you might want to skip the next like minute or so, maybe a minute and a half. Lonnie was a 53-year-old mother of nine when she discovered Jasmine's book. Lonnie was always a spiritual seeker, and she was intrigued at the

idea of a long fast to cleanse her spirit. Eventually, her interest led her to a couple named Jim and Eugenia Peznak. The Peznaks were Bretherian experts, at least according to them. They told Lonnie Morris they'd guided dozens of people through the 21-day protocol, and they could help her too if she'd come to their house in the Brisbane suburbs. First, though, they sent her a contract to sign, detailing the protocol, just orange juice for seven days than nothing at all for the next two weeks, and absolving the peasnacks of any legal responsibility if something went wrong. In June of 1999, Jim and Eugenia met Lanny at the airport and brought her back to their house.

They set her up in a little caravan in their backyard. Isolation, they told her, was an important part of the protocol. And so it began. Six days into her orange juice only week, Lonnie fell out of bed. Jim Peznak heard the thud while he was out working in the yard and ran into check on her. Stupid me, she said, as he helped her back into bed. She was not looking good, and not feeling good, either. Lonnie had been keeping a diary since she arrived at the Peznak's, and it was

full of daydreams about food and drinks. Every morning I think of cups of Earl Grey Tea. Yesterday I caught myself reminiscing over tomato and coriander soup. Today it is black forest cake and pancakes with maple syrup and ice cream and hot chocolate with marshmallow. She wrote about how her breasts were getting smaller. Wish it was my stomach, she wrote. But she was still hopeful about the protocol. One day she felt a tingle all down one side of her body and she got excited. Maybe this was the start of the spiritual cleansing. It wasn't. After the orange juice week, it was time to cut down to nothing. And before long, Lanny was in bad trouble. She became paralyzed down one side of her body. She lost the ability to talk. She tried to write in her journal,

but all she managed was a shaky spiral in the middle of the page. Then she started coughing up a thick black liquid. Jim and Eugenia were convinced that Lonnie's problem was spiritual, not physical. Jim later told police that Lonnie Morris had a spiritual blockage. She was childish, he said. She refused to let go of emotional burdens. So of course they didn't call a doctor for their student. As Eugenia would later say, sometimes a doctor's intervention can be fatal. For God's sake. Western medicine could never comprehend. and the spiritual journey Lonnie was on. That black liquid, that was just the spiritual pollutants leaving her body.

Finally, though, even the Peznax got freaked out about Lonnie's deteriorating condition. They called a doctor, a doctor sympathetic to the breatherian cause, which feels like an oxymoron. Not going to lie. I know, right? Like, who the fuck was this doctor? He reassured them, and they let Lonnie go on spiraling down. That is, until one afternoon they checked on her and found her choking on the body.

aisle in her throat. Jim stuck a tube down her throat to try and help her breathe, but she spit it out. In a panic, Jim called the breatherian friendly doctor. He got the guy's voicemail. I'm having problems, real problems, he said. Should I call an ambulance? And what should I tell them? Which I think says everything. The fact that he was asking what to say. Yeah, absolutely. It was too late to save Lonnie Morris. She died on July 1st, a little more than two weeks into the Her causes of death were pneumonia, kidney failure, a stroke, and horrific dehydration. Let me remind you, she had nine children. Oh, my God.

Now, what made this case different from the ones who came before was that Lonnie Morris had been under the guidance of other people, people who were advising her and supposed to be monitoring her progress, and they'd let her waste away and die. The police arrested Jim and Eugenia Peznak and a jury found. them guilty of manslaughter. Jim was sentenced to six years in prison and Eugenia got two. Not nearly enough, if you ask me. And the fact that they had the goddamn audacity to insinuate that it was her fault when they kept pushing her to continue their dangerous crash diet makes me so mad I could spit Nichols. That's horrendous. I hope they stub their toes on a TCC branded

metal bookcase every morning. That's all I can say. I'm not kidding. In 2011, a Swiss woman died of thirst and starvation after watching the documentary in the beginning there was light about an Indian man, Prala Johnny, who claimed he hadn't eaten in 70 years. We'll get back to him in a few minutes. Against the pleas of her family, this lady whose name was never released to the press, as is often the case in Switzerland, was so determined to follow Jasma Heen's Bretherian protocol that she was spitting out her own saliva so she wouldn't accidentally consume any liquids. believable. And I've got one more for you. In 2017, a 22-year-old German named Finn Bogamal died on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean.

He hadn't eaten or drink anything for days leading up to his death. Why? Because, he told his loved ones, he was going to learn to live on sunlight alone. Of course, our girl, Jasmine, hasn't seemed phased by any of these deaths. When asked about them, she'll just say stuff like, it's possible that these people were quote not coming from a place of integrity and did not have the right motivation so if you don't succeed if you die like poor lonnie morris or you give up it means that you weren't doing it right or there was just too much pollution or the stars

weren't perfectly aligned or something it couldn't possibly be that you jasmaheen are a liar and a con artist one of the main motivations supposedly of breatherianism is to end world hunger. A worthy goal, for sure, if you were pursuing it in a less ridiculous way. But although Jasmine likes to talk about how world-changing this stuff would be if it caught on, she's been criticized for not bothering to visit any of the countries where starvation is rampant. Oh yeah, y'all are going to love this. Her promoter in the UK is a guy named Gerd Lang. Hold on, hold on a lot. Wait, wait. His name is really Gerd? Like, like, the reflux disease that causes like horrible heartburn and like bad shit in your digestion

system and he works for the lady who says food is harmful what in the world is this story I know and actually not eating would make Gerd worse yeah and our boy Gerd once said quote we know people starve to death in Africa and much as I feel for these people I know it's unnecessary had they got the right attunement. Come on starving people. Get right with the cosmos, you idiots. This is all your own fault. I have a lot to say about this, and I'm sure y'all do too, but first and foremost, allow me to say this. Fuck you, you scammer piece of shit. This is, of course, one of the things that cults do. We can make outrageous claims, and we don't have to do anything to prove them true, and if you can't achieve what we've promised you, it's because you did something

wrong. You're inadequate. You're spiritually stunted. The Scientologists do this all day. So why does anybody give credence to this horseshit? Well, the answer to that is complicated. Partly, I think people have a genuine desire to seek out knowledge and better themselves. It's the leaders of this movement that are the villains here, in my opinion. Most of the adherents are probably genuine people. But also, and this is another cult tactic, people really like feeling like they're in on some special secret that nobody else understands. It's why conspiracy theories are so popular too. Cult leaders capitalize on people's desire to feel like one of the chosen people.

After her failed 60 Minutes experiment, Jazz Mahin told the Independent, we're dealing with intelligent switched-on people who don't need gurus. Uh-huh. If you join us, you're more switched on than the average person. You're in on the secret. I made myself as part of writing this watch an hour-long documentary. It felt like it was several hours long, but I checked. It was only an hour by Bretherians about the Pronic World Festival, which has been going on in Italy since about 2014, I think.

Now, I'm sure you could imagine what this thing was like. At least I'm sure you're picturing like copious amounts of white people dreadlocks and lots of man buns and shirtless guys with man buns juggling and people attempting to do throat singing, which must be hard after several days with no water. They do provide food and water, like for the people who are still, like, not as far along in the process. Every time the documentary interviewed somebody, they put their breatherian level on the screen under their name. And I find this interesting. Levels three and four are where you can officially start calling yourself a breatherian.

But the definition of a level three is somebody who just eats something. and drinks occasionally, which like, isn't that just everybody? I mean, what does occasionally mean? I'm not stuffing my gob 24-7. I only eat and drink occasionally. I mean, it's like two or three times a day, right? So does that mean I can legally sell books on this stuff and rake in some cash? Seems like we're being awfully careful with our language, folks, maybe trying to cover our asses if somebody else dies. It's always vague, though, isn't it? In this document, one of the speakers said love is the answer whatever the question and everybody was like yes yes what does that mean that means nothing shut up i hate that pseudo profound for shit it's so irritating

the the answer to finding the slope of an angle is not love it's just no what is that mean okay Anyway, another great line from the documentary from a guy who called himself a level two. If you tune your bio-oscillator just right, you can receive all the energy that's required for you to live and exist. This dude looked super high, by the way. Like, he looked like a meme of a stoned guy. And look, my bio-osolator is already humming, okay? I don't know how much more tuned up it could get, to be honest, without me becoming a danger to myself and others.

Just leave the poor thing alone. One lady who described herself as a level four and looked it blissfully described how she started communicating with the light beings in 2008. And she looked like she was communicating with the light beings right then. Like she looked like she was about five minutes from death. I have a theory that you can tell the true devotees of this stuff from the con artist by looking at the muscle tone. Like this lady, like obviously,

you're lying if you're saying that you never eat or drink, okay? And that is what you're saying if you're level four. But you can see that some of these people are consuming just barely enough to survive. And then there are others just walking around looking fine. Those are the scammers, the ones who are just lying through their teeth. And I think our girl, Jazz Muhin, is very much one of those. I'd love to go to one of these retreats, by the way, and like toss a pizza in the middle of the floor just to watch the battle going on behind their eyes you know a whole convoy of dessert carts just to watch the struggle you know just to just to feel something in my unenlightened life yeah yeah my theory is that a lot of these people secretly assume they're the

only ones doing it wrong yes like that everyone else who claims to survive with no or almost no food or drink is truly enlightened and they're just the only ones who haven't managed to achieve it yet and they're embarrassed by it so they don't speak up yeah at these breatherian retreats it might just take one or two people to raise their hands and be like uh so am i the only one who's still eating a pretty normal amount of food or what for the bubble pop yeah and of course like you said shame is one of a coal eater's greatest tools yeah this might be a good time to remind you that Mother God, remember, the love as one cult, like to say that food was one of the main barriers between humans and enlightenment. She liked to deprive her followers of food, and at the time

she died, she was scarily gaunt. One guy who definitely hasn't helped matters is Prala Johnny, the subject of the documentary in the beginning there was light. Johnny's dead now. He died in 2020 at age 90, but throughout his life, he was a subject of a lot of hullabaloo. He claimed that when he was seven years old, he was visited by a trio of goddesses. They blessed him and told him they would provide him with nourishment for the rest of his life via a little hole in the hard palate of his mouth. That was it, according to Johnny. He didn't have to eat or drink anymore. Now, the reason why this guy has done a lot of damage is that he's been the subject of two allegedly scientific studies in the early 2000s, and he's got doctors on his side saying it's

true. This guy doesn't eat or drink. They had him in a little room. Cameras on him all day every day for 10 straight days. Constant monitoring by doctors, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they claim he didn't eat or drink anything and he didn't pee or poop once. As you can probably imagine, there are some problems with these studies. First of all, there were multiple occasions where this dude was out of camera view for a few moments. They also let him bathe, which you're telling me he couldn't have swallowed some of that water. Come on.

Like, it's gross. Like, he's drinking his own human suit. But, like, if you got a scam to run, like, it makes sense. But the main problem with these experiments was the guy conducting them, Dr. Soutier Shaw. My guy claimed to have done this before with another self-proclaimed a Bretharian, a guy who eventually got caught eating, just like Wiley Brooks. And he was very cozy with the Brotharian community. Most definitely not an objective source.

Sounds to me like a man. and with an agenda trying to get some attention and fame. The documentary about Johnny came out and one year later, the Swiss woman died soon after watching it. It's not hard to make a connection. Other experiments with other Bretherians have gone similarly to Jasmehine's epic failure on 60 minutes. Eventually, the doctors pull the plug because if they don't, this doofus will literally die. And sometimes they pull the plug themselves. A 65-year-old lady named Navina Shine tried the Bertharian protocol on her YouTube channel

back in 2013. Navina is an interesting person. Apparently, she got herself into the Guinness Book of World Records in the 90s by walking over fire using mind-over-matter techniques. Now her goal was to go 100 days without food to prove it was possible to live on energy from the universe. Now, I know some people felt otherwise, but after watching some of her videos, I feel like she was genuine about this.

Navina seems like a sweet lady who was sincere in her desire to try and make the world better through the Britharian lifestyle, very different from the con artist I believe Ms. Jasmine to be. Nevina developed her own protocol. She'd drink tea and water, but she wouldn't eat anything at all. She set up cameras all over her house so her YouTube audience could watch her. She was convinced that as Jasmine claims, she could instruct her body not to lose weight beyond a certain point. Navina said she didn't consult her doctor before she started her experiment. Quote, A doctor can't see living on light because he looks through different lenses, Navina told a vice reporter.

The people cannot see the possibility of living on light because they are living the paradigm of it can't be done. Not possible. Yes, honey, that's the paradigm we like to call reality. Bless your heart. Nevina had some ups and downs throughout her experiment. she had some stomach issues like bile rising up in her throat and stomach pain other days she said she was full of energy but of course she lost a scary amount of weight scarily fast in 47 days in nevina finally came to her senses and stopped the experiment thank god she's honestly lucky to be alive it was staying hydrated that saved her

but she wouldn't have lasted much longer and i hope she didn't do any permanent damage to herself with her experiment i hope she's doing well Despite all the tragedies, not to mention the universe of evidence that contradicts the Britharian claims, this silliness persists to this day. Jazz Muhin is still around, still raking in money with her seminars and educational materials. And there are other Bretherian influencers, all of them about as insufferable as you're imagining them to be. In 2017, a couple named Ahaki Ricardo and Camilla Castillo got a lot of attention online when news outlets picked up on their claims that they're able to survive on the universe's energy. They claim they went three years without eating at all, and we're now just having an apple or some veggie broth a few times a week.

Castillo claimed she practiced Bretherianism during her pregnancy, which is terrifying, although I'm sure she's lying, so it's fine, but like, oh my God. These two were, of course, offering a program to teach you how to adopt the Bretherian lifestyle, or as they put it, quote, give you all the tools you need to become food-free, This program was not free. All the Bretherian gurus I've discovered have been very clear about the fact that you shouldn't try this stuff without guidance and training. Guidance and training that is, of course, conveniently available through them, and again, not free. Ricardo told CNN that you just need the proper tools and awareness to become a Bretherian.

We all know the air is light, he said. We all know there is energy in nature, so there's no way this can be dangerous. Yes, honey, nature's never dangerous. I've got some deadly nightshade tea for you here. God. This is just one example of the way the media has failed us terribly in reporting on this stuff. Ricardo and Castillo were featured in the Daily Mail, the New York Post, the Sun, and the Independent, and the coverage was infuriatingly fluffy. They mentioned, of course, that experts contradict the Britharian's claims, but still managed to platform him, and Ricardo later told CNN that the coverage brought him in Castillo thousands of new curious followers.

Great. On a site that has the gall to call itself strong health, you can find an article titled The Benefits and Risks of a Bretherian Diet. Benefits, are you fucking kidding me? The article was clearly written by AI, and it's just beyond absurd. Like, you should weigh the benefits and risks and think about whether this diet is right for you. It is not right for anyone. No. You should avoid this dangerous shit at all costs. And honestly, I just don't get it. Like to me, if we're talking about enlightenment, it is much more enlightened to think of ourselves as a natural part of the planet we're on. And I mean, humans are animals. We're made to eat food and drink water. We don't have chlorophyll. We can't photosynthesize. We're part of a natural world. And to deny that as some sort of path to enlightenment is just bizarre to me. Like, would you expect a lion?

or a deer or like a dolphin to do this shit? Of course not. So what's so freaking special about us? It just doesn't seem like enlightenment to me. It seems like arrogance. Yeah, it's never been about like actual enlightenment. It's been about feeling like you're a special little snowflake in the universe. Absolutely.

And there's this little clip that I found on YouTube, like on a YouTube short, of these two people who claim to be Bertherians talking. And one of them said something like, you know, people will ask you. you this question like what does it take to become a breatherian and even to ask that question you know it tells you a lot about the level of consciousness that they're coming from because if you really understood this you wouldn't even need to ask that it's not something you become it's you are and you just have to realize it like shut the fuck yeah it's because yeah i think the most like enlightened people when you talk to them they understand their place in, you know, the natural world, right?

Like, they understand, like, you know, like, it's okay, it's okay to eat. Like, it's okay to eat a Dorito once in a while, you know? Sure. It's okay to have a Twinkie, but you should balance it out. It's about moderation, not full balls to the wall, starvation. Jesus. Jasmine He and herself has always insisted that she's not trying to force anybody to take on this way of life. She's just educating people.

That's all. And a lot of the Bretherian influencers these days will claim, in private at least, that they don't like the emphasis on not eating anything. That for them, it's more about spiritual growth, meditation, all that good stuff. That's what one of them told a GQ reporter who went to one of their retreats for an article. The problem with that, of course, is that they're not upfront about that in their marketing at all. In that GQ article, the reporter asked the retreat attendees if the emphasis on food-free existence was in. instrumental in their decision to sign up and shell out the money for the workshop. They all said, yes, absolutely. So you're perfectly happy to use this dangerous bullshit as a gimmick to attract more

followers, even if you're not really a practitioner or believer yourself, which we know you're not, because if you were, you'd be dead of thirst or starvation by now. For her part, Ms. Jasma Heen is still thriving, still selling her books and seminars, still speaking to her groups of curious people who are interested in what she has to offer. Let me read to you from her post called Musings from Africa, published from Cape Town, South Africa on July 1st, 2023. My foot is throbbing, swollen, calling out for rest, as I'd recently broken my left big toe, ignoring this rather large inconvenience. Aw. Aw. I decided to follow the call of my heart and come to South Africa to complete an ancient circle and already I'm glad I did. No, no, she went to Africa not to, you know, help starving people

to complete a circle for her own benefit. I just want to point that out. Yeah. After a good night's rest as I hobble out my door, I began to sense this linear time flow of another being, another part of me coming more alive within me. My first human form taken over a hundred thousand years ago in this ancient land, is reawakening now within me with every step I take. In simultaneous time, that circular flow, I realize again that I still hold the body of this slight small man, and my tribe is the bushman of the Sands people who have been in Africa for over 130,000 years. My memories of this life arose within me nearly four decades ago when I began to spend time with my husband, who I soon discovered was my blood brother in that tribe. Oh my God. You always

love to hear, you know, the white ladies talk like this. Yeah. That's really uncomfortable. It's always incest. Like, always. Always. Oh, you're talking about the brother thing. Yeah. Yeah. I was just saying, like, yeah, every friggin white woman that's so low. Oh, I was actually a black man. Yeah. I was actually an African man and so therefore you're, you're oppressing me by making fun of me. I can relate to the plight of people of color. because I was one 130 years ago. 130,000 years ago. That was the last time though. Anything closer is too much for her. Oh my God, I cannot with this woman.

It goes on like that for a while. And this is the kind of red hot material you get when you sign up for Jasmehine's newsletter. Yeah, you might find out you and your husband were related in a previous life. Fun. You know, I pointed that out because I don't think this is the first time we found that like somebody was like, smack in their like past life family member. I think that's happened before in case we've discussed. I can't remember. But I think it's happened. Now, I don't know if we can call the Bretherians a cult. I think it checks a lot of the boxes. And I wouldn't be surprised if

smaller Bretherian cults existed. But there's not really a centralized organization around this practice or a charismatic leader who tells them what to do and punishes them if they don't do it. Colt light would be a good way of describing it. Yeah, I think so too. Like, I think there could be small pockets, but yeah. At the very least, it's more proof that there are people out there who will literally believe anything. And other people who are more than willing to take their money. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat half a bag of Doritos.

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