The Short Cut to Regeneration Through Fasting/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
Why We Fast
We fast primarily because we have found out that through fasting we can outstrip the laws of evolution and find the human pathway of transmutation. Evolution is the long way; transmutation is the Short Cut to higher human attainment.
There are four distinct human reasons why we fast. We fast for purification, first of all If there were no other reasons, this would be sufficient cause to entice us to this method of unfoldment. It is an unwritten law that Nature must unload the old as it passes on in its processes. There is no place in any of Nature's schemes where the old is retained longer than necessary to make a fitting protection for the new.
The physical body must unload its waste products or the bloated, discolored flesh is its reward. There is no mistaking the signals Nature sets on the face of the ordinary individual. It speaks its message in tones too plain to be overlooked. One has only to look at the great crowd of disease-laden folk,—just go to the rest-homes, or the hospitals, or homes. All over our own land and abroad, stalk the crowd who tell in every line of their faces how far they have violated this first holy law.
Every bit of food taken into the body must be thrown out again. It is the Divine Law of the physical cell. Nature does not use any of the crude food consumed by individuals for anything except fuel. It is used to set in operation the activity of the cells of the body, and these secrete their own substance,—much too fine a product to be taken from any of the badly cooked, mixed and mal-digested food stuffs. This is the lastest discovery in nutrition; we must know, once and for all, that the cells of the body are the divine producers, and all food taken into the body must be thrown out as soon as it has served the purpose of stimulating the cell into generation, secretion and excretion of the finer food substance within it.
The coarser substance of the food is thrown out from the gastro-intestinal tract, the finer through the kidneys, others through the perspiratory tract, and the still finer particles through the breath in respiration. But no matter through which channel it is done, there are millions of cells of intelligence in the body working ceaselessly, night and day, in the gigantic plan of excretion and elimination, absorption and nutrition. As long as the normal unloading process is maintained, the physical body retains its normal health; break this balance, and disease begins to be apparent in the flesh.
When the elimination is not equal to the incoming substance, it has to be taken care of in the flesh body of the individual and it is stored up as fat or deposits. Then the individual becomes the unsanitary receptacle of his own waste products. This substance is often dissolved into fine solutions and finds its way into the circulation, poisoning the blood, overweighting it and congesting it in many different parts of the body.
Every pain that racks the flesh is the voice of Nature saying "Unload, purify, purify, PURIFY!" With purification comes peace.
There is only one real cause of disease in the world and that is congestion; there is only one cure and that is circulation. Circulation cannot be normal when the blood current of the body is a heavy stream loaded down with the waste products of the naturally changing flesh.
Purification is, too, a matter of the mind. After we have paid attention to the purification of the body, we have yet the mind and the emotions to unload and, beyond these, the higher part of the mind which, like a dusty mirror, shuts us out from the full light of the higher registration of the Celestial light.
The second reason for Fasting is discipline. No one can ever hope to outstrip the evolutionary laws of life while he sets for himself only the tasks of the ordinary human. Only to the breathless runner up life's hill who, spent and dust covered, beats his breast against the tape of wisdom, will higher Truth reveal or Mystery explain.
The price of the better part is understanding, and understanding of life's finer forces can only come when one holds his whole being subject to the discipline of higher laws.
There are those who long to possess the very last gifts that life can hand them, yet want to gain them without self-conquest or comradeship with the things which are a part of the larger gain. They want fame, power, strength, wealth, love;–great recognition without the needed spiritual exertion to win it.
There are many who never set any kind of test for themselves. They are weaklings in body, mind and soul. When asked to give up anything,–from a doughnut to a dollar,–they whine, and sulk, and are perpetually sorry for themselves.
"What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" was the question of the old seer. The new seer says "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul's desire?" The answer is,—"Every thing that will fulfill the law of that desire." And there are seven planes of consciousness on which he has to make the exchange and fulfill the law.
Throughout all time the short cut for exchange has been fasting and celibacy. Whenever the ordinary race man wanted anything more than his own human indulgences, and was willing to put up the proofs by fulfilling the higher law of discipline, he made himself through self control—a magnet attracting to him, from out the Infinite Supply, the things he desired.
When a man can look at a tempting dinner and not eat, when no one says no to him but himself, or when he can face the mad urge of a strong radiant passion and curb it—not because he must but because he will, knowing that he wants something a thousand times more than he wants his own natural satisfaction, then he is on the short cut to higher possessions and neither deep nor high can keep his own away from him. High stakes are hard to win, and the short cut is not the pathway of the weakling or the coward, but it belongs to the strong heart and resolute mind.
The third reason for fasting is attainment. There are those who never get what they want, never get it when they want it, nor how they want it; never keep it if they get it and often, when they have gotten it and grown tired of it, they cannot cast it aside and go on into union with their next desires.
So we fast for attainment on all planes of being and for attainment which will fulfill and accomplish our selfhood. We have learned that we may have what we want, when we want it and how and where, and that when we have lived up our desires we must unload them and eliminate just as we did on the physical plane. Mental, emotional or spiritual stagnation is just as dangerous as plethora in the flesh. We fast to displace the old things and attain the new quickly and harmoniously.
There is no use dragging on year after year with hope dead in our breasts. Life is joy through love and service. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, joy and a sound mind. People put up with things and places and other people that, in the true scheme of life, should have been unloaded long ago.
Old thought teachings, traditions, lack of discipline and a consciousness born from these teachings bind and enslave the mind of the evolving crowd; but the transmutation man, on the short cut, knows that as he climbs he must displace the old things of one level by the incoming things of the next, and, as he fasts and mentally unloads, he stands out―stripped to the spiritual skin, ready to call around himself all the things of this newfound kingdom. These things are fashioned through the fresh desires of his own mind.
Physical, mental and emotional baggage must be laid down, and new, fresh, unpolluted desires made ready for fulfillment.
When one has decided what he wishes to unload, planned carefully what he desires to attain, fasted and breathed for it, it can no more escape him than the budding flowers can escape the warm penetrating rays of the sun which, by natural law, drive them on into a wild burst of bloom.
The fourth reason for fasting is manifestation. There are so many who live, move and have being in a world of realization and never get farther than that in their unfoldment.
It is not enough to possess anything in thought that does not fulfill. We want to "kiss the lips of our desires". There are many who feel rich in their being, yet are ever counting pennies; many who feel strong as a gaint inside, yet falter when needed to lift a pound, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak; there are many who have a constant well-spring of love and usefulness in consciousness but who never find an outlet to their deep wells. They ask "Why is it that I seem always just about to accomplish and yet all that makes life really worth while passes me by?" The new seer says "When you have had enough, you can quit. Have you waited long enough? Then stop. Who makes you wait? Yourself!"
When we are ready to step out from the law of relay into the larger one of manifested conditions we can turn on the stronger light of higher wisdom and Burbank ourself out of the old law and, through fasting, produce a new realization in a new form. We can unknow a thing ourself, with the power we realize into being.
"The thing we seek is seeking us." There is nothing the matter with the law, there is only something the matter with our manipulation of it. "God has provided some better things for us that, without us, cannot be made perfect."
When once we have taken our desires firmly into our minds and come to the moment where we will not wait another hour, then fasted, our realization must pass, by natural cosmic law, into manifestation.
Thought, feeling, form, these are the Trinity of Creation, and the thought must become a thing, just in that moment that we make it do so.
Purification, discipline, attainment, manifestation, illumination,—these are the cornerstone of the supra-man. His old heaven and his old earth have passed away, for he is one with the new laws which make for perfection through transmutation here and now.
Standing then firmly on this foundation, he passes step by step, building the supra-structure of the new Self. He wants perfection more than he wants self-indulgence. He takes body, mind, emotion, intuition and accomplishes the perfect fulfillment of them all. His own master consciousness becomes the architect of his new being,—the plan is himself, in himself and outside of himself, and he proceeds through higher self discipline to manifest the Grand Man.