Essay: The Practical Technique of Fasting
The beginner should experiment with an eighteen hour fast, repeated every week or two weeks; extend it to twenty-four hour periods in a month or two, and later on to thirty-six or forty-eight hours at a stretch. Having thus well prepared himself, he should finish the regime with a single three, or three and a half day fast.
The fast starts in the evening by missing the dinner meal, and by taking instead, to help to empty the bowels completely, a mild dose of warm senna leaf infusion--a herbal laxative tea.
The next morning, take a cupful of mild herbal stomach cleanser, an infusion of Golden Seal herbs in warm water (also known commercially as Fluid Extract of Hydrastis). Follow this a half hour later by drinking a cupful of warm or hot water. This process is to be repeated on the last morning of the fast, if the latter extends to a three day period. Fasting should be preceded and ended by these purges.
At night, after the first complete day's fast, take an enema. Use warm, slightly soapy water (vegetable oil soap is essential), hold it within the body for as long as possible while lying flat for a minute or two. Turn over on the left side for a further minute or two and then turn over on the right side for the same period. Repeat on last night if fasting for three days. On each morning, take a warm bath, not exceeding five minutes and using soap. In the morning when dressing and in the early evening, use a tongue scraper. These long, thin, narrow strips, made of lightweight plastic, are stocked by most drugstores.
It is recommended that only distilled water be drunk and that the herbal infusions be made with that also. It can be bought in jars from better food or drugstores.
As an alternative to the full fast, you may conserve your strength for work by engaging in semi-fasts of the same duration as the full fast. During these periods eat no solid food and subsist on fruit juices well diluted with water, or else, on lemonade containing one-half teaspoon of raw honey to each tumbler of distilled water, or on vegetable extract water made by soaking diced carrot, celery, and parsley for five or six hours in distilled water, then straining off and discarding the solids. This drink may be mixed with the lemonade drink already described to render it more palatable if desired. Since, when unmixed, it contains no significant quantity of proteins and no starches, it belongs more closely to the category of full rather than semi-fast and may enable them to be better borne.
While fasting, do not exercise the body or undertake physically strenuous tasks. If you are working, it is advisable to carry out the fast during a weekend. It offers a convenient time to catch up on reading and meditation assignments. Experience demonstrates conclusively that if this period is spent sitting on a chair, reclining on a couch, or resting in a bed, it is passed through more easily, more swiftly, and more effortlessly, whereas, if spent active and moving about it is passed through with difficulty, slowly dragged out. So do not spend more than the least possible energy. Pray for guidance in self-improvement and for help in self-purification.
Headaches and fatigue often appear during the first and second days of fasting. They usually disappear along with hunger during the third day.
To end the fast, be careful to break it gently and by degrees. This preconditions the stomach for normal eating. It is a serious and sometimes a dangerous mistake to break a fast with solid food. The longer the fast, the more dangerous it is to do so. The correct way is to take a mild dose of warm liquid herbal laxative like senna leaves and wait for half an hour. Then, take liquid refreshment only--a warm, clear, vegetable soup containing no solids is best. The broth should be unspiced and unsalted. It should be made from one-third part at least of carrots and the remainder of mixed seasonal vegetables in which spinach predominates. Potatoes, being very starchy, must not be a part of it. The next meal may be a thick, heavy vegetable soup of which diced carrots are a substantial part. No dried beans or lentils may be included. For the first ordinary solid meal, avoid sharp, hard, crisp foods such as toast, as these can damage the temporarily tender stomach lining; avoid also such heavy, clogging starches as potatoes--as these retard the recovery of digestive activity.
The beneficial effect of fasting is both psychological and physical. Not only are the toxic matters eliminated but so also are obstructive waste matters and sticky slimes. This purification of the body lets it function more freely.
Although fasting is given a temporary place in the philosophic discipline because of its benefits, warning must be given of the possible injuries if it is practised without discrimination. If prolonged beyond the capacity of the body to endure, fasting may end in coma or sometimes even in death. The correct length of a fasting period depends partly upon the vitality and weight of the individual. Weak and thin persons cannot endure so long a one as strong or fat persons can. The period following any fast must not be regarded as unimportant. The body, being weakened, will not be able to endure strains that it can ordinarily endure; therefore, rest must be continued and only slowly discontinued. Take particular care not to lift heavy weights. Since pulsation of the heart and blood pressure are noticeably reduced by fasting, those persons who have an already low blood pressure and even those who are older than fifty years, should take care to avoid either a total fast or a long one. The dizziness which is felt by some fasters when they get up from lying in a bed or reclining on a couch can be lessened or prevented if they will be careful, when rising from this position, to move very slowly.
The physical dangers can be adequately safeguarded against by taking the precautions mentioned in the previous paragraph and by setting three and a half days as the maximum period for any one fast. It is harmful not to take a mild laxative just at the beginning of the fast as at the end, for the bowel motions stop and previous accumulations, having no intake of food to move them, remain clogged and constipating. But those who use strong mineral salts--which heat the membrane lining the stomach rendered delicate by the fast--when mild herbal ones are available are ill-advised.
The psychical dangers also do not usually arise except on fasts extended for periods longer than this time. The chief one is the negative condition of mediumship, which opens the mind to the influence of other persons and the body to control by disincarnate entities. No aspirant who already shows mediumistic tendencies should practise fasting for longer than one or two days at a time. The sick and the old must take all needed precautions, modify the fast to suit their individual condition, or adopt the semi-fast. Sufferers from serious lung or heart disease must not attempt any form of fasting.
A series of intermittent fasts with one week between the twenty-four hour fast or two weeks between the two, three, or four day ones are preferable to very long abstinences. They are less drastic, much safer, and not less efficacious at the end of a course. The end of a course in fasting should be followed by a reformed diet. It is much less difficult after such a course to drop from one's diet any article of food or drink of which one has been fond for many years and to which one has been so addicted that its absence would be highly disturbing. The same is true of adding any new dietary articles which may seen unattractive and unpalatable. This fact makes the fast an easier and useful way of making the transition from wrong eating habits to better ones.
It is inadvisable to fast in winter as the cold weather is easily felt. The best times are spring, summer, and early autumn. Especially suitable times are:
(a.) at the two equinoxes, March 21 when the sun crosses the equator on its northward journey and thus inaugurates the spring season, and about September 23 when it again crosses the equator on its southward journey and inaugurates the autumn season.
(b.) at the summer solstice, when the sun changes its course and reverses its direction. This happens about June 21.
At these three dates, Nature is preparing her great cyclic changes throughout the world and in Man. It is then that the cleansing of man's body prepares him for these changes.
-- Notebooks Category 5: The Body > Chapter 4 : Fasting > # 63
