fasting

90:4.8Fast­ing, di­et­ing, and coun­terir­ri­tants were of­ten used as re­me­dial mea­sures. Hu­man se­cre­tions, be­ing def­i­nitely mag­i­cal, were highly re­garded; blood and urine were thus among the ear­li­est medicines and were soon aug­mented by roots and var­i­ous salts. The shamans be­lieved that dis­ease spir­its could be driven out of the body by foul-smelling and bad-tast­ing medicines. Purg­ing very early be­came a rou­tine treat­ment, and the val­ues of raw co­coa and qui­nine were among the ear­li­est phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­cov­er­ies.

100:5.10The more health­ful at­ti­tude of spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion is to be found in re­flec­tive wor­ship and in the prayer of thanks­giv­ing. The di­rect com­mu­nion with one’s Thought Ad­juster, such as oc­curred in the later years of Je­sus’ life in the flesh, should not be con­fused with these so-called mys­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences. The fac­tors which con­tribute to the ini­ti­a­tion of mys­tic com­mu­nion are in­dica­tive of the dan­ger of such psy­chic states. The mys­tic sta­tus is fa­vored by such things as: phys­i­cal fa­tigue, fast­ing, psy­chic dis­so­ci­a­tion, pro­found aes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ences, vivid sex im­pulses, fear, anx­i­ety, rage, and wild danc­ing. Much of the ma­te­rial aris­ing as a re­sult of such pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion has its ori­gin in the sub­con­scious mind.

89:3.1Re­nun­ci­a­tion came as the next step in re­li­gious evo­lu­tion; fast­ing was a com­mon prac­tice. Soon it be­came the cus­tom to forgo many forms of phys­i­cal plea­sure, es­pe­cially of a sex­ual na­ture. The rit­ual of the fast was deeply rooted in many an­cient re­li­gions and has been handed down to prac­ti­cally all mod­ern the­o­logic sys­tems of thought.

87:6.16Next came the prac­tice of rit­ual vows, soon to be fol­lowed by re­li­gious pledges and sa­cred oaths. Most of these oaths were ac­com­pa­nied by self-tor­ture and self-mu­ti­la­tion; later on, by fast­ing and prayer. Self-de­nial was sub­se­quently looked upon as be­ing a sure co­er­cive; this was es­pe­cially true in the mat­ter of sex sup­pres­sion. And so prim­i­tive man early de­vel­oped a de­cided aus­ter­ity in his re­li­gious prac­tices, a be­lief in the ef­fi­cacy of self-tor­ture and self-de­nial as rit­u­als ca­pa­ble of co­erc­ing the un­will­ing spir­its to re­act fa­vor­ably to­ward all such suf­fer­ing and de­pri­va­tion.

89:4.1Sac­ri­fice as a part of re­li­gious de­vo­tions, like many other wor­ship­ful rit­u­als, did not have a sim­ple and sin­gle ori­gin. The ten­dency to bow down be­fore power and to pros­trate one­self in wor­ship­ful ado­ra­tion in the pres­ence of mys­tery is fore­shad­owed in the fawn­ing of the dog be­fore its mas­ter. It is but one step from the im­pulse of wor­ship to the act of sac­ri­fice. Prim­i­tive man gauged the value of his sac­ri­fice by the pain which he suf­fered. When the idea of sac­ri­fice first at­tached it­self to re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial, no of­fer­ing was con­tem­plated which was not pro­duc­tive of pain. The first sac­ri­fices were such acts as pluck­ing hair, cut­ting the flesh, mu­ti­la­tions, knock­ing out teeth, and cut­ting off fin­gers. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced, these crude con­cepts of sac­ri­fice were el­e­vated to the level of the rit­u­als of self-ab­ne­ga­tion, as­ceti­cism, fast­ing, de­pri­va­tion, and the later Chris­tian doc­trine of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion through sor­row, suf­fer­ing, and the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh.

147:8.2“‘Why have you fasted? For what rea­son do you af­flict your souls while you con­tinue to find plea­sure in op­pres­sion and to take de­light in in­jus­tice? Be­hold, you fast for the sake of strife and con­tention and to smite with the fist of wicked­ness. But you shall not fast in this way to make your voices heard on high.

147:8.3“‘Is it such a fast that I have cho­sen—a day for a man to af­flict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bul­rush, to grovel in sack­cloth and ashes? Will you dare to call this a fast and an ac­cept­able day in the sight of the Lord? Is not this the fast I should choose: to loose the bonds of wicked­ness, to undo the knots of heavy bur­dens, to let the op­pressed go free, and to break ev­ery yoke? Is it not to share my bread with the hun­gry and to bring those who are home­less and poor to my house? And when I see those who are naked, I will clothe them.

134:8.3Je­sus ate fru­gally while on the moun­tain; he ab­stained from all food only a day or two at a time. The super­hu­man be­ings who con­fronted him on this moun­tain, and with whom he wres­tled in spirit, and whom he de­feated in power, were real; they were his arch­en­e­mies in the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia; they were not phan­tasms of the imag­i­na­tion evolved out of the in­tel­lec­tual va­garies of a weak­ened and starv­ing mor­tal who could not dis­tin­guish re­al­ity from the vi­sions of a dis­or­dered mind.

142:8.1By the end of April the op­po­si­tion to Je­sus among the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had be­come so pro­nounced that the Mas­ter and his apos­tles de­cided to leave Je­ru­sa­lem for a while, go­ing south to work in Beth­le­hem and He­bron. The en­tire month of May was spent in do­ing per­sonal work in these cities and among the peo­ple of the sur­round­ing vil­lages. No pub­lic preach­ing was done on this trip, only house-to-house vis­i­ta­tion. A part of this time, while the apos­tles taught the gospel and min­is­tered to the sick, Je­sus and Ab­ner spent at En­gedi, vis­it­ing the Nazarite colony. John the Bap­tist had gone forth from this place, and Ab­ner had been head of this group. Many of the Nazarite broth­er­hood be­came be­liev­ers in Je­sus, but the ma­jor­ity of these as­cetic and ec­cen­tric men re­fused to ac­cept him as a teacher sent from heaven be­cause he did not teach fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial.

143:2.3“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater than he who cap­tures a city. Self-mas­tery is the mea­sure of man’s moral na­ture and the in­di­ca­tor of his spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. In the old or­der you fasted and prayed; as the new crea­ture of the re­birth of the spirit, you are taught to be­lieve and re­joice. In the Fa­ther’s king­dom you are to be­come new crea­tures; old things are to pass away; be­hold I show you how all things are to be­come new. And by your love for one an­other you are to con­vince the world that you have passed from bond­age to lib­erty, from death into life ev­er­last­ing.

147:7.2On Tues­day evening Je­sus was con­duct­ing one of his cus­tom­ary classes of ques­tions and an­swers when the leader of the six spies said to him: “I was to­day talk­ing with one of John’s dis­ci­ples who is here at­tend­ing upon your teach­ing, and we were at a loss to un­der­stand why you never com­mand your dis­ci­ples to fast and pray as we Phar­isees fast and as John bade his fol­low­ers.” And Je­sus, re­fer­ring to a state­ment by John, an­swered this ques­tioner: “Do the sons of the bridecham­ber fast while the bride­groom is with them? As long as the bride­groom re­mains with them, they can hardly fast. But the time is com­ing when the bride­groom shall be taken away, and dur­ing those times the chil­dren of the bridecham­ber un­doubt­edly will fast and pray. To pray is nat­u­ral for the chil­dren of light, but fast­ing is not a part of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Be re­minded that a wise tai­lor does not sew a piece of new and un­shrunk cloth upon an old gar­ment, lest, when it is wet, it shrink and pro­duce a worse rent. Nei­ther do men put new wine into old wine skins, lest the new wine burst the skins so that both the wine and the skins per­ish. The wise man puts the new wine into fresh wine skins. There­fore do my dis­ci­ples show wis­dom in that they do not bring too much of the old or­der over into the new teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom. You who have lost your teacher may be jus­ti­fied in fast­ing for a time. Fast­ing may be an ap­pro­pri­ate part of the law of Moses, but in the com­ing king­dom the sons of God shall ex­pe­ri­ence free­dom from fear and joy in the di­vine spirit.” And when they heard these words, the dis­ci­ples of John were com­forted while the Phar­isees them­selves were the more con­founded.

140:5.82. “Happy are they who hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, for they shall be filled.” Only those who feel poor in spirit will ever hunger for righ­teous­ness. Only the hum­ble seek for di­vine strength and crave spir­i­tual power. But it is most dan­ger­ous to know­ingly en­gage in spir­i­tual fast­ing in or­der to im­prove one’s ap­petite for spir­i­tual en­dow­ments. Phys­i­cal fast­ing be­comes dan­ger­ous af­ter four or five days; one is apt to lose all de­sire for food. Pro­longed fast­ing, ei­ther phys­i­cal or spir­i­tual, tends to de­stroy hunger.

87:2.4Si­lence or mourn­ing was ob­served af­ter a death so that the ghost would not be at­tracted back home. Self-tor­ture—wounds—was a com­mon form of mourn­ing. Many ad­vanced teach­ers tried to stop this, but they failed. Fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial were thought to be pleas­ing to the ghosts, who took plea­sure in the dis­com­fort of the liv­ing dur­ing the tran­si­tion pe­riod of lurk­ing about be­fore their ac­tual de­par­ture for dead­land.