The Philosophy of Fasting: A Message for Sufferers and Sinners E-Book

Edward Earle Purinton

• Herausgeber: Edward Earle Purinton
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

After ten years of experience and observation, the author would re-affirm his belief in the efficacy and the desirability of sane fasting. He knows of hundreds of cases where a partial or complete fast, of one to thirty days, cleansed and renewed the body and mind to a most gratifying extent.

Table of Contents

A PERSONAL PROLOGUE

Chapter I.--Fasting for Health

Chapter II.--Fasting

Chapter III.--Fasting for Freedom

Chapter IV.--Fasting for Power

Chapter V.--Fasting for Beauty

Chapter VI.--Fasting for Faith

Chapter VII.--Fasting for Courage

Chapter VIII.--Fasting for Poise

Chapter IX.--Fasting for Virtue

Chapter X.--Fasting for Spirituality

Chapter XI.--Fasting for Instinct

Chapter XII.--Fasting for Inspiration

Chapter XIII.--Fasting for Love

TWENTY RULES FOR SANE FASTING

AN INDIVIDUAL EPILOGUE

A DECLARATION OF FAITH

Leseprobe

THE

PHILOSOPHY OF FASTING

A MESSAGE FOR SUFFERERS AND SINNERS

BY

EDWARD EARLE PURINTON

PUBLISHED BY BENEDICT LUST, N. D., M. D. BUTLER, NEW JERSEY NEW YORK CITYTANGERINE, FLA.

Table of Contents

A PERSONAL PROLOGUE

Chapter I.--Fasting for Health

Chapter II.--Fasting

Chapter III.--Fasting for Freedom

Chapter IV.--Fasting for Power

Chapter V.--Fasting for Beauty

Chapter VI.--Fasting for Faith

Chapter VII.--Fasting for Courage

Chapter VIII.--Fasting for Poise

Chapter IX.--Fasting for Virtue

Chapter X.--Fasting for Spirituality

Chapter XI.--Fasting for Instinct

Chapter XII.--Fasting for Inspiration

Chapter XIII.--Fasting for Love

TWENTY RULES FOR SANE FASTING

AN INDIVIDUAL EPILOGUE

A DECLARATION OF FAITH

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

   Time is the only sure test for a truth. If our actions, based on our convictions, bring results that satisfy us and our neighbors, then we may know that our convictions were right.

   After ten years of experience and observation, the author would re-affirm his belief in the efficacy and the desirability of sane fasting. He knows of hundreds of cases where a partial or complete fast, of one to thirty days, cleansed and renewed the body and mind to a most gratifying extent.

   He would urge, however, the need of caution--it is safer not to fast than to do it wrong. As regards a theory of health, most people are of two classes, progressives or conservatives. The progressives are apt to swallow a new theory blindly, rashly, prematurely--and they acquire mental and moral indigestion. The conservatives are apt to refuse to sample a new theory at all--and they die of mental and moral paralysis. While indigestion is notsofatal as paralysis, neither is wholesome. And the radical needs always to be on his guard, lest he act unwisely.

   A fast longer than three days should be taken only under expert supervision and direction. Certain readers of this book, following some of the rules here given, and wholly neglecting others, have fasted and come to grief. Then they blamed the book. Other readers, doing exactly as the book suggests, took their long fast and were literally made over--in body, mind and spirit. Therefore the advice to have expert supervision of a protracted fast is due not to the incompleteness of this book, but to the inability or unwillingness of the average reader to follow directions as given.

   The writer acknowledges herein a boyish exuberance and semblance of conceit, of which he trusts he would not now be guilty. But he feels that the truth is here, in spite of excrescences or peculiarities. The individual who has found himself always appears odd, simply because the natural is so unusual in civilization.

   When a bird escapes from an iron cage, after a long imprisonment, it does not pause to choose the manner of its flight or to measure the passage. It only knows it is free; and, being free, it must dare the upper world.

   The first two prose books by the author of this volume were his crude but sincere attempts at mental and spiritual flight, when he had just broken away from the confines of disease, worry, fear, tradition, convention, fashion, pedantry, prudery, and ecclesiasticism.

   He was so glad to be out of the dungeon, so eager to mount theheights, thathe sped in his mind on the first words that came. He had no time to think how they would sound. Hence these two books, "The Philosophy of Fasting" and "Lords of Ourselves", were not finished products, in a literary sense. But they were honest efforts, and the writer still believes that honesty is the highest faculty of speech.

   If you read these books with a preconceived notion of literary style, you may he disappointed. If you read them with an earnest desire to understand the human soul, and to find better ways of thinking, working and living, you will experience a new courage, hope, and strength of mind and body.

   The writer is not an anarchist, an atheist, or any other abnormal type--as a few non-thinking persons have concluded. He is a staunch defender of marriage, the home, the church, and all other bulwarks of human integrity. But he is an ardent foe of the littleness, the selfishness, the formalism, artificiality and compromise which attend most homes, colleges, and houses of worship.

   He cannot believe that health resides in drugs, nor education in books, nor truth in rituals, nor love in ceremonials, nor peace in prohibitions, nor virtue in legal enactments. Regulations are impositions. All expectations of us are restrictions about us. Only as we come, through long endeavor, high purpose, hard and painful struggle, to know, revere, trust, empower and express our own divine, natural selves, can we ensure a permanence of the verities of life.

   May this book serve in some little way to clarify your thought, strengthen your faith, deepen your convictions, broaden your opportunities, and quicken your highestaspirations.

EDWARD EARLE PURINTON

Woolworth Building, New York City

   September first, nineteen hundred fifteen

This book is the record of a soul's emancipation.

   Only sufferers and sinners will understand it.

Because only sinners and sufferers are on the highway to Freedom.

   The sinneractswithout thinking--and is thereby made bold for better things.

   The suffererfeelswithout thinking--and is thereby made receptive for finer things.

   The reasonerthinkswithout either feeling or acting--and is thereby made too numb to suffer, too fearful to be aught but impotently virtuous.

   Not to the brain of the worldly-wise, that dusty storehouse of race rubbish, will my message appeal.But to the heart of the sufferer softened through anguish, to the soul of the sinner strengthened through abandon, and to the spirit of the child quickened from its nearness to fairies and angels.

   Such as are pitied, despised or condemned I call my brothers and sisters. Borne from the stagnant surface of being into the wild engulfment of its whirlpool soul, these have sounded the misery of the depths, havelainhalf-dead amid the wreckage on the shore, and are now able to appreciate and determined to attain the glory of the heights illumed by Truth.

   Come, let us mount together. I have explored both the valley and the summit. And I promise you the way is plain.

   Don't be needlessly apprehensive at the start--this isn't a missionary tract. Missionary literature is distributed by persons too good to touch the folks next-door. You see Asiatic heathen don't need fumigating so long as we proselyte them by post.

   Now there are thousands of worthy people who honestly believe that their mission on earth is to reform, convert and reconstruct this world before sun-up to-morrow morning. Naturally they must write a book this afternoon, address at least one mass meeting this evening, and devote the feverishly fugitive midnight hours to personal exhortation. Even then a new dawn overtakes them. And the sun shamelessly smiles on a race still unredeemed.

   These self-appointed leaders require devotees. Nothing but their following justifies their faith. And if their book isn't read, or their discourse applauded, they bemoan to themselves how signally they have failed.

   How incomprehensible. Has not Truth all eternity wherein to speak to the souls of men? And if the messagebetrue, it may die on the lips that gave it--yet some soul, somewhere, shall catch the refrain and echo it down the ages.

   The success of this book will be proportional to the numbers that do not read it--now. And its failure may be measured by the amount of applause it calls forth. Give me a hearing--but spare me an audience. Open your ears and your hearts to me--but close your eyes and your lips. Take what little good there may be here for you, and leave the rest. Do not question me. Do not praise me. Above all, do not detain me. This is but a glimpse of Truth. And I cannot pause while still the horizon widens and the sun gains in glory.

A PERSONAL PROLOGUE

Words in themselves are as futile as stray bricks.

They endure only when cemented by feeling and aligned by purpose. The field of literature is mostly a dreary brick-yard, with chipped and broken bits scattered about to mark what might have been had the builder known.

Life is the only literature that lives. And if I had not first lived this book, it would never be worth the writing.To write for any other reason than that one must is to insultoneselfand to martyr one's friends. If you write only when you must, you may not always be considerate to your friends. But you will at least be true to yourself. And the perusal of your writings can never be too hard a price to pay for knowing some one who is sincere. Sincere humans are about as common as brave gazelles or compassionate tigers.

"The Philosophy of Fasting"