# The Short Cut to Regeneration Through Fasting/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI
The Illuminati Fast
There are grades of fasting which one must recognize when he begins his short cut to at-one-ment with finer forces.
The one who is taking the fast for the first time cannot expect to take the same kind of fast as those who have done the fast for several months or years. After we have established the habit of fasting, we can go as far as we like in experimenting with occult laws; but in the beginning we should take the Novitiate instructions and follow them faithfully; through these we reach the point of mental and psychical endurance and discipline which enables us to take up the Initiates’ fast or the fast of the Illuminati.
After one has taken many fasts, our several bodies become accustomed to the new action and reaction, and the new demands made upon them cannot throw them out of harmony or allow them to over-intensify in any of their sensations.
The Illuminati Fast is fast from food, water, emotional stimulus (sex) and sleep.
There are many who learn to fast from food more easily than from drink or sleep. It is as ​important to fast from drinking as it is to fast from food. All the fluids of the body must be withdrawn and the blood current depleted as far as possible.
In the olden days the masters used to bleed the patients, understanding even then that the life of the body is in the blood and that a new blood current would bring about great changes in the body, and also that the blood current is the carrier of poisonous debris, and the serum of the blood is often only a stagnate pool of substance, breeding disease in the body, as a stagnant, malaria-laden pool of water poisons the air. When the infected blood was spilled, the blood current rebuilt itself and bleeding was a short cut to regeneration, sometimes to reincarnation as it was, like many of the old methods, too strenuous a process for the already depleted patient, and it is much too strenuous for the soft consciousness of this day and age.
In the new method of fasting, the same effect bleeding is secured, with none of its limitations; the blood current is drained to the lowest ebb, and when eating is begun again, a clear, sparkling stream of oxygenized blood is ready to carry the substance which Nature intended it should carry.
To fast from drinking until the flesh is thoroughly drained of all serum, is a part of the Illuminati test. It is easily done and the rewards come quickly to the Initiate. A new blood stream quickens every state of consciousness, while good, rich, red blood exerts a new ​influence on body, mind and heart.
Many can readily fast from food and water, but not from sleep. The fast from sleep is to some the greatest discipline. The world is full of “sleepy-heads” who are nodding if they go an hour over their bedtime, and are cross, depressed and out of all harmony if they are obliged to rise before their regular hour. The loss of one night’s sleep makes perfect wrecks and cranks of them, and to have a night of broken rest renders them inert the whole of the next day.
There are thousands of people who say “I must be regular in my habits or I am perfectly worthless.” Yes, these must be until they learn a new form of regularity; some form of regularity persisted in leads to stagnation and slow unfoldment. Ruts are not valuable on any plane,–even the common race man in the wagon avoids them on his way.
“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” was written by one of those nodders who believed in it, while “Early to bed and early to rise may do very well for sick folks and guys” was written by one who had passed the time when sleep as a habit conquered him.
Sleep as a restorer, educator and revelator is the truth of sleep, but sleep as a habit is the consciousness that has not yet come to the power of the “short cut”.
Those who do not know the mysteries of night (night, in which the long vigil of the ​human mind lets in the higher forces of the higher mind) have lived but half of life. There is something born from a solitary vigil that is not found in the glare and activity of the daylight world.
Every hour differs from the last. There is a time just between three o’clock and five when all the vibrations of the earth change. It seems the good-bye of the night and the awakening of the day. Day holds night in some subtle, lingering embrace that will not let go until the very gray of the dawn drives the reluctant darkness from the earth.
It is at the hour of three that egos who are just lingering for the silver cord to break, will slip away. This is the death hour of the planet,–here is where the balance is most often cast, and those who fight death may well take their place at the bedside. Whether they see their ghostly visitor or not, they may know he is there, and only a strong, enduring recognition of life will hold the sick friend or loved one on this side of the veil.
No one really needs to die if he deeply cares to live, but it takes a conscious choice of the ego-man to extend his own life orbit, and, with this, a strong centralizing power on this side of the veil. Those who feel the chill of this hour creep into the room and over them, will do well to understand that “The river widens as it nears the sea,” and they must fling their minds with no uncertain desire for life, and more and more life. Then when the gray dawn comes in, the ​watcher can lie down to sleep in peace and the patient turn with new rest to his pillow, and all will rejoice because “he is better in the morning.”
To the Illuminatus who watches these hours through for increased vibration and wider revelation, there will come the same consciousness of the ebbing tide of life,–the whole sea of power is gone and all the gray rocks and mud covered valleys of his life will stand revealed, all weakness, all regrets, all remorse, all failures, all loss, will take mental form again and mock him,–the light of hope will burn low.
Empty of normal physical food, alone with the haunting memories of his past of millions of years, facing all the unrevealed adventures of a million years to come, he thinks in eternities as well as in time, and often here the Initiate turns back; the load of revelation is too heavy and he turns shudderingly away, seeking eagerly the fleshpots and the path of evolution, rather than meet himself in the karmic precipitate of his own transmutation short-cut.
The daylight is powerful, beautiful and complete, but it is filled only with objective calls and rampant, active, surging force; it is an insistent energy that does not mean to let the mind of man rest. It is induced action on every plane, and that thing which does not move into radiant life it kills by the force of its own surging rays.
The moonlight, starlight and midnight are the great receptive forces and in their passive action something falls like a soft mantle over the tired ​life of the world,–no work at night can take on the wear and tear of the day to those who are in harmony with the forces of the hours. The stillness, the lack of noises that fret the nerves and brain, the soft, slow turning of the table of time, the changing vibrations of the hours themselves,–the white light of the midnight hours,–the dull gray of the coming dawn–all bring their own subtleties and weave them into the life substance of those who have the strength of character to seek and find.
Fasting, breathing, meditation, concentration, and sleepnessness, this is the discipline whereby the race man opens the doors to higher power and perfected perception. “He who puts his hand to the plow and turns back, is not fit for the kingdom of God,” the olden mystics said.
There are seven bodies, with their own existing states of consciousness, which are at all times in action in the physical one, and when one fasts from sleep he intensifies the second, or astral body, and through this he can register all the wisdom of the Akashic records of his physical brain.
One part of the brain is for registration–a form of thought higher than mental thinking. In this part of mind one does not think–the thoughts think him. His own mind is a receiving radio center and not a generator of thought force; he receives a stream of thought force so big that he does not need to translate it into thought, form or speech. It flashes into his idea centers and the ideas, words and all are ​registered at once, like sight reading as compared to the old tiresome way of spelling and pronouncing.
This registration part of the mind is the “flash consciousness” used by seers, prophets and revelators.
“Before ye call, I hear” the masters said of old, and this is the part of man’s divine mind which IS and only needs to be contracted to know. Back of the knowing and the thing known stands the KNOWER, which is ever ready to flash all wisdom into the human idea centers when the human himself will get the wireless machine of his own mind in perfect accord with the within.
The Illuminati Fast subordinates the flesh, it stills the discordant thinking, it hushes the emotional call and clears the field of consciousness for the flash lights of the higher self.
Sometimes the bodily senses become a thousand times more acute, but this acuteness only serves as a springboard for the higher bodies; the mind then becomes equally alert, all five senses over-intensified, the emotions quickened, until joy can be so intense it almost becomes pain; or pain so sweet that it becomes a pleasure to match it against the ever widening reaches of the self conscious attainment.
One often has to go far on in extended sensation before he will understand how pleasure is pain and pain is pleasure, but there is a spot where they blend, just as there is a change of normal sensation in the body in which one ​cannot distinguish between heat and cold when applied to the skin. In the old world this is called disease, but in the new world, where men act naturally with so-called abnormal laws, it becomes only a place in consciousness which holds in its unrevealed crypts some revelations of the self, unguessed by the normal dwellers of world of normal sense.
In the flights of illumination which come to the Illuminati, many things are revealed which before were sealed. “He that lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God” was the admonition of the masters of the past, and here in this illumined place in our own human mind, we are in direct contact with the universal mind and all things being written on the records of the Infinite become our personal possessions.
There are many great kingdoms of consciousness awaiting our discovery, and as the higher race mind has found new levels of the physical air and with the aeroplane is carrying his physical body far beyond the level of the path of the common man, and with the submarine is seeking out the plan of the lower kingdoms, just so the Illuminatus rises into the transcendental kingdom of his inner selfhood and discovers there new spheres of intelligence waiting for his conquest.
There is a table-land of the self, and those who seek it find it, and those who do not find it can only go on pushing themselves into a fuller realization and a higher coordination until, in some inspired moment, they too will plunge ​headlong into a new world of beauty and delight.
And then–there is no darkness in life’s skies, No night, dear God, no night, For listening ever to life’s glorious song, All earth is light–light–light.
He who fasts and goes only as far as the Novitiate Fast does well and he need not be condemned by his own mind, nor hurry to force himself on into the Illuminati Fast; Eternity is a long time and the race need not hurry. It may take an even pace and still short cut a million years of experience, expression and inclusion; but to the one who is ready and who comes with an unfaltering determination to go on up the steeps of the highest experiences, willing even to short cut those who are on the Novitiate’s short cut, these can come into the Illuminati Fast with fearless hearts. The past, the present and the future are one, and they must be made one in every consciousness some time, somewhere. Somewhere we must face ourselves and all the actions and reactions of our many desires.
Through the mighty years, with a million fears, We have waited silently so, It must bring our own when the night is flown,– It must let the dawn come through.
There is nothing in all the mighty past of which we need be afraid. After all, we cannot face anything but our own desires; why should we fear in the now the things which our souls loved in the forgotten past? The brave soul longs for freedom, balance, more than for ​anything else; and he will stand with uncovered head, or kneel in silent consecration, commanding from out of the Infinite the precipitate of all that is less than freedom for his evolving soul. There is nothing that can have any power over a soul victorious; all the elemental consciousness of many millions of years will sink into oblivion before the calm determination of an illumined life.
So, in the wisdom born from on high, the Illuminatus takes his place in his own universal setting, he calls from all the past behind him and from all the future before him, the balance sheet of his own soul. Then he says in the voice of the Mighty Silence “By the power that is vested in me by Thee, Oh God, I command the elements to fall before my will. God of all the hosts of heaven, God of angels, God of men, the light of Thy benediction covers me.”
Instructions for the Illuminati Fast
When taking the Illuminati Fast, never take more than two days and nights at first; when taking the simple fast for illumination and prophecy it is well to begin with one night with out sleep; after a while, if this leaves you normal, you may take two nights, only the real mystic can take three nights. There is never anything gained by straining for revelation.
Two days and nights is the limit for the Novitiate of the spiritual discipline; after that, sleep and eat to your heart’s content. The Illuminati fast should come at the end of the ​ten-day fast. If it is taken alone without preparation, it will not do the work that is done at the close of an ordinary fast. Eat at night on the eighth day and then neither eat, sleep nor drink until twelve or three o’clock the morning of the eleventh day. Twelve o’clock is for those who feel unable to go farther.
Should this fast seem too hard you should use you own common sense and stop anywhere that the strain seems too great. A glass of milk, then off to bed will cure any sensation you may contact.
In this fast one often has extended vision and hearing. Clairvoyance, clairaudience, trance conditions, suspended animation, are all a part of the plan. The fast takes the dimness of the Soul away.
Do not try this fast unless you are not bound by the old race superstition and fear of the things of the other world. There are many new fields of discovery before the one who knows and is not afraid. There is no danger to the one who is afraid, for his own fear will send him to the table or to bed long before anyone is anxious but himself.
It is in this fast that we became adept with the mystic mirror and it is in this fast that we can discover, and afer a while interpret, the Akashic records, and here is where we learn the true power of our wireless mind and catch messages too high to translate into speech.
It is in this fast that we see the White Light of Reality and can commune, not with the ​familiar spirits of the earth plane, but with the Heavenly hosts and masters of the spheres, and more than this, through our own transcendency we become aware of the elemental consciousness of nature, the masters, the Solar system and the Solar gods. Forces of earth, air, fire and water obey our command, for through this Cosmic awareness they know and love us.
The world is only a mirror in which is reflected the other worlds and their inhabitants, and when we are transcendental enough we see the reflected worlds of many universes and take our place, a whirling center of divine intelligence, in accord with the mighty master minds.
From these illumined heights we return to the normal vibrations of our every day world, but our soul is filled with the infinite and the joy of things supernal; our wisdom is not the wisdom of the human, but the wisdom born of our intimacy with what men call God. We can trust our human mind in our human affairs to the uttermost because it is God Himself enshrined.
The ILLUMINATI FAST is the short cut of the “Short Cut”, and we may rise to this consciousness and “be as one who walks a pathway fashioned from the stars and sheds his light about him as he goes.”