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to prove that fasting from food would make people spiritual. It never did, for material actions are not the cause of Spirit. The reverse is the way of the law. That is, according to the way of the Spirit in man, so will his outer actions be. Men banded themselves together saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul. Such was the outcome of the teachings of fasting.
There is the same idea in the use of words. We speak certain words after we become spiritual. Therefore it is said that speaking those words would make us spiritual. The effect is confounded with the cause again. In the case of words which the Spirit uses, we cease to undergo the sufferings which call more and more attention to the physical body. Fasters are very exercised over their physical feelings, and thus are as materially minded as gluttons. The same with people who beat their bodies, or freeze them, or otherwise abuse them. Their whole mind being given to their bodies, they are even more materially occupied than people who please their bodies with warm clothing and fresh and beautiful adornings, and have freedom from pain of all kinds.
In the case of using words, we find there is nothing at all in great truths to call attention to material things. The words, as we speak them, are given forth as the utterance of the Spirit of Life within us. All point to the Spirit, and go forth from the Spirit. We see them, by their mysterious ways, attending to the externals. So we obey both the Bhagavad Gita and Jesus, and take no thought about what we eat, drink, or wear as to whether it is wise to wear more or less.
Paul, very often, became much exercised in his mind over material things. At one moment it was meat, and at another it was the length of man's hair and woman's hair. These subjects are not in the mind of a spiritually minded man. He lets them alone. The man who is thinking righteously will
