Excerpt from The Mir­a­cle of Fast­ing — Chap­ter 6

When I refer to fast­ing in this book, I con­stantly make the state­ment, “Eat absolutely no food and drink dis­tilled water exclu­sively.” Dis­tilled water is pure H 2O — which means it’s a com­pound of 2 parts hydro­gen and 1 part oxy­gen. If you drink rain water, or the fresh juices of fruits and veg­eta­bles, remem­ber that all of this liq­uid has been dis­tilled by Mother Nature. If you drink rain water or snow water, there are no inor­ganic min­er­als in it. It is 100% mineral-free. If you drink fruit and veg­etable juices, you are drink­ing dis­tilled water plus cer­tain nutri­ents such as fruit sug­ars, organic min­er­als and vit­a­mins. But if you drink lake, river, well or spring water, you are drink­ing un-distilled water, plus the inor­ganic min­er­als that the water has picked up. Some of this water is known as hard water, mean­ing it has high inor­ganic min­eral con­cen­tra­tions that can cause health prob­lems. Now, let me give you a short les­son in chem­istry. There are two kinds of chem­i­cals — inor­ganic and organic. The inor­ganic chem­i­cals are inert, which means that they can­not be absorbed into the tis­sues of the body. Our bod­ies are com­posed of 16 organic min­er­als which all come from that which is liv­ing or was alive. When we eat an apple or any other fruit or veg­etable, that sub­stance is liv­ing. Each has a cer­tain sur­vival time after it has been picked before spoil­ing. We pre­fer the veg­e­tar­ian diet, but the same applies to ani­mal foods, fish, milk, cheese and eggs if you eat them.

Hard, Inor­ganic Min­er­als Cause Prob­lems!
Organic min­er­als are very vital in keep­ing us alive and well. If we were cast away on an unin­hab­ited island where noth­ing was grow­ing, we would starve to death. Even though the soil beneath our feet con­tains 16 inor­ganic min­er­als, our bod­ies could not absorb them. Only a liv­ing plant has the power to extract inor­ganic min­er­als from the earth. No human can extract the nour­ish­ment from inor­ganic minerals.

Many years ago, I was on an expe­di­tion to China when one part of the coun­try was suf­fer­ing from drought and famine. I saw with my own eyes poor, starv­ing peo­ple heat­ing earth and eat­ing it for want of food. They died hor­ri­ble deaths because they could not get one bit of nour­ish­ment from the inor­ganic min­er­als of the earth. For years I have heard peo­ple say that cer­tain waters were rich in all the min­er­als. What min­er­als are they talk­ing about? Inor­ganic or organic? These are inor­ganic and they are bur­den­ing their bod­ies with these inert min­er­als, which may cause the devel­op­ment of stones in the kid­neys, gall­blad­der and stone-like acid crys­tals in the arter­ies, veins, and other parts of the body. I was reared in Vir­ginia where the drink­ing water is called hard water. It is heav­ily sat­u­rated with inor­ganic min­er­als, espe­cially sodium, iron and cal­cium. I saw many of my elders die of kid­ney trou­bles. Nearly all the peo­ple were pre­ma­turely old because the inor­ganic min­er­als would col­lect on the inner walls of their arter­ies and veins, caus­ing many to die from hard­en­ing of the arter­ies, strokes and heart attacks. One of my uncles died at Johns Hop­kins hos­pi­tal when he was only 48. The autopsy doc­tors stated that his arter­ies were as hard as clay pipes because they were so stiff and cor­roded with inor­ganic min­er­als. Yet you will hear peo­ple say, “Dis­tilled water is dead water. A fish can­not live in it.” Of course a fish can­not live in freshly dis­tilled water for any length of time, because it needs the veg­e­ta­tion that grows in rivers, lakes and seas. Imag­ine you were ship­wrecked while on a pas­sen­ger ship going to Hawaii and you became a cast­away in a lifeboat for days on the open sea. If the only water avail­able was rain water, would you say, “Rain water is dead dis­tilled water, I won’t drink it?” No, you would never say that. Of course you would drink pure rain water and sur­vive until rescued!