In Western Medicine there is a phenomenon known as the ``placebo effect.'' Even when an unsuspecting patient is prescribed sugar pills instead of medicine, still the patient sometimes reports that symptoms improve. In other words, the mere belief that the pills--made of sugar that has no pharmacological value--will help leads to an improvement in the condition of the individual. This is a remarkable phenomenon whose full significance has until recently not been fully appreciated by the medical community. Stripped to its essentials, it suggests that faith can heal. Traditionally, in Western Medicine, this effect was considered a nuisance whose effect had to be subtracted from clinical drug tests. Hence to this day ``double blind'' tests are conducted in which neither patient nor doctor can distinguish the patients prescribed the real drugs apart from those given the placebos. Fortunately, even secular society is slowly opening up to the use of meditation, prayer, etc. A very encouraging development is that recently, the medical community has begun to realize the relevance of an individual's beliefs to health. For example, a research team at Harvard Medical School conducted tests to study the effects of prayer on the health of patients.[1]
Why study prayer, and what does the placebo effect have to do with it? When people supplicate God for health, they are implicitly placing their faith--trusting their beliefs--in the power of prayer. Indeed, prayer is a potent means of accessing and altering our innermost beliefs. Fasting has similarly been used for tens of thousands of years as a complement to prayer. Moreover, prayer and fasting can lead to slightly altered states of consciousness in which the material world becomes less important, thereby opening our minds to the subtler--more spiritual--aspects of our existence. The power of prayer is not limited to matters of health, however. Through mechanisms as yet not properly understood by science, prayer and fasting seem to be able to release disproportionately large forces. Priests, shamans, politicians, healers and spiritualists of all ages have made liberal use of prayer and fasting for thousands of years. Basically, prayer and fasting are two of the most basic tools of the ``art'' and ``science'' of spiritual transformation.
In our age, prayer and fasting have become less important, even empty rituals in some sad cases. But if we sincerely aspire to build a new kind of civilization based on collective security, nonviolence, and spiritual values, then it would be unconscionable to neglect the value of prayer, meditation, deep contemplation, and fasting. Ultimately, we need to change people's hearts, so every attempt to build a better, nonviolent civilization will fail if matters of the heart and of the spirit are neglected.
This chapter examines prayer and fasting as understood by Gandhi and by the Bahá'ís. Gandhi made effective use of prayer and fasting--indeed, his fasts attained worldwide fame. Prayer and fasting are also integral aspects of the life-pattern in the Bahá'í community. Bahá'ís pray at least daily. They also fast from sunrise to sunset, abstaining from all food and drink, for a period of 19 days that ends every year with the Bahá'í New Year Festival of Naw Rúz. The Bahá'í New Year, like the ancient Persian New Year, is astronomically fixed to coincide with the March equinox (usually March 21). The Bahá'í fast is not binding on children, pregnant or nursing mothers, travelers, or on those who are too old or too weak.