Spiritual Experiences According to Ariel

Spiritual Experiences

According to Ariel Glucklich, professor of the Theology Department at Georgetown University, throughout history, pain has been used to connect with God and has served humanity in many constructive religious and social ways (Post). While mystics and religious individuals have searched for God through rituals, prayers and devotion, some individuals who desired a more intense experience of the divine chose pain to achieve this state because pain has a way of dissolving one's sense of individuality, and by dissolving the sense of self, one becomes Christ-like or Shiva-like (Simeone).

A myriad of religious rituals exist that involve inflicting intentional pain through forms such as self-flagellation, barefoot pilgrimages, extreme fasting, sleepless nights in prayer vigils, piercing the body, and wearing irritating garments (Post). Shiite Muslims whip themselves as a way of marking the murder of Hussein, and followers of Buddhism and Hinduism also engage in various ways of self-inflicted pain (Hansen). Within the religious world today, the most common form of self-inflicted pain is pilgrimage, which typically involves walking barefoot on hot and/or rocky terrain (Simeone). Glucklich explains that these religious models of pain view pain as a solution rather than a problem. The martyr and ascetic accept their painful experience as serving a divine purpose and as a means to divine insight and hidden truth (Post).

Among the Native American Indians, there are rituals in which during some four days of intense dancing, some of the dancers' chest and back muscles are pierced with wooden skewers (Pazola). The Native tribes do not regard the piercings as self-inflicted torture but as the offering of one's self to the Creator, much like Christ sacrificed himself on the cross, in fact, many compare these sacrifices to the sacrifice of the Mass (Pazola). Sacrifice is also involved in the traditional vision quest, in which individuals fast, pray and endure the elements in seclusion of several days in order to communicate with the spirits to gain direction and purpose in his or her life or to obtain knowledge that will help the entire community (Pazola). Native Americans view hardship and pain as simply the cycle of life, and believe that life is best when things are difficult because through pain people learn humility and dependence upon God (Pazola).

According to Glucklich, neuroscience teaches that "certain levels of pain possess analgesic qualities and can even induce euphoric states of mind" (Post). These states of mind are associated with the release of endogenous opioids in the brain, and together with other biochemical events, provide a firm scientific basis for religious rituals that require a painful rite of passage to a new self (Post). Glucklich explains that pain is used and even welcomed in the history of religions, and there are empirical grounds for the classically religious assertion that pain, especially self-inflicted pain, "fails to alienate the true lovers of God," and is viewed as a direct path to knowledge or/and a God experience (Post).

Today, self-inflicted pain is generally interpreted as a form of psychopathology, but within the mystical context, "pain unmakes the profane world with its corporeal attachments and leads the mystics away from the body to self-transcendence," thus pain and discipline elevates the individual into a world of deeper human community (Post). According to Glucklich, pain is even blotted out via a process in the brain known as gate-control that significantly alters biochemistry and consciousness, therefore "intentionally painful manipulations of the body could lead to states of self-transcendence or effacement" (Post).