THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE - Pink Monkey

2. Temperance in meat and drink, simplicity of apparel, chastity, and non-pampering
of the body generally, may be fruits of the love of purity, shocked by whatever
savors of the sensual.
3. They may also be fruits of love, that is, they may appeal to the subject in
the light of sacrifices which he is happy in making to the Deity whom he acknowledges.
4. Again, ascetic mortifications and torments may be due to pessimistic feelings
about the self, combined with theological beliefs concerning expiation. The
devotee may feel that he is buying himself free, or escaping worse sufferings hereafter,
by doing penance now.
5. In Psychopathic persons, mortifications may be entered on irrationally, by a
sort of obsession or fixed idea which comes as a challenge and must be worked
off, because only thus does the subject get his interior consciousness feeling right
again.
6. Finally, ascetic exercises may in rarer instances be prompted by genuine
perversions of the bodily sensibility, in consequence of which normally pain-giving
stimuli are actually felt as pleasures.
I will try to give an instance under each of these heads in turn; but it is not
easy to get them pure, for in cases pronounced enough to be immediately classed
as ascetic, several of the assigned motives usually work together. Moreover, be-