 Question II Redemption though the mortification of the flesh fasting, hair shirts, flagellation, celibacy, reclusion, martyrdom, et cetera has been prevalent in the history of Catholicism. Since pain and denial can lead to an acute awareness of the body, did such practices ever have any sexual components for ascetics? |
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 Of course! The penitents, the flagellants, Christian, Catholic, or other anyone who believes that the body, with all its sensual potential, is evil or an obstacle to the spiritual life believes the body and our senses must be mortified, "put to death." They find redemption and joy in their pain, in their self-flagellation, in being riddled with arrows, boiled alive, eaten by lions or crucified. We know that sensory deprivation, extreme pain, mystical ecstasy, and orgasmic ecstasy very likely involve the same or similar neural circuits in the brain. Neural pain and pleasure are yin and yang. Each can induce a very pleasurable, at times frightening altered state of mind. Fifty years ago, Harry and Margaret Harlow deprived infant monkeys of skin love by isolating them in cages where they could see, hear and smell other monkeys, but could not touch or be touched. Raised with wire-mesh surrogate mothers and deprived of nurturing touch, these monkeys grew into anti-social, violent adults. James W. Prescott and other neuroscientists have documented a clear connection in the brain between the lack of nurturing touch in childhood and elevated pain thresholds in the violence-aggression circuits that consistently leads to painful self-cannibalistic behavior. Our brain circuits for pleasure and pain/violence operate like a see-saw: stimulate one side and you depress the other side. Don't stimulate the pleasure circuits and the pain/violence circuits proliferate out of control. An overload of pain then is interpreted as pleasurable; pain, especially extreme pain, can then serve as a substitute for the pleasures of nurturing touch we need to survive but don't get. An addiction to redemption by mortification and pain denies our bodies and our sensual needs. It is a violent attack on and denial of our human nature. It is just as dangerous as an undisciplined, unfocused, indiscriminate obsession with sensory stimulation and overload. Moore responds |
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