asceticism

• evolution of concept of sacrifice

89:4.1Sac­ri­fice as a part of re­li­gious de­vo­tions, like many other wor­ship­ful rit­u­als, did not have a sim­ple and sin­gle ori­gin. The ten­dency to bow down be­fore power and to pros­trate one­self in wor­ship­ful ado­ra­tion in the pres­ence of mys­tery is fore­shad­owed in the fawn­ing of the dog be­fore its mas­ter. It is but one step from the im­pulse of wor­ship to the act of sac­ri­fice. Prim­i­tive man gauged the value of his sac­ri­fice by the pain which he suf­fered. When the idea of sac­ri­fice first at­tached it­self to re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial, no of­fer­ing was con­tem­plated which was not pro­duc­tive of pain. The first sac­ri­fices were such acts as pluck­ing hair, cut­ting the flesh, mu­ti­la­tions, knock­ing out teeth, and cut­ting off fin­gers. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced, these crude con­cepts of sac­ri­fice were el­e­vated to the level of the rit­u­als of self-ab­ne­ga­tion, as­ceti­cism, fast­ing, de­pri­va­tion, and the later Chris­tian doc­trine of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion through sor­row, suf­fer­ing, and the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh.

• Gautama detracted from seeking salvation through

94:7.2Gau­tama for­mu­lated those the­o­ries which grew into the phi­los­o­phy of Bud­dhism af­ter six years of the fu­tile prac­tice of Yoga. Sid­dhartha made a de­ter­mined but un­avail­ing fight against the grow­ing caste sys­tem. There was a lofty sin­cer­ity and a unique un­selfish­ness about this young prophet prince that greatly ap­pealed to the men of those days. He de­tracted from the prac­tice of seek­ing in­di­vid­ual sal­va­tion through phys­i­cal af­flic­tion and per­sonal pain. And he ex­horted his fol­low­ers to carry his gospel to all the world.

• Jesus came to destroy notion of

136:3.3Je­sus did not go into re­tire­ment for the pur­pose of fast­ing and for the af­flic­tion of his soul. He was not an as­cetic, and he came for­ever to de­stroy all such no­tions re­gard­ing the ap­proach to God. His rea­sons for seek­ing this re­tire­ment were en­tirely dif­fer­ent from those which had ac­tu­ated Moses and Eli­jah, and even John the Bap­tist. Je­sus was then wholly self-con­scious con­cern­ing his re­la­tion to the uni­verse of his mak­ing and also to the uni­verse of uni­verses, super­vised by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, his Fa­ther in heaven. He now fully re­called the be­stowal charge and its in­struc­tions ad­min­is­tered by his el­der brother, Im­manuel, ere he en­tered upon his Uran­tia in­car­na­tion. He now clearly and fully com­pre­hended all these far-flung re­la­tion­ships, and he de­sired to be away for a sea­son of quiet med­i­ta­tion so that he could think out the plans and de­cide upon the pro­ce­dures for the pros­e­cu­tion of his pub­lic labors in be­half of this world and for all other worlds in his lo­cal uni­verse.

• be not colorless ascetics

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.

• ascetics teach reverence

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

• church became ascetic in dark ages

195:4.1The church, be­ing an ad­junct to so­ci­ety and the ally of pol­i­tics, was doomed to share in the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual de­cline of the so-called Eu­ro­pean “dark ages.” Dur­ing this time, re­li­gion be­came more and more monas­ti­cized, as­ceti­cized, and le­gal­ized. In a spir­i­tual sense, Chris­tian­ity was hi­ber­nat­ing. Through­out this pe­riod there ex­isted, along­side this slum­ber­ing and sec­u­lar­ized re­li­gion, a con­tin­u­ous stream of mys­ti­cism, a fan­tas­tic spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence bor­der­ing on un­re­al­ity and phil­o­soph­i­cally akin to pan­the­ism.