self-torture

• in ancient initiation ceremonies

70:7.10The pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­mony usu­ally ex­tended over a pe­riod of five years. Much self-tor­ture and painful cut­ting en­tered into these cer­e­monies. Cir­cum­ci­sion was first prac­ticed as a rite of ini­ti­a­tion into one of these se­cret fra­ter­ni­ties. The tribal marks were cut on the body as a part of the pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion; the tat­too orig­i­nated as such a badge of mem­ber­ship. Such tor­ture, to­gether with much pri­va­tion, was de­signed to harden these youths, to im­press them with the re­al­ity of life and its in­ev­i­ta­ble hard­ships. This pur­pose is bet­ter ac­com­plished by the later ap­pear­ing ath­letic games and phys­i­cal con­tests.

• ancient form of mourning

87:2.4Si­lence or mourn­ing was ob­served af­ter a death so that the ghost would not be at­tracted back home. Self-tor­ture—wounds—was a com­mon form of mourn­ing. Many ad­vanced teach­ers tried to stop this, but they failed. Fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial were thought to be pleas­ing to the ghosts, who took plea­sure in the dis­com­fort of the liv­ing dur­ing the tran­si­tion pe­riod of lurk­ing about be­fore their ac­tual de­par­ture for dead­land.

• older ideas of self-discipline embraced

89:3.4These olden ideas of self-dis­ci­pline em­braced flog­ging and all sorts of phys­i­cal tor­ture. The priests of the mother cult were es­pe­cially ac­tive in teach­ing the virtue of phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing, set­ting the ex­am­ple by sub­mit­ting them­selves to cas­tra­tion. The He­brews, Hin­dus, and Bud­dhists were earnest devo­tees of this doc­trine of phys­i­cal hu­mil­i­a­tion.

• co-operation with Adjuster does not entail

110:3.4I can­not but ob­serve that so many of you spend so much time and thought on mere tri­fles of liv­ing, while you al­most wholly over­look the more es­sen­tial re­al­i­ties of ev­er­last­ing im­port, those very ac­com­plish­ments which are con­cerned with the de­vel­op­ment of a more har­mo­nious work­ing agree­ment be­tween you and your Ad­justers. The great goal of hu­man ex­is­tence is to at­tune to the di­vin­ity of the in­dwelling Ad­juster; the great achieve­ment of mor­tal life is the at­tain­ment of a true and un­der­stand­ing con­se­cra­tion to the eter­nal aims of the di­vine spirit who waits and works within your mind. But a de­voted and de­ter­mined ef­fort to re­al­ize eter­nal des­tiny is wholly com­pat­i­ble with a light­hearted and joy­ous life and with a suc­cess­ful and hon­or­able ca­reer on earth. Co-op­er­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster does not en­tail self-tor­ture, mock piety, or hyp­o­crit­i­cal and os­ten­ta­tious self-abase­ment; the ideal life is one of lov­ing ser­vice rather than an ex­is­tence of fear­ful ap­pre­hen­sion.