Lost person in the wilds >> lack of food (possibly water) / inadequate nutrition / poor sleep >> hallucination, delusions.
- Person has no intention to induce mystical experience.
- Uncontrolled experience, no followers to 'read' it as religiously meaningful. He was just 'lost'.
Self-styled spiritual person practising extreme asceticism >> lack of food (possibly water) / inadequate nutrition / poor sleep >> hallucination, delusions.
- Person has intention to induce mystical experience.
- Controlled experience, followers will 'read' it as religious meaningful. Person actualizes religious 'truth'.
It is a similar experience but it won't always be viewed in the same light, such as a meaningful religious experience for followers or the masses. When people with eating disorders also lack food and adequate nutrition, they start to experience hallucination and delusions. Or should I call it by a different name? I don't see why you say this is ''activism''. This here is exploration, not activism.
I support ascetic practices, but I think we should be mindful of practices and beliefs that lead to malnourishment, starvation, and deprivation as these will mess up the body and the brain. I think people should aim for health, not wither away and confuse weakness and tingling, or effects of body eating its own fat away as enlightening, or confuse induced hallucination due to starvation with some secret about the cosmos. If we take decline in health as a sign of ''spiritual growth'' than what does that really say?