[Altair]

What I find fascinating is the relation between spirituality and sense deprivation as well as starvation. If you deprive yourself of light and visual variety, like in an isolated cell, you go loopy. If you starve yourself you can also go loopy. Perhaps you also go loopy if you haven't had an orgasm for months or years.

Now some would say all of this leads to genuine spiritual experiences, but I have my doubts. Jesus, Elijah, Moses, Buddha, and many religious ascetics have starved themselves and deprived themselves sensually. For weeks, perhaps months, with some deprivations perhaps even decades. You can starve yourself and you start ''seeing'' or ''hearing'' things. In this light, it could be that some paths are deliberately seeking health decline, in the hope of achieving a connection with something beyond human. But is it really? And where do we draw the line and believe it is or isn't genuine?

I don't have the answers, just putting that here. It's a large (and I think a grey) field.