Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul

By Ariel Glucklich

Book Overview

Why would anyone seek out the very experience the rest of us most wish to avoid? Why would religious worshipers flog or crucify themselves, sleep on spikes, hang suspended by their flesh, or walk for miles through scorching deserts with bare and bloodied feet?
In this insightful new book, Ariel Glucklich argues that the experience of ritual pain, far from being a form of a madness or superstition, contains a hidden rationality and can bring about a profound transformation of the consciousness and identity of the spiritual seeker. Steering a course between purely cultural and purely biological explanations, Glucklich approaches sacred pain from the perspective of the practitioner to fully examine the psychological and spiritual effects of self-hurting. He discusses the scientific understanding of pain, drawing on research in fields such as neuropsychology and neurology. He also ranges over a broad spectrum of historical and cultural contexts, showing the many ways mystics, saints, pilgrims, mourners, shamans, Taoists, Muslims, Hindus, Native Americans, and indeed members of virtually every religion have used pain to achieve a greater identification with God. He examines how pain has served as a punishment for sin, a cure for disease, a weapon against the body and its desires, or a means by which the ego may be transcended and spiritual sickness healed. "When pain transgresses the limits," the Muslim mystic Mizra Asadullah Ghalib is quoted as saying, "it becomes medicine."
Based on extensive research and written with both empathy and critical insight, Sacred Pain explores the uncharted inner terrain of self-hurting and reveals how meaningful suffering has been used to heal the human spirit.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195132548
• ISBN13: 9780195132540
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 9.1" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

one of my favorite books!

astonishingly good! glucklich has a brilliant, original mind (as well as being extraordinarily erudite) and it is absolutely entrancing to see how he interprets and synthesizes a wide range of material ( & i don't ordinarily get excited about academic books in general or theology in particular...)

A new perspective towards pain

Great research and a new way of looking at pain. A new dimension to why people really do the stuff they do in religious cermonies and why they were designed so painful in the first place...The psychological, physical and spiritual reasons. I totally agree with the author - Pain is not always bad, in some of the cases it is extremly good for the individual growth..... as long as it doesnt go to the extremes of sadism.

Extremely Interesting and Insightful!

Ariel Glucklich's "Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul" is a fabulous look at religious pain. In an area with so few books already, a book like Glucklich's is a gem. The author takes many approaches to the topic, ranging from anthropological, physiological, sociological and psychological to break down the use of pain (both self-inflicted and inflicted by others) into an insightful, understandable read. The book is filled with massive amounts of great content, as well as excellent citations from other good works and scholars, as well. The book is academic and scholarly, but hardly a dry read. I purchased this book because of my academic interest in body modification and pain ritual, but used it massively in a 'Religion and Psychology' course. I still find myself removing it from the shelf every now and again to look something up. Whether you ultimately agree with what the book presents, one will still find the book very interesting and thought-provoking.