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states of the body and to the everyday social and economic life drew everywhere the development of the
yarning for salvation.
(G.5.c.3) Indian Methodology
The specific means of sanctification, in their most highly developed forms,are practically all of Indian
sources. In India they were undoubtedly developed in connection with the methodology of the magical
coercion of spirits; these means were increasingly used for the methodology of self-deification, and
indeed they never lost this character. Self-deification was the prevalent goal of sanctification, from the
beginnings of the soma cult of orgy in ancient Vedic times up to the sublimed means of intellectualist
ecstasy and the elaboration of erotic orgies (whether in acute or sublimed form, and whether actually
enacted or imaginatively), which to this day dominate the most popular form of Hindu religion, the cult
of Krishna. Through Sufism, this sublimated type of intellectualist ecstasy and a milder form of orgiastic
Dervish were introduced into Islam. To this day Indians are still their typical carriers even as far afield
as Bosnia. [104]
(G.5.c.4) Catholicism and Confucianism
The two greatest powers of religious rationalism in history, the Roman church in the Occident and
Confucianism in China, consistently suppressed this orgiastic ecstasy in their domains. Christianity also
sublimated ecstasy into semi-erotic mysticism such as that of Bernard, fervent worship of Virgin Mary,
Quietism of the Counter-Reformation, and the emotional piety of Zinzendorf. The specifically
extraordinary nature of the experiences of all orgiastic cults, and particularly of all erotic ones, accounts
for no influence on everyday life, or at least on the direction of rationalization or systematization. This is
seen clearly in the fact that the Hindu and (in general) Dervish religiosities created no methodology of
the conduct of everyday life.
(G.5.c.5) Certainty of Salvation
The development toward systematization and rationalization of attaining religious state of salvation,
however, is primarily directed justly to eliminated these contradiction between everyday and
extraordinary religious habituations. Out of the unlimited variety of subjective religious states which
may be produced by the methodology of sanctification, some of them may finally as of central
importance, not only because they represent psycho-physical states of extraordinary quality, but because
they also appear to provide a secure and continuous possession of the distinctive religious goods. This is
the certainty of salvation (certitudo salutis). This certainty may be characterized by a more mystical or
by a more actively ethical coloration, about which more will be said presently. But in either case, it
constitutes the conscious possession of a lasting, integrated foundation of the conduct of life. To
heighten the conscious awareness of this religious possession, orgiastic ecstasy and irrational, merely
irritating emotional means of deadening sensation are replaced, principally by planned reductions of
bodily functioning, such as can be achieved by continuous malnutrition, sexual abstinence, regulation of
respiration, and the like. In addition, the training of thinking and other psychic processes are directed to
a systematic concentration of the mind upon whatever is alone essential in religion. Examples of such
psychological training are found in the Hindu techniques of Yoga, the continuous repetition of sacred
syllables (for example, Om), meditation focused on circles and other geometrical figures, and various
exercises designed to effect a planned evacuation of the consciousness.
(G.5.c.6) Rationalization of Methodology
But in the interest of the lasting and uniform continuity in the possession of the religious good, the
rationalization of the methodology of sanctification finally developed even beyond the methods just
mentioned to an apparent reversal, a planned limitation of the exercises to those means which insure
continuity of the religious habit. This meant the abandonment of all techniques that are irrational from
the viewpoint of hygiene. For just as every sort of intoxication, whether it be the orgiastic ecstasy of
heroes, erotic orgies or the ecstasy of dancing frenzies, inevitably culminates in physical collapse, so
hysterical suffusion with pneumatic emotionalism leads to psychic collapse, which in the religious
sphere is interpreted as a state of serious abandonment by god.
In Greece the cultivation of disciplined martial heroism finally attenuated the warrior ecstasy into the
constant uniformity (sophrosyne), tolerating only the purely musical, rhythmically engendered forms of
ecstasy, and carefully evaluating the "ethos" of music for "political" correctness. In the same way, but in
a more thorough manner, Confucian rationalism permitted only the pentatonic scale in music. Similarly,
the monastic methodology of sanctification developed increasingly in the direction of rationalization, up
to the salvation methodology of ancient Buddhism in India and the Jesuit monastic order in the
Occident, which exerted the greatest historical influence. Thus, all these methodologies of sanctification
developed a combined physical and psychic hygiene and an equally methodical regulation of the content
and scope of all thought and action, thus producing in the individual the most completely conscious,
willful, and anti-instinctual control over one's own physical and psychological processes, and insuring
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