Pain and altered states of consciousness

It took me a little while to figure out what I wanted to write about when it came to touch. Touch has never been something which takes up much space in my memory. I can't remember many strong feelings of touch. Except pain. I remember tearing my chin open at around age five after falling on the kitchen floor. I remember slicing my knee on a jagged shower drain at around six. I remember slamming into a tree on a skiing trip in my early teens. I remember walking away with cuts and bruises after falling 14 feet through an old mansion's stable floor. I remember tearing the tendons in my knee, and feeling the most excruciating pain of my life a few years ago.

Note the beatific expression of St.
Sebastian (Il Sodoma)

In her "Painful Times" chapter of The Deepest Sense, Constance 
Classen explores the relationships that premodern Europeans had with pain and suffering. I was particularly interested by her paragraphs on how pain elevates the consciousness by giving us an experience beyond the mundane. "...pain, by divorcing one from everyday realities, could enable the mystically minded to experience a transcendence of the body and a corresponding exaltation of the spirit." We can see this desire for transcendence through pain throughout history, all over the world, and even in fiction. 

The Cutting Scene, George Catlin, c. 1832 depicts
a Mandan Okipa ceremony

Religious adherents from numerous disparate traditions engage in, or have engaged in, ritual infliction of pain upon the self. Christian flagellants in the Middle Ages (and in some places to this day), whipped themselves to atone for the sins of mankind. Classen points out that the suffering of pain greater than that allotted to a person would help souls around that person. Stylites, Christian ascetics, would fast atop pillars to bring themselves closer to God, physically and spiritually. Some Shia Muslims whip their backs with chains and knives or cut their foreheads to mourn the death of Ali, grandson of Mohammed in the Battle of Karbala. The Mandan peoples of North America formerly practiced a religious festival called Okipa, related to the Mandan creation myth, in which young warriors would starve themselves for days, hang themselves by hooks from the ceiling, weighted down by buffalo skulls, and pierce their muscles with spikes.

Horror movie villain, BDSM dominant,
or religious adherent?
(It's the last one. Illustration of
Spanish flagellant from The Historians'
History of the World [Public Domain])

Secular practices having to do with transcendence through pain also exist, but are mostly confined to sexual or romantic practices, intended either to confer pleasure through pain (masochism or algolagnia), or to strengthen the bonds of trust between romantic partners; both could easily be considered transcendental. This strain of willingly-suffered pain has been immortalized in popular media, beyond simple depictions of enjoyable practices. The highly-successful Hellraiser series of horror films feature a collective of hedonists called Cenobites (originally a term for religious monastics) from a dimension of pain who inflict extreme suffering and mutilation upon themselves and the unfortunate humans whom they encounter. The Cenobites are not, however, evil. They exist outside of morality, being totally dedicated to the mortification of their flesh. Tellingly, when the Cenobites were being designed, a decision was made to emulate not only the aesthetic of S&M clubs, but also of Catholic liturgical vestments. Even in popular culture, the association of self-inflicted pain with religion is impossible to escape.