My point is, with theism, the finest level for theists is they are groping along the edges of the survival mode and never transcending it.
It is a matter of degrees.
Those who are at the desperate level will cling to the idea of salvation, eternal life, heaven, avoiding hell and the crudest, a craving for virgins and other sensual pleasures in the thereafter.
Some [not all] theists will even kill non-believers they deemed as a threat and enemy as proclaimed by their God.
Theists who are more spiritually matured, will still cling to some subtle degrees of theism, since they have not transcended the survival mode effectively.
Note, not ALL of theistic ideologies are potentially evil.
At present there is a net-pro from theism, but the trend is a net-negative toward the future. With the malignant evil within certain theistic ideologies [especially Islam], there is a very dangerous threat to humanity in the future.
The difficulty is we cannot deal with specific forms of theism, but it has to be dealt on the whole.
Therefore the ability to transcend the survival mode, to modulate and manage it will enable humanity to wean off [gradually and voluntarily] theism in totality and thus eliminate any possibilities of evil and violence arising from theism as a whole.
I don’t really see how this makes one spiritual or transcending things. The militaries of the world do this kind of this, especially with elite soldiers and I see little to see these men and a few women as especially spiritual. Some probably are, but but then some members of most groups are. It’s also a very yang version of spirituality. A tough, active brutal towards the body type of spirituality. Even if it is an effective method for some, I hardly think it suits most. IOW I think it is neither sufficient, nor necessary, and in fact might be detrimental to the philosophical and attitudinal attributes associated with spirituality.
And it seems sometimes like you want your definition of spirituality as one opposed to religious ones. That it is a reactions to religious people, rather than a spirituality in its own right.
The military academies do push their elites to a certain limit to enable them to handle stressful situations but not as extreme as the above.
In some theistic religions, certain believers go to the extremes of overcoming pain, i.e. nailing themselves to a cross, self-flagellation, self-tortures, etc. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-flagellation
However these extreme acts are grounded to a faith in God.
As such, the acts by themselves do not equate to spirituality but the relevant contexts of the whole video is important.
In the OP, the message is ‘you’ have the power to be in charge of your destiny and survival as demonstrated in the extreme exercises carried out.
These subjects were put under extreme conditions of a threat of existential death or an existential crisis and they were exhorted to invoke and to use the power of their own mind and direct their physical self to overcome the terrible fears of such a real physical threat.
The end results is the subjects were made aware there are powerful potentials within their own mind which they can call upon which they are not consciously aware of.
My point is;
Theists are also subjected to an existential crisis albeit subliminally which they naturally resort to a belief in God [super being] to soothe such a crisis and terrible subliminal fears.
Since it is demonstrated secular human can overcome the existential crisis via the power of their own mind without invoking a belief in God, then,
Theists should be able to overcome the subliminal existential crisis without resorting to a belief in a God which has a very terrible negative consequences and threat to humanity.
I agree the above theory is easier said than done.
However I believe it is very possible to enable theists to be aware of the possibility for them to use the power of their own mind to overcome the terrible subliminal Angst from the inherent existential crisis.
How?
The details need further discussions but there is optimism with such a possibility because there are already non-theistic religions adopting various non-theistic approaches to deal with the existential crisis.
With elite soldiers they do go that far. And that’s in the not black ops military West. One can only guess how far the intelligence communities go in training their black ops people and how far dictatorships go training their soldiers.
Well, they relate to spirituality, just one you think includes a probelmatic set of beliefs. There are a variety of spiritualities.
I don’t really see that as spiritual. They could have all sorts of horrible beliefs, judged from any morality, and commit all sorts of acts of cruelty after this. They would get good control of pain and panic. A lot of really quite horrible people have those abilities. People who rise to power in inner city gangs and criminal enterprises are often extremely good at dealing with pain, threat of death, what would terrify other people. I don’t see any reason to think they are spiritual.
I don’t think one need be or even that it is good to be masochistic to be spiritual. I think they are other ways of minimizing anxiety without being cruel to yourself or having others be. I do understand that the intention is not to be cruel to yourself, but it is anyway.
The military does, but not ‘that far’ as the video exercises done to beginners as in the OP.
In any case whatever is practiced in the military is not in the spiritual context.
Btw, the exercises in the video were not done in the ‘spiritual’ context but merely in the name of self-control and self-development.
My intention is to present the essence therein as critical elements of the fundamental of ‘spirituality’ [as defined in this forum].
You are referring to the forms of spirituality.
To be precise, I was referring to the essence and fundamental of spirituality which is essentially survival, mortality and well being.
The difference in the various forms of spirituality in dealing with its essence is the following;
Theistic = grounded on a God
Non-theistic = no God but on own mind and potential.
Thus my point;
“In the OP, the message is ‘you’ have the power to be in charge of your destiny and survival as demonstrated in the extreme exercises carried out.” You do not necessarily need a God with its potential negative baggage.
I did not state ‘they’ [those in the subjects in the video] would be instant “saints” after what they have gone through and experienced within 4 days.
My intention was to highlight, from the exercises in the OP, we can extract the basic principles of how any person [as being human] do have the potential to control the subliminal existential threats within, i.e. one do not necessary have to surrender to a God to gain salvation.
The essential principles of spirituality and how to develop it from its ground can be extracted from many other examples, exercises and experiments, not necessary from the two examples above.
As I had stated, there are many forms and exercises to highlight that fundamental spiritual principle involving transcending the survival mode.
Note the other regarding ‘Breathing and Spirituality’.
There are others like using ‘fasting’ for many days which is not so threatening.
My main point here is we are dealing with the fringes of death at the subliminal unconscious level [an existential crisis] where theists jumped to grab onto a God [illusory] which do comes with terrible consequences. One problem is to explain to theists the fundamental truth of this phenomena.
Then we will need to explain there are fool proof non-theistic approaches [highlighted via various experiments as in the OP] available to deal with the existential crisis.
As stated above, the “how to” develop the essential fundamental principles into practices that represent spirituality is not easy but it is feasible.