One interesting thing in Varanasi-also known as Benaras- is that it houses many Aghoris-a small group of shiva sadhus- who are known to eat burning corpses. They also cover themselves with the ashes of the burnt corpses.
I'm curious about why do they persist in doing so. Obviously development of psychological ability to do things like this without any inner disturbance is a serious step in weakening ego conditioning but once it actually stops being a big deal for you there seems to be little sense in keeping on.
Being free of "any inner disturbance" is a high standard, and hard to achieve. Most Hindu sects would consider Aghori practices to be too extreme and too focused on death.
But here is a very visually stunning documentary on Varanasi and features Aghori sadhus to get a better insight into their mindset...
Training to recall the names is a mental skill, not a psychological ability (although there actually is a mental-heavy tantric hinduism practice of matrika-nyasa in which you are to visualize different hindu letters in 50 particular parts of your body simultaneously which is hardly possible for an ordinary man).
The point of spiritual training is to become free from any form of conditioning (not cultural only, natural instincts like disgust and fear too). Of course you don't need the actual ability to mess with burning corpses, surely it is useless from the practical point of view but the fact you feel bad about it means you are conditioned, an unconscious complex (a samskara - a building block of karma) in your psyche controls you and the goal is to annihilate all of these so you can experience and do anything blissfully, without giving a fuck. The result is a "now I can do anything, feel and think whatever and whenever I choose so I am free" achievement, it also means dissolution of duality and realization of union with the divine.
Nice explanation of the end goal of all "Spiritual" practices i.e. "freedom from ALL mental conditioning". The "Tantriks" come at this from the "negative" side of our psyche rather than through the socially acceptable practices. In a way, these practices are more powerful since "taboos" are psychologically deep-seated and hard to overcome.
A simple experiment that i often use to show people the power of mental conditioning is to lay down a picture of their favourite/personal god/deity and ask them to deliberately step on it with their foot (extra points if they do it with shoes on!). Almost everybody recoils and will not do it and the ones who attempt it (out of a sense of "need to win the argument in the heat of the moment", a classic example of ego temporarily overcoming conditioning) still feel bad about it for days afterwards until they do a "good deed" to balance away "the sin". It is illuminating when you think about it and brings home the point that "everything is in your head".
Nice clue. BTW there also is a chemical way to overcome this. A person given a sufficiently strong dose of MDMA will probably pass your test easily with a deep profound feeling he is performing an act of worship normal people can't understand as he would perceive everything as a manifestation of love (the rational part of the mind does not get disabled however, so he won't go kill somebody out of love, it's not this dangerrous). As far as I know scientists are exploring the potential of MDMA to dissolve mental complexes and trauma.
Very true but not applicable to all. In fact the texts mention these sort of "sidetracks" as something to watch out for and avoided actively. It is one of the main reasons to only attempt such extreme practices strictly under the guidance of a "realized guru".
