The fact is, if you learn to live in your body without thinking of it as yourself, you won’t suffer so much. The connection between you and bodily pain is only mental. When you are asleep and unconscious of the body, you feel no pain. Likewise, when a doctor or a dentist gives you an anaesthetic and performs surgery on your body, you don’t feel any pain. The mind has been disconnected from the sensation. On the other hand, by strongly picturing in your mind the suffering of another person, you can experience his pain in yourself.
The best anesthesia against pain is your mental power. If your mind refuses to accept it, pain will be greatly lessened. I have seen, at times when this body got hurt and felt severe pain, that if I put my mind at the Christ (Kutasha) centre- that is, if I identify myself more with God and less with the body- there is no pain at all. So when pain comes, concentrate at the Christ centre. Be mentally apart from pain, develop more strength of mind. Be tough within. When you are feeling pain, inwardly say to yourself, “It doesn’t hurt me.” When a hurt comes, recognize it as something to be cared for, but don’t suffer over it. The more you concentrate on the power of the mind, the more your body consciousness drops away. And the more you love the body and are overly solicitous of it, the more limited the redeeming power of the mind will be.
You heighten suffering by imagination. Worrying or feeling sorry for yourself won’t ease your pain, but rather increase it. For instance, someone wrongs you; you dwell on it, and your friends talk about it and sympathize with you. The more you think of it, the more you magnify the hurt- and your suffering. When someone wrongs you, it is far better to love him spiritually, give him your blessing, and forget it.
God is conscious of our suffering. Certainly He feels our aches and pains. Didn’t Jesus say that not one sparrow falls without the feeling and knowledge of God? When the sparrow is being killed by the hawk, the Lord knows the little bird’s sensations. He also knows your pain. Do you think it makes Him happy to see you suffering? No. He is affected when you are in trouble. So He is not as happy as you think. When God dwells in His absolute state beyond all creation, He knows He is the happiest being there is. But as soon as He feels the desires and sorrows and troubles of His children, He is not so happy.
You can sympathize with somebody else’s sufferings without actually feeling the same sensation; but if you become completely identified with that person, you will feel his pain as your own. The idea is, God knows what is going on in His creation, but still He is free from the delusion of identification with it. So even though God feels your suffering, and mentally suffers for you, His suffering isn’t the same as your delusion, because He is not identified with this universe of dualities in the same way you are. He wants you to become like Him. That is, you should live in this body, but not be affected by it. Then you will see that you are free from karma. It is not God alone who is free; you, as the soul, made in His image, are potentially free also. Be like God, who is carrying on all the work of creation without being identified with its delusive nature.
Extract from the book “The Divine Romance” by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda
