Pain : The punisher or protector !

Psychic pain is different from the physical pain:

A man was living in a village with his dog. One day his neighbour hit the man’s dog with a stick. The man got very angry and had a quarrel with his neighbour. In a heated argument the neighbour hit the man with a chappal. The man felt very much insulted. It was very difficult for him to bear the disgrace. He kept on weeping for weeks. The dog was silently watching the man. The confused dog asked its master “I was hit by the stick and I became alright in a day. You were hit by a soft chappal but your pain appears to be increasing daily even after weeks. Please tell me the reason asked the dog. The man  replied “ He hit my reputation, He hit my self respect, He hit my families name, he hit my credibility, He hit my social status, He hit my good will, He hit my value in the eyes of my future generations.”. The puzzled dog asked “ I saw him hitting only your body when were all these things hurt?"

 

The experience of the psychological pain is quite different from the physical pain. Physical pain exists till the trauma or wound caused by the trauma lasts. However, the psychological pain lasts far beyond the time of insult. The intensity of the psychic pain may tend to increase with time, unlike physical pain. The dog was mentioning about the physical pain and the man was talking about the psychic pain. The dog got hurt on the visible physical body and the man got hurt on the invisible psychic body.

Physical body and psychic body:

The psychic body for the man is as real as the physical body for the dog. Just like the hands, legs, trunk, neck, eyes are parts of the physical body, All the acquisitions man feels as his own (his home, properties, family, people, reputation, social status) are the parts of his psychic body. Our physical body is determined at the time of the birth without our involvement. However, our psychic body is designed by us over a period of time with our conscious or unconscious actions.

 

Pain is an alarm:

The primary purpose of the pain is to avoid threat or to increase the alertness towards the threat. Pain is an inevitable consequence when the physical or psychic body is threatened or hurt. In Visakapatnam , a city in Andhrapradesh there was a poisonous gas leak in a chemical factory. The accident happened in the middle of the night killing many people and had many more hospitalized. A few people died in sleep, some more who were unaware of the cause ran towards gas rather than away from it. It took many hours to alert the people. The failure of the alarm was considered as one of the reasons for high death toll. Pain is an alarm. Whenever there is perceived threat to physical or psychic body, pain is bound to arise. Nature has strongly wired the pain circuits, (physical and emotional) because the failure of the circuit may endanger the survival of the organism. Pain is closely linked to the attention. The primary purpose of the pain is to alert us, give the direction to the attention to the place and time of the threat. It helps in brisk avoidance of the threat. Threats for the humans vary from place to place and time to time. A companion today may become a threat tomorrow. This is unlike the industrial alarms which respond to specific situations. Hence pain is strongly linked to human memory to update itself with new threats and non-threats.

Physical alarms can be silenced at our will but pain alarm can’t be put off till the threat is removed completely. We don’t need to convince the gas alarms to remain quiet, but in human beings the pain alarm needs to be convinced that everything is alright. If a burglar tries to break in to our house, we can silence the alarm easily. Our psychic alarm continues asking us questions like who could it be? What could be the motive? How many were there? Any threat in the near future? How to prevent it next time?  etc. This alarm influences your routine, your interactions, your planning, your happiness and peace.

The purpose of the psychic pain is to restore the future peace. However, the psychic pain and peace cannot coexist. There are only 3 methods deal with psychic pain.

1)Dealing with the threat: 

The pain can be removed once threat is removed completely.

2)Dealing with pain:  

most of the people get down their pain by inebriating, tranquilising themselves with addictions. This can only suppress the pain but cannot dissolve the pain. Many people adapt to live with the pain. Over a period of time the same trigger won’t generate the same pain and the same pain won’t hurt to the same extent. This is called habituation.

3 ) Dealing with the psychic body:

A man prayed God and asked for an unstealable wealth. The God said “That is not possible, but I will give you a loyal guard along with the treasure who alerts you when somebody comes near this wealth. The man was convinced.  The man was happy for few days. Then his problems started. The guard used to wake up the man whenever anybody comes near the treasure. He cannot get rid of the guard till the wealth was there. The man was tired and sleepless by the alarms from the guard. Finally he told the guard that he disowned the wealth and gave back to God, God will take care of it from now on. No need for both of us to bother about it. The guard kept silent and man remained in peace.

When we get the treasure of pleasure from the world, we are bound to get the guard of the pain to protect it. Naturally with the guard comes an alarm of unrest. Yogic science proposes “ We can get rid of the psychic pain only with a psychological state where we are left with nothing to protect. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t possess anything. We can possess anything retaining our capability to dispossess them at our will (Vairagya). If we are not vigilant ,things start possessing us. Loss of discriminating capacity (Buddhi) let our possessions imbibe into the psychic body. Then If the possessions are threatened our psychic body is threatened and we experience pain. Our memories, beliefs and cognition build our psychic body. Unlike our physical body, psychic body is customised body whose structuring can be controlled with insight. Its size and volume increase with possessions and identities. Recognising that the cognition and memory are just faculties of our mind help us in dissociating ourselves from the psychic body.  Each psychic pain is an alarm which alerts us that we have internalized something which doesn't belong to us through our psychic body.