Paramhansa Yogananda

The skin’s surface does not feel touch sensations; they are experienced in the brain. One cannot taste, touch, smell, hear or see except through the mind. We seem to experience taste on the tongue, but it is actually the brain that registers flavor. Similarly, when some part of the body hurts, the pain is really in the mind, not in the body-part. We have two instruments for perceiving pain: the nerves and the gray matter of the brain. But we perceive only if the mind allows a connection between them. Unless the mind says there is pain, there is no pain. This is the marvelous discovery of India’s great masters. Under chloroform you do not feel pain, because sensations do not reach the mind. At the nerve endings there are find fibers through which the pain sensations are relayed to the brain. Chloroform prevents the relaying of these pain signals.

The brain is the sensitive instrument of the mind, and all the sensations of the body are reported to the mind through the nerves and the brain. The mind, being identified with the brain, receives and interprets these sensations. A mind made strong by the practice of powerful and positive thinking is less affected by sensations of pleasure and pain. It recognizes sensations in the way God intended-as a form of academic experience.

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Sensitivity was given to man only to protect the body; without sensation, one could cut himself badly and not know it. Sensitivity was never intended to cause pain. Animals have not developed this faculty to the degree that man has, hence they experience less pain. Otherwise, the cruelty practiced on animals in some methods of killing would be intolerable. The lobster is put in boiling water while it is still alive!

Because pain and pleasure are created by the mind, pain in the body can be lessened by practicing control of the mind. Then one can experience a sensation without its producing pain, receiving only its guiding or warning message. The Bhagvad Gita goes very deeply into it, and that is what the Gita tells us. Oversensitivity to pleasure and pain strengthens their effects; reduced sensitivity makes one less subject to pain and less enslaved to sense pleasures. I have trained my body and mind to be less sensitive and have found myself free from sense disturbances. That training is the way to gain freedom.

There was a doctor who had such mind power that he was able to perform a major operation on himself. The very thought makes the mind protest that one could not do it, because the mind has been enslaved by bodily attachments. But mind can be made powerful by training. The more you discipline your mind, the more it will be under your control. A pampered child suffers greatly over even a little hurt; a Spartan-trained child may hardly wince at serious injury.