Farewell to Pain

The American National Conference on Pain describes it as having 2 components, one purely sensory and the other being an emotional or affective component. Morphine, the drug of kings, is still one of the most potent drugs available to man for the relief of pain. Morphine selectively acts on the sub-cortical pain perception areas of the brain and abolishes the emotional/affective component of pain such that the patient feels a strange alien sensation from the periphery but it causes him no discomfort

The mind is a strange creature. It is forever at conflict – against the body, against its own self, against others of its ilk ,and against all known norms of the so called civilized society. They say it is this property of the mind that sets humans apart from all other forms of life. The ability to think , to reason and equally , if not more importantly, to feel. Feelings, not simply subjective sensations of touch, temperature or pain which have been scribbled age long in the books, but the capacity to harbour emotions, to love , to feel pity and mercy.
Since as far back as you can recall, they began cathecising you . They taught you good and evil – dividing them by boundaries you have struggled to see even to the latest day. Then they taught you to love – your parents, your family, your friends, your country and countrymen, and above all , to love ‘God’. “Why ?” You would fain question but the reply comes swift and stern , “Hush child! You must do so because we all do, because so we are told, because so it is written in the great books and chronicled by the wise – whose wisdom and authority we have no business to question.” Later when you grow up, you hear and read of a heretic named Darwin who suggests something rather absurd -
That chaos gives rise to order , that all creation and life is mere chance – and that every succeeding generation is more suited for survival and consequently more smarter than the previous. They laugh at you, “ What a preposterous and vulgar suggestion. Man was made God in His own form.” They tell you when to laugh and when to cry , of the times when you should hurt and the times when you should be happy.
However all the teachings come to naught. You stand a bystander on the brink of battle, amidst countless slain; your feet splashing in pools of blood and squashing beneath them mangled human limbs and organs. A voice within tells you that you should cry, that you should feel pain….but try as you might, the voice is alien and you cannot obey! Sooner might the thinking brain command the infracted and failing heart – “Beat ! For so I command you.”
When have the cognitive centers of the mind ever commanded the subtle, brilliantly varied and scarce understood primitive centers – of pain and emotion…of sleep and procreation. Your age old teaching struggles manfully, screaming at that ill-gotten perverted seat of pain… “Make him weep!”…but all that ever happens is the endorphins, those natural brethren molecules to morphine in the brain, simply propound. You sense there is something amiss – with you , your mind or your world – but it scarce bothers you, no more than a gnat from the marshes bothers an iron scaled dragon of many battles.
You are not euphoric…indeed far from it, simply indifferent; not autistic…oh, no- simply weltschmerz.
Your once loved ones depart your world…you put on a façade of grief but it matters little to you. They murmur against you in whispered voices…. “Heartless, that’s what he is .” But those voices are drowned by the ones that surge within you , coming from you very soul…..you descry what it says…like to a verse you heard upon a different time….it is after all a voice of the endless…of a king of sorts.


If you open your mind for me
You won't rely on open eyes to see
The walls you built within
Come tumbling down,
And a new world will begin.
Living twice at once you learn
You're safe from the pain
In the dream domain
A soul set free to fly
A round trip journey in your head
Master of illusion, can you realize
Your dream's alive, you can be the guide but...

I- will be watching over you
I- am gonna help to see it through
I- will protect you in the night
I- am smiling next to you....
In silent lucidity.