In this live teaching segment, Eckhart Tolle elaborates on his concept of the "pain-body," describing it as an accumulated emotional‑energy entity formed primarily from childhood experiences and, optionally, past‑life memories, as well as from the collective emotional field of one’s culture or environment. He distinguishes a personal component (individual early‑life pain) from a collective component (societal or regional pain). The pain-body exists in dormant and active states; when dormant it is unnoticed, but periodically it seeks to feed on fresh emotional pain because its vibrational frequency matches that of emotional energy. Tolle explains that the pain-body creates drama, especially in intimate relationships, by provoking partners’ weak points to trigger mutual pain‑body activation, likening it to a cunning gremlin. An audience member (Speaker B) asks about sensations of low‑vibration energy leaving the body and the transmutation of pain into joy. Tolle acknowledges the question, clarifies that the pain-body’s need to feed can manifest as both surrender to pain (which may feel like a release into joy) and as a subtle low‑vibration discharge when one remains present and aware, indicating that such releases are natural aspects of the pain-body’s activity rather than pathological. The segment emphasizes awareness of the pain-body’s patterns as a step toward not being driven by its drama‑creating impulses.
The pain-body periodically needs to feed on the experience of emotional pain. In other words, it wants emotional pain, it needs emotional pain, and it creates emotional pain primarily in 2 ways.
My question is related to energy. Sometimes I feel my pain body and I surrender to it, and then I feel like the pain body energy transmuting into a great joy, and it's amazing. But other times I'm present and I feel the awareness in the background, And then suddenly— sorry. Suddenly, I feel a low vibration energy leaving my body, and I'm aware of it. I don't feel negative emotion, but maybe I would like to understand what it is and if there is something wrong. Or if this is okay, is just low vibration energy being released?
Okay, thank you. Yes, we haven't spoken about the pain body yet. So, well, you all know what this term refers to. Accumulated emotional pain that you carry forward from your childhood, usually, perhaps also from past lifetimes, or if you believe in past lifetimes. If you don't like past lifetimes, forget about it. Carried over in from childhood, and it is partly personal because it's to do with your life, early life experience, which for everybody is somewhat painful, and for some much more than for others. And you also absorb pain-body from the collective into which you're born, which could be the country or the energy field or a particular area in your country, whatever it may be. You also absorb that. So there's a personal aspect to the emotional pain that Lives in you, and there's a collective aspect. And the pain-body, just a very, very brief summary, the pain-body is not necessarily, in most cases, always active. It has a dormant stage and an active stage. When it's dormant, you may not even know that it's there. And periodically, the tendency is for the pain-body to need to Feed on further experience of something emotionally painful, because that is what corresponds to the vibrational frequency of this energetic entity. Because that's what it is: emotion is an energy form. It's consciousness. Everything is consciousness. Consciousness had taken on a particular form. An emotion is a form that a temporary form that consciousness. is born into as humans. And childhood pain, emotional pain, usually leaves behind remnants of that particular emotion. It's not completely released. So by the time you are 18 or 20 years old, you have— you carry a pain body from— and for some humans, it's a very heavy thing. For others, it's— It's a very light thing. Not too bad. The pain-body periodically needs to feed on the experience of emotional pain. In other words, it wants emotional pain, it needs emotional pain, and it creates emotional pain primarily in 2 ways. Either it creates drama with people close to you so that they get— You get negativity coming back at you and then you can have the drama in relationships. Favorite place for pain-body to renew itself is intimate relationships. That's the best. You get the best food in intimate relationships and it will create drama and push the buttons. It has a borrowed intelligence. It has its own little intelligence. And it is cunning. It's a little like a gremlin kind of, and it'll it knows your partner's weak points, and it'll touch upon them in order to provoke them into responding, reacting with drama. And usually it works because then when you press the correct buttons, you awaken the other person's pain body. It goes oh. Great, I'm here too.
