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The Will to Endure and the Body's Ability to Withstand Hardship and Suffering · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  While most people are quite insulated from direct
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  confrontation with extremes which the body is asked to
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  endure, our modern media makes it possible to see and relate to
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  some of these extreme situations.
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  Far beyond the pressure of training for and running in a
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  marathon race. There are circumstances, some of
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  them voluntary, many of them involuntary, which expose us to
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  the powers of the body to withstand what can only be
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  called extreme suffering with a will to live and endure.
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  That beggars the imagination. We see both the capacity of the
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  physical body under severe pressures as well as its
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  enormous pleiancy and goodwill to provide a solid base for the
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  will to live which inhabits every being.
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  When the concentration camps were opened up after the end of
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  World War 2, we witnessed many thousands of individuals
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  emaciated to the point of starvation.
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  When villages in Vietnam were bombed with napalm during the
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  Vietnam War, we were able to view the extreme pain and
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  suffering of people who had lived through that horrible
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  experience of having their skin burned alive.
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  We have heard the stories of survivors of the atomic blasts
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  that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War 2.
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  When we observe the mass migrations, the droughts, the
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  starvation and the ravages of disease and warfare in other
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  parts of the world, we see that millions of people are subjected
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  to extremes that cause excruciating pain and yet they
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  somehow survive and try to go on with their lives on a day-to-day
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  level. We have been advised that the
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  pain experienced by women in childbirth can be far higher
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  than any other pain that we normally experience.
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  This is part of our normal human life on a regular basis, and for
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  those who have not undergone this experience in all its
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  intensity, it is truly impossible to imagine.
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  We may reflect on the body's endurance to pain and suffering
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  and ask how it is that it is able to take this on, survive
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  and continue to desire to live and breathe.
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  The Titaria Upanishad provides us an enigmatic answer.
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  Quote. For who could labour to draw in
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  the breath, or who could have strength to breathe it out, if
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  there were not that bliss in the heaven of his heart, the ether
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  within his being? End Quote.
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  It may not appear that there is any sense of that bliss about
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  which the Upanishad speaks in any of the experiences related
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  above, but somehow, deep within each being there is that secret
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  space where bliss dwells, covered over by pain, covered
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  over by suffering, covered over by all the stress of living, but
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  nevertheless there waiting to come forward and transform the
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  life. The surface being may not
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  consciously recognize or appreciate this hidden source of
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  the will to live, but nevertheless it endures.
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  This is what keeps people alive and hoping to survive under
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  extreme circumstances and in intense pain.
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  The mother writes in The Science of Living in Uneducation, quote.
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  The body has a remarkable capacity of adaptation and
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  endurance. It is fit to do so many more
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  things than one can usually imagine.
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  If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that govern it,
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  it is ruled by the central truth of the being, one will be
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  surprised at what it is capable of doing.
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  End Quote. The mother clarifies further.
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  Quote. During the last war it was
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  proved that the body was capable of enduring such suffering as is
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  normally impossible to endure. You have surely read or heard
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  these stories of war in which the body was made to suffer and
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  endure terrible things, and it withstood all that.
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  It proved that it had almost inexhaustible capacities of
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  endurance. Some people happen to be under
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  conditions that should have killed them.
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  If they survived, it was because they had in them a very strong
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  will to survive, and the body obeyed.
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  That will End Quote reference Srioro Bindu and the Mother
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  Powers within Chapter 7 Attitude page 68.