Jack – if I remember right, that pain body chapter (was it chapter 3?) was the longest in the book – Tolle had a lot to say about it 🙂 The way I understood it, it’s almost like an independent entity (separate from the pure non-self part of us) that has been built up over thousands of years of hurt and pain – from our own family, community, society, culture, country, race, religion – all those institutions that have written or unwritten rules and expectations; and some form of punishment(s) for not meeting them. And so the pain accumulates, and we carry it with us – and it rears its head whenever any of those unwritten events show up in our life in some form.

This is how I understood it – and experienced it.