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<title>THE MYSTERY OF THE FIVE SENSES</title>
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			<b><font size="4">THE MYSTERY OF THE FIVE SENSES</font></b><font size="4">&nbsp;</font></p>
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			&nbsp;</p>
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			&nbsp;</p>
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			THE senses are the doors opening out on the external world for the 
			consciousness to act and range abroad. That is the usual outward 
			movement which is generally so much condemned by spiritual seekers. 
			The doors and windows of the senses, whatever they are, all openings 
			should be closed, shut up, hermetically scaled. One should then 
			return within away from them, if one is to come into contact with 
			the true consciousness, the true reality. Even the Gita says, the 
			conscious being is seated in tranquillity within, closing all the 
			nine gates of the city, himself doing nothing nor causing anything 
			to be done.</p>
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			Well, that is one way of procedure in dealing with the senses. When 
			you consider that the senses always pull you out, they always entice 
			you to run after the sweet perishable goods of the world, invite you 
			to the enjoyment of pleasure and pain, to air the dualities of a 
			life of ignorance normally lived upon earth, then indeed the senses 
			become terribly suspect. But this need not be so. The senses instead 
			of being tempters leading you out into the ignorance may verily be 
			inspirers calling you, guiding you inward. Instead of opening out on 
			the world of maya they may open out on the world of light and truth.</p>
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			&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How can that happen? The clue is given in one of the Upanishads. 
			The Kena Upanishad says: This eye does not really see, there is an 
			eye behind that sees, and so on with the other senses. Even this<i>
			</i>mind does not know, there is a mind of the mind that knows. That 
			is the crucial point. With the eye of the eye one must see, with the 
			hearing of an inner car one must hear, and one must know by the mind 
			of the mind. Instead of opening these windows and doors outward they 
			should be opened inward, turned round about as it were like </p>
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				Page – 272&nbsp;</div>
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			the flare of a lighthouse. Then instead of being instruments of 
			illusory knowledge or maya as now, they become instruments of real 
			knowledge, receptacles or transmitters of the truth and reality 
			behind and above.</p>
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			Indeed we say habitually, when speaking of spiritual realisation, 
			that one <i>
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			sees </span></i>the truth, one has to <i>see </i>the truth: to know 
			the truth, to know the reality is taken to mean to see the truth, to 
			see the reality, and what does this signify? It signifies what one 
			sees is the light, the light that emanates from truth, the form that 
			the Truth takes, the radiant substance that is the Truth. This then 
			is the special character or gift of this organ, the organ of sight, 
			the eye. One sees the physical light, of course, but one sees also 
			the supraphysical light. It is, as the Upanishad says, the eye of 
			the eye, the third eye in the language of the occultists. What we 
			say about the eye may be equally said in respect of the other 
			sense-organs. Take hearing, for example. By the ear we hear the 
			noises of the world, its deafening cries and no doubt at times also 
			some earthly music. But when the ear is turned inward, we listen to 
			unearthly things Indeed we know how stone-deaf Beethoven heard some 
			of those harmonies of supreme beauty that are now the cherished 
			possessions of humanity. This inner ear is able to take you by a 
			process of regression to the very source of all sound and utterance, 
			from where springs the <i>anahata vak, </i>the <i>undictated </i>
			voice, the nada-brahman, the original sound-seed, the primary 
			vibration. So the ear gives that hearing which reveals to you a 
			special aspect of the Divine: the vibratory rhythm of the being, 
			that matrix of all utterance, of all speech that mark the material 
			expression of consciousness. Next we come to the third sense, that 
			of smell, Well, the nose is not a despicable organ, in any way; it 
			is as important as any other more aristocratic sense-organ, as the 
			eye or the ear. It is the gate to the perfumed atmosphere of the 
			reality. Even like a flower, as a lotus for example, the truth is 
			colourful, beautiful, shapely, radiant to the eye; to the nostrils 
			it is exhilarating perfume, it distils all around a divine scent 
			that sanctifies, elevates the whole being. After the third sense we 
			come to the fourth, the tongue. The mouth gives you the taste of the 
			truth and you find that the Truth is sweetness, the delicious nectar 
			of the gods: for the truth is also soma, the surpreme <i>rasa, amrta,
			</i><span style="font-family: Arial">&nbsp;</span></p>
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				Page – 273 </div>
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			immortality itself. Here is Aswapathy's experience of the thing in
			<i>Savitri:</i></p>
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			&nbsp;</p>
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			In the nostrils quivered celestial fragrances,</p>
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			On the tongue lingered the honey of paradise.¹</p>
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			&nbsp;</p>
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			Finally we come to the sense of touch. It is the last. But in 
			another way, it is the first and the foremost – psychologically and 
			chronologically – It is the most primary and primitive among the 
			senses, as the eye comes last as the final stage in the course of 
			the sensory evolution. The eye is the manifestation of a developed 
			consciousness; perfectly developed eyes as in man represent a 
			perfectly developed consciousness. But touch is the organ with which 
			an organism starts its life-course. It is the only organ a living 
			cell is given when it begins its forward journey. Plants are endowed 
			with that organ and faculty and that only. It is the most 
			generalised, the least specific, and the most sensitive of the 
			organs. Touch gives a closer, more intimate, even more direct 
			perception of the object, it is contact, it means identification, it 
			means becoming and being. And it is through the touch, the 
			sublimated and most intense physical contact, that you have the 
			direct contact with the substance of the Supreme, his very body. For 
			what is Sat up there is Annam here, both are the same identical 
			thing in a dual aspect</p>
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			Continuing farther, if we go beyond the five senses, we have still 
			another sense, it is mind, the sixth sense; it is in and through the 
			mind that the other five senses distil their perceptions allowing a 
			coordinated picture of the sense-experiences. Now, to attain, to 
			realise, to possess the Truth means, first of all, to know the 
			Truth: for, knowing as we know, is the function of the mind. It is 
			said, however, that the mind knows only the outward form of things, 
			its knowledge is the knowledge of an outside world, elements of 
			which are supplied by the senses. It is a Knowledge of or in 
			Ignorance. The true knowledge is not attained by the mind or through 
			the mind. For the true knowledge, it is delcared, the mind is to </p>
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			&nbsp;</p>
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			¹ Sri Aurobindo: <i>Savitri, </i>Book 1, Canto III</p>
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				Page – 274&nbsp;</div>
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			be expunged altogether or silenced at least. One must get away, one 
			must withdraw from that play of activity and be far from it. True 
			knowledge comes through revelations. It descends from above, it does 
			not enter by a level side-door and it comes only when the mind is 
			not there. But this also, as in the other cases, as in respect of 
			the other senses, is an extreme view. Like the other senses the mind 
			too can be turned inward or upward, made a receptive organ or 
			instrument. When turned round, when it is the Mind of the mind, then 
			there begins to appear the true knowledge. Then even this physical 
			mind remains no more ignorant or obscure, it becomes transparent and 
			luminous: it is able to bring its own gift, it can serve with its 
			own contribution to the real knowledge; for it is the mind that 
			gives a form and shape, a local habitation and a name to the higher 
			truth, to the real light, to the true knowledge. It is the <i>surupa
			</i>(beautiful and perfect form) chanted by the Vedic Rishis that 
			the purified mind models for the Gods to inhabit – it is what the 
			poets and prophets always aspire for in their creative 
			consciousness.</p>
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			But these separate senses with their separate qualities are not 
			really separate. In the final account of things, the account held in 
			the Supreme Consciousness, at the highest height, these diverse 
			elements or movements are diverse but not exclusive of one another. 
			When they find themselves in the supreme consciousness, they do not, 
			like the rivers of which the Upanishads speak, move and merge into 
			the sea giving up their separate individual name and function. These 
			senses do maintain their identity, each its own, even when they 
			together are all of them part and parcel of the Supreme Universal 
			Consciousness. Only, they become supple and malleable, they 
			intertwine, mix together, even one doing another's work. Also, as 
			things exist at present, modern knowledge has found out that a blind 
			man can see, literally see, through some part of his body; the sense 
			of hearing is capable of bringing to you the vision of colours. And 
			the olfactory organ can reveal to you the taste of things. Indeed it 
			has been found that not only at the sight of good food, but in 
			contemplating an extraordinarily beautiful secenery or while 
			listening to an exquisite piece of music, the mouth waters. It is 
			curious to note that Indra, the Lord of the gods, the Vedic lord of 
			the mind and the senses, is&nbsp;</p>
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				Page – 275&nbsp;</div>
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			said to have transformed the pores of his skin into so many eyes, so 
			that he could see all things around at once, globally: it is why he 
			was called Sahasralochana or Sahasraksha, one with a thousand eyes. 
			The truth is that all the different senses are only extensions of 
			one unitary sensibility and the variation depends on a particular 
			mode or stress on the generalised sensibility.</p>
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			This is what the Rishis meant when they named and represented even 
			the senses as gods. The gods are many, each has his own attribute 
			and function, but they form one indivisible unity.</p>
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			The senses therefore are not merely externalisers but they are also
			<i>internalisers. </i>They are modes and movements that work 
			separately and conjointly and present aspects of the Supreme 
			Reality. These aspects are there in the very essence and the 
			constitution of the One Truth, also they are projected outwards to 
			manifest and embody those very elements in the material 
			manifestation and incarnation of the Supreme Divine:</p>
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			&nbsp;</p>
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			&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A magical accord quickened and attuned</p>
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			&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To ethereal symphonies the old earthy strings; . . .</p>
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			.&nbsp; . it made</p>
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			&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The bogy's means the spirit's acolytes.²</p>
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			&nbsp;</p>
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			² Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book 1, Canto III&nbsp;</p>
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				Page – 276&nbsp;</div>
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