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The Mystery of the Five Senses
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 sealed. 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. 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 all 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. . 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 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 ear 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 Page 225 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.
Indeed we say habitually, when speaking of spiritual realisation, that one sees the truth, one has to see 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 Page 226 immortality itself. Here is Aswapathy's experience of the thing in Savitri:
In the nostrils quivered celestial fragrances, On the tongue lingered the honey of paradise.1
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
Continuing farther, if we go beyond the five senses, we have
still another sense, it is mind, the sixth sense as the orthodox
Indian view states. In this field too the same law we have
been expounding holds good. Mind here is the chief instrument
of knowledge: it is in and through the mind that man has
knowledge; it is in and through the mind that the other five
senses distil their perceptions allowing a co-ordinated 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.
1 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book 1, Canto III Page 227 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 be- comes 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 surupa (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. 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 Page 228 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. 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. The senses therefore are not merely externalisers but they are also internalisers. 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:
A magical accord quickened and attuned
To ethereal symphonies the old earthy strings; ...
... it made
2 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book 1, Canto III Page 229 |