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FIVE
The Training
of the Senses
THERE
are six senses which minister to knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and
taste, mind, and all of these except the last look outward and gather the
material of thought from outside through the physical nerves and their end-
organs, eye, ear, nose, skin, palate. The perfection of the senses as ministers
to thought must be one of the first cares of the teacher. The two things that
are needed of the senses are accuracy and sensitiveness. We must first
understand what are the obstacles to the accuracy and sensitiveness of the
senses, in order that we may take the best steps to remove them. The cause of
imperfection must be understood by those who desire to bring about perfection.
The senses depend for their accuracy and sensitiveness on the
unobstructed activity of the nerves which are the channels of their information
and the passive acceptance of the mind which is the recipient. In themselves the
organs do their work perfectly. The eye gives the right form, the ear the
correct sound, the palate the right taste, the skin the right touch, the nose
the right smell. This can easily be understood if we study the action of the eye
as a crucial example. A correct image is reproduced automatically on the retina, if
there is any error in appreciating it, it is not the fault of the organ, but
of something else. The fault may be with the nerve currents. The nerves are
nothing but channels, they have no power in themselves to alter the information
given by the organs. But a channel may be obstructed and the obstruction may
interfere either with the full- ness or the accuracy of the information, not as
it reaches the organ where it is necessarily and automatically perfect, but as
it reaches the mind. The only exception is in case of a physical defect in the
organ as an instrument. That is not a matter for the edl1cationist, but for the
physician.
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If the obstruction is such as to stop the information reaching the mind at all,
the result is an insufficient sensitiveness of the senses. The defects of sight,
hearing, smell, touch, taste, anaesthesia in its various degrees, are curable
when not the effect of physical injury or defect in the organ itself. The
obstructions can be removed and the sensitiveness remedied by the purification
of the nerve system. The remedy is a simple one which is now becoming more and
more popular in Europe for different reasons and objects, the regulation of the
breathing. This process inevitably restores the perfect and unobstructed
activity of the channels and, if well and thoroughly done, leads to a high
activity of the senses. The process is called in Yogic discipline nādī-śuddhi
or nerve-purification.
The obstruction in the channel may be such as not absolutely
to stop in however small a degree, but to distort the information. A familiar
instance of this is the effect of fear or alarm on the sense action. The
startled horse takes the sack on the road for a dangerous living thing, the
startled man takes a rope for a snake, a waving curtain for a ghostly form. All
distortions due to actions
in the nervous system can be traced to some kind of emotional disturbance
acting in the nerve channels. The only remedy for them is the habit of calm, the
habitual steadiness of the nerves. This also can be brought about by nādī-śuddhi
or nerve-purification, which quiets the system, gives a deliberate
calmness to all the internal processes and prepares the purification of the
mind. If the nerve channels are quiet and clear, the only possible disturbance
of the information is from or through the mind. Now the manas or sixth
sense is in itself a channel like the nerves, a channel for communication with
the buddhi or brain-force. Disturbance may happen either from above or
from below. The information outside is first photographed on the end organ,
then reproduced at the other end of the nerve system in the citta or
passive memory. All the images of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are
deposited there and the manas reports them to the buddhi. The manas
is both a sense organ and a channel. As a sense organ it is as automatically
perfect as the others, as a channel it is subject to disturbance resulting
either in obstruction or distortion.
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As a sense
organ the mind receives direct thought impressions from outside and from within. These impressions are in themselves
perfectly correct, but in their report to the intellect they may either not
reach the intellect at all or may reach it so distorted as to make a false or
partially false impression. The disturbance may affect the impression which
attends the information of eye, ear, nose, skin or palate, but it is very
slightly powerful here. In its effect on the direct impressions of the mind, it
is extremely powerful and the chief source of error. The mind takes direct
impressions primarily of thought, but also of form, sound, indeed of all the
things for which it usually prefers to depend on the sense organs. The full
development of this sensitiveness of the mind is called in our Yogic
discipline sūkmadrsti or subtle reception of images. Telepathy,
clairvoyance, clairaudience, presentiment, thought-reading, character-reading
and many other modern discoveries are very ancient powers of the mind which have
been left undeveloped, and they all belong to the manas. The development
of the sixth sense has never formed part of human training. In a future age it
will undoubtedly take a place in the necessary preliminary training of the human
instrument. Meanwhile there is no reason why the mind should not be trained to
give a correct report to the intellect so that our thought may start with
absolutely correct if not with full impressions.
The first obstacle, the nervous emotional, we may suppose to be removed by the
purification of the nervous system. The second obstacle is that of the emotions
themselves warping the impression as it comes. Love may do this, hatred may do
this, any emotion or desire according to its power and intensity may distort the
impression as it travels. This difficulty can only be removed by the discipline
of the emotions, the purifying of the moral habits. This is a part of moral
training and its consideration may be postponed for the moment. The next
difficulty is the interference of previous associations formed or ingrained in
the citta or passive memory. We have a habitual way of looking at things
and the conservative inertia in our nature disposes us to give every new
experience the shape and semblance of those to which we are accustomed. It is
only more developed minds which can receive first impressions without an
unconscious bias against
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the novelty of novel experience. For instance, if we get a true impression of
what is happening – and we habitually act on such impressions true or false -
if it differs from
what we are accustomed to expect, the old association meets it in the citta
and sends a changed report to the intellect in which either the new impression is overlaid and concealed by the old or mingled with it. To go farther into
this subject would be to involve ourselves too deeply into the details of
psychology. This typical instance will suffice. To get rid of this obstacle is
impossible without citta-śuddhi or purification of the mental and moral
habits formed in the citta. This is a preliminary process of Yoga and was
effected in our ancient system by various means, but would be considered out of
place in a modern system of education.
It is clear, therefore, that unless we revert to our old Indian system in some
of its principles, we must be content to allow this source of disturbance to
remain. A really national system of education would not allow itself to be
controlled by European ideas in this all-important matter. And there is a
process so simple and momentous that it can easily be made a part of our system.
It consists in bringing about passivity of the restless flood of thought
sensations rising of its own momentum from the passive memory independent of our
will and control. This passivity liberates the intellect from the siege of old
associations and false impressions. It gives it power to select only what is
wanted from the storehouse of the passive memory, automatically brings about the
habit of getting right impressions and enables the intellect to dictate to the citta
what sarhskāras or associations shall be formed or rejected. This is
the real office of the intellect, – to discriminate, choose, select, arrange.
But so long as there is not citta-śuddhi, instead of doing this office
perfectly, it itself remains imperfect and corrupt and adds to the confusion in
the mind channel by false judgment, false imagination, false memory, false
observation, false comparison, contrast and analogy, false deduction,
induction and inference. The purification of the citta is essential for
the liberation, purification and perfect action of the intellect.
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