THE ROLE OF THE SENSES IN MEDITATION OR SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
What is the right approach to our senses – seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting – on a journey of meditation and self-understanding? Are they hurdles one must disengage with, or pathways to understanding? What is their nature?
Senses as a hurdle or as a doorway to realisation
Certain traditions teach that we are caught in attractions around ourselves due to our senses, and it is only by their withdrawal that we can touch the silent, higher energy in us, which is fogged out by the noise of these senses. We learn that the vrittis, (movements) of the mind, their constant occupation with memory, thought, cravings, fears, etc., via the senses, prevent our ability to connect with divine consciousness. The injunction is to turn within and silence the restless activity and bondage of the senses, which flit from one thing to another.
On the other hand, other thinkers call upon us to pay complete attention, bring a kind of sensory fullness into any activity we are involved in within the here and now. It is this that builds a deep sensitivity to life, to the all-pervading sacred. In my understanding, a wholesome response to any situation, devoid of preconceptions, can come only when we bring our complete attention, and this occurs through the senses that are the doorway to attention. Krishnamurti’s teachings, Buddhist teachings of mindfulness, or Eckhart Tolle’s writings on the power of now also indicate such approaches.
So, are the senses a block, or are they a means to understanding? Are these merely differences between world-denying and world-affirming spiritual philosophies? Closer attention and meditation practice reveal that, the opposition between these two approaches is only a surface-level distinction. Both methods can be equally revealing, and they unfold attention and consciousness in their own ways.
Sensing fully and being present
Bringing all our senses fully, with intention and awareness, into any action we do can have some very amazing effects. First, our mind becomes centred, and the noise of other parallel thoughts, emotions, and scattered selves that play within us becomes muted. The scattered self becomes a whole self, and the awareness, that single energy that animates everything we do and think, instead of being in 5 different places, comes into one place. Saturated with awareness, the senses that have till now been acting in a compulsive manner, suddenly become aware. I can, in that moment, shift from a mechanical state to a conscious state. From forgetting myself, I suddenly remember myself, and my action also improves in quality. The secret of awareness has always been that it comes from divine consciousness and is always complete, content, and free. And so it can show me ever-deepening glimpses of the truth. If I am overeating, overemoting, etc. I will be able to pause and refine that behaviour. Or I may fully enjoy the moment, not with half but full attention, and yet be able to stop and pull away when it’s done. I will not be as easily swayed by the compulsive glue of its attachment. The more I do this, the more this ability will grow.
Ironically, when I am aware with all my senses, what grows is not the senses but the strength of the awareness behind them, that always flows in every activity that I do, but just don’t notice, because I am caught up in the consumption (the bhoga) of the activity. As a relationship grows with this awareness, there comes a stage when I am automatically pulled within, to the silence of this awareness in me, free of sensory adventure.
The senses are only instruments or doorways, and awareness wields them and carries the drive to experience. Yet the glue between the drive and the senses is strong and hard to separate in ordinary life, unless one pauses and observes their process.
Withdrawing from the noise and coming home
On the other hand, if I choose to withdraw my senses, or rather ask those senses to turn within, to collapse, a different experience can occur. As I reduce my engagement with various objects of experience, as the cloudy fog of their emotions and thoughts quietens, the silent witness within becomes more apparent. The gradual relaxing of constant psychological activity can also be deeply uplifting.
This turning inward, however, would be hardly helpful if it simply turns from the outwardly engaged mind to the vast universe of the subconscious, which is simply another set of thoughts and associations, endless shadows and sensations. Teachers suggest that focus comes if we observe the source of all our inner and outer mental activity. Who or what is the one behind all this? What sees, feels, tastes? Who seeks? As some teachers have taught, all desire is eventually the desire for the whole, the divine. Having forgotten it, we seek it everywhere in scattered, mini bites of happiness and experience. So, this method asks that when the one-pointed desire for inner divinity becomes the focus of the senses, or of sensing as a whole, then this inner divinity gradually reveals itself as the source of all. It becomes a shining and certain reality.
All is consciousness outward and in
Eventually, a truly non-dual teaching, such as that of Ramana Maharishi, offers further clarity. All is consciousness, so there is eventually no opposition between the inner and outer, the divine and the world. As Ramana has said, Shankara’s teaching is not simply – Brahma Satya, Jagat Mithya, but he adds a third final step, which posits Jagat Brahman. Meaning, a three-step process of revelation – the divine is true, the world is false, the world is divine. This is a step when one can see the pervading love of consciousness resonate in both one’s inner pulsations and outer world, hidden in everything that is unfolding. One realises that there are two expressions of consciousness – the witnessing consciousness that is unchanging and expresses as awareness, and the wonderous nature of consciousness that is always changing, and makes the world of images. It is for the seeker to discover the common thread in both of these, the same resonant intelligence that is both, and not get caught in delusion.
As all outward sense activity is also arising from consciousness, all senses are actually one larger sensing, one awareness that has moved outward to experience through five senses. A quieter observation shows that they are just scattered rays of the one light of awareness, here to learn, experience, and grow through the journey of life.
The light shines for us all
Meditation and self-enquiry can be a learning adventure if we follow the guidance of true masters, but also explore and see for ourselves. A comment by one of my philosophy professors stayed with me for years, an important reminder that a true seeker of truth will find clues to it everywhere – in higher as well as mundane contexts. When discussing the allegory of Plato’s Cave in class, he turned the teaching on its head. The usual reading of this allegory posits that it is the philosopher who stepped out of the cave and saw the Sun, and was the one who saw the truth. Those living in the cave were busy looking at shadows, deluded, thinking this alone is the truth. It is a powerful analogy of life lived mechanically, without seeking, and the power of seeking truth beyond the veil of illusions. Yet, he reminded us, it was the shadows in the cave that alerted the philosopher that there is a light behind. The shadows that others enjoyed, were present ‘due to light’; and so does the light of the divine lie unnoticed yet alive in everything that is.
