Sensations, Sensibility, Senses …

This weekend we had an amazing speaker, Monsieur Phillipe Perennès.  Among all the other things that he was besides being a teacher, like all of our past speakers that are like renaissance men that were wise in many subjects, he has been and agriculture, clown and teacher.  Yes the one that impress me the most clown, of course in France where he is from clown has many more special characteristics than the typical slap comedy we are used to here.  He knew how to juggle things and was able to speak with whole body, giving an extra meaning to what he wanted to show us, and this was very important because the topic of the conferences was … The Senses.  Yes little did I know that when I learned the senses back when I was little was that I was taught only some of the senses.  Yes you read right in reality we have twelve senses and not five (or six to the women, since we have a six sense) like we were told.  I was amused how this was possible, something I haven’t heard before, this was very exiting, and of course got my entire attention. 

Basically we have exterior senses and interior ones, which work together like a team, in a rhythm like breathing.  We have corporeal senses or interior, middle senses but they are a medium a way to the sensing experience and the superior or social senses.  Basically we have senses that help us to relate with ourselves, senses that help us to relate to the nature and the world that surround us and senses that help us to relate with the rest of humanity. 

I will give a brief description of them, to give you some insight of it.  The senses that help us to relates to ourselves.  We start with our largest organ in the body, our skin, and that takes us to the first sense, the sense of touch (one of the original ones).  The sense of touch is not only in our hands we can feel with our whole body, toes, legs, belly, arms and even with our hair since our skin is also covered with tiny little hairs, in some cases not so little but you get the idea.  That is why is so important how we approach this sense since it is so exposed to everything that is outside of our body, and we also have to protected it.  The first thing that we ever experience in our body was by the sense of touch by our skin, which is why is so important the handling of the infant and how we touch it.  The skin is the exterior guardian of our body.  Now its counterpart sense number two, the sense of vitality, is the guardian of our interior body, is the sense of living.  Is the guardian of our internal organs, keeps them working properly and synchronized.  Is a sense that has to be protected in order to comprehend and have compassion for life itself.  The third sense, the sense of movement of oneself, with this sense I can only perceive my movement and not the one of the others.  All the movements that we do with our body are visual manifestations of our will.  To finish in this area, the sense of balance or equilibrium.  Its organ is located in our ear and is the smallest bone in our body, how can something so tiny help us to be balance and in equilibrium, it helps us to be standing up and preventing us from falling, its able to measure the three dimension of the space, up and down, left and right and front and behind.  All of these senses are also related with the will. 

Then the senses that help us to relate to the nature and the world that surrounds us.  Here we have three of the traditional ones, the sense of sight, smell and taste, and a new one the thermal sense.  With this senses we perceive the nature that surrounds us, we can see the light and its colours.  We can smell the scents in nature.  We can taste its flavours.  We can perceive the warmth or cold.  This are senses that we must cultivate appropriately in order to be in perfect rhythm with nature and the world.  All of our emotions are expressed with these senses.

Last but no least the senses that help us to relate to one another, the senses related to the act of thought.  The sense of hearing, with it we can hear the sounds made by others.  The sense of the others language or word, that delivers to us the message, the words, ideas etc.  The sense of the others thought where this messages, words, ideas etc, are conceived.  The sense of others self (being, I); which allows us to recognize that other human being uniqueness and individuality.  With these senses we relate with others, we surrender our self, we quiet our self, and perceive completely that other human being, acknowledge, understand it, and through this senses we are able to relate in a healthy way with others.  These last senses are the hardest to understand, but are very important to cultivate and more in this times, when we put all of our energy in our self instead of into others, are times of individuality.  We need to recognize the “I” in others in order to be able to discover the “I” within us.  This senses that are the higher senses must be develop to the same level as the lower senses, in order to have a better relation to the rest of the beings that surround us.  If we relate better with ourselves, the nature and the other human beings we will be able to make this a better world and society.

To finish he summarizes everything he taught us with a painting, The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci.  In which he says that contains everything we need to know, here is portrayed everything, even the twelve senses.  Is really magical what happens when your horizons are broaden, how many possible perspectives.