Awakening Our Senses

Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri)

The five senses are the key instruments that we have in life to perceive the world and make our way within it. How we use them determines how our lives will unfold; whether towards health or disease, creativity or stagnation, enlightenment or ignorance. Learning to use our senses correctly is one of the main skills that we need, in order to master our existence and experience life in the optimal manner possible for us.

Our outer activities revolve around the messages that the senses convey to us, and how we respond to them. Our culminating experiences of pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow, depend upon the acuity of our senses and their range of function. Our minds orient themselves according to the information that the senses bring in, which becomes the basis for building our thoughts, emotions and imagination. The senses provide the nourishment of impressions through which the mind is either made calm or disturbed.

If our senses deteriorate, it is a loss that no external wealth or improved outer equipment can compensate for. Yet we seldom care for our senses properly or treat them with respect. Often we abuse them for short term enjoyment that weakens our greater sensory capacity to experience life in all of its vastness. In our pursuit of healing, we seldom look into how to care for our senses and open up their healing energies. While we are willing to buy better entertainment screens, we do not work to improve the power of the eyes that we use to see through them. While we try to detoxify the body periodically, we seldom strive to cleanse the doors of perception that the senses provide for us.

The Senses and Spirituality

The senses play an important part on the spiritual path, both in the negative sense as obstacles that get us caught in outer attachments, but also in the positive sense as higher perceptive powers. Many spiritual approaches require that we deny or limit the senses, which may be regarded as illusory or evil in their function.

Our spiritual lives are also based upon our ability to awaken deeper powers of perception. These include connecting to the “inner senses” hidden behind the outer senses. We have higher forms of seeing and hearing, connected to inner powers of light and sound, that link us to the greater universe of consciousness inside ourselves, just as our outer senses connect us to the external world. The spiritual path requires a mastery of the senses, not simply their denial, unfolding their deeper potential along with the higher energy and awareness that lies within us.

Ayurvedic medicine regards the wrong use of the senses as one of the main causes of all diseases. While overuse of the senses is usually the main problem, lack of use or wrong use, has negative consequences as well. How we use our senses reflects how we use our bodies, minds and deeper consciousness, and is an index of our entire existence and the overall meaning of our lives.

Yogic Management of the Senses through Pratyahara

The role of the senses in classical yoga is dealt with under the practice of Pratyahara, the fifth of the eight limbs of yoga, which is often called “control of the senses.” Pratyahara is sometimes crudely described as attempting to control a group of wild animals with a stick. It is more accurate to compare control of the senses through Pratyahara with control of the prana through Pranayama.

The real practice of Pranayama is not mere suppression of the prana, or simply not breathing, but deepening of the prana – helping us breathe from the core of our being, removing pranic blockages, releasing prana to flow freely through the nadis or subtle channels within us. Similarly, real Pratyahara is a deepening of the senses, helping us to have better sensory acuity, removing impairments to the functioning of the senses, increasing the relationship between the different senses and, above all, releasing the senses from their bondage to habitual forms and patterns of perception that create negativity within us. Pratyahara entails uniting the senses with the light of consciousness, the deep sense of feeling and knowing in the heart; aligning the outer light with the inner light by harmonizing the senses and the core consciousness within ourselves.

How do we accomplish this internalization of the senses? First we must honor the senses and what they reveal to us as sacred, not as mere opportunities for personal gratification. The senses are our God-given instruments of life, knowledge and expression. They reveal the world of nature, which is imbued with divine energies, in all of its beauty and glory.

The senses should be instruments of worship to honor the Divine presence in the environment around us. For this, we must look at the inner light that the senses reflect, not just attach ourselves to particular forms of sensory enjoyment. We need to connect with the light that is present in what the senses reveal, which is the light of the Seer, the pure awareness or clear light of consciousness within us.

A Vedic Approach to the Senses

Everything in the universe is made up of light and revealed through light. According to the ancient Vedic vision, the light behind the colored forms on earth is Agni, or the Divine fire. The light behind the clouds and the lightning in the atmosphere is Vaayu or wind, the Divine spirit. The supreme light of the sky or heaven is Surya or the Sun. All these three are aspects of the same light of awareness. The Vedic way is to use the senses as powers of light, allowing them to perceive, increase, expand and ascend with the cosmic light that they are part of.

In the Vedic view, our senses both perceive and reflect the cosmic reality. The eye relates to the Sun, the ears to the directions of Space, the nose to Vaayu or the cosmic Air, and the mouth to Agni or the cosmic Fire. To use the senses with the knowledge of their cosmic counterparts enables the senses to help us link to the cosmic reality. It also enables the inner senses, the inner hearing and seeing, to awaken within us.

It is important that we use our senses with reverence, honoring the divine powers through which they work. This means using the senses in a contemplative manner, along with a focus, steadiness and peace of mind. It is because we no longer contemplate life through our senses, that our lives are losing their meaning, moving too fast and leaving us in stress and anxiety.

Closing our senses entirely for some time and directing our attention within is an important aid for meditation. It allows our senses, which are overworked and over stimulated, to rest and realign themselves with the inner light of consciousness. Once we have rested our senses, we will find our field of perception cleansed and clarified as we open our eyes again, and the world will appear fresh and revitalized as well. Opening our senses wider is part of the awakening of our inner being – seeing the beauty of nature, contacting the wonderful tanmatras or essences of sound, touch, sight, taste and smell that vibrate subtly in the world around us. Nature is the highest work of art and the greatest scripture. Our senses are instruments for the worship of Nature, which is the gateway to the Spirit. We must learn to slow our senses down so that our awareness can move with the rhythms of nature. Then all life will begin to flow through us. To experience this, requires that we realign our senses from the world of the media to the real world of Nature around us.