It could seem an absurdity, but try for a moment to ponder the immense importance of the senses. Imagine how the absolute absence of senses would be: no sound,no sense of touch, no smell, no sight… absolutely nothing. Just an amorphous and insensible form.
It could seem absurd, but there are texts which state, that millions of years ago, what we call a human (ourselves), was only a mass, completely devoid of senses. The evolution from such a condition was long and troubled: this primal mass developed through different forms until it reached the form, we today, recognize as human beings.
Ok, let’s flow a little bit with our constructive (nonmechanical) imagination: the Creator didn’t make humans such as they are today (a statement sustained by many religions). This is an absurdity that must be eradicated from common thought.
The manifested form was needed as a shell to contain a principle (consciousness- being), in order to make it aware of the surrounding environment, and of itself.
If, in the Universe, the first thing that manifested itself was “sound”, it would be logical that the first sense to develop was only hearing. Don’t take it as an absolute truth – remember that we flow with a constructive imagination… but, when a child comes into the world, the first sense with which he becomes aware that something exists outside of himself, is hearing.
Once aware of that, according to the Principle of Unity, the child wishes to “touch” what lies outside of himself, in order to taste its quality, to experience the consistency.
It is the sense of touch – the response of the form to the external stimuli.
While hearing informs us about the depth and the direction from which the sounds originate, touch gives us the consistency, and the quality of the matter that composed the form which is touched.
Ok, let’s put aside the constructive imagination and see why this pondering is interesting. We haven’t to forget that the whole suface of the skin forms the sense of touch. Through the skin, we enter “into touch” with the surrounding environment – we sense the atmospheric pressure, the temperature, and the infinity of forms that surround us.
Every one of these sensations produces impressions that, in turn, “give us” emotions.
Furthermore, through the sensory contact, we learn to discriminate. Beware: don’t associate this term with the various forms of social discrimination we witness in everyday life; I speak here, about the skill to grasp the “difference” between things – a far cry from the mechanical social discrimination.
A pondering could be of use to understand the importance of observation and of what is here called, self-remembering.
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(And again back to the constructive imagination)
For the “hint” of human, that formless Being which only had the sense of hearing, such discrimination was far from its possibilities. In order to achieve this skill, he had to wait for the Manasaputra, the Lords of the Flame.
From such principles, he would have received the faculty of seeing – a fundamental historical moment, related to the birth of a potentiality that developed as mind; a moment that marked a fundamental turn, and a far-reaching evolutionary acceleration.
But this is another story….
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