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The Sixth Lesson: Cultivation of Perception.575
Another writer, Prof. Masson, has said: “If a new sense or two were added
to the present normal number, in man, that which is now the phenomenal
world for all of us might, for all that we know, burst into something amazingly
different and wider, in consequence of the additional revelations of these
new senses.”
But not only is this true, but Man may increase his powers of knowledge
and experience if he will but develop the senses he has to a higher degree
of efficiency, instead of allowing them to remain comparatively atrophied.
And toward this end, this lesson is written.
The Mind obtains its impressions of objects of the outside world by means
of the brain and sense organs. The sensory organs are the instruments of the
Mind, as is also the brain and the entire nervous system. By means of the
nerves, and the brain, the Mind makes use of the sensory organs in order
that it may obtain information regarding external objects.
The senses are usually said to consist of five different forms, viz., sight,
hearing, smell, touch, and taste. The Yogis teach that there are higher senses,
undeveloped, or comparatively so, in the majority of the race, but toward
the unfoldment of which the race is tending. But we shall not touch upon
these latent senses in this lesson, as they belong to another phase of the
subject. In addition to the five senses above enumerated, some physiologists
and psychologists have held that there were several others in evidence. For
instance, the sense by which the inner organs revealed their presence and
condition. The muscular system reports to the mind through some sense
that is not that of “touch,” although closely allied to it. And the feelings of
hunger, thirst, etc., seem to come to us through an unnamed sense.
Bernstein has distinguished between the five senses and the one just
referred to as follows: “The characteristic distinction between these
common sensations and the sensations of the senses is that by the latter
we gain knowledge of the occurrences and objects which belong to the
external world (and which sensations we refer to external objects), whilst by
the former we only feel conditions of our own body.”