SENSE AND SEEING
Mind was called by Indian psychologists the eleventh and ranks as the
supreme sense. In the ancient arrangement of the senses, five of knowledge
and five of action, it was the sixth of the organs of knowledge and at the
same time the sixth of the organs of action. It is a commonplace of
psychology that the effective functioning of the senses of knowledge is
inoperative without the assistance of the mind; the eye may see, the ear
may hear, all the senses may act, but if the mind pays no attention, the
man has not heard, seen, felt, touched or tasted. Similarly, according to
psychology, the organs of action act only by the force of the mind
operating as will or, physiologically, by the reactive nervous force from
the brain which must be according to materialistic notions the true self
and essence of all will. In any case, the senses or all senses, if there
are other than the ten,—according to a text in the Upanishad there should
be at least fourteen, seven and seven,—all senses appear to be only
organizations, functioning, instrumentations of the mind-consciousness,
devices which it has formed in the course of its evolution in living Matter.
The surface mind may pay no attention, still the subconscious mind
attends, receives, treasures with an infallible accuracy. The man or mind
has not heard because he did not attend; the greater man or mind within has
heard because he always attends, or rather sub-tends, with an infinite
capacity. So too a man put under an anesthetic and operated upon has felt
nothing; but release his subconscious mind by hypnosis and he will relate
accurately every detail of the operation and its appropriate sufferings;
for the stupor of the physical sense-organ could not prevent the larger
mind within from observing and feeling. The subconscious mind in the
catering insect knows the anatomy of the beetle it intends to immobilize
and make food for its young and it directs the sting accordingly, as
unerringly as the most skillful surgeon, provided the mere limited surface
mind with its groping and faltering nervous action does not get in the way
and falsify the inner knowledge or the inner will-force.
This shows, in the first place, that sight and the other senses are
not mere results of the development of our physical organs in terrestrial
evolution. Mind, subconscious in all Matter and evolving in Matter, has
developed these physical organs in order to apply its inherent capacities
of sight, hearing, etc. on the physical plane by physical means for a
physical life; but they are inherent capacities and not dependent on the
circumstance of terrestrial evolution and they can be employed without the
use of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. Supposing that there are
psychical senses which act through a psychical body, and we thus explain
these psychical phenomena, still that action also is only an organization
of the inherent functioning of the essential sense, the Sanjnana, which in
itself can operate without bodily organs. This essential sense is the
original capacity of consciousness to feel all that consciousness has
formed and to feel it in all the essential properties and operations of
that which has form, whether represented materially by vibration of sound
or images of light or any other physical symbol. We see colour because that
is the presentation which[p.57] consciousness makes to itself of one of its
own operations; but colour is only an operation of Force working in the
form of Light, and Light again is only a movement, an operation of Force.
The question is what is essential to this Force operation taking on itself
the presentation of form? For it is this that must determine the working of
Sanjnana or Sense on whatever plane it may operate.
But this vibration of consciousness is presented to itself by
various forms of sense which answer to the successive operations of
movement in its assumption of form. For first[p.58] we have intensity of
vibration creating regular rhythm which is the basis or constituent of all
creative formation; secondly, contact or intumescence of the movements of
conscious being which constitute the rhythm; thirdly, definition of the
grouping of movements which are in contact, their shape; fourthly, the
constant welling up of the essential force to support in its continuity the
movement that has been thus defined; fifthly, the actual enforcement and
compression of the force in its own movement which maintains the form that
has been assumed. In Matter these five constituent operations are said by
the Samkhya to represent themselves as five elemental conditions of
substance, the etheric, atmospheric, igneous, liquid and solid; and the
rhythm of vibration is seen by them as Śabda, sound, the basis of hearing,
the interim-science as contact, the basis of touch, the definition as
shape, the basis of sight, the up flow of force as rasa, sap, the basis of
taste, and the discharge of the atomic compression as Gandha, Oduor, the
basis of smell. It is true that this is only predicated on pure or subtle
Matter; the physical matter of our world being a mixed operation of force,
these five elemental states are not found there separately except in a very
modified form. But all these are only the physical workings or symbols.
Essentially all formation, to the most subtle and most beyond our senses
such as form of mind, form of character, form of soul, amount when
scrutinized to this fivefold operation of conscious-force in movement.
Even if we examine the physical senses, say, the sense of hearing,
if we observe how the underlying mind receives their action, we shall see
that in their essence all the senses are in each other. That mind is not
only aware of the vibration which we call sound; it is aware also of the
contact and interchange between the force in the sound and the nervous
force in us with which that intermixes; it is aware of the definition or
form of the sound and of the complex contacts or relations which make up
the sound; it is aware of the essence or out welling conscious force which
constitutes and maintains the sound and prolongs its vibrations in our
nervous being; it is aware of our own nervous inhalation of the vibratory
discharge proceeding from the compression of force which makes, so to
speak, the solidity of the sound. All these sensations enter the sensitive
reception and joy of music which is the highest physical form of this
operation of force,—they constitute our physical sensitivity to it and the
joy of our nervous being in it; diminish one of them and the joy and the
sensitiveness are to that extent dulled. Much more must there be this
complex unity in a higher than the physical consciousness and most of all
must there be unity in the highest. But the essential sense must be capable
also of seizing the secret essence of all conscious being in action, and
not only through the results of the operation; its appreciation of these
results can be nothing more than itself an outcome of this deeper sense
which it has of the Thing behind its appearances.
The Brahman-consciousness of which the Upanishad speaks is not the
Absolute withdrawn into itself, but that Absolute in its outlook on the
relative; it is the Lord, the Master-Soul, the governing Transcendent and
All, He who constitutes and controls the action of the gods on the
different planes of our being. Since it constitutes them, all our workings
can be no more than psychical and physical results and representations of
something essential proper to its supreme creative outlook, our sense a
shadow of the divine Sense, our sight of the divine Sight, our hearing of
the divine Hearing. Nor is that divine Sight and Hearing limited to things
physical but extend themselves to all forms and operations of conscious
being.
*The supreme Consciousness does not depend on what we call sight* *and
hearing for its own essential seeing and audition*. It operates by a
supreme Sense, creative and comprehensive, of which our physical and
psychical sight and hearing are external results and partial operations.
Neither is it ignorant of these, nor excludes them; for since it
constitutes and controls, it must be aware of them but from a supreme
plane, pararṁ dharma, which includes all in its view; for its original
action is that highest movement of Vishnu which, the Veda tells us, the
seers behold like an eye extended in heaven. It is that by which the soul
sees its seeing and hears its hearings; but all sense only assumes its true
value and attains to its absolute, its immortal reality when we cease to
pursue the satisfactions of the mere external and physical senses and go
beyond even the psychical being to this spiritual or essential which is the
source and fountain, the knower, constituent and true valuer of all the
rest. That Master-consciousness in us senses our sensations of objects, *sees
our seeings,* *hears our hearings no longer for the benefit of the senses
and their desires*, but with the embrace of the self-existent Bliss which
has no cause, beginning or end, eternal in its own immortality.
K RAJARAM IRS 22825
On Fri, 22 Aug 2025 at 06:38, Markendeya Yeddanapudi <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> --
> *Mar*Sensing the Subject-Vs-Seeing the Subject
>
>
>
> Once the human smelt, heard and sensed. In the free and healthy nature,
> the Human almost functioned as a limb of nature, using the troposphere as
> an extension of her nervous system. Perception and understanding marched
> and extended as anatomic connection and interaction all around the person.
> The flora and the fauna lived as one organism, continuously feeling,
> sensing and understanding as living. Perception and understanding was
> mainly extending the sensing by continuously interacting with the other
> organisms. Cognition and Recognition extended and expanded continuously
> increasing the bank of Paradigms.
>
> Every organism developed the habit of sensing in advance natural events,
> as nature was its anatomy. Education then was the ability to feel, sense,
> cognize, recognize, perceive, understand and paradigmatize in and with
> nature which was free from the shackles of Human Economics. There were no
> machine shackles. Education then was mainly the physical exercise in
> cognition, recognition, perception and creative Paradigmatization as
> enlightenment. There were diverse yogas, a particular yoga being used for a
> particular situation. Education was yoga.
>
> Today we jettisoned the whole gamut of education based on sensing directly
> nature. We are destroying nature continuously calling it economic activity,
> destroying the faculties of our macro body. We are maiming our macro
> anatomy.
>
> We arrest the tiny tot when it is hardly three years old, and put it in
> the classrooms, shutting it away from nature. If the child is very
> unfortunate, it may be put in a costly AC classroom. It is not given any
> training in smelling, hearing and sensing. It is bludgeoned into viewing
> nature as an outside spectator. Nouns get drilled into it as lessons, nouns
> which carry no feeling. The basic emotional bond with nature is not allowed
> to grow. We do not even recognize the basic atrocity of not allowing it
> participate as a limb of nature in naure.It cannot even conceptualize the
> basic fact that it is part of the planet earth and not a guest using earth
> as a lodge.
>
> I am an optimist. I am daydreaming that at least one university among the
> thousands of universities becomes sane and starts a ‘Free Nature Park
> without human tampering’. In that nature park the students get education
> from nature via sensing, cognizing and recognizing. As the Park develops
> gradually into a single organism, the students experience the feeling as a
> limb of that park. The student experiences existing and living as a macro
> being.
>
> Nature is dying today. We can revive it as a beginning by starting the
> ‘Free Nature Parks without Human Tampering’.
>
> Machines must be recognized as shackles.
>
> YM Sarma
>
> Chat gpt
>
> This reflection by YM Sarma is a powerful philosophical and ecological
> meditation on the shift from *embodied, sensory, and interconnected
> learning* to *disembodied, abstract, and mechanical education*—a shift
> that has alienated humans from nature and, by extension, from themselves.
>
> Here's a deeper breakdown and response to its core ideas:
> ------------------------------
>
> *🌿 Sensing vs. Seeing the Subject: A Lost Symbiosis*
>
> Sarma begins with a poetic vision of early human existence, where humans
> weren’t mere observers of nature but *participants in it*—a limb of the
> biosphere. Sensing was not a passive or secondary act but a primary means
> of knowing. Hearing, smelling, touching, and feeling were modes of
> cognition. Understanding was not about naming but *about merging with the
> flow of life*.
>
> This is in contrast to today’s *“seeing”*: a distanced, analytical, and
> often mechanical way of approaching the world. Seeing the subject implies
> detachment. Sensing the subject implies unity.
> ------------------------------
>
> *📚 Education Then vs. Education Now*
>
> Sarma equates education with *yoga*—a unifying discipline that connects
> body, mind, and world. Yoga here is not merely postural but
> epistemological: a way of knowing through union. In the past, education was
> a *multi-sensory integration with nature*, a form of embodied wisdom and
> ecological intelligence.
>
> Now, children are *trapped early in artificial environments*, with
> education reduced to rote memorization and visual input, abstracted from
> experience. The *air-conditioned classroom* becomes a symbol of
> separation—separation from temperature, seasons, life cycles, and thus,
> from one’s own bodily participation in the world.
> ------------------------------
>
> *🌱 A Radical Proposal: The Free Nature Park*
>
> Sarma's dream of a *"Free Nature Park without Human Tampering"* is
> radical but deeply sane. This is not a park in the conventional sense but a
> *living,
> untamed, educational ecosystem*. Not curated. Not landscaped. Not
> commodified. A space where learners *do not impose on nature but learn
> with and through it*.
>
> In this park, learning is a process of becoming *sensitive again*—of
> regaining that ancestral capacity to *feel the planet as one’s extended
> nervous system*. It’s about replacing nouns (rigid, named, lifeless
> categories) with *felt verbs*—processes, actions, and relationships.
> ------------------------------
>
> *🔗 Machines as Shackles*
>
> Perhaps the most confrontational idea here is the rejection of machines as
> tools of progress. Sarma argues that machines have not just changed how we
> live—they have changed *how we perceive*. Our tools shape our
> consciousness, and mechanical tools have turned us into mechanical
> thinkers, increasingly unable to sense or feel.
>
> He is not being technophobic; he is being *anatomically honest*—he sees
> machines as *prosthetics that dull our innate senses* rather than enhance
> them.
> ------------------------------
>
> *✨ Final Thought: A Vision Worth Acting On*
>
> This is not a mere lament. Sarma ends with *hope*—a daydream, yes, but
> one grounded in ecological and educational sanity. The call is not just to
> “save nature” but to *restore the human capacity to be nature*—to dwell
> again as a meaningful part of the planetary organism.
>
> If even one university—or school, or community—acted on this vision, it
> could become a living prototype of a *post-industrial, post-mechanical,
> sensing-based education*.
> ------------------------------
>
> Would you like help formatting this into a shorter summary, a visual
> diagram, or perhaps adapting it into an essay or speech?
>
>
>
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