kabballa senses

Being that the Kabballa encompasses everything, i thought i would raise this subject of interest here.

Our perception of the external universe comes through our senses. The feedback from the senses is incredibly powerful for our formation of self. I would take it that senses are located in malkut. Indeed our window into malkut comes through our senses. Without them, perhaps we would never see past the vail of paroketh. Recently I have been more aware of the power of these sensory 'gates' and there profound affect on our perception.

What has surprised me most is that there are more than five human senses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senses

This seems to be the best site i can find on this subject. Although on others it seems to imply between 9-21 human senses.(depending on definition of sense)

My thought here is this :-

how much of our spiritual understanding or 'feeling' would be lost if a sense never existed. If all humans did not have the sense of sight for example, Would the tree of life still have existed? . If we had echo location instead of sight, how different would we as a species be ? Sight to me is perhaps the most powerful sense, the one which if lost (i.e had never existed) would have the largest effect on how we, humans, have developed.

an interesting side note, of all the evolutionist theories. They are all flawed in one way, it would have been impossible for the human eye to evolve and develop. I read a book on the subject from a (christian) eye doctor, and it had charts and pictures, and explained why it couldn't have evolved. If one system in the eye wasn't present, then it would not work at all, so it all had to be present at once. You might think, oh, its an eye, no big deal, but its an extremely complex device. For instance, there is a layer of cells in your eye that can detect if your eye is going to be hit by a foreign particle, like 3 micron distance or something like that. which isn't very far, but if you were to scale that, it would be like if you were in New York and saw your buddy in Wisconsin waving at you. anyway, i just figured that might link in with what you said..

-Ven

The human senses are fascinating, and possible correlations on the Tree of Life also quite interesting.

If one takes Rudolf Steiner's 'basic' twelve senses as a starting point, I does appear that these 'gateways' to the external world are indeed located in Malkut. I would suggest, however, that each of these senses are only half of the equation, the other half being supplied by thinking.

For example, vision would be an amorphous meaningless visual stimulus without this visual stimulation being suffused with thinking, transforming visual 'noise' to meaningful visual sight. Similarly for the other senses.

This thinking, I would suggest, descends from the supernal triad, thereby allowing Malkut sensory input to become more than sensation, but thought-imbued vorstellung: meaningful in-sights (often translated as 'representation' or 'mental picture' - neither word truly adequate).

With the 'higher' or spiritual senses, such as Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, I would suggest that these are not Malkut-based, but rather of the realms of Hesed, Pahad and Tifaret. Again, however, these openings meaningfully infused by thinking descending from the supernals.

Indeed, an eye would be be quite useless without the software to translate its signal.

That signal would have many layers of interpretation by our being. for example, the eye can spot an incoming danger and close before we are even aware of it, touch has a similar ability. Then there is the brains ability to translate visual symbols and give them meaning. words and street signs for example. A thought process must be used here. Is this yesod mind, or more the territory of hod? Then there is visual stimuli of a more emotional nature, dare I say a beautiful girl in a short dress and a teenage boy would certainly trigger several emotions and thoughts, or images of cruelty or suffering, would this be netzach?

Sound is also a very powerful sense, from a babies tears to music. Music is a strange one. There is no doubt music can be very emotional, and also very good to dream to. I personally prefer radio to television ( my eyes are often busy ). Radio is a very interesting medium for the imagination too.

Of course the senses can also be fooled. http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html

I'm not sure if i am rambling here or have a point. I think my point is just how important the senses are to our self and our spiritual growth.

How did such things evolve? It does seem miraculous. However I do believe in evolution, but maybe not blind evolution. If the babe in the abyss is matter, then it has the ability to learn and develop.

AmounrA said:

What has surprised me most is that there are more than five human senses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senses

This seems to be the best site i can find on this subject. Although on others it seems to imply between 9-21 human senses.(depending on definition of sense)

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Five senses? 9-21 senses?(!) Please, fellow seekers, know at least this: that there are four actual senses or sense elementals (nature units), one relating to each elementary layer or level of external reality (nature). For touch and smell both detect the earthy level of external reality, that is, surface contact, smell merely being this sense at its most focused (detecting surfaces of individual molecules). Taste relates solely to that which is in solution, hence to water. Hearing picks up vibrations in gaseous air, even though these vibrations penetrate fluids and solids as well (even faster, in fact). And sight relates us to the photons of fire’s light. Speaking of photons, particle physics also confirms the four elements. Photons = fire (light). Leptons (essentially electrons) = air (life, an atom's atmosphere). Mesons, meaning pions, the (pre-quark-theory) nucleon-binders (hence cohesion) = water (form). Baryons or nucleons (which outside the nucleus all end up protons) = earth (weight, mass). [In order about the round, these four are: neutral spin 1 boson at the top of force’s vertical diameter, ‘negative’ spin ½ fermion to the right on matter’s horizontal diameter, neutral-on-avg. spin 0 boson at the bottom of force’s vertical diameter, and ‘positive’ spin ½ fermion to the left on matter’s horizontal diameter.]

Now to Wikipedia’s list. I cannot think the heat ‘sense’ is anything more than a fine tuning of the sense of surface contact in certain receptors, heat being fluctuation of surface. Ditto the pressure sense, pressure being displacement of surface. By ‘kinesthetic sense’, the ‘perception of body awareness’, is surely meant feeling (passive or receptive side of a conscious doer) inasmuch as it involves itself with the body through the senses and their nerves, while perception of pain is internal or emotional also, a ramification of sensation in the doer (feeling mistaking itself for the body). Balance is surely but an aspect of hearing, as is certainly a dolphin’s use of sonar – unknown to that Wikipediaist evidently, else the question of whether sonar is post-sensory or not would surely have yielded to the clarity afforded by a dolphin’s large brain size being a function of its use of sonar. (Also, I thought bats used radar, but evidently I was wrong, else it would surely have been mentioned, the article opting rather for bats use of infrared.)

There are several direct ramifications of elements in Kabbalah, of course, which is a study in itself. But one of these involves the sense organs in the head, the tongue and three pairs of organs (nostrils, ears, and eyes), for these are the physiological correlation given for the seven double letters in the Sefer Yetzirah. This is a subject involving skewing of secret traditions in written text, whose elucidation is somewhat involved But suffice it to say that the tongue is not paired because out of four elemental triads the one that points down – like water or Torah, according to the tradition surrounding the two triangles of the Jewish hexagram – represents water’s sense (taste), and it has but one sign in the manifested or lower half of the round, the other three triads having two manifested signs each. This represents a different orientation of elements than astrology, of course, save for fire, which still points in the direction of aries the head, that is, up (like flame). But water originally pointed down (the direction water flows), earth forward (direction the earthly body faces), and air back (the wind in one’s face when advancing). [Astrology's ‘rearrangement’, as well as a third way of orienting elements to cardinal directions (that of ceremonial magic, where S is hot summer’s fire, N cold winter’s earth, E warming spring’s air, W cooling fall’s water), are included with the first or original orientation in the sly pattern by which the order of the twelve simples was shuffled when the alef-bet was formed, and this even involves a joke at the expense of those (namely common humanity or non-Kabbalists) who see two senses where there is but one (as drunks see double) . . . but that’s another story.]

eyes wide shut

I don't get the thing with number four, five is far more interesting.

I think perhaps its time for the kabballa of the past to be newly built on. Perhaps the most potent discovery of the early kabbalists is the symbol of the tree of life as a map from without to within to beyond.

I feel the tone of much kabballistic text is like the works of early scientists. In the right direction but a bit contrived. I think it needs to be cleaned up and built upon. There is no reason why the early texts and the bible itself can not be wrong. Interesting steps leading the right way.

All we have to accept is that universe is alive and interactive both inside and out.That we ARE universe. Stars and people are the same. Inside distance is no object.

From here the world is yours.

whether there are 4 senses or 618 senses does not matter, just a point of curiosty for the kitten let out of the box.

AmounrA said:

whether there are 4 senses or 618 senses does not matter

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I suspect you say that as someone with less than 618 senses, I assure you as someone with more than four, I appreciate each and every one of them.

Kwaw

AmounrA said:

I don't get the thing with number four, five is far more interesting.

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You get no argument from me here: without the soul or quintessence, the elements would be pretty drab (and have nothing to do).

kwaw said:

. . . I assure you as someone with more than four [senses], I appreciate each and every one of them.

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Oh, M. le Kwaw, tell us, then: what new elementary layer have you found in nature that nature herself was not already manifesting?

I believe the argument both of you have is really with mother nature herself, or rather with the archetypal reason for there being four elements in the first place. This archetypal reason, of course, has many facets: geometrical, dynamic, ‘numerological’, and so on. But all are tied to the concept Nature.

The fourfold principle at work in nature is most easily seen in geometry’s consisting of four types of entities: (1) point, (2) line (determined by 2 points), (3) angle (a plane figure, determined by 3 points), and (4) solid surface (a solid figure is determined by 4 or more points). But it can easily be visualized dynamically as follows: in relation to a location, motion in a straight line can proceed (1) directly out, (2) more out than in, (3) more in than out, or (4) directly in. It can transition from (3) to (2) (and not vice versa), but in order to balance itself between (2) and (3), balance itself between out and in—the only other combination of out and in possible—it would have to proceed in a circle, which is not a straight line. Therefore, all Newtonian motion prior to being acted on by a force (which stands for the will) must be one of these four types of motion relative to any particular location. Furthermore: Fire’s radiation (light, the photon) pushes straight out (from a location). Air’s turbulence (the weak force, common to all leptons) pushes more out than in, since it breaks things up. Water’s form or cohesion (strong nuclear force, whose quantum is the pi-meson) pulls more in than out, since it congeals things. And earthly gravity (mass, the baryon) pulls straight in. Hence nature's fourfold structure is found ultimately in the very matter with which physics has to deal, this though being the result and not the cause of that structure.

Since fire is active, air more active than passive, water more passive than active, and earth passive, the quintessence can only be the balanced state, equally active and passive. This represents all four elements bound together by one soul (Thomas Aquinas’s ‘substantial form’), since in the body thus resulting active and passive are indeed (ideally) balanced (mortality being the wobble, in the case of mankind). This soul, nature’s quintessence, is what finally ‘crystallizes out’ of nature—the result of the four elements acting in concert—and is thus distinct from the conscious self inhabiting said body, one in whom the inner horizon as well as the outer is ‘open for business’.

Φ Φ

"Hence nature's fourfold structure is found ultimately in the very matter with which physics has to deal, this though being the result and not the cause of that structure."

Indeed, but why does this mean there are only four senses?

In Nature, it could very well turn out, that the four are aspects of one. I would not go as far to say nature has a four fold structure either.

The idea of four elements is an example of old science. It does not hold up, any more, calling water generally passive. fire as active. Its a neat way of discribing general things, but not for example, quarks. I can understand calling a bad tempered person as firey, but really its an expression not a 'fact'.

To me the facts do not lessen the mystery, but rather increase it. The reason is simple, science is getting deeper and deeper into a marvel. Far Far Far deeper than kabballa ever got a sniff of. Be it the spiral of the galaxy or the spiral of DNA. The fact that can not be escaped is this. If absolute nothing ever existed , nothing would ever have existed. The has always been potential. That alone seems impossible to our logic of beginning and an ends, but it is fact. There has always been something. Therefore a science looking into the fabrics and laws of universe will always have to accept it exists in the impossible. Something that has never not been, simply, defies it all. The fact that there is a number four is just as remarkable as there being one.

Personally I would class, sight -lightwave detector, hearing-soundwave detector, touch -hard soft detector, taste -bitter sweet detector and smell -gas detection as different senses. I would also say that the sense of hot cold is different from hard soft detection and fits none of the other, very different. The sense of balance has nothing to do with sound detection, deaf people don't fall down. So there are seven ways to sense the world. How about the sense of self? Which of the above is not a sense?

Touchy / feely.

Perhaps 'sense of balance' relates to our sense of touch. Are we not feeling which way the fluids and cystals are aligned within our ears to get our sense of balance?
You could say the same about smell, on a smaller scale, are we not feeling the molecules? A 'potent' smell might be different, eg. pheremones where an actual chemical substance enters through the 'smell receptors' and combines with our own chemical substances to stimulate the production of new ones . Even sight, we are 'feeling' photons with the nerve receptors in our eyes.

Maybe we only have one sense from which all others come?