On the play of the senses
I want to write here briefly about a practice I find deeply transformative that I see very little writing about, that of the active use of the senses. Obviously, there’s been an explosion in Mindfulness practice in the last 10-15 years or so, but often this is very “feelgood” and fairly superficial. A cute little habit to pick up, rather than something that might really challenge and change you.
I first encountered the notion of working actively with the five senses in Tantra Magick, which was the collected grade papers of the East-West Tantrik order, Amookos. Every book of magic we pick up has, in a sense, a set of implicit promises within it – who we might be or become if we really work on and integrate the work contained therein. The AMOOKOS work seemed to promise entry to a more sensual, embodied world, one filled with scent, light and colour. The imagery alone is evocative – beautiful shaktis stand astride the walled city of Shambala, emblazoned with jewels, and dripping with nectar. Embodiment via Reichian exercises promised the relaxation of tension, held like the strings on a lute. And the sensory work proposed a vivid tasty engagement with the world. It’s described in tantalising terms via a 6 month programme called The Academy of the Five Senses, where the aspirant is asked to undertake week long exercises like noting shades of gray, differentiating via the sense of smell and studying the shapes of objects, noting design vs. nature.
I took up this programme alongside a daily meditation on the Goddess of the senses, with “offerings” consisting of remembered sensory experiences. The visualisations of the Goddesses were very beautiful and spoke to the richness of sensory life – for instance, the Shakti of Sight is surrounded by peacocks with 7 rainbows meeting at her feet.
I would like to say I was transported immediately into a brighter, more sensuous world, but sadly this was not to be. My first experiences with this work were mostly a lesson in frustration, as I continually forget about it. Despite our best intentions, our minds have a momentum all of their own and will continually take us away from immediate experience into the same tired panorama of old thoughts and thinking.
The difficulty of “waking up” is well recognised in various Mystery schools. In the Fourth Way work, the teachings of Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, a fundamental principle is that we are all “asleep” and the process of “waking up” is laborious and difficult. Self-remembering (as Gurdfieff calls it) is fickle and unstable, at least at first. Continual efforts towards waking up are said to lead to formation of a more stable self. Probably the best piece of writing on it is Ouspensky’s wonderful digression in his In Search of the Miraculous where he gives an account of falling asleep and waking up again in the streets of St. Petersburg. Ouspensky refers to “the strange inner peace and confidence that comes after great efforts of this kind” before falling fast asleep – absolutely losing the thread of self-awareness – for several hours, and later, starting to. His account will be familiar to anyone who’s ever attempted this work. It happens over and over again.
So, my early attempts were faltering. The Amookos grade papers caution against assuming this work is easy – they mention that this is a lifelong practice, not something that can be mastered in 6 months. In my first attempts though, I did find moments of surprising connection and an immersion in the world. Often, this would bring with it the peace that Ouspensky describes. Being aware of the colours and textures of the paving stones and tarmac beneath my feet could make that landscape seem endlessly rich, like a fractal of subtle gradations. It reminded me of sketching in a way. In various (not altogether successful) attempts at learning to draw, I’d learnt that the more you study any given surface or object, the richer and more detailed it becomes. The more you look, the more you see. My relationship with my sense of smell became particularly interesting. Even when you can’t distinguish a particular scent, the fact and actuality of smell, its trace, seems to make the world more vivid. It lends it depth and dimensionality. I really can feel for people who’ve lost their sense of smell via Covid, it must be like only being able to see in 2d. All these early explorations were accompanied by the frustration of sudden distraction, a complete loss of remembrance for days at a time.
Alongside the sensory work, the Amookos grade papers contain many other useful exercises – meditation, working with mnemonic chains and working with the kleshas (the kleshas, to simplify are a schema of preferences and aversions). I found working with these in conjunction changed my relationship to fantasy. I would often find myself lost in fantasies – trivial or grandiose – wealth, aggression, sexual gratification or just being right – and “come to”, back to the moment, the concreteness of body and the senses. It’s strange and oddly ungratifying to drop out of these fantasies and contrast their giddy heights with the mundane reality of actually being just some bloke on the bus. But!! Then you recall and appreciate that the bus, yourself and everything on board, as having its own scent, sound, texture, design, colour, lumps and abrasions, beautiful and rich and strange in their own right.
Modern life plunges us into an ideational fog. Everywhere is an image, a distraction, an invitation to step away. To instead allow yourself instead to be a soft body in a fast moving world is a radical shift and not only that, I found with the ideas and practices above that I began to gradually stop reifying the sense of the self, the ideas and self-conceptions that I’d always repeated to myself over and over again. In their place, something different opened up.
Over time, years not months, I found the instability of practice began to give way and I found myself able to sustain awake-awareness (as it’s called in the Amookos papers) for longer and longer periods. I think the shift that allowed this was placing it an absolutely central place in one’s life and approach to the world. The world revolving around the core of awareness, Shiva in play with his Shaktis. It of course still rises and falls with life’s busyness and distractions but is a core place I always can go back and try to inhabit for much of the time.
At one point, I asked the I Ching about this process. I received back Hexagram 23, Bo, Splitting
Apart, with changing lines in the 1st and last places. This transforms into Hexagram 24, Fu, Return. The changing line text that reads as follows:
There is a large fruit still uneaten.
The superior man receives a carriage.
The house of the inferior man is split apart.
The commentary reads: Here the splitting apart reaches its end. When misfortune has spent itself, better times return. The seed of the good remains, and it is just when the fruit falls to the ground that food sprouts anew from its seed. The superior man again attains influence and effectiveness. He is supported by public opinion as if in a carriage…
I understand this to point to an end to separation, an end to being separate and cut off from experience, with benefits and blessings accruing from this shift. I think these lines are a fitting coda to this work.
