Two things nearly the same, told apart

1. Find two things nearly the same: two greens (two leaves of one tree), two sounds (two bells, two vessels struck), two tastes (rock salt and sea salt, jaggery and sugar), two cloths, two flowers of one kind.
2. The first, on its own. Touch.
3. The second, on its own. Touch.
4. Where do they differ? Not which is better: only where they differ. Touch.
5. The first again, and the second again. Each is more itself now. Touch for each.
6. Add a third. Then all three, each its own. Close your eyes and stay. Hold.
7. When you are ready, hold again, and come back through them, one by one.

Not which is better. The Mother adds to the education of the senses the capacity to choose what is beautiful and harmonious; it begins with seeing that two things are not one.

• No score. There is no right answer to where two things differ.
• Tastes: nothing you have been told not to eat. Two waters are enough.
• Sounds: soft ones. Never a sound that hurts.

Sri Aurobindo, to someone afraid of the emptiness that came in concentration:

Consciousness is not dissolved; it is the limits of the consciousness that are dissolved.

Letters on Yoga III, CWSA 30, p. 276

The Mother adds discrimination and the aesthetic sense to the education of the senses, in “Vital Education” (1951), written for the educators of the Ashram's children. Two things told apart, then three, is our exercise for it.

It has not been tested. We claim no result from it.

The Mother, in “Vital Education” (Bulletin, August 1951). She is writing about children; “it should never cease” is why it is given here to a grown man:

The education of the senses, again, has several aspects, which are added to one another as the being grows; indeed it should never cease. The sense organs, if properly cultivated, can attain a precision and power of functioning far exceeding what is normally expected of them.

On Education, CWM 12, p. 20

The Mother, in the same chapter, on what is added to the senses once they are educated:

To this general education of the senses and their functioning there will be added, as early as possible, the cultivation of discrimination and of the aesthetic sense, the capacity to choose and adopt what is beautiful and harmonious, simple, healthy and pure.

On Education, CWM 12, pp. 20 to 21