The education of the senses · Pānchõ · all five

All five senses, out to no edge and back

Each sense near, then all five at once. All five widening, each through its own element, to no edge. One silence. Then all of them back, together.

Eyes closed if you like. Nothing is recorded or sent. The screen stays on while it runs.

How it goes
  1. Sit where you are. Eyes open or closed.
  2. What you hear. What touches you. What you see. The taste in your mouth. The smell of the air. Touch for each.
  3. All five at once. The mind will fasten on one: bring the others back, gently. Touch.
  4. Now let all five widen together: sound into space, touch into the air, sight into the light, taste into the waters, smell into the earth. Touch for each.
  5. No edge. Stay in it. Hold, and it is silence.
  6. When you are ready, hold again. Come back through every station, the way you went, to the five near you.
  7. You are back. Sit a moment before you get up.

Offered after the five journeys, not before: each sense is easier to widen once it has been followed on its own. Nothing is locked.

Care
  • The way back is always one hold away, or the button at the top: it never leaves you in the middle.
  • If one sense is quiet for you, let it be: four, or three, are a whole practice.
  • If the silence frightens you, open your eyes and come back. That is part of the practice too.

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

Where this comes from

Sri Aurobindo's multiple concentration (A System of National Education, 1910) made into one journey with a return, like the five before it. The widening of each sense through its own element follows his reading of the Gītā, 7.8 and 7.9. This form is ours.

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

Sri Aurobindo, in A System of National Education (1910), after saying that the mind fastens on one thing and marks the others vaguely:

Yet this can be remedied and the attention equally distributed over a set of circumstances in such a way as to observe and remember each perfectly. It is merely a matter of abhyasa or steady natural practice.

Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 403

Sri Aurobindo, reading Gītā 7.8 and 9 in his Essays on the Gita:

“I am taste in the waters, sound in ether, scent in earth, energy of light in fire,” and, it may be added for more completeness, touch or contact in air.

Essays on the Gita, CWSA 19, p. 272

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