The Five Senses
By the Rev. Dennis Duckworth -- Sunday, September 16, 2001

Letter From Your Editor, September 2001

Bible Reading

Now when Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, he did not resort to sorcery as at other times, but turned his face towards the desert. When Balaam looked out and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the Spirit of God came upon him and he uttered his oracle: "The oracle of Balaam son of Beor, the oracle of one whose eye sees clearly, the oracle of one who hears the words of God, who sees a vision from the Almighty, who falls prostrate, and whose eyes are opened: How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel! Like valleys they spread out, like gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by the Lord, like cedars beside the waters. Water will flow from their buckets; their seed will have abundant water. Their king will be greater than Agag; their kingdom will be exalted. God brought them out of Egypt; they have the strength of a wild ox. They devour hostile nations and break their bones in pieces; with their arrows they pierce them. Like a lion they crouch and lie down, like a lioness--who dares to rouse them? May those who bless you be blessed and those who curse you be cursed!" (Numbers 24:1-9)

Reading from Swedenborg

Each of the five external senses--touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight--has a correspondence with one of the internal senses. . . . The sense of touch, broadly speaking, corresponds to the love of goodness; the sense of taste to the love of knowing; the sense of smell to the love of perceiving; the sense of hearing to the love of learning, and also to obedience; and the sense of sight to the love of being intelligent and wise. (Arcana Coelestia #4404)

Sermon

Swedenborg tells us that touch corresponds to love, and is the universal sense. Anyone we love, we want to touch--hence the kiss and the caress. We see a newborn baby and instinctively want to touch and cuddle it. We pat the dog and stroke the cat. Touch is the immediate expression of our loving feelings.

Swedenborg is very careful to speak of the senses in a certain order: touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight. And he gives the spiritual significance of these senses: touch signifies love; taste signifies affection or discernment; smell signifies perception; hearing signifies obedience; and sight signifies understanding or wisdom.

Therefore, the five senses are five ways in which love and wisdom are linked together. Swedenborg points out that touch is in all the other senses. When we taste, we touch the tongue with food and drink; when we smell, minute particles touch the membranes of the nose; we hear because sound waves impinge upon or touch the eardrum; and it can even be said that we see because light waves touch the sensitive receptors of the eye.

If touch is the universal sense, then love is universal too. Nothing can exist without love. Love is our life. Music, painting, literature--everything about them depends upon love. Science, political life, community relationships--these exist because there is a basic love behind them. Religion and the church, worldwide faiths, the understanding of God's Word--all come from the universal love that is the very fabric of human existence. When Jesus healed, he touched. All healing depends upon the touch of love.

The Sense of Taste

In the Psalms we have these beautiful lines of poetry: "O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who trusts in him" (Psalm 34:8). Again we read, "How sweet are your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Psalm 119:103). In the New Testament, Jesus is alleged to have said, "Whoever keeps my words shall never taste of death." (John 8:52).

Swedenborg tells us that the sense of touch signifies love, and the sense of taste signifies affection and discernment. What's the difference? Love is the purest and most powerful feeling in the world; affection is putting that feeling into effect. Affection means doing something with your love. This is why the sense of taste signifies affection, which is doing something from love.

This is also why Swedenborg says taste corresponds to affection and discernment. As we know all too well, it is possible to begin to like, and then to love the wrong things in life. Taste helps us to choose the good things, the pleasant and useful things, and to reject what is unpleasant and harmful. Will you have some of this? You hesitate. Taste it, and your taste will help you to decide.

The five senses have been given to us to help us keep our bodies clean and healthy, and our minds alert and responsive. But it is not simply our bodies and our external awareness. There is such a thing as spiritual health and integrity. Our sense of taste corresponds to our need to make the right choices in life so that we can become angelic beings in the Lord's sight. "O taste and see that the Lord is good." Discern! Choosing the Lord and his ways brings spiritual health and strength.

The Sense of Smell

There are not many references in the Bible to smelling. Those that are there seem to describe its pleasantness or its attractiveness. How would you like to be described as one "whose beauty is like the olive tree, and whose smell is of Lebanon"? (Hosea 14:6). Lebanon was famous for its cedar trees and its olives, and for its citrus fruits. How nice it would be to be told that your clothes "have the smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia." (Psalm 45:8). This is another way of describing your attractiveness, your cleanliness, and your freshness.

Even God can smell. In the Genesis we read, "Jehovah smelled a sweet savor and said in his heart, 'I will never again curse the ground because of humankind'" (Genesis 8:21). To smell a sweet savor means to be well disposed towards, to be pleased with.

The sense of smell comes midway in the list: touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight. Swedenborg gives the spiritual significances as: love, affection, perception, obedience, understanding. Being midway in the list, smell, or perception, takes something from both sides. It has something of love and of understanding within it. Perception is a kind of intuition--when you know in your heart that something is true. You simply know it. No need to deliberate, to work it out in your mind, to spend a lot of thought. You know it is so. You can smell its fragrance, so to speak.

Nothing is more sure than the right smell. Animals know this; they find their way about largely by sniffing. For us humans, there is nothing more satisfying than the right smell in the right place. In ancient times people followed their noses more than we do today. But aromatherapy is coming back into popularity. Certain smells have a benign and rewarding effect. Use the right smell and it will do you good. Avoid the bad, distasteful smells. The smell itself will tell you whether it is good for you or not.

This is perception, with the meaning that Swedenborg gives to it. In our spiritual life too, perception--the ability to do a thing because we feel in our bones that it is right--is a heavenly quality.

The Sense of Hearing

There must be hundreds of references to hearing in the pages of the Sacred Scriptures; I have chosen just a few. Swedenborg tells us that hearing, in its spiritual sense, refers to obeying or giving heed. We hear in order to give heed to what is being said.

"He called the multitude and said to them, 'Hear and understand'" (Matthew 15:10). This clearly means, "Give heed to my words." "The people pressed upon him to hear the word of God" (Luke 5:1). It was not just the act of hearing, but hearing in order that they might understand. "The sheep hear his voice, and he calls them by name" (John 10:3). Even sheep can give heed and follow the shepherd. But how much more significant it becomes when we realize that we are the Lord's sheep! "Have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer" (Psalm 4:1). This is not simply a matter of hearing the prayer, but of giving heed to what it means.

Swedenborg stresses this significance of giving heed, and even goes further to say that the real purpose of hearing is that we might understand what is true, and so accept it and obey it. In the list of the five senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight, and the corresponding spiritual meanings of love, affection, perception, obedience, understanding, the sense of hearing is well on the way towards the end. At one end is love, and at the other end is truth. To give heed must involve understanding what is true.

We were given our ears and our sense of hearing so that we might understand what is true, and obey it. Of course, we can do just the opposite: we can understand what is true and refuse to obey it. But that is neither the purpose of creation nor the purpose of Divine Providence. We have been given our five senses so that we may see, understand, accept, and obey what is true.

This is what makes us human, and gives us our capacity to become angels in heaven. So take heed. Or as the Bible puts it, "Hear, and your soul shall live" (Isaiah 55:3).

The Sense of Sight

The eye is an amazing and wonderful organ. Damage to the eye is a tragedy, and even a small imperfection can be a great nuisance. We see because light particles fall upon the sensitive receptors in the eye and stimulate the optic nerve leading to the brain.

To see is to understand, and spiritual sight is the understanding of truth. "Moses said, I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt" (Exodus 3:3). Moses wanted to understand why the blazing bush was not burnt up. To see is to understand. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). The pure in heart will understand what is meant by the word "God." They will see God spiritually.

"Behold, it is I myself; handle me and see" (Luke 24:39). This is a post-resurrection appearance of Christ. He had been crucified and entombed, yet here he was, standing before his followers. They could not understand it, though they wanted to. "Handle me and see" is an invitation that they should investigate in order to understand. "I turned to see the voice that spoke to me" (Revelation 1:12). How can you "see" a voice? But you can understand the words of a speaking voice. This is the obvious meaning.

In the spectrum of the five senses, sight comes at the end: touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight. What does this mean? In the language of correspondences, light is truth, and sight is the understanding of truth. Another word for this is wisdom. Therefore the eye, or rather eyesight, corresponds to wisdom.

In Swedenborgian doctrine there is the great concept of the heavenly marriage of love and wisdom. All things in creation exist because of this relationship. It is a relationship that exists in God himself, and in all that God has created. Love and wisdom are united in all things that are good.

The five senses can be seen as an illustration of one of the ways in which love and wisdom are conjoined, or linked together. Love is a feeling--a very powerful feeling. Wisdom is an intellectual grasp of essential ideas of truth. Neither can operate on its own. It is when they are linked together that they become operative.

Dennis Duckworth is a retired minister of the General Conference of the New Church in Great Britain, who served chiefly in the London area. He is also an artist, often expressing Swedenborgian themes in his paintings. . This is his first appearance in Our Daily Bread.

Prayer

Thank you, Creator God, for endowing us with the five blessings of touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight, by which we experience so much pleasure and beauty. Grant us, we pray, the wisdom to use our senses well, not plunging into physical pleasures for their own sake, but elevating heart, mind, and body in the service of those higher, spiritual purposes for which you created us. Amen.