Smells and Bells

As is explained in Diana L. Eck’s Darsan , prayer in Indian Hinduism is described as the eponymous Darsan , seeing the image of patron diety, the sight of something divine. To me, this is a way to describe what I believe to be a universal experience – the sensation of awe. Sight is a unique sense in the fact that it can discern physicality at a distance – every surface and facet of an object can be accurately interpreted simply by looking at it. Smell/taste can tell you your distance to an object, but it can’t tell you it’s shape – that requires extrapolation. Hearing is the same way, it will tell you in what direction a stimulus is coming from, perhaps even its distance, but what did the noise-maker look and feel like? In this way, sight is a sense that many people associate with reality . There’s a reason that seeing is believing, or so they say. Awe, I believe, is what happens when our reality is broken; when something that shouldn’t be, is . Strange noises and smells carr...