Smells and Bells

What are the limits of human consciousness? How do our sensations compose the reality in which we live?  Throughout the discussion of  'the sixth sense' I began trying to wrap my mind our my own brain and why in my dreams I can predict the future. Is that a sense at all? Or just precognition? I believe that to an extent it is a sense, to sense what will happen. For me, my dreams (not every dream) is characterized by deja vu to the point where if I have a dream that is realistic in design I begin to question if it is a premonition or just a dream. That is how often it occurs. What could be the reasoning of these experiences? One thought I had was that maybe these dreams are collections of past experiences, but that was proved wrong with the following experience: I had a dream where I was somewhere completely different and new. Somewhere I've never been before. I was with my father, whom I am not with too often. I was hearing noises that aren't too common in my ...

Honeycomb s "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet"  Depending on the translation, God's sweetness flows from him like honey, an oozing sweetness that could mean bliss or joy, but could also be literally translated to sweetness. With the satiability of God's words and presence being connected to only sweetness, while things that may bring harm to us are considered bitter. What's interesting to me is the delectability of God despite his power and wrath. Where is the sweetness when he induces the flood? Would we every consider God any other flavors or tastes? To connect this back to what the author said about taste being a matter of perspective. Rachel Fulton also noted how sweetness can be seen as juvenile, with the connotations as follows could be perceiving the person tasting as immature.  Further elaborating on this idea that Bernard of Clarivaux introduced of our palate being tainted by the serpent's poison, providing a loss of tastes of goodne...

"Language is steeped in metaphors of touch... call our emotions feelings, we care most deeply when something 'touches' us. Problems can be thorny, sticky... [there are] touchy people... get on our nerves" (70) Longing Hands touching  Touch is something most of us take for granted - most of us can touch, or in Ackerman's interpretation of touch above, have the ability to be touched in some way. Upon reading Ackerman's explanation of the relationship between touch and language - through the way people talk or act we get 'feelings' about them. Touch is intertwined in everything we do - in either an emotional or physical context. There is a small number of people, in fact, who were born with the inability to feel physical touch - both positive and negative. This is called anhidrosis . Analyzing what it means to not feel touch, gives an insight into what it's like to feel . Yes, from a typical perspective of a person who can touch, being able...

“it is both our panic and our privilege to be mortal and sense-full. We live on the leash of our senses" (xvii)  Roses in the water to reference Ackerman's section on the smell of roses.  Our sensations have been intrinsic in our human survival and experience and have probably changed and evolved over time. What once was integral for survival and the continuation of the species is now what shapes our human experience. According to Ackerman, our senses both limit and restrain us in our interpretations and understandings of the world in a way that isn't cerebral. Looking at animals and analyzing their senses gives us an idea of what our senses could have been. What’s the importance of the interplay between animalistic senses and our own and how much can we learn from them? Some things, in my opinion can be learned, but it must be noted that animals and humans (both actually animals) evolved and adapted in different ways that ultimately best suited them fo...

In my last post, I talked about color and colorblindness, and how color was such a personal experience. That statement got me thinking, because, when it really comes down to it, everything we experience is a personal experience. No one ever feels the same way. We may use the same general terms to attempt to describe our experiences, but in the end only we really know how we feel. Our senses and emotions have a deep connection. Another blog I found from Tufts University states that "what we sense triggers a feeling" which becomes a conceptual association. This could be anything- the blog goes into how seeing a cup of coffee, tasting coffee, hearing a coffee maker, smelling coffee beans can make us feel energized or happy. This happens all around us, though we may not know it. The sun after a long winter, for example. I feel refreshed and excited and energized on that first beautiful morning of spring, and that conceptual association leads me into my day happy. Most of the time...

For Indians, they believe that, being seen by the eyes of the gods is the equivalent of receiving a blessing from them. How do they find the power of being seen so strong? When we stare at someone, we believe that they will not be aware of it although it does happen often, particularly with mothers "mothers have eyes in the back of their heads". The people in India at one point in time must have been aware of this power that "mothers" have. They may not have understood exactly what happens energetically between someone looking at someone being looked at, but the phenomena must have occur often. As the interaction is intangible, it must have seemed something like magic or from a higher power which allowed for this intangible "magical ability" and could be the reason why they attribute the act of "being looked at" as so powerful. Although Professor Nelson and many neuroscientists explain this phenomena as being a result of things such as...