Sense and the Other

I've often thought on the senses and how people experience them. Last night Greg and I were talking about how there is an inherent sense of Other between people in that we cannot know through their person how they are experiencing something. We can know through a series of metaphors and things that are similar in our own experiences, but we cannot know it through their own bodies and souls. This, of course, speaks to a certain weakness of language in its inability to clearly express certain things fully.

Along with that discussion came up the experience of music, and how we experience music. Music is not experienced merely aurally, but on some level that is deeper. Greg said that it is almost visual, which struck me because that is also how I tend to experience music. There is something behind the eyes, just beyond my reach, but I can often sense a whole series of scenes and images when I listen to music. In the same way, light has volume and sound. How often have we said that a very brightly coloured shirt is loud?

And this, I think, can probably be extended to all of the senses in truth. They are not merely experienced on the surface through the organ that receives them, but they are experienced deeper. How many people have memories associated with smell, so that even the scent of it draws up an emotional well? How many find that sound and light draw out images and signs and hearing in our soul? Even touch and taste must hold keys to our memories, our experiencing of the world.

I suspect they go deeper to a common root, a central core. There is some centre in our being that receives this input and interprets it holistically. Psychologists and scientists will speak of the plasticity of the brain -- its ability to adapt itself in the occasion of injury or unusual differences to allow for normal functioning in an abnormal manner in terms of what part of the brain is doing what. Perhaps this is related to that, but I believe that receiving of sensory input goes to a centre that is not just divisions of the optical, and the aural, and the olfactory, and the gustatory, and the tactile, but from those divided regions on the surface of the sphere to the core of it where there is no Smell, or Sight, or Sound, or Taste, or Touch, but rather it is the heart of Sense. Just as there is neither Jew nor Greek, they are made one as Sense in the hearts of people.

Perhaps I am entirely off base on this. Perhaps I am not. Perhaps I am merely rambling by this point. But if this is indeed the case, what does this mean for our experience of the world, and what does this mean for the divisions of the world between One and Other? If this mingling of the senses into Sense is true in each of us, does it expand beyond that to something that resembles a greater consciousness, a greater awareness? Is it simply restricted to individuals and we are forever divided by our experiences?

And suddenly I am reminded of the notions of Catholic Mystery. Especially of the Mystery of the Trinity and the Mystery of union in marriage and union of the Body of Christ that is the Church and the Eucharist. Is it possible that this centre that is Sense in all of us is not just real, but essential for our being and that it ties into that which comes from Christ and makes us One and Whole with Him?