kabballa senses

AmounrA

The development of the senses origins, with which we experiance malkuth, would almost certainly start with the development of one sense. How it started bambozzles the mind. How its got so sophisticated is a wonder.

My view of what a sense 'is', is, the bodies intake of raw information. So the raw information our bodies recieve are;

1.light between 700nm & 400nm.
2.sound between 20Hz & 20,000Hz
3.Taste Mammals detect 5 primary flavours, sweet, sour, bitter, salty & umami
4.Touch Allows us to detect rough smooth Hard sharp.
(The sensory receptors in the skin have four classes; mechanoreceptors signal mechanical stimulation;Proprioceptors signal muscle tention and joint position; Nociceptors signal pain and thermoreceptors signalling temperature.Whether or not you could class them as separate senses is up to the indervidual)
5.Smell humans have between 4-5 million olfactory receptor cells. We are able to detect thousands of different odours. Some down to one part in several billion in the air.

Whether balance is a seperate sense is open to question. I think it is. http://www.scientificpsychic.com/workbook/chapter2.htm

Of course once this raw information is detectected it needs to be understood. I would guess thats a software issue. Perhaps involving Hod, Yesod & Netzach.
 

venicebard

AmounrA said:
"Hence nature's fourfold structure is found ultimately in the very matter with which physics has to deal, this though being the result and not the cause of that structure."

Indeed, but why does this mean there are only four senses?
If nature IS composed of four elementary types—of fundamental particle, or of geometric figure, or of possible activity relative to a given location, indeed of whatever ‘face’ nature turns to us in a given context—then the sense elementals, the units OF nature through which nature reaches our awareness, would naturally be of the same four types, would they not?
In Nature, it could very well turn out, that the four are aspects of one.
Of course they are. But there are still four of them, four such aspects of the One, just as there are specifically three indivisible parts of every conscious self: a knower to know the eternal, a thinker to opine over that which has finite duration, and a doer to act in the fleeting present instant (the fleeting present instant itself being the fourth, our earth aspect so to speak). Or just as there are two fundamental opposing principles—active and passive, determinative and determined—whose distillates and compounds are the four elements (and whose balanced state is the quintessence). Deduced from first principles, these fundamental divisions (and others) are quite as empirical in nature (if not more so) as observations through the senses. A careful approach to Hermetic science has no reason to relinquish its claim of bein empirical to a mainstream science that still believes gravity forms galaxies even though its OWN estimated mass of observed bodies falls short of that predicted BY AN ENTIRE ORDER OF MAGNITUDE.
The idea of four elements is an example of old science. It does not hold up, any more, calling water generally passive. fire as active. Its a neat way of discribing general things, but not for example, quarks. I can understand calling a bad tempered person as firey, but really its an expression not a 'fact'.
Isaac Newton had a healthier view of things, in that he sought the prisca sapientia, science’s pristine original, instead of thinking himself out ahead of anything previously known, as moderns in their mass egotism tend to do. Quite the contrary: knowledge of the four would have saved quantum physics its century-long (my estimate) detour seeking a non-existent quark theory, based on the absurd notion of a ‘force’ not attenuated by distance (which since it cannot be overcome by a greater force is no force at all but merely the fact that the parton is a part of something greater), when in reality it has already discovered physical matter’s fourfold structure. This is apparent from the round itself (the Orphic world-egg):

(1) At its top is fire’s ‘spin 1’ (1 round high) photon, neutral, hence centered (on the bosonic or force-like vertical axis).

(2) On its right is air’s ‘spin ½’ (1/2 round high) lepton, which for us means the electron, which is electrically charged—positive, according to Hermetic science, where current goes the direction the electrons themselves go (not opposite, as in today’s physics)—and therefore over on the right side (on the fermionic or matter-like horizontal axis).

(3) At its bottom is water’s ‘spin 0’ (0 round high) meson, the pi-meson that causes nuclear cohesion being on average neutral, hence centered (on the bosonic or force-like vertical axis once again).

(4) And on its left is earth’s ‘spin ½’ (1/2 round high) baryon, whose end state is the proton, which is oppositely charged—hence negative, according to Hermetic science—and therefore over on the left side (again, on the fermionic or matter-like horizontal axis).

That science failed to see this clear pattern—or else saw it and, frightened by confirmation of alchemy’s ‘primitive’ view, fled to quark theory’s 3 to replace parton theory’s 4—is a pity. For the pi-meson’s rôle as quantum of the strong nuclear force (water, form, cohesion) gives a range for that force identical to the ‘classic radius of the electron’, and since these two are calculated using nuclear constants on the one hand and electromagnetic constants on the other, one result would have been a coherent and plausible unification theory instead of the ridiculous chirpings one currently finds on the university campus.
. . . science is getting deeper and deeper into a marvel. Far Far Far deeper than kabballa ever got a sniff of. Be it the spiral of the galaxy or the spiral of DNA.
It turns out that the more empirical view of galaxy-formation TODAY, that of the plasma cosmologists, is consistent with the Hermetic view of descent from fire through air and water to earth, since the scale of the very large is ruled by fire, by electromagnetic forces (fire or electrostatic force and the magnetism arising from its flux), not by earth-like mass or gravitation, as the theoretical professors would have it: it has been demonstrated in plasma laboratories (all observed galactic forms having been produced and the relevant equations scalable) that a galaxy is formed by the kink-forming magnetic pinch between two parallel plasma currents or filaments where they are in close proximity. As for DNA, the Qabbalah corrected for calendar order and utilizing bardic numeration (whence arise most of the scientific ramifications) at least knew enough to associate phosphorus, of greatest importance in chromosome formation, with the gonads, for this is what reysh, bardic 15 (atomic number thereof), originally signified, as I can demonstrate to a reasonable degree of certainty.
The fact that can not be escaped is this. If absolute nothing ever existed , nothing would ever have existed. The has always been potential. That alone seems impossible to our logic of beginning and an ends, but it is fact. There has always been something. Therefore a science looking into the fabrics and laws of universe will always have to accept it exists in the impossible. Something that has never not been, simply, defies it all.
I gather here you are attempting to refute the creationists, of which I am not one. Qabbalah deals in eternals and thus could hardly be accused of being ‘creationist’ (except from ignorance, or from too much theology). But I will go you one further: you probably believe man himself was recently created (by ‘evolution’, a nebulous concept at best), whereas the actual evidence shows this not to be true (see, for example, Cremo and Thompson’s Forbidden Archeology, or the Sourcebook Project’s catalog of archeological and paleoanthropological anomalies).
. . . The sense of balance has nothing to do with sound detection, deaf people don't fall down. So there are seven ways to sense the world. How about the sense of self? Which of the above is not a sense?
Self is certainly not a sense: a sense is our intake from nature, and self is not of nature. For nature occupies the space between the bodily axis and the outer horizon, while self occupies the ‘space’ between the bodily axis and the inner horizon. Buddha’s anatta doctrine, misinterpreted to mean there IS no self, taught just this, that if you look for self amongst the five skandas that comprise the universe OUT THERE, you will not find it.

As for balance, I am uncertain at present but presume it depends on pressure, hence on surface contact, the earthy sense, though as I recall it involves fluids, so there may be more to it than this. I’ll have to study up on it. But I do not see how it could possibly mean a fifth element exists which has escaped Hermetists’ notice all these millennia. It is undoubtedly a function of one or more of the existing four. The quintessence, as I said, is all four functioning in coordinated fashion, not a fifth that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and it also signifies balance.
 

venicebard

ravenest said:
Perhaps 'sense of balance' relates to our sense of touch. Are we not feeling which way the fluids and cystals are aligned within our ears to get our sense of balance?
You could say the same about smell, on a smaller scale, are we not feeling the molecules?
Yes: precisely!
. . . Even sight, we are 'feeling' photons with the nerve receptors in our eyes.
Yes, quite: all four senses function THROUGH surface contact (touch/smell), which is, nonetheless, a distinct sense BY MEANS of which the other three function.
Maybe we only have one sense from which all others come?
The lesson of Qabbalah is that all there is has developed out of the One and seeks to become It, the One meaning the One Form, that which all units seek: Adam Qadmon, the balanced or sexless divine Form governing the Whole. It is its reduction of the entire complexity of the universe to this one simple guiding principle pervading the Whole that makes Qabbalah far superior to anything emanating from modern universities, those temples of ‘complexity for its own sake’.
 

ravenest

Another sense?

A while back I did a study on sensativity to the earths magnetic field. Some people have high sensativity in this area (Australian Aboriginals, successful explorers - as opposed to unsuccessful ones that get lost). [Unfortunatly I "cant read" the disc anymore.] Apparently we have small magnetised crystals in fluid chambers somewhere near the inner ear(?) but deeper, that allows this sense. Unfortunatly nowadays it is much disturbed by e.m.f. pollution.
 

jmd

There are a number of places I disagree in the above discussion.

Firstly, if taking the Tree of Life as a model, its manifestation is not out of the 'one', but rather out of the infinite undifferentiation (Ain Sof or 'without limit'). Once manifestation takes place, that is when, I would suggest, does differentiation and form occurs - and that last further down the unfoldment.

With regards to the quoted sections between AmounrA and venicebard a couple of posts back, I simply do not agree that what is presented as logical demonstration or inference is in fact so. Let me quote first, and then comment:
"Hence nature's fourfold structure is found ultimately in the very matter with which physics has to deal, this though being the result and not the cause of that structure."​
"Indeed, but why does this mean there are only four senses?"
"If nature IS composed of four elementary types—of fundamental particle, or of geometric figure, or of possible activity relative to a given location, indeed of whatever ‘face’ nature turns to us in a given context—then the sense elementals, the units OF nature through which nature reaches our awareness, would naturally be of the same four types, would they not?"​
The number of senses, even if there was indeed a fourfold structure or a fourfold force explanation to the manifest world, need itself be fourfold, any more than having a fourfold structure would necessitate that roses have four petals.

A sense allows perception of one's environment in such a way as to interact or 'understand' it in particular ways. One's sense of balance provides different and limited information about our body's relationship with the Earth (or other major gravitational or equivalent body); whereas one's sense of sight allows perception of myriad aspect of distant bodies; etc..

For a particular being or organism, the number of senses may be far greater than the number of ultimate forces used to describe the physical universe... or indeed less than four!

Relating it to the Tree of Life, one may even view those four forces as manifesting through Malkut, whereas the senses are functions of living organisms that in part are subject to those four forces in their physicality only. If one takes the higher echelons of the Tree of Life as spiritual manifestation, then there may be non-physically dependent senses as well.

I presume that we would agree that there are more than four different kinds of living organisms, or more than four different kinds of flowers, or four different kinds of mammals. Each of these may in turn have less or more than four different kinds of sensory receptors.
 

venicebard

jmd said:
A sense allows perception of one's environment in such a way as to interact or 'understand' it in particular ways. One's sense of balance provides different and limited information about our body's relationship with the Earth (or other major gravitational or equivalent body); whereas one's sense of sight allows perception of myriad aspect of distant bodies; etc.

For a particular being or organism, the number of senses may be far greater than the number of ultimate forces used to describe the physical universe... or indeed less than four!
I understand your point. It is just that there are essentially four distinct “ways” of “interact[ing]” with or “understand[ing]” environment, namely through each of its four functional levels, levels determined by first principles and checked against nature herself, meaning sense data, just in case one’s ‘sense’ of first principles is as nebulous as it has tended to be amongst philosophers West or East.
Relating it to the Tree of Life, one may even view those four forces as manifesting through Malkut, whereas the senses are functions of living organisms that in part are subject to those four forces in their physicality only. If one takes the higher echelons of the Tree of Life as spiritual manifestation, then there may be non-physically dependent senses as well.
Well, okay, but I hope we agree at least that senses are our interface with environment, not with self. As I understand the Tree, it defines the stages one has traversed to get to 10 (the state of being a ten-fingered) from 1 (Oneness), hence aspects within the human psyche, albeit including aspects because of which one can take in from without or from nature, namely because one has been there, has been a nature unit, before progressing to become an intelligent unit and ultimately a conscious identity or self.

It is just that by missing the point that there are four and only four senses moderns overlay even more fog on the fourfold structure of nature, leading, for example, to your tentative
. . . even if there was indeed a fourfold structure or a fourfold force explanation to the manifest world . . .
. . . when alchemists showed no such hesitation.