The Twelve Senses in the World of Nature

Silence  stillness immensity 
forest stretching endlessly 
snow covered, quietly breathing its tremendous, wide, conifer expanse
And the sough of wind rising and falling
Most beings here  - plant or animal  - are melded into this spacious and soul-purifying landscape
As is the human 
But the human is also, at least in part, separate from the land.
And human nature can discern, by way of the 12 senses, aspects and nuances of  the natural world through these 12 portals.

The snow sifts down into the forest, falling windless and so light as to seem almost weightless, afloat in place.  A deep silence holds sway, an ocean of stillness that invites entry. And there is space enough here for any size contemplation.

In the northern, boreal realm, across this endless range of semi-homogenous evergreen forest radiating its steadfast and grounded, robust energy  - across the conifer deep  - here and there, an accent counters the etheric expanse with an astral focus, an animal being  - raven, jay, squirrel-hunting marten, wolf, moose, or chickadee.

Tracks in the snow tell the stories.  A snowshoe hare nips birch tips from a fallen tree.  A luxuriously furred marten pursues a red squirrel.  Unless the squirrel quickly makes it to one of its underground dens it will become the marten’s meal.

Sometime in the night the wolf came near.  It came to investigate who was howling in the evening, howling like, yet unlike, another wolf (it’s own sense of language revealing that, although the sound of my howl seemed very similar to a wolf’s, there was a subtle difference).  It came near enough to discern the scent of human presence, approached as near as it dared, always keeping a periphery of safety as it circuited the area of the cabin.

What curiosity was left unquenched? And in the daylight I could feel the wolf watching me from somewhere in the woods, as I went out on the frozen lake to investigate the passage of its own movement, the story told by its tracks.

Surely, from the wolf’s point of view, it experiences the most challenge of interpretation (in a sense, the wolf’s level of conceptual sense) from the human community.  As is well known, the wolf can read, very intimately, the comings and goings, the various aspects of, the moose, and other inhabitants of its immediate neighborhood.  But the human being becomes rich in enigma, embodies a broad range of Unknown in the sphere of the wolf’s experience.

Snow-shoeing through a forest during a snowfall can be an ideal setting to attune to the landscape.  Distractions are reduced  - sound is muffled and visibility is confined to a radius of a few feet (of course it goes without saying that one has to exercise care, bring a compass and be good at orienteering, or you can end up in oblivion!)
Overall, the Spirit of the boreal forest  - the heart of the boreal forest landscape, like the heart of one of its trees, one senses, is golden, intricate, warm despite the climate, perhaps because of the climate, to counterpoint the cold.

In sharing this encounter with nature through the twelve senses, I will begin with the outermost, least penetrating sense and proceed to the deepest-registering sense (please note that the following presumes a basic understanding of the 12 senses.  If the reader wishes to prime him/herself on this subject, use the links under “Further Resources” at the end of the article.  Alternatively, information is readily available by entering an internet search via “12 senses”  - and adding “Rudolf Steiner” can be helpful):

Touch.

The longer I touch the snow and ice here, the number grows this sense.  Then, in turns, it is awakened by prickle of conifer needle, rasped by bark, or caressed by the soft feel of usnea moss.  Whatever the sensate experience of touch, I have to admit that it defines my separation, the self’s bounds, or at least the physical body’s self-bounding. I do touch nature with this sense, but only her outermost surface, a Braille of rebuff, no entry past the outermost edge.  As we continue down this list, we enter, increasingly, into the inner nature of things.  But the sense of touch is the most external.

For example, when the wind gusts across my face, my sense of touch feels the impact of that gust, but my sense of temperature registers how cool or warm it is.

A manatee, with more brain space dedicated to touch than any other mammal, has a long-distance sense of touch.  Whisker like hairs all over its body act as sensors, so that it can, in effect, “touch” from a distance.

Life.

After a long day of snow-shoeing my sense of life feels drained, very low in energy/chi, even despite practicing energy-enhancing Qi-gong along the way (I’m not by any means a master in the art yet).

Overall, as I undertake this trek, my sense of life is both enhanced and exhausted.  My constitutional energy is put to the test, the body forces are working at their limit. However, the etheric energy of the forest is so resplendent that there is a constant influx of vitality.  An interesting point to be made here is that in urban areas people have to enhance their life sense due to the lack of nature-borne vitality.  In consideration of this, we can say, if asked what is truly the most valuable property in, say, New York, the answer is that Central Park has more worth that all the rest of Manhattan combined!

Migrating birds can detect and use magnetic fields of the Earth to navigate by.  Is this so-called “magnetic field”  actually part of the sense of life of the planet streaming forth?  And are the birds, in a way, projecting their own sense of life outward to detect the Earth’s energy in this manner?

Wolves are known to stare into the eyes of their prey before opting to attack, reading in their potential prey the nature of their sense of life, their overall constitutional strength and condition of health.

Movement.

This sense of awareness of the body-in-motion enables us to know where any part of our body is even with eyes closed.  It is a sense that can be refined and enhanced, as in the case of intricate choreography.

When projected outward, we can sense movement in others.  One evening, as I was bent over a campfire, cooking a meal, I could sense something passing over above me.  As I looked up I saw an owl flying in the trajectory I had been sensing.  The owl, as we know is capable of flying quite silently.  I did not hear its passage, nor could I see it in any way, until after I looked up.

For the whole version of this article visit the Earth Vision website.