most foolish, for all of us must needs depend upon
these five senses in our everyday affairs, and would soon come to grief
were we to neglect their reports. Instead, I am trying to acquaint you
with the real nature of these five senses, that you may realize what they
are not, as well as what they are; and also that you may realize that
there is no absurdity in believing that there are more channels of
information open to the ego, or soul of the person, than these much used
five senses. When you once get a correct scientific conception of the real
nature of the five ordinary senses, you will be able to intelligently
grasp the nature of the higher psychic faculties or senses, and thus be
better fitted to use them. So, let us take a few moments time in order to
get this fundamental knowledge well fixed in our minds.

What are the five senses, anyway. Your first answer will be: "Feeling,
seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling." But that is merely a recital of the
different forms of sensing. What is a "sense," when you get right down to
it? Well, you will find that the dictionary tells us that a sense is a
"faculty, possessed by animals, of perceiving external objects by means of
impressions made upon certain organs of the body." Getting right down to
the roots of the matter, we find that the five senses of man are the
channels through which he becomes aware or conscious of information
concerning objects outside of himself. But, these senses are not the
sense-organs alone. Back of the organs there is a peculiar arrangement of
the nervous system, or brain centres, which take up the messages received
through the organs; and back of this, again, is the ego, or soul, or mind,
which, at the last, is the real KNOWER. The eye is merely a camera; the
ear, merely a receiver of sound-waves; the nose, merely an arrangement of
sensitive mucous membrane; the mouth and tongue, simply a container of
taste-buds; the nervous system, merely a sensitive apparatus designed to
transmit messages to the brain and other centres--all being but part of
the physical machinery, and liable to impairment or destruction. Back of
all this apparatus is the real Knower who makes use of it.

Science tells us that of all the five senses, that of Touch or Feeling was
the original--the fundamental sense. All the rest are held to be but
modifications of, and specialized forms of, this original sense of
feeling. I am telling you this not merely in the way of interestin