What has happened to smell?

Just the other night I was reading something about smell. The sensation, the capacity of smell, has almost disappeared from humanity. Animals are very sharp. A horse can smell for miles. A dog can smell more than a man. Just by the smell the dog knows that his master is coming, and after many years the dog will again recognize the smell that is his master’s smell. Man has completely forgotten.

What has happened to smell? What calamity has happened to smell? There seems to be no reason why smell has been so suppressed. No culture anywhere has consciously suppressed it but it has become suppressed. It has become suppressed because of sex. Now, the whole of humanity lives with sex deeply suppressed – and smell is connected with sex. Before making love, a dog will smell the partner because unless he smells a harmony deep down between the two bodies, he will not make love. Once the smell is fitting then he knows that now the bodies are in tune and they can fit and they can become a song – even for a moment a unity is possible.

Because sex has been suppressed all over the world, smell has become suppressed. The very word has become a little condemnatory. If I say to you, ‘Do you hear?’ or if I say to you, ‘Do you see?’ you don’t feel offended. So, if I say, ‘Do you smell?’ one should not feel offended, it is the same language. Smell is a capacity; just like seeing and hearing, smelling is a capacity. When I ask, ‘Do you smell?’ one feels offended because one has completely forgotten that it is a capacity.

There is a famous anecdote about an English thinker, Dr. Johnson. He was sitting in a stagecoach and a lady entered. She said to Dr. Johnson, ‘Sir, you smell!’

But he was a man of language, letters, a grammarian. He said, ‘No, madam. You smell. I stink!’

Smell is a capacity. ‘You smell. I stink.’ Linguistically he is right. That’s how it should be if you follow grammar. But the very word has become very condemnatory. What has happened to smell? Once you suppress sex, smell is suppressed.

You can read in the scriptures that people say, ‘I saw God.’ Nobody says, ‘I smelled God.’ What is wrong in it? If eyes are right then why is nose wrong? In the Old Testament it is said that your face is beautiful and your taste is beautiful, but not your smell. Smell is not talked about. We talk about God’s beatific vision, we never talk about his beatific smell.

One sense is completely crippled – and if you cripple one sense then one part of the mind is crippled. If you have five senses then your mind has five parts. One fifth of the mind is crippled and one never knows. That means one fifth of life is crippled.

The implications are tremendous. If you touch a small thing somewhere it reverberates all over. Accept everything. I was talking to you a few minutes before about repressing sex: because of repressing sex, smell has been repressed, and because of repressing sex your breathing has become shallow – because if you breathe deep, your breathing massages the sex center inside. People come to me and say, ‘If we really breathe, we feel more sexual.’ If you make love to a woman your breathing will become very deep. If you keep your breathing shallow you will not be able to achieve orgasm. The breathing hits hard, deep down in the sex center; from the within it massages the sex center.

Because sex has been repressed, and because breathing is repressed people have become incapable of meditation. Now look at the whole thing. What nonsense we have done! Repressing sex we have repressed breathing and breathing is the only bridge between you and the whole.

Gurdjieff is right when he says that almost all religions have behaved in such a way that they seem to be against God. They talk about God but they seem to be basically against God. The way they have behaved is against God.

Now that breathing is repressed, the bridge is broken. You can only breathe shallowly, you never go deep, and if you cannot go deep in yourself, you cannot go deep in existence.

Ancient Music in the Pines, Ch 3 (excerpt)