Recently, I have been contemplating the ability to perceive beauty and meaning. In order to perceive anything, it is necessary to develop our sensory organs. We have developed eyes to see. Without ears, sound waves would be elusive to us. If someone were to talk to us about pleasant and unpleasant smells, we wouldn’t know what they are actually talking about if we didn’t have a nose.
However, it is also necessary to develop what could be called internal senses. Our ears are not enough to appreciate the beauty of music. Cats and dogs have a more developed sense of hearing, but they probably do not appreciate the beauty of music as humans do (although a recent article on the BBC’s scientific website reported on research that showed that cats are soothed by classical music and seem to be particularly inclined towards Handel).
Nevertheless, our evaluation of beauty and our ability to comprehend meaning differ from person to person, and I believe there is no place for doubt that our internal perception grows and develops over time, especially if we are We are practicing, as one of the speakers at a recent lecture on homeopathy said: “Intuition grows with time.” For example, since I studied the violin and piano, it is obvious that I loved music and spent hours and hours with it every day. As the years passed, I appreciate it even more and have become more receptive to the beauty of some works that didn’t touch me as much in my youth. While our physical abilities of sight and hearing decrease with age, it seems that our inner senses develop, and we are able to see more with the heart and the eyes of our mind.
Our ability to perceive beauty and truth does not depend solely on these qualities themselves, but also on the development of our inner senses. Can we therefore confidently judge what exists or doesn’t exist? C. W. Leadbeater once said, “One of the most common mistakes is to assume that the limits of our perceptual power are also the limits of what can be conceived.” How much more do we still need to discover? Angel