The real sixth sense

Once on a road trip, we were behind a truck on an interstate and smelled something funny. My friend was driving, and as he passed the truck, we saw the Nestle logo on the side of the trailer. We were smelling chocolate, not anything toxic.

One thing we couldn’t do: we couldn’t choose not to smell it as long as we were behind or beside the truck. But other times, we may encounter a smell, such as a dead animal or excrement, and immediately flee. We don’t dwell in the smell.

Just as we spit something out that tastes rotten. We avert our eyes when we encounter ugliness. We pull away when we touch something hot. We cover our ears to muffle excessively loud sounds.

The film Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds claims that the ancients viewed thought as one of the senses with smell, taste, sight, touch, and hearing. I agree. We can’t control a thought entering the brain any more than we can control these “sense”-ations.

Thoughts, of course, accompany anything we sense. They may also come without the senses. In normal times, all of our senses are active unless we consciously choose to block them off by closing eyes, muffling ears, etc.. Likewise, we’re almost always receiving thoughts. Some thoughts are triggered by memories, such as when seeing a familiar actor or hearing an old song. Other thoughts seem to come out of the blue.

While driving through farm country and passing a cattle feedlot, the smell of manure may envelop your car, but if you’re going at highway speed, it soon passes…