|}
__NOTOC__
=Why Is It Important to Cultivate Senses?=
People have many senses which are asleep. If all the senses they possess were awake, there are many things they would perceive, which can just pass by without anyone suspecting anything.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/11-may-1955#p18</ref>
==For Knowledge==
Sensations are an excellent instrument of knowledge and education, but to make them serve these ends, they must not be used egoistically for the sake of enjoyment, in a blind and ignorant search for pleasure and self-satisfaction. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p28</ref>
If you learn to see well, exactly, precisely; if you learn to hear well; if you learn through touch to know the nature of things; if you learn through the see of smell to distinguish between different odours—all these are a powerful means of education.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/31-march-1954#p13</ref>
==For Expansion of Consciousness==
If one approachs things with this idea—of studying, of wanting to develop exactitude of perception and the relation between things—then, instead of living in sensations for sensations' sake, "I like this, I don't like that", one knows the quality of things, their use and their interrelations through this study of the senses. This puts you in contact with the world in a completely conscious way. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/31-march-1954#p16</ref>
==For Nobility and Generosity==
For one who has developed a truly refined taste will, because of this very refinement, feel incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner. This refinement, if it is sincere, brings to the being a nobility and generosity which will spontaneously find expression in his behaviour and will protect him from many base and perverse movements.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p11</ref>
==For Self-Protection==
There is a tremendous power in sensorial immobility. If one can remain like a wall, absolutely motionless, everything the other person sends will immediately fall back upon him. And it has an immediate action. It can stop the arm of the assassin, you understand, it has that strength.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/22-february-1956#p12</ref>
==Importance of Educating the Senses==
To this general education of the senses and their functioning there will be added, as early as possible, the cultivation of discrimination and of the aesthetic sense, the capacity to choose and adopt what is beautiful and harmonious, simple, healthy and pure. As the capacity of understanding grows in the child, he should be taught, in the course of his education, to add artistic taste and refinement to power and precision. He should be shown, led to appreciate, taught to love beautiful, lofty, healthy and noble things, whether in Nature or in human creation. This should be a true aesthetic culture, which will protect him from degrading influences. A methodical and enlightened cultivation of the senses can, little by little, eliminate from the child whatever is by contagion vulgar, commonplace and crude. This education will have very happy effects even on his character. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p11</ref>
=What Are Senses?=