Chapter 18Subtle Sights, Sounds, Smells and Tastes · Subtle Smells and Tastes

It [experiencing subtle smells and tastes] was not an opening of occult knowledge and powers, but simply an opening of the inner consciousness.

* Subtle smells of that kind [sweet smells] are a common feature of occult experience. Their exact nature and provenance varies, but they have no gross physical cause.

* The smell [coming from a person] is due to something in the person’s vital-physical. That something may not be prominent at all times. When it is, the smell is there.

* I wrote [in the preceding letter] that the something may be of different kinds in different cases and one cannot give a rule that it is this or it is that. What has the dirtiest smell is sex.

* Every man has a different smell; also there is a particular smell that goes with different states of the vital-physical. Animals (like the dogs) recognise a man and his character by the smell. The human sense has lost this acuteness, but it can be recovered by a development in the sense consciousness. That is what probably has happened in your case. There are others in the Asram who have the same experience.

Chapter One