The sense of smell is part of instinct. It is actually part of our forebrain that has become an offshoot in the course of evolution…or has isolated from the forebrain to some degree. In animals this is not yet so, and the sense of smell is still completely in the forebrain.
In the sense of smell, we experience non-boundary the most–we become one with the environment. For example, when smell overpowers, we lose ourselves temporarily. We do not really voluntarily smell—the world comes at us and we cannot stop ourselves from smelling it (short of stopping breathing).
We truly can be overwhelmed as when a foul smell makes us vomit. But interestingly, our sense of smell will neutralize the overpowering effect, and within a few minutes of being exposed to an unpleasant odour we no longer notice it. This is because man has control over his instinct, and so is able to neutralize ‘loss of self’ from smell (whereas a dog cannot do this and is wholly given up to its sense of smell).
A salmon returns to the stream in which it was born, but if smell has been turned off it will not find its way. Homing pigeons rely entirely on their sense of smell to find their way. Animals are tied to their environment only by instinct, whereas man is not driven by instinct. We classify people as kinaesthetic, auditory, or visual in learning style, but never in terms of their sense of smell, because no distinction can be made between how each of us smells.
As an animal evolves, the sense of smell separates from the brain and becomes smaller, and this indicates the evolutionary step to freedom from instinct. But always, as some faculty wanes, another increases. So as the power of smell wanes in terms of us having the power to neutralize it, this neutralizing power is itself a newer faculty…
We are to move from instinct in finding our way home to finding it through moral sensibility…
With smell, we distinguish pleasant from unpleasant and in this valuation we move into conscious assessment, which is the basis of human morality. We say something ‘stinks’ when it displeases, and we ‘smell a rat’ when someone in our midst is immoral. This is no mere coincidence, as immorality is malodorous on the inner planes. And an immoral person is repulsive to spiritual beings because of the odour that they exude.
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, when the person enters the spirit world the first thing that occurs is that he is ‘sniffed’ by the gods. His moral qualities are evaluated through the sense of smell. Our human smell has not come to this level of sensitivity yet, so please don’t draw wrong conclusions about people! And the foul or unpleasant smell of a person of bad character is an inner smell at present. But in the sense of smell, we are looking at an evolving faculty of discernment to know where we belong…where our true home is…and who is our true kin.
We have four pairs of sinuses that are each associated with a different aspect of instinct. Note that all four aspects relate to finding our place or home in the world!
| Sinus | Aspect of Instinct |
| Maxillary | ~ Being (or not being) at ease in one’s space |
| Frontal | ~ Anticipating danger – (worry about what may happen in our environment, or about future) |
| Ethmoid | ~ Finding someone offensive or attractive |
| Sphenoid bone | ~ Ability (or inability) to position oneself in relation to our world or others |
Emotional/mental patterns of the sinuses
An infant knows its mother by smell, and relaxes as the ethmoid sinus registers her presence, for example. Our instinctual nature must transform completely to a higher order of expression. When we know our safety to be from our inner alignment, then the aspects related to the sinuses become more about finding true home rather than ensuring external safety. As we find our true home through moral sensibility, where our olfactory sense is located now there will form a two-petalled lotus or chakra related to (moral) discernment (Steiner). Smell is the most ‘hard-wired’ of the senses to know what is benevolent.
Fragrance Alchemy as Refining our Sensibility
Through clearing the debris in the emotional pathways (meridians), our attunement and sensibility to discern what is life-enhancing and what is not is greatly increased. These fragrance oils– because of their high purity and alchemical properties–also support a refinement of the inner sense of smell, so that we more easily recognize the frequencies that are coarser and not life-enhancing. In this manner, we are accelerated in finding ‘home’. The fragrance oils actually support body evolution, not only through erasing emotional memory from the story of separation, but also through refining the sense of smell as organ of discernment.
As sense of smell becomes more powerful at discernment, all senses entrain to greater refinement, including the sense of taste that has a hidden organ between the throat and larynx, which can ‘taste’ the quality of a situation and effortlessly know. The power of the FA oils is just being revealed…