“Scent of the Pine” – Subtle World

Part One: Inspiration of Scents

On a hot, breezy day, I hung out the laundry—old sheets being washed in new laundry detergent with new spot remover added. Once dried, I shook the first one out over my bed, discovering that it was scented with a fragrance so intoxicating that I was overwhelmed. I stopped and stood still, holding the sheet. What was happening? While the new products could be seen as the cause, my response fit an occasional, yet familiar pattern in which ordinary aspects of life suddenly create an opening into a space that I have come to call an awareness of a greater dimension. When I told a friend about my fragrant sheets, he offered these approximate words: “the entrance to the subtle plane.”* I considered this. Later, another friend, unaware of my sheet episode, had in casual conversation offered that while the physical body has five senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste) the subtle body has only three (sight, sound, and smell). I considered his words timely. Had I experienced my subtle body?

Synchronous with my experience of the sheets, I became aware that most of the reasons offered in the lyrics for a song I exercise to daily, “Feeling Good,” (sung in this case by Canadian singer Michael Bublé), are words of sight: dragonflies, blossoms, stars, and more, while several are of touch: sun and breeze—yet only one is of scent: that of pine tree needles. I have had no prior experience that I can recall with “intoxication by scent”—except as I next relate from childhood.

Once when I was about nine, my family traveled through the northern state of Maine, with forests of pine trees surrounding towns and highways. At a stop that we made, with my own money I bought a white, woven pouch with a green pine tree printed on it, so tightly filled with pine needles it seemed it could burst, and so fragrant. I raised the scented pouch to my nose over and over, breathing deeply each time—a child intoxicated by pine scent.

Part Two: Meher Baba in God Speaks

Evolution:

“The infinite God-is . . . individualized as the embodied soul, begins a journey through all the forms of creation in order to develop full consciousness . . .”*

Reincarnation:

“The individual soul reincarnates millions of times in order to experience all the opposites of existence . . .”*

Involution:

“When the consciousness of the soul is ripe for disentanglement from the gross world . . . it gradually approaches the first of six intermediate planes of consciousness . . .   . On the first subtle plane, the individual embarks on a conscious search for God—the spiritual path.”*

My realization is, “The divinity of life is everywhere present, both recognized and unrecognized.”

* “Feeling Good” from the album It’s Time recorded by Canadian singer Michael Bublé was written by English composers Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd and first performed on stage in 1964.
* Meher Baba, God Speaks (Oakland, CA: Dharma Enterprises, 1955), 175–176 as read in Rose Reed, “The Divine Theme of the Soul’s Journey,” Journey in Consciousness (Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India: Meher Mowanvani Publications, 2008), 3.
* Reed, Journey, 6.
* Meher Baba, God Speaks, 34–39.
* Reed, Journey, 7.
* Meher Baba, God Speaks, 41–54.