A Service of Dr. Val Karan - 558 Anderson Avenue - Cliffside Park, New Jersey 07010 - (201) 943-2726 - Karan4U@aol.
com - Sept. 2006
KARAN 4U NEWSLETTER
Enter William with Sense and Sense-ability
Dear Clients, Family and Friends,
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that my son
and daughter-in-law had another baby boy, making me a grand-
father for the sixth time. The bad news, as we mark five years
since 9/11, is that it is no longer a question if we will have an-
other terrorist attack but rather when an attack will be at-
tempted. Sadly, little William Gabriel Karan begins his passage
through life during an Era of Worldwide Terror. How do we
protect William, ourselves, and all our loved ones from fellow
travelers with hostile intent?
Actually, in many ways, William is more attuned to sensing bad
guys from good guys than we adults are. Research supports the
theory that infants are capable of making sense of the world
from birth. Unfamiliar situations or objects often elicit fear re-
sponses in infants. This is because the senses of taste, smell,
touch, and hearing are well-developed at birth and are used by
the infant as cues for the appropriate reaction to unfamiliar
adults. It is also long believed that young children are better
than adults when it comes to “paranormal abilities,” that is, hav-
ing telepathic, portending, or mystical experiences beyond the
range of scientific explanation. Such paranormal phenomena in
children have been heralded in such popular films as
“Poltergeist” and “The Sixth Sense.” Media and mythology
aside, there are a number of serious researchers who suspect
that children, from the youngest ages, are physically more re-
ceptive to such paranormal phenomena because they have what
Zen teachers call a “beginner’s mind,” eager and open to all ex-
periences. Children lack the prejudices that many adults have
against such far-out, irrational, "unscientific" ideas. With the
passage of time, so say my colleagues who specialize in para-
psychology, my little grandson and all young children will tend
to lose these special paranormal attributes.
The sense that does become most prominent with age is vision,
ironically, the least developed sense at birth. As adult caretakers
provide stimulation to fine-tune the sense of sight, the other
senses, unfortunately, begin to fade in importance. For Ameri-
cans and Europeans, in general, seeing is believing; for other
cultures, reality seems to reside far more in what is heard,
smelled or touched. Our school curriculum reflects the visual
bias (notice that the word "reflects" seems more natural than the
word "echoes") of our culture. By the time William enters for-
mal schooling, he will, in the immortal words of Jeffrey
Schrank author of Teaching Human Beings, be taught “non-
sense.” Our culture does not place a high value on educating the
senses, says Schrank: “They do not teach how to observe, listen,
touch, taste, or smell, in spite of the considerable evidence
which indicates that the senses can indeed be educated.” Not so
in many primitive cultures where developing the potential pre-
sent in the senses is a natural function of education. But in the
civilized and developed countries, the senses are most often
neglected. Instead, sensory awareness is stunted by pollution,
increasing noise levels, the rapid pace of living, and standard-
ized and chemical pseudo foods. All these forces tend to
lessen the joy of sensation.
The sense of smell is actually one of the most powerful and
primitive senses man has. Many primitive societies rely on
the services of skilled sniffers to arrange compatible mar-
riages. In fact, in nonliterate cultures, the odors of men and
women are taken more seriously than their appearances Pro-
fessional wine sniffers can tell by the bouquet the type of
grape, where it was grown, and even the vineyard and vintage
year. Perfume mixers can often detect mixed essences as
small as one part in millions. An average person can detect
two thousand different odors and can double this capacity
with a little training. Many pleasurable smells come from na-
ture but are rarely experienced in our urban and suburban life;
others come from people, and we've learned to consider them
unpleasant. Hence, our capacity to enjoy smells is severely
stunted. Instead of savoring smells and tastes, Westerners talk
while they eat or think of things other than the food. This re-
sults not only in a lessened enjoyment of the food but also in
the tendency to eat much more than is really needed.
Technological man is also out of touch with the touch sensa-
tion. Religious restrictions prohibit some touching, but Don't
touch has become a cultural mandate. Some people grow old
and never learn the full joy of the sense of touch. They handle
loved ones sparingly and with aloofness, having little contact
comfort from or with other human beings.
Sound also plays a minor role in the sense lives of Americans,
compared to primitive people. To not teach listening is to
teach that it is not important. Therefore, it is not surprising
that teachers complain of students’ inability to listen or follow
directions.
Granted, there is a visual bias in our country. But is seeing
truly believing? Consider the following image:
Looking at the
black letters,
one should be
able to clearly
see the word
“Good.” But
focus for a
moment on
the white letters, and the same image suddenly reads “Evil.”
Relying on our visual sense, which is most poorly developed
of our senses at birth, we as adults have a hard time, indeed,
distinguishing good from evil and evil from good.
 A Service of Dr. Val Karan - 558 Anderson Avenue - Cliffside Park, New Jersey 07010 - (201) 943-2726 - Sept. 2006- Page 2
I am advocating a policy which can properly be called “No
Sense Left Behind.” I think we will have a better chance of
detecting impending danger if we can help preserve and
strengthen the natural innate sixth sense that warns and pro-
tects little William and other infants. It is time for us also to
pay more attention to the sentient beings in our homes,
backyards, and nature. The animals who share our planet
can better sense potential disaster by detecting subtle or
abrupt shifts in the environment.
After the terrible tsunami of 2004 that killed over 150,000
people in Southeast Asia, eyewitness accounts attested to the
fact that animals offered better early detection cues than any
man-made, technological systems. Unlike the horrible hu-
man toll, no dead animals were found along the coast of the
Indian Ocean. Before giant waves slammed into Sri Lanka
and India coastlines, wild and domestic animals seemed to
know what was about to happen and fled to safety.
In modern times, there are stories of animals compassion-
ately using their awareness to warn and aid humans. A car-
diologist confirms that for ten years, two cats served as a
woman's pacemakers when they took turns waking her dur-
ing the night and massaging the chest area above her heart.
The British Medical Journal reported the ability of dogs to
sniff out cancerous tumors. The U.S. Epilepsy Institute says
that dogs can tell when a person is about to have a seizure.
Dogs warn people and steer them to safety so the falling per-
son doesn't get hurt.
I believe that these anecdotes of animals' instinctive cues
and their attempts to alert people to danger carry an impor-
tant message to our sensory malnourished and visually bi-
ased population. We will have a better chance of reducing
suffering and destruction from natural or terrorist on-
slaughts if we mobilize more of our senses and screen for
more than objects. Israel, for example, has pioneered a sys-
tem which combines questions and biometric measurements
to determine if a passenger on an airline should undergo
screening by security officials. In trying to spot travelers
who have "hostile intent," this may involve inserting one
hand into a sensor that monitors physical responses -- blood
pressure, pulse and sweat levels – as well as answering “hot-
button questions” like "What is the purpose of your trip?" or
testing the responses to words, in many languages, that trig-
ger psycho-physiological responses among people with ter-
rorist intent. This system represent the new way to combat
terrorists using technology. Authorities are convinced that
beyond hunting for weapons and dangerous liquids brought
on board airliners, the battle for security lies in identifying
dangerous passengers. This does so by looking for patterns
of behavior that indicate something all terrorists have: the
fear of being caught.
A program such as this -- called Screening Passengers by
Observation Technique, or SPOT -- was set up at Boston's
Logan Airport after 9/11 and has expanded to about a dozen
airports. Trained teams watch travelers in security lines and
elsewhere. They look for obvious things like someone wear-
ing a heavy coat on a hot day, but also for subtle signs like
vocal timbre, gestures and tiny facial movements that indi-
cate someone is trying to disguise an evil intention.
In short, this initiative would involve training airport screen-
ers to react as my new grandson naturally reacts, namely, to
pick up on cues —such as facial expressions or vocal pat-
terns -- that might indicate a person has something to hide.
Perhaps this is a harbinger of a new era in which we come
to our senses, in which we cultivate and expand our human
potentials rather than hide or numb them. The visual sense
that develops slowly and then becomes preeminent may, in
the long run, be less vital to our well-being. As someone
who has recently been diagnosed with a pre-cataract condi-
tion, this is faint comfort. Fortunately, cataract surgery is
now a safe, effective, and comfortable procedure performed
almost exclusively on an outpatient basis. I heard Rabbi Dr.
Jonathan Rosenblatt deliver a sermon recently on the bibli-
cal phrase, in Numbers 15:37-41, “Do not follow after your
heart and after your eyes, which lead you astray.” The Torah
recognizes that vision is unreliable and ephemeral. Indeed,
both Isaac in Genesis and Samson in Judges perform their
most heroic and memorable acts while blind. We, too, the
Rabbi preached, must rely on insight more than sight, on
substance more than image, thereby girding ourselves with
stronger safeguards against potential dangers.
Besides reminding us to leave no sense behind, William
Gabriel has a Hebrew name – Hillel Gavriel -- that comes
from one of my all-time heroes. Hillel, who lived around the
turn on the Common Era, was born in what is now Iraq. He
moved to Israel where he was possibly the most influential
Jewish figure in Talmudic times. A review of his sayings
and opinions shows that he was also probably the first and
foremost psychologist of all times. Hillel was known for his
exceptional patience, gentleness, and love of people. His re-
sponse to a convert who wanted to be taught the whole To-
rah "while standing on one foot" was: “’What is hateful to
you, do not do to your fellow-man,’ that is the whole Torah,
the rest is commentary.” Although very modest and humble,
Hillel recognized such psychological precepts as the impor-
tance of ego strength ("If I am not for myself, who will be
for me?”), of empathy (“If I care only for myself, what am
I?"), and of seeking advice ("The more counsel, the more
understanding") And when we eat a sandwich on the night
of Passover, we are following the multi-sensory experience
of Hillel who “used to enwrap the Paschal lamb, the matzo
and the bitter herbs and eat them as one.”
William’s middle name comes one of the four major archan-
gels (Gavriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel). The name Gavriel
means "G-d gave me strength” and also denotes masculinity.
In Jewish mystical writings, Gavriel is also connected with
dreams.
As my new grandson enters an uncertain and perilous world,
he is well equipped and well entitled. May he strive to be a
man like Hillel, to always be patient, to help society, to fol-
low his dreams, and to continue to develop and use all his
senses and talents. The future of mankind depends on his
power and perception.
Shana Tovah!