Course XV - Teaching 5: Sensitive Picture

The sensitive picture is one of the most important steps in the exercise of meditation, for it is the stage in which the soul controls its feelings and gives its intended form, tonality and vibration.
Seemingly the name of this step in the exercise indicates that sensations occur while the practitioner is describing what he feels. Sensations take place during the development of the Imaginative Picture. In this Sensitive Picture you take account of your feeling and conceptually you are identified with the state of sensibility. So, while you imagine a slow, rhythmical rain, our appeasing or calming sensation derives from the observation of two drops of water, not when the meditator describes the Sensitive Picture. So, when this step develops during the meditation, the practitioner is aware of the peaceful and calm sensation experienced.
Moreover, during the description of the Sensitive Picture, the practitioner defines the sensation experienced, and typifies and stabilizes it. So, when the Imaginative Picture is made, simultaneously sensations take place, and when the practitioner speaks about feeling it, he possesses and perceives his sensation. On the other hand, the achievement of the intended sensation is not an instantaneous effect, for the sensation is not an impression. Impression is the influence of the stimulus on the senses. Sensation, as a step in meditation, is mental perception of the effect of this stimulus.
This step is taken reuniting and bringing to the mind different sensations experienced by virtue of the Imaginative Picture. This operation must be made gradually or in crescendo, namely, he must begin describing the prelude of sensation and, by suggestive affirmation of its feeling, gradually to lead it to acquire a definitive form of the sensation intended.
An operation of this kind on sensibility is precisely the educational aspect as to purification or plenitude.
Also here we must warn against the evil of the word that, in virtue of expressing more intensely and constantly a sensation achieved, usually minimizes and scatters it, returning sensibility to its early state instead of keeping suspended on the culminating point achieved.
For instance, when a sensation of abhorrence is reached, you should not continue to talk and talk, since words disintegrate the sensation; you must keep this sensation so that you may pose later your purposes by means of this force. You shall not get effective or durable purposes without sensation. When I imagine a rotten food (Imaginative Picture), at once I feel disgust (Sensation). If I describe what I have felt and keep this sensation with no dilution or disintegration, at once I shall pose serious and steady purposes not to eat again foods in this condition. But if sensation is lightly confused, weak and non-realized, the purpose neither would be posed nor had realization force.
The Sensitive Picture must be strong and exaggerated as to its expression. As we said earlier, emotionality does not move through weak, loose stimuli; you must revolutionize it if you wish lasting effects. Emotionality, as a vital element of the human nature, shall be balanced by itself. If you try an exhaustive and analytical research to discover the real tonality of the experienced sensation it would lose intensity.
So do not fear to state steadily that you feel such or such sensation in spite of feeling it less intensely.
But as we said earlier, in your exposition you must observe a gradual procedure, that is, from the enunciation of the sensation to reach later, by exaggerating, the affirmation that you have perceived the whole sensation that you were seeking. During this step in meditation is when, in fact, one can say that the practitioner controls his sensibility and is operating, controlling and imposing on it a tonality and a way to feel that is the fruit of his will. This is the culminating point in the exercise.