Before our "incense connoisseur" left town we asked him to write something for our then new website that would provide some of his unique wisdom for our customers. After marrying the love of his life he took tabla in hand and ventured out of the world of business for good to spend the rest of his life in meditation and service to all. I am often amused that he retired from the business of incense to his life of service. Every time I see him he is laughing. So I thought it fitting that he share his thoughts on these funny little sticks that clearly have brought a lot of bliss into his life.

The Essence of Incense

For tens of thousands of years people have burned incense all over the world. The materials, methods and the context have all varied, but the basic activity remains the same and shows no sign of diminishing. In 2004, the ‘home fragrance’ industry was booming like never before. Wal-Mart and other large department stores commonly allocate 50-60 square feet in each store to home fragrance. The trend of “natural” food and natural living continues to move into mainstream markets at a growth rate of 20% per year. For that reason conventional synthetic sprays will give way more and more to scents and incense made by natural methods from natural materials.

Why? Because smell counts. Why did Christopher Columbus risk his life, reputation, and the lives of his men to find the East? Why did the Vikings do the same several centuries earlier? Spices, herbs and fine fabrics like silk. Travelers and legends wove themselves through the courts of the most powerful people in Europe and the Middle East for centuries about the quality of life in the mysterious lands we now know as India , Japan China and the countries of southeast Asia.

America today is the land of fast food and football. One might think that such delicate things as spices and herbs might be easily overlooked in a sea of salt and pepper shakers, polyester clothing, blue jeans, and frozen and often genetically altered food. But for many today, there is a sensitivity to something more delicate, more spiritual, more inward-- a deeper pleasure. Wordsworth describe it as “Intimations of immortality”

At the end of the 19th century, physicists discovered that the material world is not so solid after all. A pencil, curtain, automobile, human body, whatever you might be looking at right now, all are made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of particles such as protons and neutrons, which are made of quarks, which are made of the quantum mechanical field. Some are now calling it the Unified Field. And certain physicists, like Eddington, Bore, Einstein, have suggested this underlying field just might be the very essence of what we are—consciousness.

What does this have to do with incense? Using incense is one of the most important and time-honored activities associated with this knowledge and experience. Though incense is certainly not a prerequisite to gaining an experience of this underlying field of Consciousness it has always been an important auxiliary and supportive aspect of human spiritual evolution.

The highest quality, refined incense can give us a sense of direction toward that which is more delicate, more inward, more easy, more fulfilling, more enjoyable, more unbounded.

To Enjoy

Incense takes us into pleasure. Pleasure has to do with our senses. There are five senses. And, there are degrees and levels of pleasure for each of the five senses. Take, for example, the sense of touch. Imagine holding a handful of gravel. Now imagine holding a handful of dandelion puffs. There is a continuum of touch from the most coarse to the most delicate and refined.

Using the sense of sight, look first at a garbage dump and then a view celestial sunrise. One is clearly more delicate, more elevating. In the realm of taste fast food is on one end of that spectrum of experience, a wonderful gourmet meal at the other. In the field of sound one might say that heavy metal rock and roll might occupy one end of that spectrum while classical music occupies the opposite end. Studies have actually shown that plant growth is definitely affected by the type of music played.

The same is true of the sense of smell. The basic principle is this: a more refined sensory experience helps us become more successful, happy, progressive, settled, balanced, coherent, alert, etc. We evolve, we grow, from exposing ourselves to things which are more deeply pleasurable, more refined, more exquisite, more balanced, healthier.

The ancients knew this, and the wealthy and knowledgeable in Europe and the Middle East had some faint sense of it. They were tantalized by the infinite, and the higher, more refined subtle pleasures that lead to it.

Our increasing interest in refined incense is merely a part of our desire for fine fabrics such as pashmina, cashmere, Egyptian cotton, organic fabric, and all the other more refined materials. Incense is one of the little but powerful helpers toward more refined experience.

How Does Incense Do This? Very simply. Through Pleasure. More refined pleasure is a more refined experience. More refined sensory experiences refine consciousness, our awareness. More refined awareness evokes, elicits, creates higher consciousness, more spiritual, holistic awareness and perspective. People who enjoy incense often tend to be more spiritual, more holistic, having higher, more comprehensive knowledge of what life is all about, broader perspective. Incense helps this grow by refining the awareness through more delicate experience, more delicate perception.

To Purify

Incense is also deeply purifying.

Life has many layers. It is not just what we can see with our eyes. Life is like an ocean, with many inner layers. Just like that ordinary conscious awareness has many layers from the most mundane to the most refined. Incense leads us to those deeper, more refined layers of conscious experience. And these many layers of awareness also collect stress, fatigue and incoherence.

Incense has the ability to clear or purify these subtler layers of our own consciousness and physiology, and to purify the subtler layers of our environment as well. When we clean our house, we vacuum and dust and scrub and polish. This cleans mostly the gross, surface, physical environment. But what about those subtler layers, the more spiritual layers? Incense goes where soap and water cannot go, and cleanses those layers, especially certain fragrances such as loban (benzoin) and myrrh. Cleansing those layers is certainly one reason people have been using incense for millennia all over the world.

‘Scientifically’ minded people scoff at the existence of these subtler layers of life, referring to them as objects of religious belief, which have no objective existence and which cannot be proven. This perspective belongs to a mindset not familiar with modern physics. Because physics not only has declared the Unified Field, it has declared all sorts of subtler values from the gross level of matter to the Unified Field itself.

Incense is a more natural, less expensive, healthier air freshener and room purifier. The sooner more refined, natural incense replaces the synthetic air fresheners of today, the better.

To Offer

Life is an offering. We offer ourselves to others, to our spouse, our children, our parents, our employers, our employees, our friends, our other relatives, to our society, pets, to everyone we come in contact with. In offering, we grow. We become more flexible, more pure of mind and heart, more expanded, more innocent, more compassionate, more tender, stronger, more resilient, more evolved.

Fire creates offering, the offering process. ‘Offering’ means something is consumed and transformed into something else. Ignorance is transformed into knowledge, stubbornness into flexibility, instability into stability, crudity into tenderness, sadness into happiness, badness into goodness. Heat does this, it melts boundaries. When we heat some food, it becomes softer, its rigidity lessens, so it can be transformed by the digestive fire even more, until it eventually becomes consciousness, and the most refined and fundamental aspects of our physiology. The boundaries of the food become less and less, until the “boundaries” disappear.

When we light incense, we are transforming matter into energy, potential energy into kinetic energy. This is part of the definition of offering, transforming of something gross or old into something more refined and new, fresh. All fire or burning does this, and in this sense, all burning is spiritual. But we don’t refer to all fire as burning incense. What makes burning incense special?

1) Intent (of the manufacturer, seller, and consumer)2) Materials (how pure and refined)3) Experience (how pure and refined, how delicate)4) The context (where, when, how)

Certain intentions, materials, experience, and contexts will tend to increase the sense of offering, humility, inwardness, and peace. From time immemorial, those among us who are more aware have perceived that humans are not the only beings that enjoy the sense of smell. How often have we heard or read the phrase, ‘burnt offerings?’ We haven’t heard the phrases ‘drawn offering,’‘felt offering,’‘heard offering,’ or ‘tasted offering,’ although the other four senses also certainly have their profound spiritual dimensions and practices.

There is something spiritually special about aroma. Burning a stick of incense somehow seems to be more spiritual, more influential of the Divine, in its very nature than the activities of the other senses. One reason is that matter is transformed, and there is a complete transformation from the most gross element (matter) into something else. It is not just using the sense of smell, it is the act of burning which is transformative and purifying.

Every time we light a stick of high quality incense, there is that sense, often not consciously or specifically appreciated, of spirituality, of offering, of “Let Thy Will be done.” Let me become a better person, more aware of others, more helpful.

To Heal and Balance

Ayurveda, the ancient Indian medical science, is a combination of the word ‘Ayu,’ which means ‘life’ and ‘lifespan,’ and ‘Veda,’ which means ‘knowledge’ (related to the English words vision and video). Ayurveda’s motto is ‘Ayurvedomritanam,’ which means ‘Ayurveda is for immortality (Amrita, which also means nectar).

It is interesting that the word for immortality (Amrita) also means nectar. Nectar is the end product of the refinement and production of the herbal kingdom. Most incense is made of herbs. Therefore a clear connection can be inferred between herbs and incense and perfect health.

One of the main principles of Ayurveda is the Tridosha principle. ‘Tri’ means three and the two are etymologically related. ‘Dosha’ means blemish. According to Ayurveda, the ordinary human body involves three basic imbalances or blemishes, called doshas, which are natural to human life, and even necessary for life as we know it. Eventually, it is possible to go beyond these blemishes and gain (physical) immortality, and there are many legends about this state of life in every ancient culture. In the meantime, and in order to go in that direction, Ayurveda requires that these three doshas be a) not too strong, b) not too weak, and c) balanced among themselves.

Balancing these three doshas is one of the most fundamental activities and purposes of Ayurvedic medicine, which is based on prevention more than cure, although it certainly includes the knowledge of how to cure. The ancient seers who cognized the eternal principles upon which Ayurveda is based came to understand that it is a mistake of the intellect that brings imbalance to these doshas and it is imbalance of these doshas (called the three humours in Greek, Roman, and pre-modern European medicine) that give rise to or allow for all disease. The knowledge and experience of Ayurveda, correctly practiced, emphasizes the importance and sanity of prevention. Most people are familiar with the adage: an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.

There are six basic ancient texts of Ayurveda, the foremost of those texts was written by Charaka. One of the technologies propounded by Charaka involves the burning of medicinal herbs, and inhalation of the smoke. Each aroma has an effect, and many herbs, flowers, and trees when burned produce effects which can balance one or more of the doshas on a very profound level, creating a healthier personality and body.

Due to the spiritual value previously discussed, burning incense is often something many people experience as healing, settling and nourishing. We might consider incense to be something that takes our attention away from worries and those aspects of life that are less charming to those more refined levels of experience that are more charming.