The Sixth Sense

When I was five years old, my mother had a dream, a very creepy dream I might add. She dreamt that I was on my way to school when a big yellow school bus hit me and knocked me down to the asphalt; I was bleeding and holding on for dear life. In fear that this dream may actually happen, my mother forbid me from attending school until she felt that it was safe enough for me to venture that half-mile walk. Two days later, my mother and I were sitting home watching television, flipping through the cable channels when we came upon the daily news on NBC. A child, an African-American girl about the age of six was killed in a school bus accident that day and the news-breaking story had left the community in devastation. She lived down the block from me. It was then that my mother knew that there was a sixth sense; although she did not understand it scientifically, she connected with it spiritually and has coped with it ever since.

Well, that story was quite the extreme for not too many people experience such dreams, thoughts, or events. However, many people have faced simpler incidents, just as feeling a presence around one person, or knowing what someone else was thinking. Some people even get ad feelings before something dreadful happens. We try to explain the scientific reasoning responsible for these phenomena and how and why they occur in some people but not in others. In a year 2000 publication of the online version of Psychology Today Magazine, psychologists try to understand what it is that leads people hunches, instincts, and intuitions into actual future events. They describe a case in which a man is firing his gun, but gets the infamous ad feeling on the fifth shot of his revolver. Receiving this feeling, he removes the bullet from the fifth chamber, immediately goes to the sixth chamber and continues firing. About a week later, a family member got into a serious argument with his wife. The man with the gun, set his gun on a table, leaving it open for the husband to later grab and try to use on his wife. The gun owner stepped in and tried to intervene with the husband decision, and when the gun went off, there was no bullet in the fifth chamber to be fired. Everyone was safe.

According to more case studies performed in this article, psychologists around the world have spent decades learning about the sixth sense, or what we have come to refer to as psychic abilities. Studies have reported subjects experiencing elepathy (mind-to-mind communication), clairvoyance (information received from a distant place) and precognition (information received from a distant time). Studies suggest that we have ways of gaining information that bypass the ordinary senses. The sixth sense and similar terms, like second sight and extrasensory perception (ESP), refer to perceptual experiences that transcend the usual boundaries of space and time. (Radin, et al., 2)

Another type of sixth sense is feeling, tasting, or seeing things that cannot be touched or seen, such as music. According to a 60 Minutes interview of Carol Crane back in August of 2002, hile most people simply hear a concert, Carol Crane actually feels it - every instrument, every note. She says it's very pleasant, for the most part, ut I notice that every time leave a symphony, I feel as if I've just been run over or something, like I'm just drained. (CBS 60 Minutes, 2002) Neurologist Richard Cytowic has attributed Crane symptoms to be a rare brain isorder called synesthesia where some of the more common senses that we all share are wired/fused together, creating almost another sense, the sixth sense. With this condition, music can be seen and felt, and words can even be tasted as well.

The sixth sense is by far an extraordinary phenomena that occurs in many people all across the world. Although it has been thoroughly researched for many years, it has yet to be fully explained by any scientists. Perhaps there is no answer, it is simply innate, a God-given talent if you will.

References

CBS 60 Minutes II. "Sixth Sense". Documented August 14, 2002. Viewed May 16, 2007

D. Radin, C. Rae, R. Hyman. "Is There a Sixth Sense?". Publication Today Magazine. Documented July/August 2000. Viewed May 16, 2007