The Sixth Sense

By Tom Monte

"It is theory that decides what we can observe."
~ Albert Einstein

All of us have had the experience at one time or another of thinking about someone and then, quite without warning, suddenly bumping into that same person as we rounded a corner while still engulfed in our reverie. "Hey, I was just thinking about you," we usually say to our friend.

"That's funny," our friend replies. "I was thinking about you, too."

"That's amazing," we say.

Despite the fact that such events are amazing, we forget them rather quickly, or dismiss them as coincidence. How difficult it is for us to believe that we intuited the presence of our friend nearby, and that that intuition triggered our reverie about him or her. Many of us resist the suggestion that humans possess intuition -- a sixth sense -- because it leads to speculation that does not fit our picture of reality, or of human nature. Most of us see the world as individual and separate beings, incapable of communication beyond the physical means available to us. Still, such things happen periodically throughout life. We dream of events that mysteriously take place later on. We "sense" portentous trends, or propitious opportunities. We have "feelings" or "first impressions" of people upon meeting them.

We read about the work and predictions of famous psychics, like Edgar Cayce and Emmanuel Swedenborg, or about police who periodically consult psychics for clues to intractable investigations. Such consultations sometimes prove incredibly accurate and fruitful, and consequently, the practice continues. We may find such occurrences interesting but irrelevant to our lives, or we may dismiss them as mere coincidence. Our skepticism has a ready answer: Such events may appear to be related but really aren't.

Of all the members in the animal kingdom, we humans rely least upon intuition or a "sixth sense." Elsewhere in nature, animals are dominated by abilities or senses that we humans have little or no understanding of. Birds migrate thousands of miles to exact locations to find food and warmer climes. Some birds actually travel almost from pole to pole. How they navigate such journeys remains a mystery, but some scientists believe that animals -- especially birds -- have the ability to perceive strands in the earth's electro-magnetic fields. Other abilities are equally impressive, and equally mysterious. For example, whole species of birds appear to regulate their fertility based on their perception of weather patterns and food availability a decade in advance.

Perhaps the most impressive trick of all is the one performed by the remarkable green turtle (Chelonia Mydas), which feeds off the coast of Brazil, but breeds some 2,000 miles away on the tiny island of Ascension. Ascension is located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Among the many questions that have baffled scientists for decades are: how can the turtles find such a place so far away and in the middle of water? How do they manage to swim 2,000 miles? And why do they bother doing it at all, when there are good places to breed that are far closer, it would seem? These questions are still unanswered, though unproven theories abound. Scientists have suggested that perhaps the turtles possess radar. We have trouble deciding which sounds stranger: casting a beam of radar 2000 miles while swimming, or possessing a sixth sense?

Human experience is also full of well-documented feats of intuition, extra-sensory perception, mind-to-mind communication. The frequency with which such events have occurred prompted Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist, to develop his now famous theory of "synchronicity." After much study and examination, Jung defined synchronicity as "the concept of a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved." Jung distinguished between chance events, or coincidences, and those he called synchronistic.

Coincidence, he said, occurs when the odds favor the repetition of similar events. The odds can be very long, but if you repeat the experience enough, you are bound to wind up with a repeating series -- hence, a coincidence. Things happen, and sometimes they happen two or three times in a row.

Synchronicity occurs when you have some degree of "foreknowledge" of the coming experience. The occurrences that are about to take place seem to be "anticipated" by you, the observer or participant, and thus cannot be mere chance or coincidence, said Jung. Jung took pains to distinguish between the words coincidence and synchronicity. The word coincidence means to coincide, which is to say that a series of events repeat themselves within a a specific period of time. In coincidence, the repeating series is usually supported by the odds which favor the repetition of such events. Hence, you wake up one morning and look at your digital clock and see three numbers, 6:38. Later, you get into your car and happen to notice that the trip-meter below your odometer reads 638. That's a coincidence. But as the series further repeats itself, the odds become more improbable, and the chance factor becomes more unlikely. Thus, later that same day, after you've noticed that your digital clock and trip-meter show the same numbers, you go shopping, make some purchases, and are told by the cashier that your grocery bill is $6.38. Afterwards, you get home and notice that the time is 6:38.

Later, you turn on the television set and are told that the winning lottery number for that day is 638.

Interesting? Yes. But when events such as these occur, there is little we can say about them except that they are strange and even startling. Feeling helpless, we must confine them to the realm of coincidence because, as far as anyone can tell, there was no foreknowledge of the coming series. It simply happened, and we were witness to the events.

Synchronicity has an added dimension: that you were in some way aware of the coming events before they took place. You anticipated them. Jung acknowledged that examples similar to one mentioned above, in which the number 638 is repeated through the course of a day, may well be an example of synchronicity because no one knows if your awareness was mysteriously heightened upon seeing the first 6:38, causing you to unconscious expect the coming series. Under other circumstances, you may never have noticed the trip-meter gauge, nor connected the events that would follow.

Mysteriously, you possessed a heightened degree of sensitivity, but it is retrospective -- that is, you are aware of the series after it happened. If there was any

knowledge of the coming series, it wasn't conscious. Thus, as long as foreknowledge cannot be proven, such events must remain within the realm of coincidence.

But it is different when we are conscious in advance of coming events. All examples of extra sensory perception are synchronistic, because, by definition, the person has some degree of anticipation or foreknowledge of important events yet to take place. Emanuel Swedenborg's well-documented vision of the great fire of Stockholm is widely accepted example of such foreknowledge. An important dream about a person or events that later prove true, or your reverie about a friend who suddenly turns up, are also examples of synchronicity.

Jung pointed to the work of J.B. Rhine, the Duke University researcher whose investigations into parapsychology proved the validity of ESP. Rhine developed a series of experiments designed to prove or disprove such abilities. One of Rhine's tests was to ask a group people to predict in advance the sequence of five cards that later would be drawn from a deck. The test group guessed correctly at rates far above the probability of chance. In one instance, a person scored 25 hits in a row; the probability that such a thing could happen was 1 in 298,023,223,876,953,125. (See "On Synchronicity," from The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Vol. 8; Princeton University Press.)

Jung investigated astrology, tarot, and the I Ching to discover that these tools were helpful in articulating the practitioner's foreknowledge of coming events, a knowledge that usually remains buried in the unconscious. Jung maintained that such perception exists at a strata within the unconscious that he called the world of archetype. This archetypal world (similar to Plato's world of forms) contains a universal body of abilities, instincts, and knowledge that we all inherit, and that shapes our lives as we progress through various stages of maturity. Within the archetypal world is a controlling center which Jung called the self. It rules not only consciousness but unconsciousness. The self is the source of dreams, visions, and inspiration. It means to direct each of us through a process Jung called "individuation," which means "becoming a single, homogeneous being, and, in so far as 'individuality' embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self." Individuation, Jung said, is analogous to "self-realization."

Jung described the human psyche as ultimately linked with the infinite. The self mediates between the two worlds: the infinite and the finite consciousness. In this way, we humans exist in a paradoxical state as universal (or collective) and unique beings. Each of us draws from a psychic well that is nourished by a universal source of water. The self pilots us through individual development, offering up dreams, creativity, insight, and, occasionally, intuition. It is our choice to accept such information, or deny it.

Still, we can easily become aware of other levels of consciousness through biofeedback training. All of us have been taught to believe that we are unable to control the body's "involuntary" mechanisms -- that is, heart beat, sweat glands, body temperature, blood pressure, and the like. But after a short period of biofeedback training, people can influence these responses beyond anything they had previously dreamt. The mind does have powers that can be called upon, but are usually left dormant because they violate existing belief systems. The experiences and understandings that exist at such levels may well remain a mystery, as long as we are unwilling to be open to them. What we do know is that whenever an artist of scientist breaks through to those higher levels, magic happens.

T.S. Eliot once said that a poem rained down upon the poet, that it entered the poet's mind from the ether that surrounds life. Of course, it is one thing to intuit the nearby presence of a friend, and quite another to "receive" a great idea or work of art. Yet, Eliot's metaphor is supported by historical fact.

In his book, On the Shoulders of Giants, Columbia University sociologist Robert K. Merton pointed out that almost all important ideas emerge more than once in a given historical period, and that each person who articulates the new ideas arrived at his or her conclusions independently.

Commenting on this phenomenon, Harvard Evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould wrote, "... great scientists are embedded in their cultures, not divorced from them. Most great ideas are 'in the air,' and several scholars simultaneously wave their nets." The image of ideas hanging "in the air" and people "waving their nets" to apprehend them is appropriate because it illustrates on a much grander scale the same phenomenon that occurs when you are thinking of your friend and then surprisingly encounter him. It suggests that we possess an ability to perceive and perhaps even communicate on other more subtle levels.

This is not as far out as many would believe. Today, modern physics is supporting a picture of reality that is also based on a unity between mind and matter.

"Quantum physics has taught us that we, the observers of reality, are, at the same time, the participants of reality, writes Fred Alan Wolf in Taking the Quantum Leap (Harper and Row, 1981). "In other words, 'observation' is not a passive noun; 'to observe' is not a passive verb. We are actively choosing the reality of the world each instant, and during that same instant, we are unaware that we are doing it."

 In an interview with the editors of East West Journal (March 1982), Quantum physicist Fritjof Capra, author of the Tao of Physics, described the impact of quantum mechanics on our picture of reality this way:

"The shift is toward a world view that you can call a holistic view, or an organic view, an ecological view... Ecological because it is characterized by the notion of the fundamental interdependence between all phenomena... As Neils Bohr emphasized, the main consequence of these theories was that you could not separate any part of the material universe from the rest without making an error... The new vision of reality is a spiritual vision in its very essence... The human spirit, as I've come to see it, is the mode of consciousness in which the individual becomes aware of being connected to the cosmos as a whole. The mode of consciousness is much broader than a rational mode, it is an intuitive mode. It typically occurs in meditative experiences but can also occur in many other settings."

The domain of the sixth sense -- with such words as intuition and clairvoyance that serve as so much heavy baggage – is really nothing more than a larger picture of humanness and of reality than we currently subscribe to. The picture of life that dominates our culture describes us as separate people, living very separate lives. For those with such a world view, our only unity is our common need to survive. But it's important to recognize that such an outlook is not what we came from, nor where we are going. Science is describing a new reality, with vastly different boundaries -- or perhaps no boundaries at all. The new world view -- arrived at by modern thinking and methods -- is in fact straight out of the past, the ancient past.

For millennia, this was the dominant world view, a world view that still exists in most of the world's religions. Indeed, in Indian yoga, intuition is the single greatest tool to finding happiness and life. "Intuition is soul guidance," wrote Paramahansa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship, 1983).

Nowhere was this better expressed than in the American Indian. For those who lived on the American plains or forests, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the four winds were deities, emissaries of the Great Spirit, with whom you talked each day. Through such interaction, the universe became alive and personal. Information was exchanged.

Benefits were received. Thanks was given. There was no need for elaborate arguments or efforts to convince people of their innate unity with one another and with the Great Spirit. People understood the voices in the wind.

Click Here to Return to the Listing of Articles