The Direct Use of the Mind as a Sixth Sense

We are trained to believe that the mind relies entirely on the 5 senses of perception and the 5 senses of action in order to receive data or undertake action. If the mind is cut off from the senses, we believe that it is powerless and unable to either sense, communicate or act. Spiritual science indicates that the mind has a power of its own that is independent of these senses. Modern Western science is now validating this understanding through a unique series of experiments and advances in understanding the operations of the mind.

We are all familiar with the image of the great theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. He was stricken with a degenerative disease which left him unable to operate his body, including the power of speech. He was able, however, to develop a method to generate speech through the power of the mind to generate internal vibratory patterns which an external device was able to translate into speech. The mind was capable of generating these bio-electrical impulses which carried the content of the thought in such a way that a computer-aided device could convert it into speech patterns.

His experience is not unique. Researchers have been reported to be testing the implant of an interface, called a bio cortical motor implant between the brain and the computer of people who have lost the use of speech by reading the signals the brain generates and translating this into computer generated speech. Other people are able to operate a computer through the power of the concentration of the mind, with the signal enhanced by various “listening” devices that have been developed. Similarly devices have been developed to capture the brain’s signals to operate prosthetic limbs.

What all of these things have in common is that they directly tap into the brain’s signals and tie them into external devices that at least partially replace the use of the normal biological senses that carry out actions such as movement or speech. They prove that the brain is not absolutely dependent on the senses.

There is also extensive research into telepathy, the ability of the mind to directly communicate with another mind, either to pick up the thoughts of another person, or to communicate thoughts to another person. A young student did an experiment in telepathy and found that certain pairs of individuals were able to identify colors or numbers of shapes being focused on by the other party far in excess of random chance. Similar experiments have been designed and carried out by researchers in mind science under rigorous conditions. While such results remain rare, they nevertheless do occur and tend to support the idea that just as a computer device can pick up and enhance the transmission of brain signals, so certain individuals are capable of internally enhancing these signals, while others may be receptive and capable of capturing and translating such signals, making the incidence of telepathic communication something in our hidden capabilities and potentially a power that will manifest more widely as we explore ‘inner space’ more systematically in the future.

There is no doubt that certain individuals who live together are able to ‘sync’ their thought process to such a degree that they know what the other person is thinking and in many cases they are able to supply words or finish sentences for one another, or just express something that the other person acknowledges they were just thinking about, without a specific external context to justify the synchronistic thought arising.

Teillhard de Chardin described a mental ‘atmosphere’ that surrounds us, similar to the atmosphere of air, or the ionosphere around the planet. Thoughts generated create waves which go out into this mental atmosphere, which he called a noosphere, and are there to be picked up, received and potentially acted upon by others who happen to capture these waves. This may also explain how certain ideas or inventions arise in different parts of the world at the same time without direct communication between the thinkers or inventors. Another pointer in the direction that the mind has its own power of thought creation and reception independent of any reliance on the senses.

Many people have had the experience of entering an atmosphere that was filled with mental concentration and being impacted by that atmosphere. Entering a library where people are engaged in serious study has a strong impact on the mind of the individual, and helps to tune one’s mind to the mental wavelengths. Similarly, when an individual gives a lecture on a subject requiring intense concentration, one can palpably experience the atmosphere of concentration. Silent chanting of a mantra can have an extraordinary impact on an environment as reported by people who happened to enter that location, indicating that the mind was able to generate a field externally without the use of speech. Many people have commented on the ability of certain practitioners of yoga to create a field of peace and concentrated awareness around them, another sign that the mind can have palpable effects in the outer world without use of the physical senses to create that effect.

It appears that the mind’s ability to generate bio-electric signals can be enhanced; and it appears that the mind’s ability to receive and interpret such signals can be enhanced. When the two coincide, communication can take place without speech. A future development thus can be seen as a consequence of the further evolution of consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “The awakening of the psychical consciousness liberates in us the direct use of the mind as a sixth sense, and this power may be made constant and normal. The physical consciousness can only communicate with the minds of others or know the happenings of the world around us through external means and signs and indications, and it has beyond this limited action only a vague and haphazard use of the mind’s more direct capacities, a poor range of occasional presentiments, intuitions and messages. Our minds are indeed constantly acting and acted upon by the minds of others through hidden currents of which we are not aware, but we have no knowledge or control of these agencies. The psychical consciousness, as it develops, makes us aware of the great mass of thoughts, feelings, suggestions, wills, impacts, influences of all kinds that we are receiving from others or sending to others or imbibing from and throwing into the general mind atmosphere around us. As it evolves in power, precision and clearness, we are able to trace these to their source or feel immediately their origin and transit to us and direct consciously and with an intelligent will our own messages. It becomes possible to be aware, more or less accurately and discerningly, of the activities of minds whether near to us physically or at a distance, to understand, feel or identify ourselves with their temperament, character, thoughts, feelings, reactions, whether by a psychic sense or a direct mental perception or by a very sensible and often intensely concrete reception of them, into our mind or on its recording surface. At the same time, we can consciously make at least the inner selves and, if they are sufficiently sensitive, the surface minds of others aware of our own inner mental or psychic self and plastic to its thoughts, suggestions, influences or even cast it or its active image in influence into their subjective, even into their vital and physical being to work there as a helping or moulding or dominating power and presence.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XIX Occult Powers of the Subliminal, pp. 147-148