The Sixth Sense is Mental Fire perceiving and registering the other five. There can be no perception without a unitary percipient whose identity enables it to grasp an object as an entirety, says Plotinus. Reason is purely human; instinct, an endowment of deity. Divine or Spiritual Soul (nous) without Anima Mundi is rational and noetic (logos); Animal or Astral Soul (psyche) within Anima Mundi, irrational and phrenic (alogos). Reason is the outcome of a slow development of the human brain (noetikon); instinct, the spiritual unity of the five senses endowed by Deity (aisthetikon). Reason is purely human; instinct, an endowment of Deity. But reason can only develop at the expense of natural instinct. The Sixth Sense will be fully developed in the average man of the Sixth Race by Buddhi, when galvanised by the essence of the awakened Manas. Water, one of four primordial Elements, was transmitted to us by the Fourth Race, as we shall transmit Ether, the Fifth Element, to the Sixth. Then our Sixth Sense shall be awakened. The Sixth Sense or “normal clairvoyance” will correspond to the next Element of Matter or “permeability,” i.e., spiritual sight. Then, those who have been seeking a “fourth dimension” to explain the passage of matter through matter shall find what they sought, a sixth characteristic of matter. Abstractions such as the “fourth dimension,” being outside mental perception and experience, are errors of realism if not unfortunate verbalisms. When the Fifth Principle has merged with the Sixth, man will acquire and enjoy Jnanashakti, the power and privileges of enlightened mind. Man is the child of Cyclic Destiny. Cycles of Materiality will be succeeded by Cycles of Spirituality, and fully developed faculties will open up the Sixth Sense. The majority of future men will be glorious Adepts. Having acquired physical development at the expense of spirituality from the Second Race to the end of the Fourth, Fifth Race humanity has now crossed the meridian of perfect adjustment between Spirit and Matter, or equilibrium between spiritual perception and brain intellect. But as the Sixth Sense has hardly sprouted above the soil of materiality, few can at present enjoy the legitimate outgrowth and endowments of the higher life. When the Third Eye or Dangma Eye of the Stanzas of Dzyan opens again, the minds of those who will live at that time shall be awakened and become as pellucid as crystal. Finally, when the Sixth Sense has awakened the Seventh, Chrestos shall be regenerated as Christos and will illumine the souls of all men. “And they will listen to my voice; and they shall become one flock under one Shepherd.”

What is the sixth sense? Is it physical, mental or spiritual? Do we all possess it or is it unique to exceptional individuals? Might there be a seventh sense and an eighth sense as well? What role does culture play in determining the range of our perceptual abilities? The search for a supplementary sense has taken many directions and yielded numerous possibilities for an "additional faculty" of perception - from magnetism and movement to dreaming and clairvoyance. Stimulating reflection and debate, The Sixth Sense Reader explores the cultural contexts which give rise to such reports of "psychic" and other powers that exceed the ordinary bounds of sense. In this groundbreaking volume, leading scholars in history, anthropology and biology take the reader on a tour of the far borderlands of consciousness. From the world beneath to the world beyond the five senses, every potential avenue of sensation is opened up for investigation.

Man is the Microcosm and miniature copy of the Macrocosm, the living witness of the Universal Law and its mode of action on Earth. It is the Neo-Platonists who applied the term Microcosm to man. Ancient philosophy called the Earth the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, and man the outcome of the two.

Dreams are images of hopes and fears. Somnambulism, premonitions, and second sight are a disposition, energised by the power of the imagination, to perceive and guess by intuition reflections from the Astral Light. In sense dreams the mind is always asleep. The sensual tendencies of the dreamer are readily impressed by pictures from the Astral Light, and thus the direction of such dreams is always towards the animal plane. We should therefore train ourselves to wake up when a sense dream occurs; and the instantaneous rejection of impure thoughts during the period of waking consciousness will tend to set up a habit of rejection, which will act automatically in sleep. There is no simple answer to the question “what is it that dreams?” for it depends entirely on each individual, what principle will be the chief motor in dreams, and whether they will be remembered or forgotten. When the material man dreams, all he sees with his eyes shut, and in or through his mind, is of course subjective. But the Inner Man, who is the silent spectator of the life of the dreamer, all he sees is as objective as he is himself to himself. The dream state is common not only to all men, but also to all animals, from the highest mammalia to the smallest birds, and even insects. Every being endowed with a physical brain, or organs approximating thereto, must dream. Human dreams do not differ much from those of the animals. But that which is entirely terra incognita for science is the real dreams and experiences of the immortal Ego overshadowing mortal man, which thinks and acts independently of the physical body. What we often regard as dreams or idle fancies may be stray pages torn out from the life and experiences of the Inner Man, the dim recollection of which at the moment of awakening becomes more or less distorted by our physical memory. Every night, when the Inner Man is freed from the trammels of matter, he lives a separate life within his prison of clay. But the outer man cannot be conscious of the Inner Man, for his brain and thinking apparatus are paralyzed more or less completely. Ordinary dreams are caused by sensuously desirous consciousness awakened into chaotic activity by the slumbering reminiscences of the lower mind. The combined action of desires and animal soul is purely mechanical. It is instinct, not reason, which is active in them. But, as a rule, our memory registers only the fugitive and distorted impressions which the brain receives at the moment of awakening. Among the vast number of meaningless dreams there are some in which presages are given of coming events. When such dreams come true, they may be termed prophetic. In the case of individuals who have truly prophetic dreams, it is because their physical brains and memory are in closer relation and sympathy with their Higher Ego than in the generality of men. The Adept, however, does not dream, he just paralyzes his lower self during sleep, and becomes perfectly free. Dreams are illusions and the Adept is beyond illusion. Imagination is the best guide of our blind senses. We see through our imagination, and that is the natural aspect of the miracle. But we also see actual and true things, and it is in this that lies the marvel of the natural phenomenon. Those of a nervous temperament, whose sight is weak and imagination vivid, are the fittest persons for this kind of divination. The stronger the spirituality of the dreamer, the easier it will be for the Higher Ego to impress on the brain a vivid picture of the dream. In the materialistic man, in one whose proclivities and passions have severed his astral soul from her spiritual counterpart and master, in him whose labour has so worn out the body as to render him temporarily insensible to the voice of his soul — such persons rarely, if ever, will have any dreams at all. On the other hand, highly spiritual people will see visions and dreams when asleep, and even in their hours of wakefulness. Messages sent by one soul to another are perceived as premonitions, dreams, and visions. Facts are generally inverted in dreams, and this can be explained by the law of introverted mental vision. The Higher Ego does not think as its evanescent personality does. Its thoughts are vivid pictures and visions of past and future scenes, of wonderful living acts and heroic deeds, which are all present in the eternal now — even as they were when speech expressed in sounds did not exist, when thoughts were things, and men did not need to express them in speeches, for they instantly realised themselves in action by the power of Kriyashakti, that mysterious power which transforms instantaneously ideas into visible forms. In persons of a very materialistic mind, because the Ego is so trammelled by matter, it can hardly give all its attention to one’s actions, even though the latter may commit sins for which that Ego will have to suffer conjointly in future. True dreams, being actions of the Higher Ego, they produce effects which are recorded on their own plane. Ordinary dreams, by and large, are the waking and hazy recollections of such actions. Between the inner man and the physical brain there is a kind of conscious telegraphic communication going on incessantly, day and night. When the brain is asleep, the physical memory and imagination are also asleep, and all cognitive functions are at rest. Our mundane life is a “dream” to the Higher Ego, while the inner life, or what we call the “dream plane,” is the real life for it. The will of the common man is dormant in dreams and therefore inactive. A sick person, especially just before death, is very likely to see in dream, or vision, those whom he loves and is continually thinking of; and so also is a person awake, but intensely thinking of a person who is asleep at the time. In cases of consumption, or other emaciating diseases, dreams become pleasant because the astral soul of the patient has begun detaching from the physical body, and therefore becomes more clairvoyant in proportion. As death approaches, the body wastes away and ceases to be an impediment or barrier between the brain of the ailing man and his Higher Ego. In Black Magic it is no rare thing to evoke the “spirit” of a sleeping person. Thus the sorcerer may learn from the apparition any secret he chooses, while the sleeper remains ignorant of what is going on. A nightmare arises from oppression and difficulty in breathing; and the latter will always create a feeling of oppression and a sensation of impending calamity. By cultivating the power of dreaming, clairvoyance is developed. But only one’s clairvoyant faculty, aided by spiritual intuition, can interpret one’s dreams. The only one who profits from a dream book is its author. If you could remember your dreams in deep sleep, when the spiritual consciousness is active, you would be able to remember all your past incarnations. That exalted state of remembrance is the “Memory of the Heart”; and the capacity to impress itself on the brain, so that it becomes part of its consciousness, marks the opening of the Third Eye.

Plato held the eternity of matter. The material of which the world was formed was originally a shapeless mass existing from eternity. It was arranged in perfect and beautiful forms by God. Plato comments on the nature of the soul, the soul of the world, the origin of evil, and the four original elements of all created, corporeal things. But the soul is both created and uncreated. The subject is illustrated by geometry and the doctrine of ratios, and by the musical scale. The divisible and the indivisible are the Other and the Same. The opinion of those philosophers who make the soul a compound of both refuted. Two discordant principles rule the world: Fate or Necessity, and Intelligence or Wisdom. The soul is not altogether the workmanship of the Deity: Illustrations from geometry, the planetary system, and the science of music. The soul derives its beginning neither from time nor is the product of generation, but it is endowed with several faculties and virtues.