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.

A satire on the boasted wisdom, fortitude, magnanimity, and temperance of man, in the form of a dialogue between Ulysses in the island of Circe, and Gryllus, whom she had changed into a swine, and who now prefers his swinish condition to a return to the human form; Ulysses asks Circe for permission to restore his companions to the human shape. Circe will grant the request if the men themselves desire it. Gryllus, one of them, is brought forward to answer in behalf of the entire company. He refuses, and gives his reasons. He says that by making him and his companions beasts, Circe has done them a great favour. Beasts have more fortitude than men; they fight in fair, open combat, without trick or artifice; they are no cowards, they never cry for mercy. Beasts are courageous and daring, even the females; while the courage of men is artificial, and women are timid. Beasts are more temperate and chaste then man; they indulge their appetites only in a natural way, and at the proper season. Beasts do not value silver or gold. They have no adventitious desire. Their senses are more accurate. Beasts are satisfied with one kind of food, and this procured without difficulty; they have nature for their teacher, and could teach men many useful lessons. Men are incontinent: they indulge unnatural and excessive appetites; and are never satisfied.

While the popular talk of English common sense in the eighteenth century might seem a by-product of familiar Enlightenment discourses of rationalism and empiricism, this book argues that terms such as ‘common sense’ or ‘good sense’ are not simply synonyms of applied reason. On the contrary, the discourse of common sense is shaped by a defensive impulse against the totalizing intellectual regimes of the Enlightenment and the cultural climate of change they promote, in order to contain the unbounded discursive proliferation of modern learning. Hence, common sense discourse has a vital regulatory function in cultural negotiations of political and intellectual change in eighteenth-century Britain against the backdrop of patriotic national self-concepts. This study discusses early eighteenth-century common sense in four broad complexes, as to its discursive functions that are ethical (which at that time implies aesthetic as well), transgressive (as a corrective), political (in patriotic constructs of the nation), and repressive (of otherness). The selection of texts in this study strikes a balance between dominant literary culture – Swift, Pope, Defoe, Fielding, Johnson – and the periphery, such as pamphlets and magazine essays, satiric poems and patriotic songs.