We are all familiar with the five senses; sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, but do you have a sixth sense? What about a seventh or eight? Some researchers believe there could be as many as twenty one or more. The power of the conscious mind is amazing and responds in many different ways to physical phenomenon.
Do you feel a strange vibe in the room? What about deja vu? Do you have a feeling like you are outside of your own body? Anomalous experiences are not uncommon in humans and we often explain these experiences and related them to psychic powers, spirits, witchcraft or some form of life energy like a terrestrial or extraterrestrial entity. There are many people who believe some of these experiences could be related to a past life.
The conscious mind attempts to form a story from our sensations and reflections. Life as we experience it is not just a series of unconnected thoughts and events, it's a coherent narrative unfolding in an orderly universe. But sometimes we have experiences that don't fit our expectations and may even contradict what science has taught us is possible.
Just for reference at this point, the commonly held definition of a “sense” is, “Any system that consists of a group of sensory cell types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted."
Experiences of the paranormal and psychic kind are considered a bit bizarre and can't be easily explained by using conventional scientific laws. The belief in the paranormal is considered magical thinking. Clinically magical thinking is the term used to describe a wide variety of nonscientific and sometimes irrational beliefs such as religious and cultural traditions that believe in spirits, demons and other entities of nonhuman form. It is not magical thinking however if you put forth a theory, provided there is an understanding that the theory is not necessarily "rational" by today's scientific logic. Many things were once considered magical thinking by science, but these things like, the earth is flat, man cannot fly, people can't govern themselves have all been proven wrong and these ideas now form basic concepts in our world.
Humans will have many strange and bizarre experiences as we go through life, but most people aren't comfortable talking about them because they feel people will judge them as strange, irrational, an crazy or even making the statement that they are losing it. Hearing voices and no one is around, subliminal messages in a song you are listening to or seeing faces in the clouds or in food items are basically forms of conscious perceptions. These are really automatic processes and would also include such things associated with our intuitions or our sixth sense basically like, sensing danger. These sudden occurrences that seem to just burst into our subconscious can feel like we have a kind of clairvoyant ability.
Belief in the paranormal can be considered a positive thing, within reason, because it would imply you are more intuitive, more open to strange experiences, open to skeptical inquiry and sensation seeking. Believers are not all alike however and some will take it to the extreme where their imagination and there fantasies become real in there mind. There is a consistent correlation between paranormal beliefs and various psychological problems like depression, schizophrenia, mania and a few others, these are weak correlations but they are there.
In extreme environmental situations such as high altitude isolation, very cold temperatures and suffering from exhaustion, hallucinations occur where you have the feeling that you're missing some of your companions or you start to experience extreme loneliness and even fearing that intruders are near by and put you in a sense of high alert.
The most common of anomalous experiences and most people will experience it at least once in their life time is the feeling someone is starring at you, your emotions become activated, it can be exciting, comforting or creepy. If you feel uncomfortable normally you will look around to check and see if someone is looking at you, your movement will draw attention and confirm your suspicion.
The conscious mind attempts to form a story from our sensations and reflections. Life as we experience it is not just a series of unconnected thoughts and events, it's a coherent narrative unfolding in an orderly universe. But sometimes we have experiences that don't fit our expectations and may even contradict what science has taught us is possible.
Just for reference at this point, the commonly held definition of a “sense” is, “Any system that consists of a group of sensory cell types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted."
Experiences of the paranormal and psychic kind are considered a bit bizarre and can't be easily explained by using conventional scientific laws. The belief in the paranormal is considered magical thinking. Clinically magical thinking is the term used to describe a wide variety of nonscientific and sometimes irrational beliefs such as religious and cultural traditions that believe in spirits, demons and other entities of nonhuman form. It is not magical thinking however if you put forth a theory, provided there is an understanding that the theory is not necessarily "rational" by today's scientific logic. Many things were once considered magical thinking by science, but these things like, the earth is flat, man cannot fly, people can't govern themselves have all been proven wrong and these ideas now form basic concepts in our world.
Humans will have many strange and bizarre experiences as we go through life, but most people aren't comfortable talking about them because they feel people will judge them as strange, irrational, an crazy or even making the statement that they are losing it. Hearing voices and no one is around, subliminal messages in a song you are listening to or seeing faces in the clouds or in food items are basically forms of conscious perceptions. These are really automatic processes and would also include such things associated with our intuitions or our sixth sense basically like, sensing danger. These sudden occurrences that seem to just burst into our subconscious can feel like we have a kind of clairvoyant ability.
Belief in the paranormal can be considered a positive thing, within reason, because it would imply you are more intuitive, more open to strange experiences, open to skeptical inquiry and sensation seeking. Believers are not all alike however and some will take it to the extreme where their imagination and there fantasies become real in there mind. There is a consistent correlation between paranormal beliefs and various psychological problems like depression, schizophrenia, mania and a few others, these are weak correlations but they are there.
In extreme environmental situations such as high altitude isolation, very cold temperatures and suffering from exhaustion, hallucinations occur where you have the feeling that you're missing some of your companions or you start to experience extreme loneliness and even fearing that intruders are near by and put you in a sense of high alert.
The most common of anomalous experiences and most people will experience it at least once in their life time is the feeling someone is starring at you, your emotions become activated, it can be exciting, comforting or creepy. If you feel uncomfortable normally you will look around to check and see if someone is looking at you, your movement will draw attention and confirm your suspicion.
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