If you have never suffered, you won’t need to read this page.
The Buddha said that all life is suffering, but that doesn’t mean the process must be a daily occurrence, though
in the end, it’s your choice. Each religion has its own terminology, but the Hindu term
“maya” is as good as any other for me. The translation is “illusion.”
Most of us rely upon our five senses to tell us what reality is. When
we are young, few of us can conceptualize a Sixth Sense, so we rely on the basic five, sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch.
All you need do, however, is pay attention in your high school science classes, and it becomes abundantly clear that our ability
to tune into sound vibrations is very limited; there are hyper sounds and hypo sounds, either
above or below our capacity to detect. Likewise with sight, we are subject to the capacity of our eyes’ abilities. Unaided,
we cannot see beyond the horizon and nor into the earth with eyes alone. Though we can see into the Milky Way and outer space,
we cannot focus on very much of it, and our eyes are not tuned to the light of the most distant galaxies.
Some things register with our olfactory nerves and others do not. Our
smell perception can also be confused, especially if other odors enter our environment. Taste, as a means of perception, has
it limitations. An object cannot be tasted unless it is placed in our mouth. How can we taste far-off objects? How can we
taste emotions, or how can we gain taste perception from ideas? What, for instance, is the taste of the color green? Again,
we can only gain touch sensations from having the object before us, within reach.
And most people are satisfied with this set of illuminations; we seem content with what we can
do, though it seldom occurs to us how limited we are. And our limitations do not prevent us from
making judgments about our world and the people in it. So most of the judgments that human beings make every day are in some
sense poor. Our conclusions may be hopelessly flawed, but we bumble our way through life’s circumstances. We castigate
acquaintances who do not see, hear, taste, smell, or receive touch sense impressions as we do.
On a good day we recognize our limitations, but seldom do we make that concession to people who
are unlike us, or “different.” Because we have all had to develop an ego consciousness, we all have been short-changed.
Afterworld.info
is my blog of experiences that came to me only because I suffered various hurts, didn’t like them, and attempted to
gain new understanding of the truths of our world. Only when you or I hurt do we say to ourselves, “Wow! I don’t
want to go through this again! What can I do to avoid such an experience?” I’ve discovered that
truth is a never-ending pursuit. No matter what understandings we achieve, there are still more-sophisticated revelations
to be gained.
I believe that a
Sixth Sense is the birthright of each person, but we must claim its existence through usage; we must be willing to develop
and expand it, just as we would our muscles.
The Sixth Sense is very subtle, certainly not as powerful as viewing
a gorgeous sunset or smelling chlorine or running one’s hand over gritty sandpaper. Our physical body has quite a bit
of sensitivity in the normal five senses; we’ve been working on those since our conception. The Sixth Sense has also
been there, but is remains in its infantile state if we won’t or can’t exercise it. Call it extra-sensory, if
you will, its potential for expanding our enjoyment of life is probably without limit.
The Sixth Sense seems to
operate most powerfully from the brain’s right (imaginative) hemisphere, though I believe it has roots in every cell
of the body. It is more a dimension of our being than a faculty that can be found in the physical
body. Some think our Sixth Sense filters its inputs through the pineal gland (which, strangely, is shaped much like
our physical eyes) or “third eye.” Maybe that is why insights seem to come from our brain, why inspirations appear
to arise in our head.
My own experience with this dimension
of self led me to marvel at how very subtle is its “still small voice.” One can sometimes hear a word or name
while those around us don't. Or smell a scent vaguely, yet know that the odor didn’t arise in our nose. Thus, there
are psychic sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations. One can feel a chill on the spine, though the room is very warm.
In this manner, we encounter ghosts or discarnates, but then tend to “write it off” as imagination, often becaue
we are unable to repeat the stimulus at will. And there are some individuals who are actually scared of having such abilities,
as it means we must face new discomforts. There can be distinct visual images that arise from non-physical stimuli, but these
often appear on an “inner screen,” where I get most of my own visualizations.
Some folks think that
“being psychic” means that one is an accomplished telepath or prophet. But there are many psychic gifts. The psyche
is not limited to the physical brain and spinal cord, but seems to be positioned throughout our body cells too. The average
person never recognizes that dreams are the most common form of psychic ability. Theoretically, our cells should send out
an alarm when our diet isn’t adequate, but how many people are tuned in to those very quiet notifications? Edgar Cayce
said that “psychic is of the soul.” I remember the nuns telling me that everyone has a soul, but we just can’t
see or feel it. I was perplexed. So, a child in early religious instruction is justified in disbelieving such concepts.
The real truth is that we don’t have a soul, but instead are
souls. And we wear a physical body as a living shroud, a mass of cells, bones, nerves and blood vessels that are designed
to assist in maximizing the soul’s efforts to re-connect us to the source of all energy and knowledge, so that we eventually
can reach a level of no longer needing physical bodies or structures in which to live.
Ghost study leads most
people to recognize that Life continues (along with consciousness) into that region called death. There is only a transformation
at death—a passing, but our real identity continues after the body dies. And many in the ghost state are at first
confused when they pass over--they never expected to maintain their consciousnes and knowing after the body died. Nobody ever
told them that "knowing" continues even after body death. For a long time after our death we remain who we
were, neither more sinful nor more holy. Death doesn’t cure anything. Individuals
who try to contact the dead should know that the deceased do not have any superior knowledge, and even if they can respond
to us, their information can be flawed or partial. And that eternal consciousness continues (even if it is subdued or masked)
through our future lifetimes as a "soul data base." Any of that memory can be retrieved if the talent for
doing so is pursued. But, that pursuit requires self-discipline, a quality sorely lacking in western societies where things have become our gods. Why settle for subtle insights, so many people decide, when
one can ride an ornamental vehicle with a lot of flash?
So, our Sixth Sense is seldom developed much at birth
(though there are notable exceptions in history). If you want to develop psychic ability (and there are many variations in
this gift) then you must be willing to work at knowing your soul self. In a permissive society, that isn’t easy to do.
It seems that only in caring for our spiritual or eternal self do we begin to manifest qualities or talents that, in our youth,
we never suspected of existing. Don't tell the universe what you want to manifest. In most developed individuals that I know,
what talents they manifested were not the ones that their ego wanted to strengthen. See why an essentially spiritual (not
necessarily "religious") pursuit is necessary. Living only in the ego is bad for psychic development. We must be
connected to "something higher."
