The sixth sense is the conditioned mind trying to take a more acceptable name || Acharya Prashant (2015)

Acharya Prashant: There is fundamentally no difference between the five senses and the sixth sense.

Just as the five senses constitute who we are, similarly the sixth sense too is but a product of the five senses. It is just that the ego sense is identified more with the mind than with the hands, or eyes, or tongue, or ears. Hence, it wants to give more weightage to the so-called sixth sense (which is nothing but the mind).

We often hear people speaking in these terms – such as, “The sixth sense is intuitive, the sixth sense is metaphysical.” We even hear of things such as “women have a more advanced sixth sense”.

Just as the five senses are external and dualistic, similarly the sixth sense too is not what one is.

You see, we have a fascination for the paranormal. The eyes are so ordinary . . . you see how they are functioning. We have a fascination for the paranormal because we want to prove that we, as we are, are still something beyond the material.

The body appears so limited, and so weak. So, one likes to claim and attribute those powers to the body which the body doesn’t have and cannot have. So we talk of things like intuition and conscience and sixth sense, as if they are coming from somewhere beyond the body-mind.