The extra-ordinary powers of the mind known as “psychic abilities” are an inherent gift to all of us. Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips tell us in their book The Development Of Psychic Powers (1988) that psychic powers are our birthright. Some people more naturally express these abilities than others. For the others, psychic abilities may be developed through study and practice. It is also called “intuition” or “psychic abilities.” In more conservative circles it is called a “hunch” or “gut feeling.” The term ESP, “extra sensory perception,” was coined by the late Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine. He was a professor and head of the parapsychology laboratory at Duke University. Dr. Rhine was ridiculed by some and admired by others, and he was working with parapsychology at a time when it was considered taboo.

It is a good thing that the “6th sense” is gaining a revived recognition of its usefulness. Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), “As the end of the second millennium draws near, the limitations of logic, rationality, and the scientific method as the sole means of guiding our lives are becoming all too painfully clear. Increasingly our world is turning to modes of perception and understanding that don’t rely on evidence presented to our senses, modes such as intuition and faith… The early Greeks (Greece being the birthplace of logic, philosophy, and the rudiments of the scientific method) recognized that rational thought is incomplete and needs the support of intuition.”

Belleruth Naparstek goes further by saying in her book Your Sixth Sense: Unlocking The Power Of Your Intuition (1997), “We’ve entered a new stage of our human evolution, a time when the development of our psychic capacity is essential to our survival. Without a new and stronger kind of psychic attainment, without a deeper sense of spiritual connectedness to the whole, and without a much larger sense of self than we as a species has ever attained, our planet could easily die from out-of-control aggression, territoriality, and greed. So it’s no coincidence that we find ourselves in a time of great interest in psychic phenomena, of widespread longing for connection to our virtual core. More and more people are looking for ways to join with the mysterious, the wider perspective, the divine, the world of spirit.”

What is intuition?
Intuition is an ability you already have and use every day. Exercising intuition makes it stronger, and making it a conscious process makes it more accessible. Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), “Intuition is a capacity you are born with as a human being, like the capacity for language or thinking or appreciating music. Intuition is not a power one acquires. It’s an integral part of every human mental, emotional, and psychical process. Each moment⎯right now⎯you receive information intuitively; you’re simply unaware of the process. You use your intuition in practical reasoned decisions you make every day, from choices as mundane as to what to eat for dinner, what to major in, or who to marry. The trick to using your intuition more effectively is to bring the unconscious data it supplies to a place where your conscious mind can interpret it.”

Intuition is not limited by space or time. Intuition does not require that you know anything about the subjects you’re inquiring about. It doesn’t even require that you understand all the impressions that you receive. This is the beauty of intuition. Even though you may know nothing about refrigerators, a refrigerator repair man may come to you and ask you why a particular refrigerator is resisting repair. You can find out through intuition, by describing feelings, pictures or words coming to you about the dysfunction of the appliance. The refrigerator repair man can then use your clues to determine the problem. You can know the answer to any question. You have access to all the answers. It is not the same as knowing everything consciously. It is a different kind of knowing.

Intuition plays a part in all your decisions. Feelings are emotional senses without explanation, and we tend to dismiss feelings as unreasonable and untrustworthy, but feelings are facts. Feelings are often what overrides the rational mind in the decision-making process, and in fact can be a very trustworthy steering mechanism through your reality. It is not uncommon for someone to delay a trip based on a feeling, only later to find out that a disaster had been avoided, or an opportunity would’ve been lost if they had left. Feelings, or gut feelings, can be very accurate indicators of the right choices for you.

One might ask what the difference is between intuition and psychic abilities. Actually, there is no difference. The word psychic seems weird and “far out” to some people, whereas intuition is a word that is more acceptable in conservative circles. The words psychic and intuition are used interchangeably and synonymously. However, one might say that intuition is a precursor to having psychic abilities, or becoming a psychic. Developed intuition leads to psychic abilities. Intuition comes from the right hemisphere of the brain, the “primary brain.” According to Enid Hoffman in Develop Your Psychic Skills (1981), the right brain “knows,” and the left brain “guesses” and theorizes.

Shakti Gawain says in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance For Daily Life (2000), “Intuition is a natural thing. We are all born with it. Young children are very intuitive, although in our culture they are often trained out of it early in life… some of us consciously develop this ability, while a majority of us learn to disregard and deny it… Fortunately, with some practice most of us can reclaim and develop our natural intuitive abilities. We can learn to be in touch with our intuition, to follow it, and to allow it to become a powerful guide in our lives… the intuitive mind… [has] access to an infinite supply of information, including information that we have not gathered directly through personal experience. It appears to be able to tap into a deep storehouse of knowledge and wisdom—the universal mind.”

Why do we have intuition, and do we all have it?
A scientific hypothesis is that intuition is first and foremost a survival tool. It gives you information instantaneously that you might need in a survival situation. The ability to be in tune to the surrounding environment was a life and death situation in primitive times. People who were more intuitive had a better chance of survival.

Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), “We tend to rely on our more advanced and civilized senses, but remember that our most reliable senses are the ones that developed first. Our sense of touch develops before our sight, our intellect last of all. Nature tells us what we can count on to survive, and we were given intuition for a reason. Most of your life questions related in some way to the future, and intuition, being foremost a survival tool, is especially adept at addressing the future. Most likely it is the sense (or collection of senses) specifically geared to gathering information that is not available in your immediate environment. For most of us, this process takes place unconsciously and with much interference from our logical minds and emotional patterning. In becoming aware of our intuitive information before it’s fully assembled and before we have unwittingly acted on it, we bring this valuable data above our emotional consciousness to the level of our intellect. As a result, we make better reasoned decisions.”

Everyone has intuition. Even those who think they don’t, yes, they have it too. How often have you thought of your friend, and lo and behold, your phone rings and you know it is your friend? Have you ever had a dream that came true? You have at least once blurted something out and your friend said, “Hey! I was just thinking that, you read my mind!” Haven’t you ever “known” without knowing how you know something? You have had intuitive experiences galore, but you might not have realized that was what they were. Most often these experiences are dismissed without thinking much about them, or we chalk it up to coincidence.

Everyone operates in their life not even knowing how much they use their subconscious abilities. It is actually a two way street between the subconscious mind and the conscious mind. The subconscious not only communicates with the conscious mind, giving it privy information now and then from the realms of the “unknown,” or psychic hits, but it also takes direction from the conscious mind. What your conscious mind projects as a desire, your subconscious goes about creating, giving you information along the way as to its workings. Joseph Murphy explains this in his book Psychic Perception: The Magic Of Extrasensory Power (1971), “It is best that you have a healthy regard and respect for your thought. Thought is the most powerful force in the universe… Your subconscious mind could be likened to an iceberg—90% of it is below the surface. It is your subconscious mind that does the work according to the orders given it by your conscious mind. What you think with your conscious mind you produce with your subconscious.”

In other words, your subconscious mind knows at least 90% more than your conscious mind does, if not more. Your subconscious mind works with the mathematics of the cosmos, all probabilities and all outcomes. It knows the future, it knows the past, and it knows all the possibilities for your life. It is one with the universal mind. It knows who will be standing on a particular street corner at 2:20 PM on a particular day, and will attempt to arrange that chance meeting you need to have with that stranger who will soon become one of your closest friends or business partners. The subconscious mind will nudge you to take the bus that day instead of the train, or give you the idea to take a different route home than you normally do. This is how psychic hits work. There is a constant rapport between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. If you realize that this is not such a mystery, and learn how to “hear” your subconscious when it speaks to you, your life can have some very magical unfoldings based on following the directions you are given from within yourself.

The attainment of psychic abilities is the direct attempt at learning to tune in to the subconscious and using it consciously. Although the human mind will never be able to hold all that the subconscious does, it can definitely be trained to interact with and take direction from the larger self that is directing your life. The advantages of being able to do this are limitless.

These three types of psychic skills are involved with intuition:
Clairvoyance: clear seeing, usually having to do with images, pictures, symbols.
Clairsentience: having to do with sensing, or feelings, knowing.
Clairaudience: having to do with hearing, actual words that you literally hear, also celestial music or whooshing sounds.

Course Continued…