What Does Kabbalah Say About the Sixth Sense?
By Bnei Baruch
Kabbalah says that every person has a dormant, sixth sense. This sixth sense is something one develops over time. No one is born having this sense already developed. One might ask: what about people who are born with psychic abilities or unique powers of intuition? Aren’t they born with that sixth sense?
Let’s take someone like Nostradamus as an example. He was born with a special talent to predict future events. But did he feel what was to come through the sixth sense? Kabbalah says—no, the sixth sense is completely unrelated to such abilities.
Predicting the future, and other psychic abilities, are qualities found in unique people who are extremely sensitive to Nature. And yet, these qualities pertain to the physical world only. People with such abilities can sense past and future events in this world, but not in the higher, spiritual realms. Therefore, such abilities only allow a person to have extra information about our earthly, biological existence, whereas the sixth sense allows one to feel and additional, spiritual realm.
In fact, many animals are also able to sense what will happen in the future. They can predict natural phenomena such as earthquakes, hurricanes and storms a few days before they occur. In addition, thousands of years ago, people’s abilities of intuition and predicting the future were much greater than they are today. This is because throughout time we have lost our sensitivity to Nature. All in all, these abilities belong to the physical world and not to the sixth sense. But if so, what is the sixth sense, and how do we obtain it?
Kabbalah says that the sixth sense is when one rises “higher” than the physical world and begins to feel more than what his natural five senses perceive. This new feeling is called "the sixth sense."
This new sense perceives a different environment than what the five senses perceive. It feels a spiritual environment, called in Kabbalah “Upper Light.” As soon as one feels the Upper Light through the sixth sense, he feels unrestricted in every sense and experiences a pleasure that he has never felt before.
But in truth, it is impossible to explain what the sensation of spirituality is, unless a person feels it for himself. The sixth sense gives you a fundamentally new feeling, and trying to explain it to someone who hasn’t experienced it, is like trying to describe to a blind person how the sunset looks like.
When a person begins feeling spiritually through the sixth sense, he actually begins living in that realm. And at the same time, he continues living in the physical world together with all other people.