Whether you call it instinct, hunch, gut feel or inner voice, we have all experienced from time to time that sixth sense which has guided our decisions and actions. Even the most pragmatic, logical and hard-nosed individuals in fields as cold and calculating as business, medicine and science have experienced that there has been a finite boundary for their fact-driven decision-making, beyond which they have followed their instincts.We have only five organs of direct experience via our nose, eyes, ears, skin and tongue. Our brain is only an assimilation, evaluation and decision centre. While it can process all the information that accumulates from our sense organs, it does not have the capacity to directly experience the external world.
Then how do we get this instinct? Is it a nudge from information accumulated through evolution and stored in our genes and subconscious? Or is there another, unseen sense organ somewhere?
Indic spirituality says that an individual has a soul, atma, and that everyone’s soul is part of a paramatma, greater soul. It further states that the soul can achieve omniscience, trikaal jnan. Further, this spiritual belief concedes that no proof can be provided for the soul, it has to be experienced. So, we can only sit back and wonder, whether our sixth sense is sheer luck supporting an illogical decision? Or is it evidence of our soul consciousness?
