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Many experts typically divide ESP into three main categories: |
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Telepathy (communicating mind-to-mind) |
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Clairvoyance (seeing events or objects using an inner sense of sight rather than an external one) |
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Precognition (viewing events before they occur) |
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Other experts, who really like to go into detail, add two more categories under the blanket term ESP. They are more pertinent to perception of the past than seeing into the future, but they're interesting to think about. They include: |
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Retrocognition (seeing past events without using the five senses) |
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Psychometry (learning the history of a particular object without using the five senses) |
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All of these categories share a common characteristic: perception that extends beyond the use of the five senses. Does that mean that they all add up to make up the one sixth sense that people commonly talk about? Or is it possible that people have many psychic senses, perhaps dozens or even hundreds, that extend beyond the familiar five physical senses? No one can answer this question (yet!), but it gives us a wide range of possibilities to ponder. On the other hand, certain skeptics insist that these phenomena are not unusual at all, and that a rational explanation must exist. |
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Those so-called realists out there might argue that there's a plausible explanation for having a hunch, the old-fashioned word for receiving information without conscious sensory input. But the key word here is ''conscious." |
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These realists claim that a hunch may involve a combination of unconscious sensory input, past experience, and good judgment. For example, you might suddenly have an odd sense that a thief is about to attack youwithout consciously realizing that you saw a knife glint in his hand. You also might have forgotten that you'd seen his face on a post-office poster several weeks ago. And perhaps you were already a bit tense because your shopping trip required going into an unsafe part of town. |
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