now before i begin, let me state that i am not making a claim of psychic prowess or whatever you would like to call it.
i have discovered that instinct, when listened to closely, can actually be… well, at least similar to what we normally call psychic. more than once in the last week i have done things that i had no reason for doing, but i knew there was a purpose to doing it, and it kept me from trouble. once, i was speeding down a road in a hurry and slowed down for no reason, then passed a cop. another time, i looked over my shoulder to see someone pointing an airsoft gun at my head with no way of having known they were behind me. (they weren’t two feet back, more like 30.) i didn’t hear them, see them, see someone else look or slow down, or whatever, but i acted and it worked.
i guess my question is, is this simply instinct, heightened subconscious awareness, or is it somehow psychic?
also, is this a controllable thing, or coincidence?
I read an interesting theory about stuff like this once. The basic position was that because we end being right, and coincidentally it seems as if we’ve figured something out it registers for us a major event, ie., we remember all the times our spidey sense tingled and we were quasi-psychic.
What we fail to recall is all the times that we do something like this (like slow down when we’re speeding) and nothing happens.
I don’t want to say that psychics don’t exist… one because I can’t prove it and two because I don’t have that much interest in whether or not psychics can see the future.
But, I think that the relative importance we place on spidey-sense moments leads us to selectively remember times when we were right. Its also not that surprising that you saw a cop right after you were speeding… perhaps that road has a lot sections where people speed and the police have a lot of enforcement.
I’m of the impression that there is validity to people we would call ‘psychic’ or whatever other cork you want to put in the different third eye test tube the west has seemed to stir up.
I’m sitting here watching the NBA playoffs and once again, it’s occuring to me how good Lebron James really is. He happens to be in a profession which requires him to manipulate his body and a bouncing sphere, which is lucky for him as that profession pays quite well. I, along with everyone else is watching the same game, but somehow Lebron sees something more.
My point here is that almost everyone is really good at something. Sometimes it’s guessing last names, sometimes it’s playing basketball, sometimes it’s playing poker… All of these things require a type of insight, a keen ear to the universe if you will. The patterns are there, it’s just being able to spot them in a macro level that seems extra ordinary. I don’t think it is, which is to say I don’t think it’s any less feasible than a 21 year old playing a game at a near demi-god level.
I remember for about a week I could literally sense the potency of my next hand of poker while playing online… but it required so much mental effort I sort of grew out of it.
It’s all about listening, if you simply refuse to conceed that the universe is presenting itself to you at face value it will eventually turn translucent to the point of insanity.
I believe what you’re thinking about is not instinct, but intuition. Intuition can often be called “the voice inside that tells us what to do.” Instinct on the other hand, is predominantly reactionary; like a reflex system programmed into our nervous system. We cannot survive without instinct, but we cannot grow without intuition.
Self-knowledge, at the heart of philosophy, comes from intuition—the tool of self-reflection.
From a physiological and psychological perspective, there is evidence that we process sensations both consciously and unconsciously. You may not have consciously realized that someone was behind you pointing a gun, though you may have sensed something unconsciously/intuitively/psychically and concluded that it was precognitive (since it was by the literal definition of the word).
For example, this evidence comes from studies of prosopagnosia (face blind) patients. They can’t recognize familiar faces, but their bodies react to the sight of familiar faces via the autonomic nervous system (something like a very mild form of a fight-or-flight response). Even more applicable is the blindsight patients who claim not to be able to see a flash of light; when asked to just guess where the flash of light was located, they can do it. Consciously, there is no awareness of the flash of light, but they unconsciously process and retain the information.
Of course, this is just a thought. I don’t think this theory would easily explain your foresight of a police car as well as gemty’s, but it’s another possibility for specific instances.