ESP [Extra Sensory Perception] : Sixth Sense

Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP) is defined as ability to acquire information by paranormal means independent of any known physical senses or deduction from previous experience. The term was coined by Duke University researcher J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as telepathy, precognition and clairvoyance. ESP is also sometimes casually referred to as a sixth sense. The term implies sources of information currently unexplained by science. Popular belief in ESP is widespread.

The existence of ESP abilities is highly controversial, and no scientifically conclusive demonstrations of the existence of ESP have been given. Parapsychology explores this possibility, and some experiments such as the ganzfeld have been suggested as good evidence of ESP.

Types of ESP

Precognition
Precognition is the ability to know things ahead of time. Nostradamus is one famous example of a person with precognitive powers. However, there are many psychics who claim they can tell the future. The more precognitive power you have, the greater your chances will be of knowing about events before they happen. Precognition can come in many forms. One of the most common and reliable of these is through dreams. Dreams can sometimes provide very credible information about future events; however, this form of precognition can often be hardest to believe and interpret. Perhaps this is because your dreams don't seem as real or tangible as knowledge that comes to you while you're awake. That's not to suggest that all dreams are predictions of the future — far from it. Most dreams have nothing to do with precognition. Still, learning to use your dreams as guides, and becoming able to discern which dreams anticipate future events, can be very valuable skills.

Retrocognition
Retrocognition is the ability to look into the past and get information that is not otherwise available to you through one of your five senses. For some people, this information comes spontaneously. For example, one woman with strong retrocognition skills reported that she was standing by the side of the road one day and flashed upon of a scene of a car accident. This vision had a disturbing effect on her. In fact, it was so compelling and realistic that she set out to determine if a crash had actually taken place there. Upon investigation, she found that indeed, a terrible accident had occurred just days before, exactly as she had envisioned it. However, not everyone with retrocognition experiences these spontaneous flashbacks. Certain individuals with this skill use meditation or purposeful visualization to look back into the past.

Telepathy
Mental telepathy is the ability to know what another person is thinking or visualizing without being told anything about their inner thoughts. Statistically speaking, telepathy is a relatively more common way to exercise your sixth sense. Perhaps that's because it can be easier to get information by reading another person than by trying to obtain information from things like one does with clairvoyance. In some cases, the connections between people seem to somehow support telepathy.
Perhaps you've experienced telepathy in your own life by knowing who is on the line as soon as the phone rings, even if there's no special reason to expect that person to call. You might also have had telepathic experiences where you thought about someone you hadn't talked to in ages, only to have them contact you later that same day. In this latter case, you don't really know whether it was you who experienced the telepathy or if it was the person who did the calling that did. You can check with them to try to straighten it out, but the fact of it may never be clear.

Remote Viewing
Remote viewing is the ability, while staying in one place, to "go" somewhere else with the power of your mind and visually see what is there. Space is not a limiting factor for individuals who have strong remote viewing capabilities. Interestingly, there has been substantial experimentation using remote viewers to examine whether or not this type of ESP truly exists and can be relied upon. One example is the government-funded "Stargate" project that had psychics attempt to remotely view foreign targets for intelligence purposes. The viewers' results were good enough that this program received government support for many years. Today it's even the subject of a number of books. However, that doesn't mean that remote viewing has been determined to be foolproof. Although indisputable evidence exists regarding the legitimacy of remote viewing, it's still difficult to rely on this kind of information. Nearly everyone makes mistakes at times, even excellent remote viewers.

Clairvoyance
Clairvoyance is the ability to know something that is currently taking place without reliance on any of your five senses to obtain that knowledge. For example, sometimes an individual will suddenly see in their mind's eye an event that is currently transpiring; only later will they get confirmation that what they envisioned truly happened. At other times, clairvoyants will not see the whole picture but will simply sense that something happened. Mostly, clairvoyance is the ability to get information about things: "mindless objects." Take this story of a woman who lost the stone in her wedding ring.

Incident Relating to Clarivoyance:
One afternoon during lunch, a woman looked down at her hand only to realize that one of the three diamonds in her wedding ring was gone. She was extremely upset because had no idea when or where she'd lost the stone. She was certain it was gone forever. After breaking the news to her husband, the two began to look all through their house for it, not having any idea where the stone might be. Then suddenly, the husband had a vision that his wife's diamond was on the ground underneath the movie-theater seat she had occupied the night before. He didn't tell her about this vision at first, in case he was mistaken. Instead he told his wife he was going to the store and returned to the theater to look for the diamond. Sure enough, when he reached the spot where they had been sitting, the stone was there, just like he had pictured it. He brought the diamond back to his wife to her great delight and told her about the mental picture that led him to it.

Out-of-Body Experience(OBE)
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE), is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body (autoscopy). About one in ten people has had an out-of-body experience at some time in their lives. Scientists know little about the phenomenon. OBEs are often part of the near-death experience, and reportedly may also lead to astral projection. It is claimed that OBErs sometimes observe details during an OBE which were unknown to them beforehand.

In some cases the phenomenon appears to occur spontaneously; in others it is associated with a physical or mental trauma, use of psychedelic drugs, or a dream-like state. It is possible to induce the experience deliberately, for example through visualization while in a relaxed, meditative state. Recent (2007) studies have shown that experiences somewhat similar to OBEs can be induced by direct brain stimulation. Relatively little is known for sure about OBEs. Some of those who experience OBEs may have willed themselves out of their bodies, while others found themselves being pulled from their bodies (usually preceded by a feeling of paralysis). In other accounts, the feeling of being outside the body was suddenly realized after the fact, and the experiencer saw their own bodies almost by accident.

Mediumship
Mediumship is a form of relationship to spirits practiced in many religions, including Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo, Kardecism, and Umbanda.
The term "mediumship" denotes the ability of a person (the medium) to experience and/or to tell others about their experiences of contact with spirits of the dead, spirits of non-corporeal entities, angels, and/or nature spiirits. In addition to experiencing these spiritual phenomena directly, the medium generally facilitates communication between non-mediumistic people and spirits who may have messages for them.
A medium may listen to and relate conversations with spirit voices, go into a trance and speak without knowledge of what is being said, allow a spirit to enter his or her body and speak through it, or may use some form of physical tool, such as a writing pad, to relay messages from the spirits those who wish to contact them.
Mediumship is part of the belief system of some New Age groups. In this context, and under the name channelling, it most often refers to a medium receiving messages from a teaching-spirit of advanced wisdom.
In some cultures, mediums (or the spirits working with them) are said to be able to produce physical paranormal phenomena such as materializations of spirits, apports of objects, or levitation.

Psychokinesis
The term psychokinesis (from the Greek ψυχή, "psyche", meaning mind, soul, or breath; and κίνησις, "kinesis", meaning motion; literally "movement from the mind") , also known as telekinesis (Greek τῆλε + κίνησις, literally "distant-movement"), sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, denotes the paranormal ability of the mind to influence matter, time, space, or energy without the use of any currently known type of physical means. Examples of psychokinesis could include distorting or moving an object, or influencing the output of a random number generator.
The study of phenomena said to be psychokinetic is an aspect of parapsychology. Inquiry into psychokinesis under parapsychology laboratory conditions is most often done through test subjects attempting to influence random number generators. Some paranormal researchers are convinced that psychokinesis exists and deserves further study, pointing to experimental results such as those done using random number generators. Skeptics contend that psychokinesis does not exist but only appears to due to publication bias, fraud, delusion, statistical manipulation of scientific data, or other naturally explainable phenomena.