Course Excerpt: Psychic Skills Course Excerpt: Psychic Skills Course Excerpt: Psychic Skills The extra-ordinary powers of the mind known as “psychic abilities” are an inherent gift to all of us. Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips tell us in their book The Development Of Psychic Powers (1988) that psychic powers are our birthright. Some people more naturally express these abilities than others. For the others, psychic abilities may be developed through study and practice. It is also called “intuition” or “psychic abilities.” In more conservative circles it is called a “hunch” or “gut feeling.” The term ESP, “extra sensory perception,” was coined by the late Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine. He was a professor and head of the parapsychology laboratory at Duke University. Dr. Rhine was ridiculed by some and admired by others, and he was working with parapsychology at a time when it was considered taboo.
It is a good thing that the “6th sense” is gaining a revived recognition of its usefulness. Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), “As the end of the second millennium draws near, the limitations of logic, rationality, and the scientific method as the sole means of guiding our lives are becoming all too painfully clear. Increasingly our world is turning to modes of perception and understanding that don’t rely on evidence presented to our senses, modes such as intuition and faith… The early Greeks (Greece being the birthplace of logic, philosophy, and the rudiments of the scientific method) recognized that rational thought is incomplete and needs the support of intuition.”