The Sixth Sense Is Reason over Instinct

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 35 pages

The full treatment of a distinction that appears in miniature in Apprehension and Comprehension in Confusing Words. The sixth sense is defined as Mental Fire perceiving and registering the other five, with the argument from Plotinus for why something of the kind must exist: that there can be no perception without a unitary percipient, whose identity enables it to grasp an object as an entirety. Two epigraphs give the shape of the doctrine — the Katha Upanishad on the senses as horses, the body as chariot, kama-manas as the reins and intellect as the charioteer; and the Pythagorean line that it is mind that sees and hears all things, while whatever else exists is deaf and blind.

The core claim is that reason is purely human while instinct is an endowment of Deity, and that the two stand in inverse relation — reason developing only at the expense of natural instinct. The terms are given in Greek: the divine or spiritual soul, nous, without Anima Mundi is rational and noetic; the animal or astral soul, psyche, within Anima Mundi is irrational and phrenic. Reason is the outcome of the slow development of the human brain, the noetikon; instinct is the spiritual unity of the five senses endowed by Deity, the aisthetikon. From that follows the contrast the middle chapters work out, between rational conduct and automatic behaviour, and the account of Anima Divina against Anima Bruta that recurs throughout this section.

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