"Cogito ergo sum" - I think, therefore I am - the translation of those great words of wisdom uttered by the French philosopher Rene Descartes during the early seventeenth century. How true they first appear, yet so far from the truth they must remain. To this day, the best things in life cannot be proven. Isn't our mere existence just one huge fantasy, played out by mortal actors upon the stage of life? Shakespeare thought so but, to my limited knowledge, he never did name the writer, director or producer.

The 'Age of Reason' brought with it the general acceptance of personal reasoning; it took a massive step forward, leading us beyond the constraints of what history had dictated. Apparently, we were allowed to think not only about how we perceived things but also about how we had been led to perceive. Many worthy authors and philosophers readily welcomed the belief that reality cannot exist outwith the bounds of our own imaginations. Thoughts and ideas are all relative to past experience and through forming our own complex ideas, we can help sculpt our own lives. But, it is not outwith the bounds of reality to manipulate that which we believe to be true, is it?

Descartes believed in two types of substance - matter and spirit; we, as human beings are constructed of matter, we each have a mind, which is spirit, yet spirit may not be proven. Descartes believed that we could not accept anything as truth unless we clearly perceived it, yet despite man's immense understanding of science and technology, no experiment can produce proof positive of the existence of mind, which may also be spirit?

When such learned individuals make statements pertaining to the alleged fact that a body can exist without a mind, (therefor the two cannot be the same), I ask, how the hell did they deduce this? A body without a mind or, indeed, a mind without a body - it takes some considerable thought processing to work that one out, or is it just me?

If mind and body are separate and the body can exist without the mind then what is the probability of the mind existing without the body? And who can prove that the body is actually existing without the mind if we have no evidence of the mind's existence in the first place? The body can exist without the limbs but the limbs, in nature, cannot exist without the body. This is down to the simple mechanics of the human form - everything that exists as part of the body is dependent on the heart, therefore the heart cannot feed the mind, it being spirit? That Frenchman really got my brain churning and that, again, posed me with a problem. Where does the brain fit into this scenario? Ah, yes, it is part of the physical makeup of the body. It is the central processor for our five basic senses, our actions and reactions. It is the nerve centre and controller of all, the ultimate ruler of our body. Once it goes, the rest soon follows suit and, upon its cessation, clinical death is declared. Does it possess the mind?

I am no dualist. There is more to life than just matter and spirit. Take religion, for instance; doesn't the New Testament announce the existence of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? The Holy Trinity - or the magnificent three - may represent Body (matter), mind (spirit) and one other - that, which we shall call soul.

From here, I invite you to try some number crunching. I draw my comparisons loosely to the reasoning of one Sigmund Freud, born a Jew; he divided the mind into three parts: the id, the ego and the superego. Where has that lead us? We have body, we have mind, we have soul, but the mind, we find, apparently has three identities also. That's us up to six without dissecting the matter and the soul and suggests all types of scenarios. What if all three forms can be transcended to a further three divisions, each with a counterbalance? Quite a revelation, wouldn't you say? Wasn't six, six, six the supposed 'number of the beast'?

Weren't words once written stating that the 'blessed few' number but 144,000?

This is not a physical number, nor a quota, this is the sum of all the parts, which make up humanity. Don't be mad, I hear the cry! This is surely insanity? Well, here's why it may not be so...

Take your 144,000 and divide it by the six senses pertaining to the physical being.

Now take that new number and again divide it by the six facets of the human mind.

In turn, it may follow that the soul also represents the embodiment of six further divisions, so take your latest number and again divide it by the six.

Surely the devil must have beguiled you, do your eyes deceive you?

666.666666666666666666666666666666666

But, what if the beast does not exist? What if he represents nothing more than an elaborate hoax, ancient arithmetical wizardry used to subdue an inquisitive nation ill adapted to cope with the truth? Good-evil, ego-alter ego, yin-yang, life-death, the moral principle is to maintain a balance that is acceptable to human nature, each extreme cancels out the other and between the two we should seek a happy medium. Indeed, one cannot exist without the other and, as we are well aware, opposites attract. What if life, no matter how short, is given to offset death and in this short living space of time we have to determine our own number? What if eternal life could be proven? Who would control the book of numbers and by what means?

Freud believed that subconscious memories could guide behaviour. By trying to retrieve suppressed or repressed memories, he hoped to demonstrate an understanding of human behaviour. Freudian theory is still largely acknowledged in many therapists' work, resulting in analysis of dreams and hypnotic regression treatments to bring long forgotten memories to the fore. My own personal concern is that genetics and the evolution of species really botches all this up. Back in 1865 when Gregor Mendel established his basic laws of inheritance, he studied only that which could be perceived as truth - that which could be physically proven. Here lies my dilemma. The possibility exists that memories and thought patterns contain an element of inheritance and that many of these alleged 'repressed' or 'suppressed' memories depicted by Freudian theory may be nothing more than fragments not from past lives but, rather, from dilutions of inherited genetic characteristics. I invite you to prove me wrong and, in the meantime, introduce some 'food for thought'. Aspects of human matter can be inherited so why not aspects of the mind and of the soul? Wouldn't this, in turn, contribute to the evolutionary process?

The study of human genetics is ongoing. If reality is only that which we perceive to be true as proven by the five physical senses, what then of the power of suggestion? What if…?

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov received the Nobel Prize in 1907. Born in Russia in 1849, he became a renowned physiologist, probably most easily recognised for his studies of digestion and the 'conditioned reflex'. Basically, Pavlov successfully proved his theory using dogs, bells and food. The animals were 'conditioned' to expect reward in the form of food when they heard a specific sound. Indeed, the reaction could be produced even in the absence of reward after a period of 'conditioning'. Could the same be said for people? To what degree do our thoughts, actions and reactions of today reflect a long forgotten or even subconsciously conditioned response? Established religion can create the illusion of morally justifiable responses. Without morals, where would we be? What are morals? The rights and wrongs of human behaviour as dictated by whom? Over generations, as the world leaders change, so too, apparently, do the rules. Our fear of absolute chaos is all that stands between free will and our indoctrinated beliefs of reality. Once again we can draw comparisons between the physical and the metaphysical sciences of which, religion may be perceived as one.

Survival is paramount in nature, regardless of species. Survival can be seen as dependent on the three basic elements of water, food and air. Here, once again, we can witness the importance of this mystical number three. Stepping closer, you would expect to see clearer, but I prefer to take a step back and view the wider picture. Only individual existence can succeed with these three, basic elements. In order to truly survive we must also consider procreation, hereditary and knowledge. The physical body represents our tree of life, the senses representing our physical awareness. But does our inherent need for survival diminish when any of the five accepted senses cease to exist?

The whispered mention of any 'sixth sense' is soon hushed in both learned and religious circles, yet I ask the following…

Did governments spend massed fortunes attempting to cultivate minds for such dubious missions as 'remote viewing'?

Why was it suggested that esteemed military establishments tampered with the minds of suitable candidates in the project known as MK Ultra?

Did eminent scientists experiment with chemicals, such as fluoride, within the confines of war camps for the purposes of a minion of thought control?

What, exactly, is New World Order?

If the mind is spirit and the brain is matter, then accepting the fact that by influencing the brain one can control the mind, then matter must, in fact, be co-dependent on spirit? Remote viewing uses nothing that can be proven; yet it appears to reflect back to the five physical senses. Now, I'm really confused! We are back at that fearful number six again. The body must, indeed, be maintained by six senses, which obliterates the idea of extra sensory perception (ESP), as this suggests it is over and above that which is acceptable as normal. It has to be inherent in all humans, not just a chosen few.

Reality check - let us consider what we already have; The three subdivisions of human experience - body, mind and soul.

The Body - the representation of all that we can prove by means of not five but six senses, each driving our basic instincts for survival. It may be the temporary protector of the mind and soul, should they cease to exist at the point of death. Being of matter, and of genetic make-up, each trait was inherited from our forefathers and may, likewise, be passed on to our future offspring.

The Mind - some may say difficult to prove but to all accounts and purposes, it has a co-relationship with the body. It appears to be in control of the thought processes, which can, to a degree, be mapped out in the brain. Here, we can experience the invisible elements such as ideas, imagination, emotion, dreams, memories and personality - six different elements; each created by life experiences. No two minds can be identical because the laws of inheritance can be tarnished by random selection. Even identical twins can differ in their thoughts, yet their actions and outlook remain similar. Controlling the mind by means of an external source can also assimilate control of the body.

The Soul - again cannot be proven, but can theoretically display a co-relationship with the mind. The soul can transcend basic human reality. Like the body and mind, it may send experiences to the senses but it may also communicate with other souls. To realise the true potential of its existence we have to consider the possibility of experiencing that which we have never physically known. If all we had were five senses, how would someone bereft of each, experience faith, hope and joy or any of their counterparts? What, truly, does the soul contribute to our short, blinkered life span? Discovering six levels of consciousness of the soul could be the predetermining factor of the true meaning of life.

Philosophers! Where would we be without them? What woman has ever climbed to the dizzy heights of fame or infamy for her philosophical wonderings? John Locke was born on August 29th 1632, star sign Virgo. I often wondered at the sometimes-pinpoint accuracy of astrologers and astronomers but usually always put it down to powers of deduction, chance and coincidence. That was until I accepted that fate was not brought about by pure chance and chance was a game of numbers. Coincidence, like chance, is a mathematical percentage with a margin of error. Yet what are numbers?

Absolute zero has always fascinated me because of its failure to provide evidence of its existence. No matter how often we half something we never run out, therefor when someone utters the ubiquitous accusation of your only having half a life, dumbfound them by replying that a half life is, in reality, eternal! Coincidences do not exist - they are events befitting the given situation, ones that we should expect or even welcome, despite not fully understanding that we helped create them.

Locke proclaimed his interest in equal rights for women. His belief that the subjugation of women was man made, and could therefore be reversed, was widely published and it is with this in mind that I now venture into territories new.

Conscious - Sub conscious - unconscious. Another group of three that must subdivide to further establish our pattern of life and death. Our soul could be the keeper of these mental states. Thought patterns must, like sound and light, emit frequency waves. To what distance will a sound, heat or light wave travel? By constantly halving the strength of that frequency do they ever cease to exist? Like genetic inheritance, by diluting the gene it will eventually fail to appear as recognisable, but many generations down the line, the right set of factors can, once again, re-establish the original trait.

Only when the body acknowledges the response can we truthfully say we are conscious of the effect. Our sub conscious state is part of our mind, partially controlled by our experiences and recognition of experiences, times, places, feelings and objects. Only in the unconscious state do we lose our focus completely… or do we? Nothing exists purely with a beginning, middle and end; there is always something in between. It is the 'in-betweens' that occupy my mind. The space between consciousness and sub consciousness is not empty, nor the space between sub consciousness and unconsciousness, for where, then, falls sleep? Is it really only a temporary interlude to recharge the physical attributes of the body and rest the mind? Can the mind exist without the body and can the soul be separated from the mind?

Emotions appear to be elements that can reflect self. They play on that illusive sixth sense. For every negative emotion there is a positive; love and hate, sadness and joy, despair and relief. How can one prove the existence of emotion when you cannot physically see them? Actions speak louder than words, but what if inhibitions prevent the implementation of those actions? Do we call it sanity or insanity? We become conscious of an internal battle between different personalities within the same body and mind and we can drop to the depths of calling this 'soul searching'.

The eyes are said to be windows to the soul but does it then follow that the soul of a blind man cannot be found, or that he will never understand or recognise his soul mate? Displays of emotion can be so subtle that they are easily overlooked, lest the eyes deceive the language of words or the intonation deceive the use of those chosen words. How then can emotions be expressed freely? Society dictates that we harness our thoughts, control our emotions and act in a way befitting the environment in which we exist. Freedom of speech exposes itself as a non-starter, with compliance an odds-on favourite. To bet against any of these is like taking on the outsider; win, lose or draw they will always say luck played her hand. Success, power and control are the ultimate goals of the disillusioned. Love, peace and understanding are the goals of the wise.

To summarise, once again, education, religion, social conditioning and the media teach us there are five senses. Any reference to a sixth sense is swept under the carpet or labelled as something mystical, spiritual or just plain mad but, what if there is a whole load more to it?

The sixth sense is not an illusion, there is nothing 'special' about it and everyone has it, only we don't all know it. If there is nothing more to life than existing within the frames of reality then life seems pointless, until you realise that 'reality' is a figment of our imaginations. It is merely that which we have been conditioned to accept as normal.

I would rather give up completely than continued facing a false reality, so I dug deeper. The findings could change your whole outlook on life.

For some strange reason, people 'find' one another, for no apparent reason. These 'coincidences' aren't anything to do with reality, as we perceive it; they are through that so-called sixth sense. Until we realise it exists we make so many wrong turns and miss so many opportunities that any one of them can lead to disaster. This subconscious 'thought' is not new. If you haven't witnessed it, then I'm sure you must, at some point, have pondered the meaning of life.

People come together through what others call 'fate' or 'destiny'. The odds of that happening are millions to one against, so much so, that it is almost suggesting collective thought.

Psychiatry, psychology and most of the -ologies were borne from the 'discovery' of this 'phenomenon', which is easily manipulated to fit in with the lay of the common land. In general, those individuals demonstrating any 'odd' behaviour were branded as either geniuses or mad men, depending on what elements they displayed. Everyone thinks. When you engage the thought processes of your mind you are literally weighing up your options, mentally calculating possibilities and visualising scenarios… arguing and reasoning different points of view with your self. How can one person argue or debate? With whom can they reason? The physical aspects of these internal 'struggles' are displayed as normal. Each 'argument' demonstrates a balanced point of view with determining factors such as moral principles and our awareness of right from wrong helping us arrive, hopefully, at the correct decision. Only when irrationalities descend can problems arise. Those who try to explain this as 'hearing voices' or who think aloud during these internal debates are locked up for it! Keep all the lunatics together because society can't cope with them. Here, we find what they term schizophrenia, paranoia and delusion. When your perception of reality can't fathom something out, it saps the necessary energy from your body, hence the body being necessary to fuel the mind and provide 'food for thought'. When you finally come face to face with the realisation of truth, it hits you like a bolt of lightning.

Trauma is what throws us into the state that allows us to begin to see all these things. People like Freud and Jung worked on that theory. Even my favourite, Pavlov, knew it and demonstrated its existence as near perfectly as any. Plato did too. All the stuff about platonic relationships is achievable but only when the persons concerned are on the same psychological level and in perfect control.

What about love? Love is as high as it gets hence the sayings; "love gives you wings" and, "love can make you fly". It is energy within the soul, a different level of consciousness that can cause confusion at first. It is eternal and offers eternal 'life' if you like. All the greatest loves go down in history for all to see, whether in literature, art or music, to remind us that it isn't impossible to achieve. There should be no mistaking it - every powerful emotion invokes an element of trauma.

Unfortunately, people get fed up waiting for it and go looking for the next best thing. If you succeed in accepting that weird 'sixth sense', subconsciously you wait. You make the mistakes, you straighten up and you continue along the curving path in search of the truth, wrongly comparing every future action with the past. One day you will find what you had never realised you were even looking for… the truth! It can take time but it will eventually find you. That is no coincidence.

I hope you have, by now, considered that there is far more to a meeting of minds than you thought previously possible. The internal struggle is only a physical reaction, the different facets of your 'character' (ego versus alter ego) trying to reason with each other. One casts doubts and the other tries to rationalise them. The mental battle rages on until a physical reaction is achieved; that can leave you drained. These are the things that are meant to maintain our sanity or push us over the edge. How often have you thought that someone's actions, reactions or fears were irrational? If you had been to the edge and back they wouldn't seem so strange. We are all on the edge and the next step is one giant 'leap of faith'. If you have ever dreamt the 'falling' dream, you know that the mind is conditioned to accept the fall but it's the sixth sense that kicks in and stops us hitting the bottom… that's when you normally wake with a start!

Once the trauma of realisation has been and gone, everything else is down to how we have perceived reality in the past. The doubts, fears and worries aren't real, they are merely the little voices in our heads battling for supremacy, forcing one to think about consequences, forcing one to think about a reality that maybe isn't really there. How can it be there? There is no concrete, scientific evidence, and nothing physical to show for what and how one really feels.

Emotions running high - love - nobody can steal something we only feel. The wicked thing is that nobody can prove its existence either. In this weird, wacky higher consciousness, we can fly. We can look into our minds and see whatever we want and those same thoughts can transfer between two people no matter how far apart they are. Emotion is blind; it is like a sixth sense that doesn't need actual physical elements like the other five. We have already begun mapping our future. All that is stopping us pursuing it is that stupid beast called 'reality'. Of love, didn't someone once say, 'let it be carved in our hearts and carved into stone, for all to bare witness'?

Time is meaningless, it just reinforces an unreal reality.

When your number's up, it's up! On cloud 999

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