“Everybody knows…” Really? “It’s just common sense.” “Common Sense” refers to a vague notion that x should be obvious to any “normal” person. Street smarts. Folk wisdom. Savvy. Savoir faire. Wit. Culturally conditioned responses “make sense” within a particular social context.

Today we will examine a more precise definition. Everybody has an objective faculty which can be called “Common Sense“.

This faculty acts as the gatekeeper to conscious experience. As people don’t know they have such a faculty, they don’t improve it. Educators do not educate it, “Health Professionals” do not heal it. Power-possessors actively work to disrupt and distort it. Many so-called mental and social diseases or disorders result from malfunctioning of this very important faculty.

The “Establishment” does not want people to realize they have, and develop, actual Common Sense.

What is Common Sense?

You presently experience hearing, touch, sight, and so on. You remember experiences past. You can imagine experiences, combining memory and creativity. As I write this, I hear raindrops against the window. I remember the sound of rain on the thatch roof of a hut in the Amazon. I imagine (based on memory) descending to the street and meandering in the rain, the sounds, smells, sights.

Now: how do I tell this apart? How do I differ between present sensation, memory, imagination? You just know, right? That’s Common Sense: the faculty which makes that distinction, and – it is not always so cut-and-dried.

Imagination often significantly alters and even invents memories, as you can verify by comparing them with records. For example, I noticed and noted in my diary the titles of 5 books stacked in a bookstore. Years later, the diary entry proved the memory to be wrong.

Watching a previously viewed film, I remember a scene differently. The video didn’t change, my memory did! A memory of a dream may masquerade as a true memory. Many falsely assume their own memories to be precise records of “what happened,” yet courts of law often find that one witness remembers and describes an event quite differently from another.

Dreaming suspends Common Sense. One “senses” imagined objects as real. Fortunately, the nervous motor impulses do not engender actual movement – the dreaming mechanism disconnects the muscles, except for the eyes (REM sleep). Sleepwalking results from some failure of this disconnection.

A schizophrenic may hear a voice making comments or giving orders (“God told me to do it”), or may see an angel or devil. An anorexic perceives her skeletal body as being overweight. Common Sense discrimination between imagination and sensation breaks down.

Do you ever “see” the colors of music, “hear” the patterns of a painting, “taste” a sunset? This “Synesthesia” results from a warping or suspension of Common Sense. Sounds like fun! Not necessarily a bad thing unless it leads to delusional assumptions and dangerous actions.

Common Sense also sorts out thoughts, emotions, and other experiences. “Wishful thinking,” for example, confuses emotion with thought. Rationalizing adorns willful beliefs with “logic.” Conversely, thinking “what I should desire” fogs genuine emotion.

Modern Western education fosters the delusion that thinking about something equals experiencing it. Products of this education often can’t tell the difference. Far from developing Common Sense, the “educational” system deteriorates it. No wonder our modern societies have so much “Mental Disease!” Hmmm… do you smell a rat? The weaker the Common Sense, the easier to manipulate. Those who lack genuine Common Sense tend to believe statements of authority figures. “After all, he’s an Expert. He even has a PhD. He must be right!” Or, “Statistics show…” (See “How to Lie with Statistics,” by Darrell Huff.)

My teacher in “Social Studies” class assigned to write a paper about an addictive drug. Caffeine interested me – coffee had leashed me for several years already. My teacher commented, “That is a good paper, but caffeine is not considered an addictive drug.” Years later, a newspaper article confirmed that scientists had begun to recognize caffeine as an addictive drug. The experts finally figured out what the common person had known all along!

Why do imaginary or remembered sensations normally seem less “real?” Dreams and hallucinations do not depend on sensory stimulation, yet “feel” real. Children at play don’t experience as much difference as adults; many have a “real” imaginary companion, or experience the doll or stuffed animal toy as alive.

Evolution shaped Common Sense. Experience of actual sensations must trump memory and imagination. An animal satisfied by imaginary or remembered sensations would not persue actual food and sexual partners, would not survive and reproduce.

Common Sense also produces the feeling that all perceptions come to “one place” or center, which results in the illusion of “I,” or “ego.”

Many people who study “spiritual” teachings become confused. They hear or read something like, “In enlightenment you lose or transcend your ego,” and since they confuse Common Sense with “ego” or “I,” they think they have to give up or ignore their Common Sense. They “go crazy,” or “flip out” (of common sense). This misunderstanding may come from problems of translation. English and other modern Western languages lack the appropriate terms for esoteric science. Real Common Sense lays the foundation for self-work. “Spiritual” disciplines such as monasteries usually require novitiates to do gardening, kitchen, or other physical work. Sufis stipulated that members must master a craft.

Indeed, a very important step on the “ladder” of meditation is variously called “centering,” “focusing,” “concentration,” or “The Diamond Point.”

“Psychedelic” substances such as LSD, Ayahuasca, Mescaline, and so on, also affect Common Sense, sometimes extremely. Beneficial experiences with them call for carefully controlled conditions (Leary’s “set and setting.”) Imagination or imagination/memory combinations take center stage. You may get “jumped” to the quickness of perceiving the functioning of your Common Sense. That is, your awareness may move to the “other side” of what is felt as the ego. This experience can be frightening, shocking, even traumatic, but in the right setting, also therapeutic. How does the nervous system create what you experience? Precisely how do your perceptions relate to “reality?”

Common Sense. Intelligence (in the I.Q. sense) won’t get you very far without it. So how do you develop it? Same as how you develop any other faculty: by exercise. “Perfect practice makes perfect.” Work on real-life problems with real-life solutions, to avoid delusion. Get your hands dirty. Gardening, cleaning, carpentering, knitting, tinkering… many enjoy hobbies that involve producing something with physical work. This helps the common sense. But factory jobs, where one works on only one step in the process, do not.

Striving to accomplish complex aims in the midst of life gives valuable feedback, keeps you sane. Weigh information you read or hear against your experience. Check your imagination, memory, and perceptions with external feedback.

Transcend your culture. Travel and converse with people of different cultures, with an open mind. Like a jewel encased in clay, Common Sense withstands the rubbing of conflicting cultural values.

Unfortunately, these days, Common Sense is not very common!