The Sixth Sense: The Door to the Temple of Wisdom

“The Sixth Sense defies description! It cannot be described to a person who has not mastered the other principles of this philosophy, because such a person has no knowledge, and no experience with which the Sixth Sense may be compared.” — Napoleon Hill

The Capstone of the Philosophy

This final chapter represents the apex of Napoleon Hill’s philosophy — the point at which all thirteen principles converge into something that cannot be fully understood or experienced by reading alone. It must be lived. It must be earned through the patient practice of the preceding twelve principles. Hill himself writes that he hesitated to include this chapter, fearing it would seem too mystical to readers who had not worked through the system, and dismissible to those who had not experienced the phenomenon it describes.

The Sixth Sense is what Hill calls “the receiving set through which ideas, plans, and thoughts flash into the mind.” It is not the same as intuition in the everyday sense — a vague feeling or hunch. It is a reliable, consistent channel of communication between the prepared, cultivated mind and what Hill calls Infinite Intelligence — a dimension of knowing beyond what can be accessed through ordinary analysis or experience.

How the Sixth Sense is Developed

Hill is explicit that the Sixth Sense is not given — it is grown, through the sustained practice of the other twelve principles. Each principle contributes something essential to its development:

• Desire — provides the emotional fuel and the specific purpose
• Faith — opens the mind to receiving guidance beyond ordinary knowledge
• Auto-Suggestion — conditions the subconscious to be a reliable channel
• Specialized Knowledge — provides the material that the Sixth Sense can work with
• Imagination — develops the mental faculty through which intuitive impressions are received
• Organized Planning — gives intuitive guidance something concrete to attach to
• Decision — allows the guidance received to be acted upon promptly
• Persistence — maintains the practice long enough for the Sixth Sense to fully develop
• Master Mind — amplifies the mental energy available for higher forms of reception
• Sex Transmutation — provides the creative fire that elevates the mind to its highest functioning
• Subconscious Mind — is the mechanism through which the Sixth Sense operates
• The Brain — is the physical instrument that receives and transmits thought at the sixth-sense frequency

Together, these twelve principles prepare the mind for a quality of knowing that no single one of them, practiced in isolation, could produce.

The Council of Invisible Advisors

One of the most unusual and memorable practices in the book is what Hill describes as his own method for developing the Sixth Sense and accessing the combined wisdom of the greatest minds he had studied: a nightly “meeting” with a council of nine imaginary advisors.

Hill’s Invisible Council

For many years before writing Think and Grow Rich, Hill conducted imaginary meetings with nine historical figures he had chosen as his “invisible counselors”:

1. Abraham Lincoln — for integrity, humility, and wisdom under pressure
2. Napoleon — for military strategy, decisiveness, and the will to overcome obstacles
3. Carnegie — for organized effort and the Master Mind principle
4. Darwin — for patience, systematic observation, and intellectual discipline
5. Lincoln — for emotional intelligence and long-term thinking
6. Emerson — for philosophical insight and the relationship between the individual and the universal
7. Thomas Paine — for courageous, clear-thinking challenge to convention
8. Edison — for creative persistence and practical genius
9. Henry Ford — for efficiency and vision

In these nightly sessions — which Hill conducted in a state of deep, relaxed concentration — he would present each advisor with a problem or question and then listen for what he imagined their response might be. Over time, he found that these advisors developed distinct, consistent personalities in his imagination — and that the “responses” he received transcended what he consciously knew about these figures. Ideas, perspectives, and solutions arrived that surprised him.

Hill does not claim this is supernatural. He suggests two possible interpretations: either the imagination, thoroughly primed with knowledge of these figures, was able to generate genuinely new combinations and insights; or some form of genuine contact with wider intelligence was made through this practice. He leaves the interpretation to the reader.

The Practical Value of the Invisible Council

Whether understood mystically or psychologically, Hill’s invisible council practice has a clear practical value: it forces a kind of thinking that most people never engage in.

When you sit with a problem and ask “How would Lincoln approach this?” or “What would Edison do with this constraint?” you are temporarily escaping the prison of your own habitual perspective and accessing the mental models, values, and problem-solving approaches of some of history’s most effective thinkers. This is not so different from what great coaches and mentors provide — an outside perspective that reveals what the person inside the situation cannot see.

Building Your Own Council

1. Choose five to nine figures — historical, contemporary, or fictional — whose qualities of mind and character you most admire and wish to develop in yourself.
2. Spend some time genuinely studying each one: read their writings, their biographies, the accounts of people who knew them. The more vividly you can imagine their specific perspective, the more useful the practice.
3. Each evening, after your auto-suggestion session, conduct a brief imaginary council meeting. Present a specific problem or question. Imagine each advisor in turn responding — not with generic platitudes, but with the specific perspective you believe they would bring based on what you know of their life and values.
4. Write down whatever comes. Don’t edit for plausibility. Review in the morning.
5. Notice over time which advisors seem most consistently useful for which types of problems.

The Synthesis: All Thirteen as One System

Hill closes this chapter — and the book — by returning to the central claim: the thirteen principles are not independent techniques that can be cherry-picked and applied in isolation. They are an integrated philosophy of mind that produces its fullest results only when all thirteen are practiced together, consistently, over time.

The analogy he uses is organic: a healthy body requires all of its systems working together. Strengthen only the lungs while neglecting the heart, and you have not improved health — you have created a different kind of imbalance.

The person who practices all thirteen principles, Hill argues, will eventually experience a transformation of mind that goes beyond technique. They will find themselves operating with a quality of perception, judgment, and creative capacity that they could not have imagined at the beginning of the journey. This is what the Sixth Sense, fully developed, actually is: not a party trick or a mystical power, but the natural result of a mind that has been systematically cultivated, protected, directed, and opened.

The Final Reflection

Of the thirteen principles in this book, which one have you most consistently neglected? Which one, if applied more fully starting tomorrow, would produce the most significant change in your results? And what is the one quality — the one habit of mind — that you most want to build through this system? The answer to that last question is the beginning of your next chapter.

Key Takeaways

• The Sixth Sense is the capstone of Hill’s philosophy — not a technique in isolation, but the natural result of all twelve preceding principles practiced together over time.
• It is described as a reliable channel between the prepared, cultivated mind and Infinite Intelligence — a form of knowing that transcends ordinary analysis and experience.
• Hill’s invisible council practice — nightly imaginary meetings with nine historical figures — is a concrete technique for accessing perspectives beyond one’s habitual mental models.
• The practice works psychologically, even setting aside metaphysical claims: it forces perspective-taking that reveals blind spots and generates ideas beyond one’s own habitual thinking.
• The thirteen principles function as an integrated system, not a menu of independent techniques; the fullest results require the fullest application.
• The Sixth Sense cannot be fully taught — it can only be described to those who have developed it through practice. The rest of the philosophy is the preparation.