I am wondering about our capacity to see or hear — to perceive. For instance, is “seeing” with the heart more than a metaphor? Is there a way of perceiving that exceeds our usual senses? For that matter, could it be said that there IS another sense?Once I was asked to contribute a chapter on the supernatural understanding of psychopathology for someone’s three-volume project about abnormal psychology through the ages. I wrote the following:Naturalism is the philosophy of the naturalist perspective, and it stands behind the human science of psychology. K.A. Aho, in the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, asserted that a human being is a “lived-body,” — a dialogical way of being that is already engaged and embedded in a web of socio-historical meanings. That is, people are born embodied into a culture, thrown into it as the philosopher Martin Heidegger has said. Aho claimed that the job of the human sciences is not to explain existence but to understand how we interpret ourselves, how we make meaning out of our experience of being in this world. A background of meanings is always already in place informing the development and direction of a worldview. The background that informs the discipline of psychology is naturalism, but by contrast the background that informs the discipline of theology is anti-naturalism, and perhaps for some a more specific version of non- or anti-naturalism known as supernaturalism.Religious people believe in the supernatural. You don’t have to be religious to believe in the supernatural, but religious people do. There is a current horror movie franchise going that uses the term “paranormal,” and it usurps a small branch of psychology that has had interest in things like telekinesis (the ability to move objects with your mind) and extra-sensory perception (the ability to read minds).Recently, I have been working on an article for a professional journal looking at the philosophy of science involved with research into psychotherapy, and I wrote the following:More to the point concerning research, naturalism takes two sub-categories. Ontological naturalism concerns reality — the proposition that nothing exists outside that which can be examined empirically in the physical world. Methodological naturalism concerns the way to investigate that physical world — a commitment to certain methods for limited purposes, i.e. the scientific method. By contrast, in discussions of research methodology anti-naturalism is everything that goes beyond the physical world and is usually pointed at confronting naive realism and ontological naturalism. Thus, for instance, phenomenology, which is a philosophy of subjective experience, is of the non-naturalistic perspective.All of that probably seems like a lot of gobbledygook. It is philosophical and academic jargon, but basically I am wondering if there is a distinctly spiritual way of perceiving. If so, it would be anti-natural in character. Does God use our usual and more naturalistic ways of perceiving to get His messages across, or is there a special channel, a uniquely spiritual means by which God communicates? Or perhaps it is a combination of the two, as when something happens in our natural world but we get the spiritual significance of it. I think people attempt to use the natural world in order to get guidance from God, as when someone lays out “a fleece” to see what God is trying to tell them. Such would take place when a person says to God, “Give me a sign.” Then something happens in the natural world, and that person believes he or she has heard from God. But beyond that, is there simply some kind of knowing that comes to a person, some kind of impression, some kind of message that God imparts and it simply arrives without any essential naturalistic sense or character to it?I believe this can happen. Scripture calls this God’s “word.” It is the direct contact one experiences in which a person hears from God, sees God at work, and otherwise senses something that really has no sensory correlate. There is no sound to hear; yet, a person hears. There is no writing on the wall to witness; yet, someone sees.The Bible is not like the arc of the covenant in a Steven Spielberg movie. No physical fire flows out from its pages to scorch the earth and all its inhabitants. When you see a Bible, it looks like a book — one among many. To be sure, that is the way some people see it, with a thoroughgoing naturalism. They believe the Bible is just a product of anthropology, something people have created through centuries of storytelling and the innate need to scare away the monsters in the dark.The Bible, however, is more than that. The Bible is a revelation of God in and of itself, but one does not actually hear from God by reading the Bible in a natural fashion. In all cases when someone hears from God, God must speak to a person’s heart and mind supernaturally, and that includes while the person is reading the Bible. God must speak to a person’s heart and mind while in worship, or else it’s just so much music and people getting excited by the volume. God can speak to a person’s heart and mind riding the bus, and then the bus ride becomes worship. God can speak to a person’s heart and mind while he or she is looking at the ocean, reading a novel, looking at Facebook, making love or disciplining the kids, and when that happens God intercedes, teaches, and affects life.Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” One must be listening, turned toward God and in a sense asking for the supernatural capacity to hear or else God’s word is missed in the natural hiss of static chatting. The Bible also says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” The ability to hear from God, to hear God, is a matter of seeking and asking but also of stopping and waiting. It comes naturally, but it is supernatural. It is psychological, but it is also spiritual.