Ouuuu, my spidey sense is tingling. We all have had a similar experience with our senses tingling in various capacities. Perhaps Spiderman and his spidey sense is closer to reality than comic book hero. At least when it comes to his spidey sense. It seems like most of the time I hear people talk about ‘Common Sense’, it is in reference to the lack of it in most people. Well, perhaps by their definition, but there is another common sense which certainly is common to us all.
The American Heritage Dictionary states the following as the definition for common sense:
n. Sound judgment not based on specialized knowledge; native good judgment.
Many times through out our lives we hear this phrase. It is often a relative term that is subject to the user of the phrase. However, in my recent study of the Baha’i Writings, I came across something that made me realize that the term common sense, might actually have a greater and more significant meaning than the ‘common’ way it has been used.
One of the most powerful books I have read is an interview with Abdu’l-Baha, one of the three central figures of the Baha’i Faith. The author of the book Laura Clifford Barney had a series of interviews with Abdu’l-Baha on a variety of subjects such as the nature of man, the meaning of life, and several mysteries relating to Christianity that have eluded humanity for centuries. All these are answered within these pages in a very simple manner. The name of this excellent book is called Some Answered Questions. I happened to reference something the other day, and recognized how a certain aspect of the nature of man actually relates to ‘common sense’.
The question that was presented to Abdu’l-Baha was the following:
Question. — What is the difference between the mind, spirit and soul?
(Abdu’l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 207)
He went on to answer this, and then further went on to discuss the aspects of the physical and spiritual powers within humanity. Read it carefully:
In man five outer powers exist, which are the agents of perception — that is to say, through these five powers man perceives material beings. These are sight, which perceives visible forms; hearing, which perceives audible sounds; smell, which perceives odors; taste, which perceives foods; and feeling, which is in all parts of the body and perceives tangible things. These five powers perceive outward existences.
Man has also spiritual powers: imagination, which conceives things; thought, which reflects upon realities; comprehension, which comprehends realities; memory, which retains whatever man imagines, thinks and comprehends. The intermediary between the five outward powers and the inward powers is the sense which they possess in common — that is to say, the sense which acts between the outer and inner powers, conveys to the inward powers whatever the outer powers discern. It is termed the common faculty, because it communicates between the outward and inward powers and thus is common to the outward and inward powers.
For instance, sight is one of the outer powers; it sees and perceives this flower, and conveys this perception to the inner power — the common faculty — which transmits this perception to the power of imagination, which in its turn conceives and forms this image and transmits it to the power of thought; the power of thought reflects and, having grasped the reality, conveys it to the power of comprehension; the comprehension, when it has comprehended it, delivers the image of the object perceived to the memory, and the memory keeps it in its repository.
The outward powers are five: the power of sight, of hearing, of taste, of smell and of feeling.
The inner powers are also five: the common faculty, and the powers of imagination, thought, comprehension and memory
(Abdu’l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 208)
Common sense here means a definition of a power that is within us all. The sense is a power that operates in both the inner and outer world in relation to the powers which we all possess as human and spiritual beings.
So next time you use the term common sense, remember that it took common sense for you to come up with that. 
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