What Exactly Is Mental Telepathy?

By Rachel Jordan

The term 'mental telepathy' is misleadingly broad. It essentially means the direct communication of thoughts between people without using the basic five senses. There is a huge difference, however, between having a creepy feeling that someone is watching you and being able to pick the plans for a nuclear reactor out of an unsuspecting scientist's mind. Mental telepathy covers a huge range of abilities from very basic to fairly complex. This article will attempt to explain the different levels of mental telepathy.

NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION:

Kinesics, or non-verbal communication, occurs whenever two people communicate without speaking, using their eyes, body language, and facial expressions instead. This can range from simple messages like 'go away' to entire conversations. Any parent who has tried to communicate something to their spouse that they don't want their children to hear has experienced this. Non-verbal communication is achieved easiest and most accurately between people who know each other well"siblings, parents and children, husbands and wives, and close friends.

Most people do not regard this form of communication as mental telepathy since here communication is through senses and not just with sounds. Theoretically, this argument holds good. However, we cannot disregard the role of mental telepathy here. The very observation that this kind of non verbal communication is most effective in people who are intimate with each other or know each other well tells us that the minds of these people are more in synch with each other. However, skeptics may argue that this communication is merely effective because people who know each other well understand each other's body language well or have previously developed a mode of non verbal communication.

EMPATHY:

When you can understand and perceive the emotional state of the other person, then this ability is known as empathy. Many people can do this well and many cant because the ability to put your self in somebody else's shoes is not inherent. However one can develop empathy with preparation and observation. This fact can be seen in actors who can not only emulate the emotional states of others but also enhance their empathy so much that they can laugh and cry exactly like the other person.

Sympathetic pain or truly feeling the pain of the other person is often experienced by many. This can be particularly prevalent in mothers who even develop a fever when their children are sick. There are times when close friends or relatives actually feel the pain whether it's emotional or physical or even mental of the other person. Then there is something known as long distance empathy which all of us have known and experienced at one time or the other. This happens when some one real close to us has problem or gets hurt or even is in danger and is somewhere else and we feel their pain and emotion.

There are some skeptics and psychologists who scoff at these kind of incidents and call them the work of an overactive brain. In certain cases they may have a point because we can see the injury and the hurt. However in cases of long distance empathy where a person doesn't even know that his loved one is injured or hurt, then they don't have an explanation about why a person who cannot even see the other person can feel the pain.

CONCRETE CONCEPTS

Thought transference of symbols, numbers, or names of objects between two minds is beyond the regular five senses in communication. A designated sender and receiver, intense concentration, training, and practice are often involved in this type of mental telepathy, such as a mind reader or physic with a television audience, who is able to guess the names of loved ones or what card a person is holding in their hand.

Here the principle is that simpler concepts are easily communicated. For instance an animal is more difficult to communicate than a shape or color.

Experiments in telepathy are often conducted on this level. The Zener cards used in tests of mental telepathy are simple, concrete black-and-white symbols (a circle, square, star, plus sign, and three wavy lines). On one hand, skeptics and critics of the Zener cards have pointed out that with only five cards to choose from, even a random guess has a 20% chance of being right. On the other hand, one could argue that a shared, known, limited set of concrete symbols increases the ability of the sender and receiver to coordinate their thoughts. Furthermore, although anyone can get a 20% success rate with enough guesses, a success rate of 50% or higher (which have happened) can not be explained away by simple statistics.

ABSTRACT CONCEPTS

Mental telepathy at this level goes beyond simple colors and shapes to more abstract concepts like ideas, actions, or values. It is rare and difficult for telepaths to achieve this level, and experiments have shown that they have a lower success rate.

Telepathy shouldn't be ruled out when it comes to animals that seem to communicate ideas to each other through non-verbal actions. Because animal brains lack prefrontal lobes, telepathy would probably not go beyond simplistic ideas such as hunger or danger signals, but many have seen two dogs look at each other and go running for an almost pre-decided location.

While humans may have once been capable of telepathy, as the species evolved and developed language, it was no longer needed as a form of communication. With the right stimulation humans may be able to call upon this dormant ability that includes abstract communication of ideas. Mental telepathy could be used to communicate, without the need for the use of the five senses.

However, there are some who feel that man may be able to develop ESP and telepathy and such psychic abilities in the near future. As man's psychic powers grow it may be possible for the entire race to become telepathic in the future. - 31521

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