Yoga and Meditation

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

Whenever two people communicate without speaking, using body language or facial expressions instead, it is considered non-verbal communication or kinesics. Some people are able to communicate simple messages while others are able to communicate entire conversations using kinesics. You may have experienced this when giving looks to a cohort in a secret plan of action. Achieved easiest and most accurately between people who know each other well, kinesics involves knowing what the other person is thinking by non-verbal gestures or kinesics.

Some can argue (with good reason) that this doesn’t count as mental telepathy, as the two people are using their senses to communicate (just not with sounds). Technically, this is correct. This doesn’t mean, however, that mental telepathy does not play a role. The fact that non-verbal communication occurs most successfully between people who are related (like family), or who have lived together for extended periods of time (like spouses) implies that their minds might be more attuned to each other than to strangers. On the other hand, one could argue that this merely means the two people know each other well enough to understand each others more subtle body language, or have created agreed-upon nonverbal signals to communicate.

EMPATHY:

Empathy is the ability to recognize, perceive, or directly experience the emotions of others. Some people are very poor at this, and others are very good at this, being able to mentally ‘put themselves in another’s shoes’ and understand how they must be feeling. Empathy can be increased with training and practice. Actors, for example, are able to imitate the emotions of others, even to the point of being able to make themselves spontaneously laugh or cry.

‘Sympathetic pain’”feeling another person’s pain as if it were your own is something expectant fathers mention, some claiming they can feel the mother’s labor pains at the same time she is experiencing them. If someone close to you is experiencing an overwhelming emotion, you may feel an echo of the same emotion inside you, and mothers often describe this uneasy feeling when their child has been injured. The phenomena of long distance empathy, where a person suddenly feels that someone close to them is in danger, even though they are not near the person at the time is common in other relationships, as well.

Overactive imagination has been blamed by some psychologists and they feel other senses are being used, so it doesn’t count as mental telepathy. How would you explain the phenomena of long-distance empathy, when you are not in proximity to the person? This might explain the feelings experienced if you have sympathetic pain after seeing your child break his arm, however.

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.

The simpler the concept, the easier it is to communicate through thought alone. For example, a color or shape may be easier to convey than an animal.

This level involves a lot of trials in telepathy. In these experiments Zener cards are used. These cards have simple symbols engraved on them like black and white patterns, squares, circles, waves etc. There are many cynics and doubters who may say that since there are merely five cards involved, there is a probability of a guess being right at least 20% of the time. However, on the other end, people feel that having known symbols can enhance the thought coordination between the sender and the receiver thus enhancing their telepathic technique. Moreover even if we assume that random guesses may succeed 20% of them time, there is no explanation of success rate of 50% or more.

ABSTRACT CONCEPTS:

This level of mental telepathy involves more advanced abstract concepts than shapes and colors. Here people communicate ideas, values and actions, which is quite tough the success rate is quite low. Telepaths seldom achieve this level and the ones who do are pretty rare.

Some animals appear to communicate, and science is not able to explain how. Telepathy shouldn’t be ruled out. At this level, such animals would be using abstract concepts, albeit very basic concepts. Due to the nature of animal brains lacking prefrontal lobes, such ideas would probably not go beyond simplistic impulses like ‘hungry’, ‘thirsty’, ‘horny’, or ‘danger!’

Some people feel that initially in the olden days man had the power of telepathy, which declined as language and man, evolved. Assuming this is true, and then right research can show us the right way to rediscover this lost skill.

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.