The many facets of Mental Telepathy
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.
This may not count as mental telepathy, as the two people are using their senses to communicate, just not verbally and this is correct. However, mental telepathy plays a role, because their minds are more attuned to each other because of extended exposure to the way the others mind may think and some predictability comes into play, so there is a sort of mental connection. Two people that know each other well enough to understand more subtle body language, or have created nonverbal signals to communicate, might be argued that it is not be classified as mental telepathy.
EMOTIONAL TELEPATHY:
Through empathy it is possible to directly experience the emotions of others or connect on an emotional level. Putting yourself in another’s shoes’ and understanding how they feel is not something everybody is able to do. Training and practice can increase empathy. Imitating the emotions of others, even to the point of spontaneously laughing or crying is something actors and sociopaths can do everyday.
Most people have experienced ‘sympathetic pain’—feeling another person’s pain as if it were your own. For example, after witnessing someone close to you break their arm, you may experience an uncomfortable feeling or even an ache in your arm, even though you know it’s fine. Similarly, when someone close to you is experiencing an overwhelming emotion, such as joy, grief, or depression, you may feel an echo of the same emotion inside you. Finally, there is the phenomena of long distance empathy. In this case, a person suddenly knows—they FEEL it—that someone close to them is in danger, has been hurt, or is in pain, even though they are not near the person at the time.
Psychologists write off such empathetic phenomena as a simple trick of an overactive imagination. At the very least, they do have a point that other senses are being used. Would we be able to feel the sympathetic pain of a broken arm, for example, if we could not actually see the injury? This does not explain, however, the phenomena of long-distance empathy.
CONCRETE CONCEPTS:
This is the thought transference of concrete symbols and objects between two minds. Mental telepathy at this level must by necessity move beyond the regular five senses, and often requires a designated sender and receiver, intense concentration, training, and practice.
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.
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!’
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.
Other scientists believe however that telepathy and other esp and psychic powers are in fact the ‘future’ for mankind. And if enough people can develop these powers, theoretically all humans in the future could become telepathic.