Definition of Telepathy
Telepathy is the movement of knowledge between people without the use of their five senses. It is a type of sixth sense where a direct transfer of thought is sent between the sender or agent to the receiver or percipient. Twins are commonly thought to be able to communicate telepathically. It is also referred to as ESP, or extrasensory perception.
Frederic W. H. Myers was the first person to use the word telepathy in 1882. He combined two Greek words, tele meaning distant and pathe meaning feeling, to describe a phenomenon in psychological and psychiatric patients. They were able to perform unspoken orders from their administrators while being mesmerized through the use of magnetic objects. Sigmund Freud also noticed this in his patients and concluded that it was a primitive faculty of the mind that was lost during the evolution of humanity.
After the end of World War I, Spiritualism became a mass movement as people sought comfort from the events of the war and the lost of loved ones. The Willing Game also became popular during this time. A large group of people would send someone out of the room and collectively think of something for the person to do, such as finding an object. If the person can do the task quickly, the game is successful.
Types of Telepathy and Some Terminology
Latent Telepathy: The transfer of basic information. This is not immediate for there can be a time-lag between when the sender and the receiver.
Retrocognitive or Intuitive Telepathy: The transfer of information about a past, present, or future state of the sender’s mind to the receiver.
Emotive Telepathy: The transfer of an emotion between people. Also called emotional transfer.
Superconscious Telepathy: Delving into the superconscious, or collectivized wisdom of humanity, to gain knowledge.
Clairvoyance: The ability to see an event happening at another place and/or time.
Mediumship: The ability to channel spirits from the afterlife.
Parapsychological Experiments
The first telepathic tests were taken in 1885 under the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). Two people were placed in separate rooms and had to communicate a two-digit number, visual image, or taste to each other. More recently, one experiment was even held in space: the astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell ran 200 series of numbers in his head while on the Apollo 14 mission. Four recipients on earth each read 51 series. This suggests that distance is not an issue with telepathy.
It has been concluded that women are better receivers of telepathic messages than men because they are commonly thought to be more in-tuned to their emotions. In general, both the sender and the receiver have to be in a strong emotive state in order for telepathy to work. Yet no matter how convincing telepathy may seem, there is no solid proof of its existence because it is nearly impossible to conduct controlled experiments on the human mind. However with anything else that is spiritual or religious, the conviction one feels will help keep the belief alive.
