Psi Telepathy

Telepathy

What Is Telepathy?

The term telepathy is used in a variety of different ways. It can refer to almost any form of "mental communication".

The standard science fiction style of telepathy involves literal communication between two or more minds. Telepaths have psychic conversations with each other at a distance. Such a literal vew introduces all sorts of difficult questions - would such communication consist of transmision of language? That would seem inefficient and would suggest that the evolution of telepathy post-dates language. If telepathic communication is not linguistic, how would mental symbols map between different minds?

In fact telepathy can be much subtler than that. The term itself derives from the Greek words "tele" (distant) and "pathia" (feeling).

Telepathy does not have to involve complex messages and conversations, nor does it have to be two way. Any form of mind to mind communication would be classified as telepathy.

The most famous telepathic experiments are those involving Zener cards. Here one person attempts to transmit a symbol to another. Such telepathy - if it exists - would be simple one-way transmisssion of an image.

An extension of the zener card experiments involves attempts to transmit more detailed images. For example, the sender might concentrate on a picture of a house whilst the receiver draws roughly what they "see". This allows for the more human and emotional aspects of the mind to come into play. Unfortunately it also makes interpretation of the results more difficult. How does one judge the degree to which the received picture "matches" that which has been sent? Does a triangle on top of a square match a house? Or a sailboat?

At its simplest, telepathy need not even be conscious. Many of us have had a "feeling" that someone we know is in trouble or needs our help. This "remote empathy" could be considered a form of unconscious telepathy at the raw emotional level. Unfortunately such intuitive feelings are impossible to test under laboratory conditions and are immune to rigorous statistical analysis.

Does Telepathy Exist?

So, does telepathy exist? The skeptics would, correctly, point to the lack of convincing experimental evidence and the fact that instantaneous mental communication at a distance would break many of the currently accepted scientific theories.

Those who have experienced some form of telepathy would say that lack of a scientific theory to explain their experiences simply points to a failing of the current scientific model of the universe.