Jan 7, 2008

Telepathy

Telepathy is direct mind-to-mind communication. Telepathy comes from the Greek tele, meaning distance and pathe meaning 'feeling' and is a form of ESP, i.e. the ability to perceive extra-sensory information, i.e. information not usually available to the five senses of sight, sound, taste, feel and smell. The information is said to be received in the form of thoughts, ideas, feelings, images or sounds.

Scientific investigation of telepathy began with the research undertaken by the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882 by a group of Cambridge scholars for the purposes of investigating paranormal phenomena , a study known these days as parapsychology. The word 'telepathy' was adopted by one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research.

Tests for telepathy involved using Zener cards, which are a pack of 25 cards consisting of five symbols each appearing five times. The sender would look at card and the subject would attempt to perceive the symbol directly from the researchers' mind - sometimes the receiver and the sender would be in different rooms, or different buildings. The sender transmits the information, concentrating on the symbol on the card they have just drawn, while the receiver perceives the information.

Telepathy commonly exists between people who are close, for instance, mother and child. Often it can occur spontaneously in times of crisis when a loved one is in an accident or suffering some trauma. Their partner, or relative, may experience pain or feelings similar to what the victim is suffering.

J B Rhine, who carried out ESP tests in the US from the 1930s onwards, made the distinction between testing for clairvoyance, precognition or telepathy. He found that it was hard to differentiate between them in experimentation. For clairvoyance the researcher doesn't look at the card he or she has drawn, because otherwise the subject could be receiving the information from the researcher's mind which would be telepathy. Likewise, precognition tests for the ability to perceive the future so the subject needs to predict what the next card to be drawn will be.

Dream telepathyNew York psychiatrist, Montague Ullman, became interested in the possibility of sending and receiving telepathic messages while asleep through dreams . In 1953 Ullman started experiments to investigate dream telepathy. The receiver starts dreaming when they enter REM sleep so the sender needs to transmit needs strong, visual messages in the form of easily recognisable images at this time. His research did lead to positive results, with receivers reporting dreams that reflected the content of the images the senders were transmitting.

by www.thesupernaturalworld.co.uk

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