Spiritual Action

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.

EMPATHY

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.

'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.

There are some skeptics and psychologists who scoff at these kind of incidents and call them the work of an overactive brain. In certain cases they may have a point because we can see the injury and the hurt. However in cases of long distance empathy where a person doesn't even know that his loved one is injured or hurt, then they don't have an explanation about why a person who cannot even see the other person can feel the pain.

SYMBOL AND OBJECT PROJECTION:

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.

Here the principle is that simpler concepts are easily communicated. For instance an animal is more difficult to communicate than a shape or color.

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.

Interestingly there are certain animals which can communicate effectively and we have still not discovered their modus operandi. Telepathy may be one of the methods. In this kind of communication between animals very basic abstract concepts will be involved. Since animals do not have prefrontal lobes which enhance complex communication, this communication will be restricted to basic impulses like thirst hunger and even danger.

There is a theory that humans were once capable of telepathy, but lost it as the species evolved and developed language. If this is true, then with the right stimulation humans should be able to 'relearn' this dormant ability.

If enough people can develop these powers, theoretically all humans in the future could use mental telepathy to communicate, according to some scientific beliefs.