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Telepathy
The psychic
phenomena by which communication occurs between minds, or mind-to-mind communication.
Such communication includes thoughts, ideas, feelings, sensations and mental
images. Telepathic descriptions are universally found in writings and oral
lore. In tribal societies such as the Aborigines of Australia telepathy
is accepted as a human faculty, while in more advanced societies it is thought
a special ability belonging to mystics and psychics. Although not scientifically
proven, telepathy is being increasingly studied in psychical research.
History:
"Telepathy" is derived from the Greek terms tele ("distant")
and pathe ("occurrence" or "feeling"). The term
was coined in 1882 by the French psychical researcher Fredric W. H. Myers,
a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Myers thought his
term descrbed the phenomenon better than previous used terms such as the
French "communication de pensees," "thought-transference,"
and "thought-reading."
Research interest in telepathy had its beginning in Mesmerism. The magnetists discovered that telepathy was among
the so-called "higher-phenomena" observed in magnetized subjects,
who read the thoughts of the magnetists and carried out the unspoken instructions.
Soon other psychologists and psychiatrists were observing the same phenomena
in their patients. Sigmund Freud noticed it so often that he son had to
address it. He termed it a regressive, primitive faculty that was lost in
the course of evolution, but which still had the ability to manifest itself
under certain conditions. Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung thought it more important.
He considered it a function of synchronicity (1).
Psychologist and philosopher William James
was very enthusiastic toward telepathy and encouraged more research be put
into it.
When the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) was founded in 1885,
after the SPR in 1884, telepathy became the first psychic phenomenon to
be studied scientifically. The first testing was simple. A sender in one
room would try to transmit a two-digit number, a taste, or a visual image
to a receiver in another room. The French physiologist Charles Richet introduced
mathematical chance to the tests, and also discovered that telepathy occurred
independent of hypnotism.
Interest in telepathy increased following World War I as thousands of bereaved
turned toward Spiritualism attempting to communicate with their dead loved
ones. The telepathic parlor game called "willing" became popular.
Mass telepathic experiments were undertaken in the United States and Britain.
Experimental findings:
Most often telepathy occurs spontaneously in incidents of crisis where a
relative or friend has been injured or killed in an accident. An individual
is aware of the danger to the other person from a distance. Such information
seems to come in different forms as in thought fragments, like something
is wrong; in dreams, visions, hallucinations, mental images, in clairaudience,
or in words that pop into the mind. Often such information causes the person,
the receiver, to change is course of action, such as changing his travel
plans or daily schedule, or to just call or contact the other person. Some
incidents involve apparent telepathy between humans and animals.
Telepathy seems to be related to the individual's emotional state. This
is true of both the sender and receiver. Most women were receivers, as case
findings showed, and one possible explanation is that women are more in
touch with their emotions and rely on intuition more than men. Geriatric
telepathy is fairly common, this may be due, it is speculated, to the impairment
of the senses with age.
Telepathy can be induced in the dream state.
It appears to be related to some biological factors: blood volume changes
during telepathic sending, and electroencephalogram monitoring show that
the brain waves of the recipient change to match those of the sender.
Dissociative drugs adversely affect telepathy, but caffeine has a positive
effect on it.
During his 1930 ESP experiments J. B. Rhine also made some discoveries concerning
telepathy: It was often difficult to determine whether information was communicated
through telepathy, clairvoyance, or precognitive clairvoyance. He concluded that telepathy
and clairvoyance were the same psychic function manifested in different
ways. Also, telepathy is not affected by distance or obstacles between the
sender and receiver.
A telepathic experiment conducted during the Apollo 14 mission in
1971 proved distance is not a barrier. The experiment was not authorized
by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), nor was it
announced until the mission was completed. Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell
conducted the experiment with four recipients on Earth, 150,000 miles below.
Mitchell concentrated on sequences of twenty-five random numbers. He completed
200 sequences. Guessing 40 correctly was the mean chance. Two of the recipients
guessed 51 correctly. This far exceeded Mitchell's expectations, but still
was only moderately significant.
Theories:
Although over the centuries various theories have been advanced to describe
the functioning of telepathy, none seem to be adequate. Telepathy, like
othe psychic phenomena, transcends time and space. The ancient Greek philosopher
Democritus put forth the wave and corpuscle theories to explain telepathy.
In the 19th century, the British chemist and physicist William Crookes,
thought telepathy rode on radio- like brain waves. Later in the 20th century
the Soviet scientist L. L. Vasilies proposed the electromagnetic theory.
The American psychologist Lawrence LeShan proposed that each person has
his or her personal reality, and the psychics and mystics share separate
ones from other people which allow them to access information not available
to others.
In conclusion telepathy, like the other forms of psychic phenomena is elusive
and difficult to test systematically. Enough evidence is available to reasonably
substantiate the phenomenon does exist. But, quantifying it seems to be
another matter. The phenomenon is closely connect to the emotional states
on both the sender and receiver which creates difficulty in replicating
experimental results. Attitudinal factors also influence the phenomenon.
The best that researchers can hope for is to have supportive and receptive
subjects in experiments that produce similar results. A.G.H.
Sources: 29,
Gertrude Schmeidler, The City College,
New York, 61.
(1) Synchronicity: A term coined by Jung to designate the meaningful coincidence
or equivalence (a) of a psychic and a physical state or event which have
no causal relationship to one another. Such synchronistic phenomena occur,
for instance, when an inwardly perceived event (dream, vision, premonition,
etc.) is seen to have a correspondence in external reality: the inner image
of premonition has "come true"; (b) of similar or identical thoughts,
etc. occurring at the same time in different places. Neither one nor the
other coincidence can be explained by causality, but seems to be connected
primarily with activated archetypal processes in the unconscious. Source: 60,