‘Mental telepathy‘ can be a broad term that encompasses numerous things. It typically means reading the thoughts between people without using normal senses. The difference is a huge between having an intuitive gut feeling and knowing information that could only be gathered by reading somebody’s mind. Very basic skills can be construed as mental telepathy but so can very complex. Different levels of mental telepathy can be summarized in this article.

KINESICS COMMUNICATION:

Whenever two people communicate without speaking, using body language or facial expressions instead, it is considered non-verbal communication or kinesics. Some people are able to communicate simple messages while others are able to communicate entire conversations using kinesics. You may have experienced this when giving looks to a cohort in a secret plan of action. Achieved easiest and most accurately between people who know each other well, kinesics involves knowing what the other person is thinking by non-verbal gestures or kinesics.

Some can argue (with good reason) that this doesn’t count as mental telepathy, as the two people are using their senses to communicate (just not with sounds). Technically, this is correct. This doesn’t mean, however, that mental telepathy does not play a role. The fact that non-verbal communication occurs most successfully between people who are related (like family), or who have lived together for extended periods of time (like spouses) implies that their minds might be more attuned to each other than to strangers. On the other hand, one could argue that this merely means the two people know each other well enough to understand each others more subtle body language, or have created agreed-upon nonverbal signals to communicate.

EMPATHY:

When you can understand and perceive the emotional state of the other person, then this ability is known as empathy. Many people can do this well and many cant because the ability to put your self in somebody else’s shoes is not inherent. However one can develop empathy with preparation and observation. This fact can be seen in actors who can not only emulate the emotional states of others but also enhance their empathy so much that they can laugh and cry exactly like the other person.

Most people have experienced ’sympathetic pain’—feeling another person’s pain as if it were your own. For example, after witnessing someone close to you break their arm, you may experience an uncomfortable feeling or even an ache in your arm, even though you know it’s fine. Similarly, when someone close to you is experiencing an overwhelming emotion, such as joy, grief, or depression, you may feel an echo of the same emotion inside you. Finally, there is the phenomena of long distance empathy. In this case, a person suddenly knows—they FEEL it—that someone close to them is in danger, has been hurt, or is in pain, even though they are not near the person at the time.

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.

CONCRETE CONCEPTS:

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.

The simpler the concept, the easier it is to communicate through thought alone. For example, a color or shape may be easier to convey than an animal.

Zener cards often used in mental telepathy test are an example of this principle. Simple, concrete black-and-white symbols (a circle, square, star, plus sign, and three wavy lines), gives even a random guess a 20% chance of being right. On the other hand, a shared, known, limited set of concrete symbols may increase the coordination of the thoughts between sender and receiver. A success rate of 50% or higher (which have happened) can not be explained away by simple statistics, but may indicate a level of mental telepathy, instead.

ABSTRACT CONCEPTS:

Mental telepathy at this level involves abstract concepts like ideas or actions, which are more complex to communicate than colors and shapes. Telepaths rarely achieve this level, and lower success rates are indicated in experiments.

Telepathy shouldn’t be ruled out when it comes to animals that seem to communicate ideas to each other through non-verbal actions. Because animal brains lack prefrontal lobes, telepathy would probably not go beyond simplistic ideas such as hunger or danger signals, but many have seen two dogs look at each other and go running for an almost pre-decided location.

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.

Other scientists believe however that telepathy and other esp and psychic powers are in fact the ‘future’ for mankind. And if enough people can develop these powers, theoretically all humans in the future could become telepathic.

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