indwe magazine – June 2005

Between Minds

Understanding Telepathy
Text: Dana Lee
“No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.” – Mignon McLaughlin
Telepathy refers to the psychic phenomenon where communication occurs between minds, without words and beyond body language signals. Communication includes thoughts, ideas, feelings, sensations and mental images.
There is growing acceptance that most of us are using telepathic skills in a very basic form already. Think about it. Many people can report instances of instinctively knowing who was at the other end of the line when the phone rang, or bumping into someone they hadn’t seen for years after “thinking about you just the other day”. Mothers often sense when their children are in danger. Couples who are newly in love, or have been together for years, often complete one another’s sentences. You walk into a room and ‘sense’ the atmosphere. All these are examples of basic telepathy at work. In short, you don’t know how you know, you just know.
In some tribal societies, such as the Aborigines of Australia, telepathy is accepted as a normal human faculty. In the West and the rest of the developed world, telepathy is viewed as a special ability belonging to mystics and psychics. Maybe Sigmund Freud had at least part of the truth when he described telepathic ability as a regressive, primitive faculty that was lost in the course of evolution, but which still had the ability to manifest itself under certain conditions. Right or wrong, many people are intrigued by telepathy and work at (re-) sharpening this communication tool.
There are various institutions around the world doing research into telepathy. Particularly, interest in transpersonal communication flared after WWII with so many bereaved desperate for some last contact with their loved ones. The US and British governments are known to have dabbled in experiments. Psychologist Carl Jung thought it important and viewed it as a function of synchronicity. Psychologist and philosopher William James was very enthusiastic toward telepathy and encouraged more research into it. Despite numerous attempts, results from experiments remain indecisive, unreliable or insignificant. The phenomenon is closely connected to the emotional states of both the sender and receiver, which creates difficulty in replicating experimental results.
Quantum physicists have, however, discovered a similar phenomenon in the world of particles. It would seem that two particles, once ‘related‘ but now separated by physical distance, remain responsive to changes that affect either particle. Particles just seem to ‘know’, inexplicably, what is happening to other particles.
The best-known example of this in humans occurs in twins. Last year the BBC documented an experiment on eight-year-old twins. The twins were in separate rooms out of sight of each other. One of the twins was hooked up to a polygraph machine, the results of which were closely monitor. At the exact moment that the other twin plunged his arm into a bucket of ice-cold water, the polygraph readings for the first twin showed significant deviation. The polygraph-twin had no conscious knowledge of what was happening to his sibling. Even so, his body responded in a marked and measurable way.
Many people do, however, report conscious knowledge of information picked up through extra sensory perception. These people either mentally see (clairvoyance), mentally hear (clairaudience), or just know (clairsentience) such information. Often these people are referred to as psychics. Sometimes they are so consistently accurate that even the police will ask them to help with investigations.
Dr Colleen-Joy Page, founder of the Academy of Metaphysics in Gauteng, is of the opinion that we are all naturally highly intuitive. Most of us, however, don’t pay attention to our inner voice. As we suppress and ignore this voice, it grows progressively faint. Society also encourages us to live in a world that is based on logic, often dismissing intuition as hocus-pocus or, at best, a flimsy basis for decision-making. Furthermore, like all other senses, intuition is not infallible. All these factors conspire to turn us away from that gentle inner voice.
Virtually every profession distinguishes between the highly intuitive sense of the virtuoso and the competent, workmanlike performance of other professionals. There are stockbrokers who do a good job, and then there are those who seem to have an uncanny knack to call the markets, who just seem to know. There are psychologists who are competent, and then there are those who are deeply in tune with their patients, those who just get it. These high performers often ascribe their success to ‘gut feel’ or ‘instinct’. Ascribing it to extra sensory perception may be more accurate but is still less socially acceptable.
The trick, say the Metaphysics experts, is to pay attention. Those of us who want to re-awaken our telepathic sense need to practise awareness. We need to get to know what goes on in our own minds so that we may distinguish between the random, unending stream of inner dialogue and the soft, gentle voice of our sixth sense. Once this inner voice becomes audible again we need to learn to trust it, bearing in mind that it is fallible. After all, sometimes we don’t hear correctly but that does not stop us from trusting our ears. With practise comes greater awareness and greater accuracy.
There are also games that one could play. Perhaps the most famous of these are the Zener cards. This set of twenty-five cards was developed specifically for telepathic experiments. Each card is imprinted with one of five symbols – a wave, a circle, a square, a star or a cross. The game consists of ‘guessing’ which symbol you or your partner has drawn from the deck.
It would indeed be a brave new world if human thought were transparent. In essence, we would be forced to say what we mean. There would be none of the subtle little deceptions that we practise every day. To live in a world where honesty and truth were the order of the day would, for many of us, be very scary. Maybe it is indeed a blessing that, for most humans, telepathic skills remain rudimentary.
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