Telepathy

Communication of thought from one person to another without the intervention of physical means.

The apparent communication directly from one person’s mind to another person’s, without the use of speech, writing or other signs or symbols.

Supposed ability of one person to know the thoughts of another; communication of thought from one person to another by nonphysical means.

The ability to communicate with others wordlessly, that is, by broadcasting one’s thoughts or by receiving the transmitted thoughts of others. Claims of telepathic powers are typical of patients with psychoses and of some shamans.

Sending thoughts from one mind to another with no physical mechanism involved; thought transference. Telepathy may be either consciously willed or involuntarily experienced. It involves the transmittal of thoughts, feelings, and images from mind to mind; it does not include clairvoyance or true precognition. Telepathy comes from the Greek words tele (“distant”) and pathe ( occurrence” or “feeling”) and was coined in 1882 by Frederick William Henry Myers (1843-1901), a British psychical researcher and a founder of the society for psychical research (SPR). Although telepathy has been described in many cultures around the world and through time, the SPR was the first organization to attempt to study psychic phenomena in a methodical manner.

The SPR, established in 1882 and still operating today, included many prominent persons in its membership, from both humanistic and scientific fields. One of their chief goals was to prove to a doubting scientific establishment that parapsychology is real; to do this, they determined to use scientific methods to test such things as telepathy. Their initial experiments involved hypnotizing subjects and asking them to select a card containing a number or image that the experimenter chose. In the 1930s, U.S. parapsychologist Joseph Banks Rhine performed similar laboratory experiments (with non-hypnotized subjects) using a card set he devised, Zener Cards. The 25 Zener cards consisted of 5 sets of 5 different symbols. A sender in one location would select the shuffled, face-down cards one by one and concentrate on sending images of the symbols to a recipient in another location. The recipient would attempt to receive the images in the same order the sender sent them. A success rate over a predetermined good guessing rate would be indicative of telepathy occurring.