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A Modern Theory of Telepathy [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-17
telepathy [noun] - the ability to know what is in someone else's mind, or to communicate with someone mentally, without using words or other physical signals
I like that definition of telepathy from the Cambridge dictionary since the Cambridge lexicographer didn't feel compelled to include squishy qualifiers like "purported" or "apparent" or "supposed" as so many have. If you think this means I believe telepathy is an actual phenomenon or ability, you're right. I do.
My belief is that telepathy is a physical property of human and other animal brains. There's no need for supernatural or paranormal explanations and someday science will recognize that fact. As of today, though, according to Google AI, the all-knowing, all-seeing brain of Google (just kidding; it's software and has serious limits):
There is no scientific evidence that telepathy exists. The scientific community generally considers telepathy to be pseudoscience.
This long-standing relegation of telepathy to the ‘woo’ category was mentioned in a letter published in Nature way back in 1938:
It is probable that most psychologists and practically all physiologists regard the evidence in support of ‘clairvoyance’ and ‘telepathy’ as worthless from a scientific point of view.
Why do I think otherwise? In this article, I propose a theory of operation for telepathy and provide anecdotal evidence from my own experiences. You can contribute yours down in the comments.
Do I buy into Vulcan mind-melds and Jedi mind control? Naw. That's great science fiction, but highly unlikely to be science fact. Instead, I view telepathy as a relatively simple physical process that derives from the electrical activity of the brain, similar to how radio operates, in that there's transmission (sender) and reception (receiver) of signals with sharing of information between those two points.
Why Lab Tests Fail
I suspect traditional lab tests fail because they don’t test telepathy. Instead, many test precogntion or remote viewing or some other psychical skill. For example, guessing the next card in a deck of cards or the next random image shown on a screen is a test of precognition, i.e. detecting a future event. While I do consider precognition possible, it’s not telepathy as defined earlier.
There is a test for telepathy called a Ganzfield experiment. From Wikipedia:
A ganzfeld experiment (from the German words for "entire" and "field") is an assessment used by parapsychologists that they contend can test for extrasensory perception (ESP) or telepathy. In these experiments, a "sender" attempts to mentally transmit an image to a "receiver" who is in a state of sensory deprivation. Consistent, independent replication of ganzfeld experiments has not been achieved, and, in spite of strenuous arguments by parapsychologists to the contrary, there is no validated evidence accepted by the wider scientific community for the existence of any parapsychological phenomena.
The likely reason replication fails is that the studies fail to match senders and receivers. Think of your car radio. If you want to listen to your favorite music, you don’t spin the dial at random. You tune to a frequency that plays songs you like. If telepathy does operate similar to radio in the sense of having senders and receivers, mismatched frequencies will never connect.
Evolutionary Benefits
Why would brains have developed telepathic skill? Here are 3 possible reasons:
Cooperation
Emergency help
Danger detection
Cooperation while hunting for food or protecting the tribe would of course be highly beneficial. When hunters are out of visual range of each other and vocal contact would alert tonight’s dinner, being able to silently communicate with fellow hunters would be a huge advantage.
Transmitting a request for emergency help contributes to survival. “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” as the old commercial phrased it.
Danger detection is a valuable survival skill. Are you familiar with the feeling of being watched or have you heard someone described as having eyes in the back of their head? Those abilities would be very helpful for the primate alone in the jungle under the watchful eye of a hungry tiger.
Communications Overview
Radio works by transmitting and receiving electromagnetic waves generated by a transmitter connected to an antenna and picked up by a receiving antenna. The receiver decodes the information carried by the waves and converts it into audio content like music or talk shows that are accessed by tuning to the correct frequency.
Credit to Circuit Globe, a technical site designed to lucidly explain electrical and electronics engineering topics
I propose that telepathy has similarities. Senders generate electrical brain waves (alpha, beta, delta, theta, and gamma) that are measurable and have specific ranges of frequencies between 1 Hz and 150 Hz. Receivers detect the brain waves of the sender and decode the content. And just like your car radio, reception only occurs when the sender frequencies and receiver frequencies have the same values.
We humans are descended from earlier primates and like our ancestors, lived in small groups for most of our history. These groups had limited genetic diversity. It’s plausible their brains operated at similar frequencies because of the genetic closeness, thus sender/receiver synchronization was probably much more common before humans dispersed. While modern humans retains vestigial telepatchic ability, diverging genes have likely led to lesser ability.
Content is King
Here are a few examples of telepathic content:
Feelings/emotions — possibly the first type of content. Fear, anger, love...
Images — mental snapshots of an important location or event or a food source
Words — single words that quickly convey information. Danger, help…
Phrases — short phrases that signify cooperation. Come with me, behind you...
Long Distance Operator
In my experience, telepathy occurs over distance and doesn’t depend on physical proximity. Instead, it just requires compatible senders and receivers. An example many of us can relate to is telephone telepathy. Rupert Sheldrake is a leading proponent of this phenomenon. He writes:
Seemingly telepathic experiences with telephones are common. Many people have found that for no apparent reason they start thinking about a particular person, then the phone rings and that person is on the line. Or else when the telephone starts ringing they have an intuition about who is calling, and turn out to be correct.
This may be synchronicity, a concept introduced by analytical psychiatrist Carl Jung to describe events that coincide in time and appear meaningfully related, yet lack a discoverable causal connection. Jung argued that synchronicity supports existence of the paranormal.
However, clients who disclose synchronicity experiences to their therapist report not being listened to, accepted, or understood.
Quantum Entanglement
Let’s delve briefly into quantum mechanics, a fundamental theory that describes the behavior of nature at and below the scale of atoms.
Human bodies don’t have antennas that allow transmission and reception of electrical signals over great distance. In fact, medical instruments such as EEGs that measure brain activity typically require intimate contact with the subject to overcome external interference. I’m no physicist and don’t play one on TV, but quantum entanglement seems to provide a mechanism for telepathic communication that overcomes this barrier.
Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon where particles become so deeply connected that their properties are intertwined, no matter the distance separating them. Change the state of one particle, and the other reacts instantaneously.
Nature recently published this report about how scientists are extending entanglement from subatomic level to molecular level:
In a major accomplishment for quantum mechanics research, scientists at Durham University in the UK have achieved the first-ever quantum entanglement of molecules. The team used precisely controlled optical traps or ‘magic-wavelength optical tweezers’ to create environments that support long-lasting entanglement. Although quantum entaglement between atoms has been demonstrated multiple times before, a research team led by Simon Cornish at Durham University achieved a major milestone by demonstrating it with molecules for the first time. Since molecules have additional structures and properties, such as vibration and rotation, scientists believe they can leverage them in quantum applications.
It’s feasible a quantum entaglement between two human brains would duplicate specific vibration in one in the other. Remember frequency? Frequency is the number of cycles a vibrating object completes in a given amount of time. Frequency is used in science and engineering to describe the rate of vibrations in things like radio waves.
Practical Mind Reading
Cool stuff from Stanford University in January 2024. This research shows it’s possible to read and decode brain activity into cognizable objects, which would be one part of what’s needed for successful telepathy.
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a wearable, electronic cap able to read brain waves and allow people to direct robots. EEGs (electroencephalographs), a record of the electrical activity in the brain, are generally weak, and using them to determine what objects the wearer is paying attention to and how the wearer wants to interact with the object is extremely hard. “You cannot do it by just asking them to think about an object. Actually, there are pretty mature techniques from neuroscience research, known as steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) and motor imagery,” Ruohan Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher in Stanford’s Vision and Learning Lab says. Neural Signal Operated Intelligent Robots (NOIR) attaches a “flickering” mask to objects. This flickering signal elicits strong responses in the visual cortex of the brain. By reading these patterns generated from visual neurons firing as the person looks at different objects, researchers can identify which object the wearer is thinking of.
Attraction and Repulsion
Is this love, baby, or is it just confusion?
Have you experienced love at first sight? The feeling of love at first sight is often based on someone's appearance, demeanor, or aura (the distinctive atmosphere that seems to surround and be generated by a person). Your frequencies mesh when you meet your soul mate. Or should that be telepathy mate?
Studies show that heart rate and respiration synchronize when couples hit it off on a blind date, which means other physiologic indicators are affected as well.
I suggest that we have a telepathic connection to people we like and those we love. The connection to loved ones is obviously stronger than to acquaintances. You’ve heard that great minds think alike, I’m sure. This may indicate a telepathic connection.
Could telepathy also explain hate at first sight? I’ve met people that I took an instant, visceral dislike to without them saying or doing anything overtly objectionable. Am I sensing something negative in their nature?
Veering into pure conjecture now, I wonder if attraction to celebrities results from a form of mental linkage. Does someone like Trump transmit at a frequency that people attending his rallies are able to receive? Otherwise, it’s quite hard to understand why those who should oppose him, practicing Christians, for example, become devoted to a man they logically should despise.
Deliberate Limitations
Help put Mom & Pop in the Poor House!
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our minds were open to receiving telepathic messages from every person we ecounter in our lives? Imagine walking into your local Walmart and hearing the thoughts of all 500 customers and employees at the same time. Yikes!
That would result in massive overload, like having a car radio that plays every station simultaneously and the songs, commercials, talkshows, and religious broadcasts meld into a gigantic steaming pile of white noise.
Instead, brains have evolved to allow openness at times and provide shielding at others. It makes sense that times of great distress heighten transmission and reception. And that you’re more likely to be receptive to a person you feel emotionally close to. Think of long-term couples who finish each other’s sentences or subconsciously agree on what’s for dinner.
On the other hand, if you don’t want your brain to explode when visiting Wally World, shielding is essential.
Somebody’s Watching Me
When I was a 12 year old boy walking to the library, I passed a commercial office on the main drag of the city I lived in. It was in a brick building and had large windows at the front. As I walked by, I spied a woman working at a desk at the rear of the office with her back to me. I watched her and thought about her as I passed. Just before I moved out of view, she turned and looked at me suspiciously. When she saw I posed no threat, she smiled and waved.
Are there other explanations besides telepathy? Sure. Perhaps a driver blew their horn just then. Maybe she caught my reflection in a shiny object. However, this is just one of many times in my life when someone has detected my presence or I’ve detected someone else’s presence without any obvious means of doing so. How about you?
Thai… Thai… PIZZA!!
My girlfriend Carol had a hankering for Thai food. Not just an “oh, Thai would be nice”, but near-drooling for three days. We made a date for a non-specific dinner and she drove the 15 miles to my house for a meet-up prior to visiting a restaurant. When she arrived, I asked her what she was in the mood for. “Pizza!” she declared. Then she added, “I’ve been dying for Thai the past 3 days, but on the drive over I suddenly wanted pizza. I have no idea why.”
She had no idea why until I informed her that while waiting for her, I’d mentally run through multiple options and settled on pizza. We greatly enjoyed our deep dish pizza and never did go out for Thai. However, she did make me attend a classical music concert by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, so I consider us even.
Distress Call
My boss was a tyrant. I fell into deep depression and ended up pushing my wife away. Therapy? Ha! He-man no need head shrinker, by golly! We separated and were living in different states. One day, I received a crystal clear and overwhelming image of someplace I’d never been. My estranged wife was being beaten up by the guy she was dating. It was bad enough that she landed in the hospital. I called and she tried to hide it, but I knew she was in trouble. She finally admitted it.
It was a wake up for me. I pulled myself together and helped her through it. We resolved our issues, and 30 years later, we’re still together and still finishing each other’s sentences.
References
What are wireless brain sensors? January 11, 2021 — www.news-medical.net/…
Scientific Tests of Telepathy, May 14, 1938 — www.nature.com/…
Ganzfield experiment — en.wikipedia.org/…
Investigating paranormal phenomena: Functional brain imaging of telepathy, December 2008 — pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...
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