(Superpowers of the Human Biomind)
TELEPATHY - THE OPENING UP OF
Part One of Three
Ingo Swann (08Aug05)
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN PART ONE:
1. INTRODUCTORY
2. CAN IT BE TRAINED?
3. THE NEW SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT
4. WORD TRAPS
5. THE CONVENTIONAL TERM “TELEPATHY” DISSECTED AND EXAMINED
6. MOVING TELEPATHY BEYOND ITS OLD CONCEPTS
7. MIND?
8. THOUGHT – THE NATURE OF?
9. THE CONCEPT OF TELE – PATHY ENLARGED
10. THE TELEPATHIC-EMPATHIC “BOBO” EVENT
11. INTELLECTUAL vs ORGANIC TELEPATHY1. INTRODUCTORY
The bulk of this essay was in draft form during 1999, at which time I hesitated to introduce it into this Website.
There were three or four reasons for this hesitation back then – one of which was that there had been no significant advance or development about telepathy in more than sixty years.
In the absence of such advances anyone might make suggestions this way or that. But without some new development that might give new meaning or importance, one might only be talking in circles based in old, outworn concepts.*
However, a major scientific development has recently taken place, a development that already has triggered renewed interest in the bigger picture possibilities of, shall we say, applied telepathy.
Before discussing that particular development, however, it needs to be established that telepathy has had a bigger picture all along, one that is, if nothing else, quite amusing.
Almost everyone is at least somewhat familiar with popularized concepts of telepathy, and perhaps also knowledgeable about very many parapsychological experiments conducted here and there to see if telepathy actually exists, and if so, to what degree it does.
Evidence garnered from such decades long experiments more or less confirms that telepathy does exist, but does not robustly manifest itself too well in formal laboratory test conditions and situations.
Instead, the best examples of its robust existence come from informal real-life situations, and then usually reported (if at all) in anecdotal form.
So the mixture of formal experiments and anecdotal reports have long represented the scenario with respect to what is known and not known about telepathy – well, let us say instead, the scenario that is publicly available.*
But there is ANOTHER element at work within this scenario, an element that became clear piece by piece during this author’s long participation in remote viewing research at Stanford Research Institute – research sponsored and funded for about twenty years by our nation’s most important intelligence agencies.
To briefly and bluntly sum up this element, it is generally understood that if too much efficient telepathy would be developed, then SECRECY of all kinds would be extremely difficult to maintain.
Large sectors of human activity depend on the functional value of secrecy, and no one wants the minds of those who design and maintain it to be accessible via telepathy.
There are many types of secrecy, of course: military, diplomatic, governmental, industrial, economic, social, and criminal - down to and including individual shysters, scammers, liars, misleaders, scumbags, hoodwinkers, and fakers who would rather not have their thoughts and intentions easily “read” by telepathic means.
So, from times biblical onward, THIS reluctance has constituted the bigger picture of what we call telepathy – a.k.a. mind reading.*
While telepathy may engage mere research interests, and serve as inspiration for science fictions, it is possible to think that actual and potentially efficient telepathy is feared, detested, hated in the real world of human activities, and must not be allowed to be developed as such.
One might like to have telepathy for oneself, but would rather OTHERS not similarly have it.
For clarity, one might like to read the minds of others; but one might not like to have one’s own mind equally available to others. Right? Right!*
Of course, authorities cannot squash telepathy when it spontaneously manifests among Earth’s populations. But organized activities designed to research and possibly develop various forms of its functioning CAN be squashed via various subtle ways and intrigues – and, to this author’s knowledge, ARE squashed.
With its sporadic and often minimal funding, parapsychology research included various kinds of so-called “paranormal” phenomena that sometimes included telepathy.
But behind the scenes of such research were narrowed eyes always alert on behalf of ensuring that telepathy research did not, in any long-term sense, benefit from funding, including funding from private sources.
Behind these already covert scenes, such narrow eyes also covertly and carefully scrutinized ALL literature about telepathy, having, if nothing else, access to media means to debunk and ridicule whatever and whoever was involved.
Secrecy MUST be maintainable – even in the face of the fact that some developed forms of it might be HELPFUL in detecting, preventing, and defeating certain dismal and egregious activities.*
About the only instances in which telepathy is minimally tolerated involve “psychic detectives” some of whom DO assist in helping police to solve crimes, often in astonishing ways.
To avoid the telepathic issues involved, the psychic detectives are referred to merely as “psychics,” “seers,” or “clairvoyants,” even though such clairvoyants often detect the thoughts, intentions, and motives of the criminals involved.
You see, clairvoyants are supposed to “see” things, as contrasted to “reading thoughts, intentions, and motives,” these four words constituting the official parapsychological definition of TELEPATHY*
As mentioned above, important developments with respect to telepathy have recently taken place.
After so many decades during which telepathy was socio-scientifically homeless, these developments more than suggest that telepathic research is now here to stay, albeit most probably in highly secret circumstances.
For a bit of necessary background, a full part of scientific objections to telepathy was (1) that there were no mind-brain mechanisms that could account for direct, mental mind-to-mind exchanges of information, especially of the long-distance kind; and (2) that no known medium existed through which the mental information could directly be transmitted.
Doubly damned in this way, it was thus scientifically held that telepathy was impossible, even though early psychical and parapsychological researchers had provided carefully controlled cumulative evidence that it was not impossible.
However, it WAS possible for the materialist sciences to dismiss such evidence, because science dismissed the whole of psychical and parapsychological research anyway.*
There things stood (as they had stood for many decades), backed up by the official conviction - plus more than a little bit of desperate hope, that such mechanisms would never be discovered.
For clarity, minds should not be able directly to “read” each other especially concerning secrets. And (as this author was sometimes asked) if one could not be confident of such then what COULD one be confident of. The secrecy games would never be the same.2. CAN “IT” BE TRAINED?
Through the years this author listened to people expressing the usual conventional objections to telepathy as the ruination of secrecy, one was quite surprised that numbers of them wondered, with worried eyes and in lowered voices, if “IT” could ever be trained.
Almost everyone of course assumed that IT could not be trained, on the evidence that IT never had demonstrated itself amenable to training.
But there was (and still is) the worrisome possibility that someone (another nation, for example) would somehow engineer such a breakthrough – placing other non-telepathic nations at some serious disadvantage.“IT” was always referred to as an “it,” mostly, it seems, because few dared verbally to link telepathy with training, this possibility a greater horror than the mere existence of telepathy itself.
In the sense of this wonderment, “training” implied elevating IT to a higher predictable functional workability than what was visible as a result of carefully controlled experiments whose results did NOT imply much of anything along such lines.*
It is of course possible to assume that one can’t train IT if one doesn’t know what IT is, and which assumption is a great relief when it comes to imagining what might happen if IT was somehow amenable to training.
Such assumptions are even eager to overlook (ignore) how ANYTHING gets trained.
Briefly speaking, anything that involves perceptions and motor cortex responses is trainable because the associated perceptions and motor cortex responses CAN be trained (i.e., developed, activated, enhanced, expanded, etc.).
After all, perceptions and motor cortex responses ARE known to support various kinds of ITs – sports, piano playing, etc., and if such are expanded via training then the IT-thing has more to work with, so to speak.
Indeed, even natural “gifts” benefit from the training of their associated perceptions and motor responsiveness.
In other words, one does not directly train an IT itself, but whatever perceptions and motor responses are involved can undergo training.*
It might be necessary, of course, to find out WHAT perceptions and motor responses are ACTUALLY involved – and there is usually a great deal of confusion in this respect.
One source of such confusions is that most tend to like the IDEAS about something they have managed to come in possession of – and when an idea IS liked, there is usually some reluctance to discover, for example, that it is not entirely workable, or is not consistent with certain facts.
Generally speaking, ideas are liked much more than are facts, and many ideas can get along quite well without them, thank you very much.
So what usually happens along these lines is that people try to train their IDEAS about something – especially when the IT involved remains, as it is often said, “elusive.”
And telepathy is among the most elusive of the elusive – so much so that even whatever perceptions and motor responses are involved are also elusive.*
However, it has recently turned out that the IT is now not as elusive as it has been, because hard scientific evidence for the actual existence of IT is now in hand, more or less anyway.
3. THE NEW SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT
In an effort to try to keep up with what is going on in science, this author subscribes to a few science magazines that review and synopsize new scientific activities and events.
One of these sources is SCIENCE NEWS: THE WEEKLY NEWSMAGAZINE OF SCIENCE.
In its April 30, 2005 issue (Vol. 167, No. 18) appeared an article entitled “Goal-Oriented Brain Cells – Neurons may track action as a prelude to empathy.”
The first paragraph reads: “Neuroscientists in Italy listened in on monkeys’ brain cells that they say may lie at the root of empathy, the ability to discern others’ thoughts and intentions.”
This author’s eyes bugged out upon scanning this first paragraph – because “sensing the thoughts and intentions of others” is the formal definition not of EMPATHY but of TELEPATHY.*
Back in 1996 or thereabouts, some neuroscientists inadvertently came across a curious cluster of cells while examining the premotor cortex of one or more Macaque monkeys. Said premotor cortex is thought to be the brain area involved with “planning movements.”
It was observed that the cluster of cells fired not only when the monkey performed an action, but also fired when the monkey merely saw another monkey perform the same action.
The cells were named MIRROR NEURONS because they “reflect” the actions that monkeys observe in other monkeys.
The Italian scientists built on this earlier work “by examining how certain mirror cells respond to the intention behind the action.”
The SCIENCE NEWS article closed with “Whether people have the same kinds of mirror neurons as monkeys do … remains unknown.”
Even so, humans and monkeys are closely related genetically. Some say that humans descended from them, or at least point up that such are our “cousins” not yet come down from trees.*
It’s worth pointing up here that no one seems to know exactly what kinds of neurons the human brain actually has. For example, on the cover of the April 2004 issue of America’s premier science journal, the venerable SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, drew attention to that issue’s lead write-up by asking: “HAS SCIENCE MISSED HALF THE BRAIN? NEGLECTED CELLS HOLD KEYS TO THOUGHT AND LEARNING.”
“ Neglected brain cells?” It would seem that no cells of the brain, as important as it is, should be “neglected.” Presumably, possibly, certainly, human mirror neurons are (were) among the neglected cells – cells that were not looked for because science had thought, even boasted, that telepathy was impossible? (Do remember, as earlier noted, that macaque mirror neurons were discovered by some incidental chance.)
Anyhow, we don’t know what half of our brains do, but the neglected half might hold some surprises when it ceases to be neglected.*
As a brief aside, during his twenty-plus years in parapsychology and etc., this author discovered, with some few exceptions, that most parapsychologists and etc. were not interested in brains, much less their cells.
They WERE interested in “paranormal” phenomena, but only if such phenomena were amenable to experiment-testing of the kinds that yielded statistical evidence.
For example, testing for telepathy by transmitting intellectual “targets” composed of graphic images, colors, numbers, Zener card images, kooky surrealistic assemblages, etc.
The same intellectual targets were also used to test for clairvoyance, so if a given subject was successful it could not conclusively be stated whether success occurred via telepathy or clairvoyance, both conveyances usually yielding low statistical averages anyhow.*
It could have been wondered if one’s telepathic neurons or faculties, powers or whatever, were interested in Zener card images, or colors, or target assemblages that were worse than the worst surrealistic art, so much so that they didn’t make sense.
It could have been noticed that dynamic telepathic occurrences among the raw public mostly involved something IMPORTANT, something that transcended mere intellectual targets, something often consisting of life or death events.
This was sometimes acknowledged in some parapsychology labs. But no one knew how to introduce a real life or death situation into experimental testing.
It might not be too much to think (hypothetically, of course) that dynamic telepathy, when it spontaneously occurs amongst the raw public, might belong to, well, something like a life force – rather than to intellectualizing reality boxes whose mental workings might be somewhat questionable.
In any event, it seems that telepathy is not interested in Zener cards, etc.
So, if the modern sciences have missed 50 percent of the brain, parapsychology might have missed 95 percent of telepathy.*
Returning to mirror neurons, from other earlier not entirely dependable sources involving research elsewhere, it seems that scientists (other than the Italian ones) have discovered that the cells in the premotor cortex fired up not only with respect to actions in others, but, as a “great surprise,” also duplicated “sensations and emotions.”
Paraphrasing a little, it was soon said (by a neuroscientist at the University of California) that via the special premotor cortex neurons we are “practically in another person’s mind.”
As already mentioned, these special premotor cortex cells are now referred to as MIRROR NEURONS, because they seem to “reflect” not only physical actions, but also less tangible stuff such as sensations, emotions, and thoughts.
But there remains one outstanding, unresolved issue.
It seems that one’s mirror neurons are doing their thing all of the time, whether one is conscious of it or not. On average, most people are not consciously aware of what is going on in their mirror neurons.
So, outstanding is the issue of where, when, if, and how conscious awareness “kicks in.”
Be pleased to remember this “kicks in” thing, because it seems to play a major role with respect to all forms of consciousness.
If one wants to examine more information about this topic, the Google search engine is carrying some thousands references under the heading of MIRROR NEURONS.*
The familiar term TELEPATHY is of course totally forbidden in science and even mostly so in academia.
But this new mirror neuron scientific discovery opens up new potentials that are at least the equivalent of telepathy.
Even so, naming the premotor neurons as MIRROR NEURONS is perhaps not a bad idea - because, as will be elaborated ahead, the term TELEPATHY is almost totally useless anyway.*
In any event, one can wonder if various kinds of research are already underway with respect to discovering more of the capacities of mirror neurons, and perhaps developing knowledge and enhancement of them.
One might bet one’s bottom dollar on this – because it is conceivable that at least eight known intelligence agencies throughout the world would like (away from public awareness) to possess these capacities for their own use - to say nothing of economic and industrial concerns, various (secret or otherwise) organizations, clubs, cults, cells, and numerous other Machiavellian whatnots.*
There is a very specific reason for this anticipation, one that might not be understood unless it is pointed up.
With the increasing scientific discovery of various kinds of mirror neurons, telepathy has, as it were, “gone” scientific – and is thus now elevated from its former ignominious non-scientific status.
Once something has gone scientific, various worries appear with respect to who is going to develop its possible developments, and who is going competitively to use them for what?
So WE better look into this before someone else does – and gets ahead of us, to our disadvantage.
To be clear, no one is now going to treat telepathy as “unproven” and “hopefully, impossible.”
IT is here to stay. So, under the concept of mirror neurons, telepathy is finally opened up – because science itself can no longer ignore it. So-called “skeptics,” dwelling in the idea that telepathy is impossible, must be slightly red-faced in the light of this development.4. WORD TRAPS
Basically speaking, the discovery so far of mirror neurons tells us only two things – that telepathy IS possible, because specific neural receptors in the premotor cortex provide a physical “explanation” for it.
However, mere physical evidence of something doesn’t tell us all that much about how it works, or about what is further involved beyond or in addition to its physical-ness.*
Stuff and things must of course be assigned some sort of a name-identity.
So a word for that identity comes into existence, more or less quickly followed by a definition(s) for it.
The word + definitions thus convey the IDEA of the identity so named and defined.
Thereafter, when the word is utilized we feel we have a grip on the idea – and thus assume we know what we are talking about.
If the idea-word-definitions fall into popular appeal, they thus become cast in intellectualizing cement.*
This is all well and good, even sometimes exciting – because when, via words + definitions, one feels that one is participating in and sharing ideas, one might experience a sense of certainty about whatever is involved.
On average, specimens of the human species like a sense of certainty more than they do uncertainty.
So it sometimes doesn’t matter if the IDEA was, shall we say, founded on something less than facts, but more on a nomenclature selection that seemed fashionably exciting at the time the idea first got underway.*
There is, of course, always the bothersome problem of new facts that don’t quite fit into the assumed certainty of the original idea – problems bothersome because they chip away at the assumed certainty involved.
Everyone probably has at least a little familiarity with what is done with such bothersome problems.
The assumed certainty of an idea-word-definition tends intellectually to be “protected,” if only by virtue of being cast in socio-intellectual cement, because if not, there is always the threat of inundations of uncertainty.
Once a word has achieved the status of vast socio-intellectual consensus “reality,” any challenges to its assumed authenticity are simply sidelined.
Via all of this sometimes palpable nonsense, many words become unknowing intellectual traps – in that if we do not use such and such an idea + definitions + word, it then might seem that we do not know what we are talking about.
One such word-trap is the term TELEPATHY - the idea + definitions + word of which will now be dissected.5. THE CONCEPT-WORD “TELEPATHY”
DISSECTED AND EXAMINEDOne of the early reasons (in 1999) for postponing this essay on telepathy was the absence of mainstream scientifically accepted evidence for it.
Against this absence, just about anything written about telepathy could be considered as just so much vaporous hooey, at least in those “minds” wanting to consider themselves as being scientifically proper.*
But coupled to the absence of some kind of scientific evidence, there was also a second reason.
As some few researchers had noted as early as sixty years ago, any in-depth research and consideration of the assumed basic concepts upon which ideas of telepathy are founded reveals that neither the concepts nor the ideas actually fit together.
In that people, on average, do not like to have their assumptions and ideas eroded or popped by the introduction of something contrary to them, it seemed (as of 1999) that dragging through the misfitted “telepathy” situation was more or less like pissing into the wind.*
However, “telepathy” IS a word, and words are attached to conceptual ideas, and it is via words that we think and exchange information about those concepts.
In a certain sense, words connected to words are something like a road map via which places and things are connected together so that one can both find one’s way and arrive at a specific place or location.
If the road map is incorrect, one might end up who knows where.
If words stimulate ideas and concepts, and if the ideas and concepts are not precise, or are somewhat fictitious, who knows what one’s thinking will end up as.
Well, if one is in possession of even slightly non-applicable assumptions and concepts about “telepathy,” one might end up NOT manifesting too much of it.
In other words, “telepathy” is a word, but it is ONLY a word, while the ideas and concepts upon which the word is based may be slightly or even mostly non-applicable to the phenomenon itself.
The word is only a term intellectually assigned to the phenomenon, but is NOT the thing itself.
Furthermore, the assigned term only reflects the versions of the ideas and concepts (i.e., the different realities) that the definitions identify in print and in dictionaries.
When the definitions become socially concretized, and because they are found in dictionaries, we then feel we know what we are talking about.
The only remaining problem, usually invisible, is that ALL of the facts about something are seldom known.*
In any event, once a word has become socially concretized, it then governs the way the thing or phenomenon is intellectually to be thought about.
In other words, how the term is intellectually to be thought about is packaged in a certain way, and so people don’t like to think about it in another way.
In the face of this certitude, anyone suggesting that understanding of “telepathy,” for example, might benefit by moving in the direction of “a road less traveled” is likely to be confronted by a lot of blank stares, rolling eyeballs, and snide commentary about one’s position just around the bend, heading in the direction of Loony Town.*
The term TELEPATHY belongs to a collection of other words that are likewise used with the general conviction that we know what we are talking about.
Although this may be the case in a general superficial sense, words like “telepathy” have some rather tattered and incomplete conceptual packaging.
The following six examples are taken from the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language that traces words from their earliest usages in English, with definitions that at least approximate the original meanings involved.
Most words undergo evolutions of meanings. As will be seen, however, the original definitions of the following six terms have not changed all that much and are almost the same as our modernist definitions.
At about 1626, SECOND SIGHT is found in English having the definition of “A supposed power by which occurrences in the future or things at a distance are perceived as though they were actually present.”
Some 300 years later, at about 1837 - SIXTH SENSE came into English usage, defined as “A supposed faculty by which a person or creature perceives facts and regulates action without the direct use of any of the five senses.” (Please bear in mind this particular definition.)
1847 - CLAIRVOYANCE came into English usage taken directly from French. But in French the term was used in the context of “Keenness of mental perception, clearness of insight; insight into things beyond the range of ordinary perception.” This French definition seems more or less hinged to the basic concept of wisdom.
However, in English usage, the term was given the definition of “A supposed faculty attributed to certain persons, or to persons under certain mesmeric conditions [i.e., trance conditions] consisting in the mental perception of objects at a distance or concealed from sight.”
1855 - THOUGHT READING came into English usage, while THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE had appeared a bit earlier in 1822. Both concepts had the definition of “The reading of another person’s thoughts; direct perception by one mind of what is passing in another, independent of ordinary means of expression or communication.”
1882 – TELEPATHY came into English usage, definitions of which will be discussed just below.*
Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that the six terms indicated above supposedly identify six DIFFERENT “supposed” powers or faculties, the supposition of which generated about a hundred years of research and experimentation attempting to discover the why and how of the supposed differences.
The general idea behind this was that if the facts of the differences could be established, then each of the supposed powers or faculties might be cultivated into more efficiency.
Well, when this writer entered as a subject into parapsychology labs in 1970, parapsychologists still could not be certain if a successful experiment was a case of telepathy, clairvoyance, sixth-sense, second-sight, or, possibly, out-of-body perception.
As a partial explanation for this, it is quite easy to ascertain that people, including parapsychologists, love differences more than they do samenesses, possibly because differences are more amenable to gossip, arguments, diatribes, combats, philosophical conflicts, and other odd human whatnots.*
One of the results of this Search for Supposed Differences was that it went completely unnoticed that the definitions of the six terms above reveal that all of them have at least one thing in common – acquisition of INFORMATION by means, faculties, or powers UNKNOWN.
Such powers or faculties were not too much unknown because they were so notably known that they had at least acquired names for themselves.
In fact, it should be noted that each of the six terms discussed above have numerous synonyms. It is interesting to note that some of the synonyms for each of the terms are interactive among all of the six terms discussed above – as if one synonym can stand in for others of them.*
The principle and standard idea of TELEPATHY consists of conceptualizing it in terms of “mind-to-mind,” or, somewhat redundantly, as “mental telepathy.”
So when one sees a graphic illustration of it, one is usually looking at a visual-aid set-up of two heads separated by a distance whose “minds” are supposed to be in process of interacting in unknown ways that transfer information from one to the other.
The mind sending the information is usually described as the “sender,” the one receiving the information is the “receiver.” Quite imaginative, don’t you think?*
In any event, in experiments designed to demonstrate telepathy, the two subjects involved are asked to use their “mental telepathy,” the general idea being that the sender’s mind is supposed to try sending something to the receiver whose mind is to try receiving what is being sent.
With some few exceptions during the last 100 or so years, this ostensible methodology has not worked very well, if at all, but it is still the on-going standard parapsychological research concept and model.
The bottom line here is that we use the concept-term TELEPATHY defined as mind-to-mind, and thereby assume we know what we are talking about.
But what if telepathy was not exactly mind-to-mind, but rather consisted of stuff and things we don’t know about?6. MOVING TELEPATHY BEYOND
THE OLD MEANINGS OF THE WORD “TELEPATHY”Most of the following discussions will depart from the rather simplistic and fruitless “mind-to-mind” rationale, so basic reasons for doing so need to be established.
This author was born in the southern part of the High Rocky Mountains in a small mining town that was left over from what at one time had been a big mining town basically with respect to discovering loads of gold and silver.
Left in impecunious circumstances after the early death of her husband, one of my grandmothers had converted her home so as to give, sometimes advancing credit, room-and-board to itinerant miners of all sorts who came to work in the left-over mine processing metals of lesser values - or independent prospectors still hoping to find golden motherloads somewhere among the local high mountain peaks.*
This Granma had been born into extreme poverty, but nonetheless had matured into rather tough and sturdy rolling stock characteristic of most early mountaineering women who could express their declamations in both genteel and/or hard-boiled, straight-forward ways.
Physically and in manner, Granma somewhat resembled the once famous actress Marie Dressler (1869-1934) who was toughly featured in the movies “Tugboat Annie” (1932) and, a little more, but not quite, genteely in the famous “Dinner at Eight” (1933).
Granma also had a large potion of the legendary Green-Thumb thing, and a fair share of future-seeing especially when danger was forthcoming.*
When this author was about seven or eight, two ostensible miners knocked at the door seeking room and board.
Granma took one look at them and said that the house was full up. The two retreated looking a little forlorn.
These two resembled most other mining itinerants who came and went, and the house did have beds available. So this author inquired of Granma why she had sent them on their way.
“ Honey,” she replied, “types like those try to act as if they are big shits on silver platters, but they are only small turds on tin plates. They always cheat and make trouble, and always disappear before paying up what is owed.”
“ But how do you know that in advance?” I asked.
“ You can feel it crawling on your skin, and smell it in your nose – it’s not a smell-smell, of course, but it’s a smell anyway.”
This author has remembered this small but rather stunning discussion ever since.
About a month or so, the town’s sheriff escorted the two guys out of town for running up bills of credit. Delicious town gossop that that certain Red Light Ladies had been advancing their services on credit and the two guys could not pay up. THIS, apparently, was too much, for it was alleged that the sheriff got a kick-back from these affairs.*
Did Granma’s perception consist of “telepathy,” a term coined in 1882, but which had not yet wended its way up into the high peaks and deep valleys of the High Rocky Mountains during this author’s childhood. Neither had the term “intuition.”
“ Gut-feeling” yes, perhaps with a smattering of “second sight.”
This author never heard the term “telepathy” until sometime after World War II, and then only in the context of “psychological impossibility.”*
So, WAS it telepathy? Was it the “mind-to-mind” thing?
During the course of the 1960s and 1970s, an astonishing array of bio-receptors were scientifically discovered in various laboratories here and there.
All of these receptors were somewhat akin to those being called “mirror neurons” lodged in the premotor cortex.
Two enterprising authors (Robert Rivlin and Karen Gravelle) pulled together all of this receptor research, and, supported by a stunning bibliography of scientific papers, melded them in an organized fashion in their book entitled DECIPHERING THE SENSES; THE EXPANDING WORLD OF HUMAN PERCEPTION (1984).
Among the scads of receptors discussed are those lodged in the skin described as “receptors that feel the temperament of others; receptors that feel bonding or antagonism; receptors that trigger alarm and apprehension before their sources are directly sensed.”
Does not this resemble the creepy-crawly skin thing, that vast numbers of human specimens sometimes experience?
Lodged in the nose are receptors that detect “pheromones, sexual receptivity, fear, love, admiration, pain in others” that “trigger sensations/perceptions of intentions, motives, and thoughts.”
Is this not the smell thing, which is not a smell-smell, but a smell anyway - an affect that many also experience, although they know not how, why, or wherefrom?*
“ Telepathic experiences” are discussed on pages 196 and 211 of DECIPHERING THE SENSES, but elements of such litter almost the entire book.
However, telepathy is exclusively thought of as the “mind-to-mind” thing, against which skin-to-mind and nose-to-mind seem to have no relevance – at any rate, relevance as to how whatever is involved might be drawing information from.
Additionally, as with the outstanding problem relating to mirror neuron receptors, something depends on when, or if, “consciousness kicks in.”
In other words, various kinds of one’s receptors might be firing away all of the time, or at least quite often.
But if the so-called consciousness of the so-called mind-thing doesn’t kick in, then one is no wiser about what receptors are firing away at than if the firing up did not take place at all.*
As a depressing postlude to the DECIPHERING THE SENSES book, the astonishing information in it seems to have resulted in an absence of astonishing impact. The book came and went without too much ado.
One reason for this lack of popular appeal is that the book’s title seems inappropriate and even boring - because what are discussed in the book are OUR SEVENTEEN SENSES - senses additional to our ordinary famous five.
But some additional small part of the reason for the book’s disappearance might be that neuroscientists are primarily interested in brains, not skin or noses, while parapsychologists (who might collectively have benefited something from the book) are not even too much interested in brains, much less noses and skins.
You see, parapsychologists tend to be psychologists, or, lately, some kind of physicists – most of whom don’t know what brains are doing or are up to. With some marvelous exceptions, generally speaking, brains are outside of their fields – hence outside their reality boxes, too.
Also to be noted is that many proclaimed “psychics” feel that whatever is going on doesn’t even have a physical explanation. After all, if psychic perceptions are derived from some other affair transcending material physicality, then why should anyone be interested in physical factors.
(As will be commented upon later in the forthcoming Parts Two or Three, it should be granted, however, that there IS that possibility to be considered – i.e., that there are factors involved in addition to physical ones.)*
In any event, mirror neuron receptors have now been discovered in brains - perhaps to the delight of the brain people -but perhaps not so much to those fomenting and guarding SECRETS that could now be vulnerable via mirroring thoughts, intentions, and motives of others.
So one of the first essential problems about telepathy has now been at least partially answered – i.e., that the actual existence of “telepathy” has actually been confirmed in more than just argumentative theory – as well as scads of other bio-receptors distributed throughout the ORGANIC electro-chemical physical body.
See that term ORGANIC? Be pleased, if possible, to retain it in it your memory banks.*
Now, it is necessary to dissect the past definitions of TELEPATHY.
The EOP, i.e., THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OCCULTISM AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY (1978), has a quite long essay under the heading of TELEPATHY – from which certain sections will now be quoted below and ahead.
“ Of the various branches of psychic phenomena there is none which engages more serious attention at the present day [i.e, at about 1900] than telepathy or thought transference.
“ The idea of intercommunication between BRAIN AND BRAIN [emphasis added], by other means other than the ordinary sense channels, is a theory deserving of the most careful consideration, not only in its simple aspect as a claimant for recognition as an important scientific fact, but also because there is practically no department of psychic phenomena on which it does not have bearing.”*
This definition is somewhat of an embellishment over what seems to be the original one proposed by Frederick William Henry Myers (1843-1901), one of the principal founders (in 1882) of the Psychical Research Society in London,
His definition reads: “The communication of impressions of any kind FROM ONE MIND TO ANOTHER [emphasis again added] independently of recognized [the five physical] channels of sense.”
Via these two definitions of TELEPATHY, we can perceive that mind-to-mind and brain-to-brain began to be linked at some point between 1882 and 1900, and are still so linked today.7. MIND?
To proceed further, it is important to somewhat comprehend what is meant by MIND, and seeking to achieve that comprehension is something of a challenge. One can read numerous books on psychology, of course, but all one will end up with is more understanding about psychology within whose contexts “mind” is not very well understood as such.
So it is more interesting simply to trace the dictionary definitions of MIND.
To begin with, the Oxford Dictionary presents some twenty-eight definitions of the term, each definition being accompanied by three to five distinctive nuances – more or less making up a total of eighty-four plus definitions or partial ones.
MYND (probably taken from some early Indo-European source) is found in English at about 1000 at which time it principally referred to “memory, remembrance, recollection, commemoration, commemorative.”
In a lesser, secondary sense, it also referred to “The state or action of thinking about something, as in thought of an object; to have in mind, to give heed to.” For obscure reasons, this early definition was declared Obsolete.
At about 1200, however, MIND was being referred to as “The cognitive or intellectual powers, as distinguished from will and emotions.”
1297 – “Purpose or intention; desire or wish.” Also declared Obsolete for reasons unstated.
1340 – “Mental or psychical being, or faculties thereof.”
1400 – “That which a person thinks about any subject or question; one’s view, judgment, or opinion.”*
With one principal exception, combinations of these early definitions, including the Obsolete ones, still mostly constitute the gist of how MIND is defined today.
The exception has to do with the introduction of the term CONSCIOUSNESS into the mix, a term that was not in English much before 1681, and then with the principal definition of “the recognition by the thinking subject of its own acts or affections; the faculty of being conscious, as a condition and concomitant of all thought, feeling, and volition.”
The reference to “being conscious” refers, in general, to being conscious OF whatever one is in the awake state or condition, possibly including being conscious OF dreams, etc., while in the sleep or in a trance condition. So, the correct appellation here would not refer to consciousness per se, but of conscious-of-ness in the awake condition.*
The reason for this slight correction is that the “State of Consciousness” was proposed and generally accepted after about 1805 - after which the State of Consciousness was increasingly described as the whole, innate existence of consciousness within which many separate forms based on conscious-of-ness can arise, disappear, shift, change, modulate, etc., and do so whether one is awake or not.
As many observed, “we know not” what the innate State of Consciousness is. Such is more or less STILL being said of it as this essay is being composed now in 2005. (See, for example: SHADOWS OF THE MIND: A SEARCH FOR THE MISSING SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS (1994), by Roger Penrose.)Back in 1866, the then renowned British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) also pointed up “that what consciousness is, we know not; and how it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp, or as is any other ultimate fact of nature.”
Going back a few years earlier than Huxley, the still famous British economist John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) had noted (in his A SYSTEM OF LOGIC (1843), that “Mind is the mysterious something that thinks and feels.”
Between Huxley’s and Mill’s comments, we today really don’t know much more about consciousness and mind, excepting a few transient details the importance of which is vague – although a great deal is now known about the brain and sensory receptors.*
In any event, at some point after the term “consciousness” had become present in English, the Oxford offered up the following definitions of MIND.
(1) The Seat of a person’s consciousness;
(2) Memory;
(3) Thoughts, volitions, and feelings;
(4) The system of cognitive and emotional phenomena and powers that constitutes the subjective being of a person;
(5) Also, the incorporeal subject of the psychical faculties,
(6) The spiritual part of a human being; the soul as distinguished from the body.
To these definitions (or descriptions) it would now be necessary to add:
(7) The discovered existence of thousands of kinds of cellular receptors, now including mirror neurons lodged in the premotor cortex;
(8) The subliminal systems constituting the subconscious;
(9) The superliminal systems constituting the lesser known superconscious;
(10) And a selection among the historical eighty plus definitions of MIND, including those that imply transcendental elements.
If these ten brief definitions do partially establish what MIND consists of, the next question is how, or whether, the ten elements work harmoniously together to produce what is fondly referred to as “mental clarity” – which is something one would like to have possession of when telepathically attempting to connect up to thoughts and intentions of others.
There are occasions when some few of the specimens of the human species cannot even telepathically connect up to their own thoughts and intentions. This is at least one basis for considering, hypothetically of course, that MIND might not have mental clarity all of the time, but could at least partially exist as a confusion of rather entangled neural networks.*
Now, to get back to TELEPATHY itself, defined as mind-to-mind thought transference. Well, it does take two minds or two brains to “interact” so as to communicate “impressions of any kind from or between one mind to another independently of recognized [the five physical] channels of sense.”
So, in this sense we have TWO interacting minds, let us say Mind A and Mind B, both being thought of as independent of each other.
Might we not think that Mind A is in possession of its versions of the ten elements laboriously listed above?
Might we not think that Mind B is in possession of its own versions of same?
If so, might we not might dare to think that the Mind A and the Mind B versions might be different, differently arranged, ordered, or disordered, differently constituted, differently founded upon different intellectual and awareness thresholds, and other such whatnots?
One doesn’t want to consider that these A and B versions of minds might be quite messy, because such is often all to obvious anyway.
And, as earlier mentioned, there is the issue of whether or not consciousness “kicks in” relevant to any telepathic interaction – meaning that although the brains involved might interact with this or that telepathic thing, mind-consciousness itself might not “kick in” – this in turn implying that brains and their associated receptors might be doing their thing, but consciousness is out to lunch.
In general, it CAN sometimes be observed that lots of consciousnesses are out to lunch most of the time – including those consciousnesses that opined that telepathy is solely, exclusively, and specifically a mind-to-mind affair.8. THOUGHT - THE NATURE OF?
Although few take note of it, the concept of TELEPATHY as the mind-to-mind thing carries within it the earlier concept of thought transference - in that it is thought that thoughts are manufactured in the mind-thing.
This is taken so much for granted that any other ideas about it can seem alien. and welcome doormats for such ideas might be replaced by no trespassing advisories.*
In any event, discussions about the nature of THOUGHT are almost totally absent in the parapsychological literature about telepathy.
So the EOD does not have a special entry for it, although there are entries for Thought-Reading, Thought-Transference, Thought Vibrations - Theory of, Thoughtforms, and Thoughtography otherwise known as Psychic Photographs.*
The term THOUGHT was in Old English very early at about 839, and, according to the Oxford dictionary, carried the various definitions of:
“ The action or process of thinking;
“ Mental action or activity in general, especially that of the intellect:;
“ Exercise of the mental faculty;
“ Formation or arrangement of ideas in the mind.”
Twentieth-century definitions of the noun were briefly given as:
(1) The action or process of thinking - cogitation;
(2) Serious consideration;
(3) Recollection;
(4) Reasoning power;
(5) The power to imagine, conceptualize;
(6) Something that is thought;
(7) An individual act or product of thinking;
(8) Intention, plan;
(9) Opinion, belief;
(10) The intellectual product or the organized views and principles of a period, place, group, or individual;
(11) A slight amount of.
Only one synonym is given: IDEA*
The early 839 and the later twentieth-century definitions more or less resemble each other, although the modern definition is slightly more detailed – with the result that both sets of definitions give the idea that one knows what one is talking about, right?
The New Columbia Encyclopedia (1975) has apparently not found it necessary or useful to have an entry for THOUGHT, although it does have one for THOUGHT READING whereby one is directed to SEE TELEPATHY – which is briefly defined as “apparent communication [of information] between two persons without recourse to the [physical] senses.”
“ Two persons?” Presumably this refers to two persons each having MIND and THOUGHT without which the persons probably would not be enabled to thought-recognize themselves, much less others.*
Anyhow, referring back to the eleven modernist definitions of THOUGHT, the contexts of the mind-to-mind thing presuppose that thoughts, such as intentions, in one’s MIND are
(1) pristine and crystal clear enough that they
(2) can be transferred to
(3) another mind and
(4) arrive in such other mind in a condition pristine and crystal clear
(5) which other mind itself must be in a condition of pristine and crystal clarity
(6) in order for this whole thing to be conducted in circumstances that are pristine and crystal clear from the start-up.
This seems to be asking for a whole lot, in that at least some minds are not, in the first place, characterized by too much pristine and crystal clarity of thoughts - even to the thinker who is thinking them in what passes for such thinker’s mind morass.*
Most modern dictionaries give about twenty-one distinct qualitative definitions for THINK.
If one reads through them, it becomes possible to wonder how thoughts of one kind can be distinguished from other kinds – except thoughts concerning the most mundane matters, such as disposing of the garbage – which some few are not very good at, anyway.
In any event, it seems that certain kinds of thinking result in “forms” in the mind; other kinds result in mental image pictures; yet other kinds result in reflecting, in TRYING to center one’s thoughts; other kinds result in devising opinions, judgments, ideas, plans via deduction, inference, and imagination.
Thus, if one chances to telepathically recognize a thought-intention, there remains the difficulty of determining whether it merely consists of an opinion, judgment, idea, plan, deduction, inference, or imagination. Is this not a mess?9. TELE – PATHY EXAMINED
After sort of summarizing the mind-to-mind, thought-to-thought comedy (or fiasco?), it is finally appropriate to mention that the term “telepathy” CANNOT be translated into any language as “mind-to-mind.”
Whether Frederick Myers understood this or not when he coined the term back about 1882 cannot be determined now.
But in constructing the term he certainly knew he was loosely attaching together two Greek words – TELE meaning “distance; at a distance; over a distance,” and SYM-PATHY.*
Back in 1882, there may have been a slightly socio-scientific context involved, in that the phenomena under discussion had for a longish time been known as “thought-transference over distance,” during which “thought” had been assumed to be the principal activity of the mind morass.
Behind this socio-scientific context, Alexander Graham Bell’s version of the telephone had been patented and demonstrated in 1876.
The term “telephone” is drawn from the term PHONIC defined as “of, or related to, or producing sound; of, or relating to, the sounds of speech.”
So TELE-PHONE was defined as “an instrument for reproducing sounds (speech) at a distance.”
In this sense, TELE was entirely scientific, and so it quickly became a sort of scientific rage that inspired quite a number of TELE-prefixed words.*
In the sense that TELEPATHY was first used, TELE was prefixed to another Greek term, PATHY, itself drawn from the Greek PASCHEIN that translates into English as PATHOS, and refers to “undergoing experiencing, to undergo suffering emotions and feeling.”
In this context, however, “undergo” did not, in the negative sense, exclusively refer to “suffering,” but instead “to partake of; “to pass through experiencing” of something.
The negative contexts of PATHY are drawn from another Greek term, PATHES, which DOES refer to suffering as painfully suffering.*
The English term SYMPATHY was derived from the Greek SYMPATHEIA and the later Latin SYMPATHIA, both derived from SYN + PATHOS.
SYN- (or SYM-) is the GREEK prefix for “with, together with,” which, in English, refers to “with; along with; together with; at the same time with; to bring or experience together with.”
In English, however, SYMPATHY seems mostly to have been thought of as something vocalized or expressed at funerals or wakes, even if only sent via mail in the form of somber greeting cards.
But even this English connotation does have an earlier, and more informative, history.*
SYMPATHY entered English at about 1579 and which had the rather remarkable definition of “A (real or supposed) affinity between certain things, by virtue of which they are similarly or correspondingly affected by the same influence or affect, or influence each other (especially in some occult way), or attract or tend toward each other.”
By 1596, another definition has formed up: “Conformity of feelings, inclinations, or temperament which makes persons agreeable to each other; community of feeling; harmony of disposition.”
This seems to reflect “birds of a similar feather flock together.”
It was not until about 1600 that the term took on the familiar definition of “The quality or state of being affected by the sorrow or suffering of another.”*
However, at about 1662, SYMPATHY was defined as “The quality or state of being affected by the condition of another with a feeling similar or corresponding to that of the other; the fact or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings of another or others. Also, a feeling or frame of mind evoked by and responsive to some external influence.”
As of about the 1980s, modern definitions for SYMPATHY were being given as:
(1) Feelings, emotions, experience – more at PATHOS.
(2) An affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other;
(3) Mutual or parallel susceptibility or condition brought about by it;
(4) Unity or harmony in action or effect;
(5) Inclination to think or feel alike – intellectual or emotional accord;
(6) The act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another – the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity;
(7) The correlation existing between two bodies capable of communicating their VIBRATIONAL ENERGY [emphasis added] to one another through some medium.*
Before dissecting and examining the above, we should take the time to note the following dictionary (not occult) definitions for:
SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS: A vibration produced in one body by the vibrations of exactly the same period in a neighboring body.
SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM: Autonomic nervous system; a part of the vertebrate nervous system that governs involuntary actions.
AUTONOMIC: Acting independently of volition.*
Please now redirect your attention to the seventh modernist definition of SYMPATHY noted above, i.e., “The correlation existing between two bodies capable of communicating their vibrational energy to one another through some medium.”
In this respect it might be pointed out, if only hypothetically, that if capacities for such kind of “communicating” did not innately exist in the human species, then such communicating would never be experienced in any way, and thus would never become a topic of wonderment or debate, much less one of direct experiencing.
The EOP does not have an entry for SYMPATHY. Neither do the following major sources summing up parapsychological research:
PARAPSYCHOLOGY: SOURCES OF INFORMATION (1973), Compiled under the auspices of the American Society for Psychical Research (1973).
ESP RESEARCH TODAY: A STUDY OF DEVELOPMENTS IN PARAPSYCHOLOGY SINCE 1960, by J. Gaither Pratt. (1973).
PARAPSYCHOLOGY: NEW SOURCES OF INFORMATION, 1973-1989, compiled by Rhea A. White (1990).
It therefore seems that sympathy, apparently a major ingredient in all kinds of sensitivities (certainly telepathic sensitivities), has not been considered very deeply in psychical or parapsychological research.*
The sixth definition of SYMPATHY quoted above is given as “The act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another – the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity.”
*
The term EMPATHY entered English via German after it was coined, in German, in 1912, EINFUHLUNG (in + FUHLUNG) - (which literally translates into English as “in + feeling”) – the German term defined as “The power of entering into the feeling-experiences of or understanding of objects or emotions outside ourselves.”
A German by the name of Lipps leaned on this definition to describe “The theory that the appreciation of a work of art depends upon the capacity of the spectator to project his personality into it.”*
As already mentioned, it is interesting to note that the EOP, and other parapsychology sources, does NOT have an entry for EMPATHY.
EOP likewise does NOT have an entry for FEELING – although it does have an entry for SENSITIVE, but only in relation to MEDIUMS, some of which, as is admitted in psychical and parapsychological research, have been quite good at TELEPATHY.
If, in desperation, one consults the authoritative NEW COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA (1975), one’s desperation will remain desperate – for there is no entry for EMPATHY therein.*
can drive one to consult little known and unpopular sources (even among parapsychologists), among which is HANDBOOK OF PARA-PSYCHOLOGY (1977), edited by Benjamin B. Wolman.
Therein, on page 875, we can finally find an entry for EMPATHY, described as:
“The ability to perceive the mood and feelings of another person and the understanding of the feelings, sufferings, and situation of another person without those feelings being communicated by words.
“ Moreover, empathy encompasses communication across large distances: thus it borders on and often transgresses the borders of ESP.”
On page 878 appears the added comment that “Both empathy and telepathy are instances of TRANSFER of psychological elements such as emotional states, perceptions, thoughts and so on, but such a transfer is facilitated by the particular somatopsychic or psychosomatic nature of the individual concerned.”*
SOMATO-SOMATIC CELL refers to “one of the cells of the body that compose the tissues, organs, nervous system, neural networks, and parts of the individual other than the germ cells.”
As earlier discussed, mirror neurons have been discovered in the premotor cortex, which is just one of the organs, or parts, of the individual other than germ cells. Unless other reasons are to be discovered, it is fair to speculate that mirror neurons respond via some kind of empathic contact with others.
So also, it seems, do skin cell receptors, nose receptors, and quite a number of receptor cells throughout the whole body discussed in DECIPHERING THE SENSES referred to earlier.
Alas! No one knows what empathy is or consists of, at least insofar as discovering its technological mechanisms, much less why consciousness sometimes does or does not “kick in” about it.
However, those who sense vibrations, better known as “vibes,” probably do realize that they are in something like a condition or state of IN + FUHLUNG with what they are sensing.
In English, this “something” might be defined as IN + WITH + PARTICIPATION with what they are sensing.*
This may be one reason as to why empathy is not too popular – because some vibes as well as some minds can be quite yucky, etc., and so forth.
Simply put, people don’t like to experience those empathic-feelings that they don’t like – which might bring about a lot of closure with respect to empathic experiencing.
The only exceptions seem to be those stalwart types (most often women) who successfully become empathic-clairvoyant-ESP-telepathic-time-traveling psychic detectives - which they of course could not become if they wilted at the first skin-crawl of the usually ugly events they are invited to empathically inspect and sort out.
(NOTE: As this essay was finally being sorted out during 2005, there was a short-lived production about psychic detectives recently at work with police detectives – on cable, but five amazing episodes were on prime time. Utterly fascinating, and worth tracking down if possible. During the 1970s, the very impressive Dorothy Allison gained much media attention for helping police solve difficult cases, and, as well, the remarkable Robyn Jameison, Jeanne Borgen, and Joe Morgan who did likewise. Among others, more recent PSI detectives are the astonishing Nancy Myers and Noreen Renier. Check the Internet for these names; also See: A MIND FOR MURDER: THE REAL-LIFE FILES OF A PSYCHIC INVESTIGATOR by Noreen Renier (Berkeley Books, 2005). The deeper empathic-telepathic implications of this PSI detective situation will be considered more deeply in Parts Two and Three.)*
Meanwhile, there is no entry for EMPATHY in the official 1987 DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS (DSM-III-R) published by the American Psychiatric Association, and no entry for TELEPATHY either.
But there is an entry for EMPATHY in the PSYCHIATRIC DICTIONARY (Fifth Edition, 1981), edited by Robert J. Campbell, M.D.
“ EMPATHY: Putting oneself into the psychological frame of reference of another, so that the other person’s thinking, feeling, and acting are understood and, to some extent, predictable.”
Also, “the ability to accompany another to wherever the other person’s feelings lead him, no matter how strong, deep, destructive, or abnormal they may seem.”
There is also a brief reference to EMPATHIC – “the organism’s primary feeling-motivation and response.” (Please note that here we finally encounter FEELING + MOTIVATION, this latter term appearing, along with “thinking,” in association with the definition of telepathy – i.e., thoughts, motivation.”10. THE TELEPATHIC-EMPATHIC “BOBO” EVENT
In the context of empathy, reference is now made to “strong, deep, destructive, or abnormal” in connection with “empathic participation.”
To get into this rather yucky type of thing, it can be told that back in the mid-1970s this author was acquainted with a quite wealthy Wall Street type whose wonderful wife was deeply into parapsychology stuff.
They entertained lavishly, and among their numerous dinner guests were writers, scientists, politicos, etc., including various police commissioners and noted detectives with whom the use of “psychics” to help solve crimes was often discussed.*
At the time there was a certain individual who seemed to have tested well in some simple, even silly, clairvoyant experiments, and it had somehow been decided to see if he might be able to give clairvoyant tips about crimes.
Because by then I knew a lot about how experiments should be designed and conducted, I was called upon to witness (and oversee) a few meetings between three police detectives and the individual who had tested well in the clairvoyance experiments.
The whole affair was to be strictly off the records, and, in any event, the clairvoyant individual involved refuses to have his name mentioned, so we will give him the alias of BoBo.
I would not narrate the following because it is anecdotal and there are no records to support it. But what is narrated is quite consistent with what most other psychic detectives report experiencing, and which reports today do have police verification.*
The drill with BoBo was this: The detectives (identified by fake names) were interested in gaining information about unsolved or difficult crimes.
It was agreed that the detectives should bring photographs (only five) of possible suspects, present them face down on a table, whereupon BoBo the clairvoyant, without touching the photos, would say whatever he would say.
BoBo would be given no other information, and the detectives were to be seated, told to not move, and to keep their mouths shut in case they inadvertently gave some kind of clue.
Of course, BoBo understood that some kind of crime was at issue, or the detectives would not be interested.*
In the first session, the cops carefully laid out five photos face down, then sat and kept their mouths shut.
BoBo was seated in a chair placed at a distance from the photos so that he could not touch them, or wave his hands over them. He did not close his eyes, and almost immediately indicated that “Crime is somehow involved here, but there is no crime, so what are you’al doing here?”
The five photos were of five cops, including one commissioner, none of whom seemed covertly involved in any kind of crime.
This, of course, was an unscheduled test, one that had not been agreed upon. BoBo was a little pissed, but the detectives seemed pleased.*
At the next session, some days later, the same detectives again put five face-down photos on the table.
BoBo surveyed them from the same distance, but this time took a little longer before he commented.
Then: “Well, the thoughts here are complicated . . . “ A few moments passed. Then: “But this involves a bank robbery in broad daylight where someone withdrew a large amount of money that was handed to him in a paper bag, went outside, took a taxi to Brooklyn where the cab was held up while waiting at a red light. The only thing taken was the paper bag with the money in it.”
Everyone looked quite bewildered, including myself. The whole story in practically one or two breaths!
BoBo continued: “The photos are not of the robbers involved, nor of the man who was robbed. The fourth photo from the left is of one of the bank’s employees, a male, who arranged the job, so it was basically an inside piece of work.”*
This time, the detectives, their faces rather flushed, didn’t seem too pleased, and one of them complained that “Because of the amount of money involved, we have checked out all of the bank’s employees.”
BoBo didn’t wilt, merely saying “Well, you better check again.”
We never learned the outcome of this, but the detectives did come back for more. They wouldn’t have done so if they had thought BoBo was delivering nonsense.*
So, about two or three weeks later, the detectives were back again, this time with six face-down photos.
BoBo sat and began his scrutiny with his usual calm indifference, but took a little longer before he said anything, sort of shifting this way and that in his chair.
“ This is about a missing person, the second card from the right (pause). Can I see him?”
So he was shown – but still did not touch the card. “Yes,” BoBo said, “that’s him. He seems to have been an important police informant about some important investigation underway.”
One of the detectives: “…seems to HAVE BEEN?”
“ Oh, yes, he’s already dead, about a week or ten days ago, I’d say. . . . it was over in New Jersey, outside of Trenton to the north a little.
“ They beat the shit out of him, but he wouldn’t talk, they took a hacksaw and sawed off his left foot. He fainted.
“ They then strangled him with a piece of narrow wire that cut through.
“ His face turned blue.
“ They threw him and his severed foot in the trunk of an old green car and drove him away.”
Silence.
Then: “Where did they go?”
“ Oh, that,” BoBo responded with tears in his eyes. “The green car is left abandoned in the parking lot of (deleted) raceway.
It’ll be discovered soon, because the body has already begun to stink.”
About a week later, we were told that the stinking car had been found, and that the detectives, now thoroughly impressed, had another “task.”*
BoBo, however, was a somewhat hysterical wreck. “I can’t get the bloody brutal thoughts of the killers and pictures out of my head - especially the sawing off part, the smell of the bone, blood, the agony of the guy, my skin again and again crawls with his fear and pain. God Damn! I can hardly sleep, every time I close my eyes there’s that FOOT dangling. Even drink doesn’t help. I’ve had to get pills.”
About two weeks later, “Well, I’m a bit better now, but let the cops train their own clairvoyants, and let them be forensic specialists who are used to this kind of shit.”
So, that was the end of BoBo’s clairvoyant detecting – after only three tries at it.*
Clairvoyance? Or was it telepathic, or, perhaps empathic? Whatever it was, it was clearly WITH IT + PARTICIPATORY – completely in keeping with, to paraphrase a little, “Putting oneself into a empathic-telepathic-somatic-psychological frame of reference so as to participate in (i.e., “mirror”) another person’s feelings, no matter how strong, deep, destructive, or abnormal they may be.”
*
Poor BoBo. At the time, neither he nor I knew that his empathic-clairvoyance was “wide open.” Myself, I had to find out about this kind of thing some years later, albeit in an entirely different way.
But this led to the understanding that telepathic-empathic connectivity can be closed, can be partially open, be lukewarm, or openly “hot” upon special occasions – especially in the contexts of sensing threatening dangers whether their sources are consciously perceived or not perceived.
If one reads enough of the literature about experienced instinct, gut-feeling, intuition, and insight, it might dawn that these phenomena are mostly characterized by some kind of vibrational empathy, more so than by conscious intellectual deduction – which is not a bad thing if it correctly accompanies the vibrational empathy.
But most experiencers of instinct, gut-feeling, intuition, and insight usually say that they have no intellectual idea of what is involved, or how any of this comes about.
So the presence of conscious intellectual deduction usually does not accompany those forms of vibrational empathy.*
This is perhaps why such real experiences have been excluded from versions of telepathy focused only in the mind-to-mind scenario in which thoughts, intentions, and motives ARE considered as intellectually conscious constructions formatted within the contexts of the swampy mind-thing, and within whatever a given mind-thing is utilizing as its reality box.
In any event, mind-to-mind telepathy can also be closed, or be lukewarm, or, on some occasions, be “hot.”
The lukewarm versions of telepathy are what usually show up under parapsychological testing, usually with lukewarm results that measure in the 0.5 to 1.5 percent ratio.
These have been, and still are, interpreted as “suggestive” of telepathy, not as complete evidence of it – much to the relief of those having minimal or major secrets to conceal.11. INTELLECTUAL VS ORGANIC TELEPATHY
As already tiresomely emphasized, TELEPATHY is a term intellectually and vividly associated with “mind-to-mind thought-transference” – and that is the beginning and end of that concept.
The “mind-thought” thing has long been established as a conscious intellectual affair that emanated from the elusive Seat of intelligence located somewhere in the brain-mind thing, (although no one seems to have located that Seat for sure).
It is additionally thought that INTELLECT produces thinking, meaning that if Intellect were absent in our species, there would be no thinking of thoughts.
It is from INTELLECT that the term INTELLECTUAL is derived, one of the definitions of which is given as “Developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by EMOTION or EXPERIENCE.” (Emphasis added.)
Thus, intellectual thinking and affairs can take place in the absence of emotions or experience, so many vistas of this and that can be intellectually-mind-established that are completely out of touch with experience that might significantly modify those non-experienced vistas.
Furthermore, the intellectualized vista of TELEPATHY incorporates only four, largely superficial, basic factors, i.e., the two thought-minds involved, the intervening distance between them, and the transference of thoughts over or through that distance.
Thus, if something transmitted across the intervening distance cannot be recognized as a mind-thought thing, it is then not thought of as telepathy.
This is not to say that such cannot occur, because it sometimes (rarely, it seems) does.*
As a shift in conceptual venue, EMOTION is defined as “Feeling – the affective aspect of consciousness; a psychic and physical reaction subjectively experienced as a strong feeling and physiologically involving changes that prepare the body for immediate vigorous action.”
As indicated in the definition of INTELLECTUAL, intellectual affairs can proceed in the absence of experience or EMOTION, the implication being that intellectuality doesn’t particularly need to feel anything or have a basis of experiential understanding.
Thus, intellectual telepathy is expected to proceed without experiential and emotional stuff mucking up the process. The transmission of thought alone will do – IF the sender and receiver are up to snuff in recognizing thoughts coming and going from one mind morass to another.*
As will extensively be discussed in Part Two forthcoming (one of these days), it is quite well understood (in the advancing brain studies area) that unless something is somehow FELT, it will not register in consciousness or in the so-called mind.
But meanwhile, attention is drawn to that part of the definition that refers to “changes that prepare the BODY for immediate vigorous action.”
The principle definition of BODY is given as “The organized physical substance of an animal or plant whether living or dead; the living or dead organism.”
ORGANISM is defined as “A complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their function in the whole; an individual constituted to carry on the activities of life by means of organs separate in function but mutually interdependent.”
The term ORGANIC refers to anything “of, relating to, or arising in a bodily organ.”
It is now to be noted that an organic bodily organ cannot feel anything unless it is somehow organically stimulated to do so – and in order to be organically stimulated it has to possess some kind of organic “equipment” that organically recognizes, responds, or reacts to such organic stimulating.
This “organic equipment” has historically been referred to as the physical senses, which were thought to consist of five, and only five.
But with the increasing discovery of vast numbers of cellular receptors throughout the human bio-body, it is more apparent than ever that we have more organic senses than just the obvious physical five.
This can be phrased in a different way. We have more organic MICRO-senses than just the traditional MACRO-five, and it has become clear that various micro-senses detect kinds of information that the macro-five do not.
It is also somewhat understood that information, acquired via the macro-five, more or less feed directly into appropriate parts of the brain organs - at least when one is in a clearly awake, hopefully conscious, condition, during which what is perceived via the macro-five can intellectually be thought about.
This is all more or less straightforward and understandable. But it is also apparent that if our organic systems had to wait until something could intellectually be thought about in the awake condition, then the organic systems would be much stressed – or, perhaps, wouldn’t work at all.*
The foregoing is probably difficult to grasp – unless it is put into some kind of order, even if only hypothetically so.
1. Organic systems exist;
2. Organic systems continue to exist only because they are systems whose elements work together to form the whole of them;
3. To exist, organic systems must have numerous sensory receptors that are stimulated by various kinds of information;
4. To continue to exist, organic systems must have organic ways and means of processing information incoming from a possibly wide variety of its sensory receptors;
5. The most natural, and logical, basis for this is development of a central nervous systems that collects receptor information and forwards it to what passes as its brain;
6. The developed brain is usually sectioned into various groups of synapses and neurons each of which are dedicated to dealing with certain categories or types of information;
7. The whole of the foregoing so far must work automatically, so central nervous systems must have functioning counterparts we refer to as non-conscious, non-volitional autonomic response systems.*
AUTONOMIC is defined as “Acting independently of volition, i.e., reflexive; acting spontaneously without depending on volitional thought.”
VOLITION is defined as “The [conscious] act of making a choice or decision; the power of choosing or determining.”
Volitional activity requires some kind of conscious thinking, and which is the putative chief function of mind, those two morasses that have laboriously been detailed earlier.
The way one’s life is intellectually lived might depend on volitional activity based on whatever is being filtered through what passes for efficiency within the two morasses.
But one’s very physical existence depends on the efficiency of one’s organic autonomic nervous system, that very system that does whatever it does “independently of volition” - which is to say, in the absence of being volitionally conscious of it intellectually..
It is usually assumed that it is the intellectual thinking mind that telepathically detects thoughts, emotions, and intentions of others. It is quite possible that the mind sometimes actually succeeds in doing this, but the average hit rate is also acknowledged as being quite low.
On the other hand, as but two examples, the organ referred to as the skin has receptors that organically feel emotions and intentions of others; the organic nose has organic receptors that smell emotions and intentions of others.
But this is neither acknowledged nor referred to as telepathy, and won’t ever be - unless the existence of intellectual telepathy AND organic telepathy is acknowledged.
It seems that the only two real differences between the two are:
(1) that organic telepathy that is somatically felt via the impulses of the autonomic nervous system is more likely to “kick in;”
(2) while intellectual telepathy is less involved with autonomic impulses, but more involved with what is being mentally calculated within the mind-morass.
More simply put, here is the important distinction between “felt” and “thought.”
In the larger picture of all things, it is quite well known that specimens of the human species can undergo various kinds of mental calculations without feeling too much of anything.Based upon a lot of evidence voiced by numerous telepathic experiencers, “Mental calculation alone does not a telepath make.
”TO BE CONTINUED AS PART TWO UNDER THE
GENERAL HEADING OF
“ THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS KICKING-IN”**
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