But what exactly is telepathy? It comes from the Greek word tele, which means "distant" and pathos, which means "feeling." Basically it means "feeling from a distance." A better definition is that telepathy is a communication between minds that cannot happen through the known channels of the senses. It is the ability to communicate through thought to another. Yet not only communicate, but also to read the mind of another. Usually, telepathy takes place during serious times of crisis. In fact, Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist from the University of Virginia, reported that 50%-80% of telepathic communications happened during a serious crisis.
This then begs the question, "can such a phenomenon be reproduced in a laboratory setting?" This is what J.B. Rhine set out to do when he founded the Duke Parapsychology lab. His famous research on telepathy took place from 1929-1962. In order to test telepathy, he used what is now known as the Zener deck. It is a stack of cards that contains five different symbols- a circle, a square, a star, wavy lines, and a cross (see pic below). It was invented by his college Karl Zener, for the express purpose of testing telepathy.
In more modern tests, parapsychologists have incorporated what is called the Ganzfeld Method. The assumption is that telepathy can be much more induced when someone is in an almost meditative state. The goal is to reduce the noise around a person, along with the business of the mind, and help the them relax. The experiment has three phases: preparing the receiver and sender, sending the target, and judging the outcome.
In preparing the receiver and sender, the receiver is placed into a "ganzfeld" state by relaxing in a comfortable chair, while listening to white noise over headphones, and wearing translucent hemispheres covering their eyes, while a red light shines on their face. Sometimes, a relaxation tape is also played over the headphones. After a while, the brain becomes starved for sensory information. This means that it is ready for new visual imagery and changing sounds. During this state, mild or vivid imagery is commonly experienced. This is the state they want the receiver in. However, before they are sealed into the ganzfeld chamber, the experimenter will ask the receiver to speak aloud any feelings or images that come to mind when the relaxation tape ends. After this, the experimenter shuts the door and then escorts the sender to a distant, securely isolated room.
The experimenter has previously asked his assistant to randomly select what is called a "target pack" out of a large pool of packs. Each pack contains four pictures, one of which the assistant randomly selected as the telepathic target for the session. Because of the way the packs are packaged, the experimenter has no idea of the contents of each pack.
The experimenter then hands the target pack to the sender, and seals him in the sender's chamber. It is important to note here that though this didn't happen at first, all the interactions between the experimenter with the sender and receiver are all automated. This ensures that the experimental procedures are all followed the same way. The sender then picks one picture from the four and tries to mentally send it to the receiver. Finally, after about thirty minutes, the experimenter informs the sender and receiver that the experiment is over and then the results are judged.
In the judging process (remember the experimenter does not know the identity of the pictures target pack), the experimenter opens the pack and pulls out the pictures and shows them to the receiver. He asks the receiver to rank the pictures 1 through 4, according to how well each matches her impressions during the ganzfeld simulation. After she ranks the pictures, the session is over, and the sender reveals the actual target.
A direct "hit" is given if the receiver ranks the actual target number as "1". If not, the entire session is considered a "miss". By chance, this experiment should result in a hit every four sessions, for a 25% chance hit rater. Any thing remarkably greater than this is considered above chance, and shows that somehow, the sender's target picture reached the receiver.
The first meta-analysis of the Ganzfeld method was done around 1985. Of the 28 cases that reported "hits", 23 had resulted in hits greater than chance. The odds against chance were ten billion to one. Researchers began to conclude that something remarkable was going on here. Since then, the ganzfeld experiment has been tweaked to ensure greater controls, and replicated by parapsychologists all over the world - with the same results. Telepathy is no longer the stuff of science fiction or horror novels; it is a confirmed reality.
In the next post we will look at dream telepathy, along with the experiments done to test it.