Read my mind

How is a mother able to understand the language of her newborn baby? Knowing who’s calling before the phone even rings, guessing who’s behind the door when the door bell rings, meeting a long-lost friend the same day you were thinking about him/her are all examples of telepathy. While many of us experience this phenomenon from time to time, telepathy seems to have finally got a stamp of acceptance from science.

Scientists recently conducted the world’s first computer-mediated brain-to-brain telepathy experiment in which a person in Mumbai said “hola” and “ciao” to three people in France. The greetings were not spoken, typed or texted, the communication took place between the brains of a set of study subjects. The team, whose members belong to Barcelona-based research institute Starlab, French firm Axilum Robotics and Harvard Medical School, published its findings in the journal PLOS One in 2014. Now that science has proved that brain-to-brain communication can happen, telepathy seems all set to script a new chapter in communication that is... well... all in the mind.

Do we all possess telepathic abilities? Dr Trupti Jayin, clinical psychologist and past life regression therapist, says, “Yes, all humans are telepathic. It is called quantum entanglement. This is because we are spiritual beings in a physical body. Our spirit, jiva or consciousness, expresses itself through the five senses and five organs of actions. All experience is first communicated by thought, which is non-physical and then by the body. So, in effect, if we develop our ability to transmit thoughts at a faster frequency, we would not need words to be spoken. This has been experienced by pregnant mothers who just know what the baby feels, by lovers who don’t need words.”

Not terming this a scientific experiment, Dr Thimappa Hegde, HOD, director and senior consultant, Neurology at Narayana Health City, Bengaluru, says such experiments come under para science and not science. He explains, “There are cases when a person wants to communicate something and the intention is very strong, then irrespective of the receptivity of the person at the other end, a person is able to make a communication, this is what is known as telepathy.

Just through intention, a person is able to transmit thoughts and ideas and another person is able to receive it around the same time the thought is being communicated. However, this is considered to be para science, this is not scientific at all. All that I can definitely say is it is certainly possible to make communication with just thought.”

“When two people are very sensitive to each other (like two people in love) and have increased level of sensitivity, then they are able to communicate with just thoughts. Sensitivity is one aspect, the intention to communicate is another. There’s something called the power of intention, and when it’s genuine and strong it is possible to radiate your thoughts to a specific individual,” says Dr Hegde.

Explaining the power of thought, Dr Seema Anand, founder and promoter of Look Beyond (Health & Wellness) and member of the Indian Board of Alternate Medicine who specialises in clinical hypnotherapy, says, “The single most powerful form of energy is thought. Thought is more powerful than electro-magnetic energy, colour or sound. It is the start of any form of energy.

Thought can transfer without any boundaries of time, space or distance. As we all know when light travels through space, by the time it reaches us, it takes a long period of time and it also diminishes, it’s the same with sound, but thought has no such limiting factor, it can be transformed. Sitting here, I can transfer a thought across the globe. All energy moves in wave form, thought too moves on a similar plane.

A thought is transmitted, which is why every one of us is a telepath — some are natural telepaths and others can be trained to be telepaths. It’s part of our basic genetic structure. Acknowledge and recognise it and it’s there, don’t and it will become latent and surface only once in a while. Every human being is intuitive and telepathic. While telepathy is receiving and transmitting the thought, intuition is receiving of thoughts or pre-knowledge of something that is about to happen. We are all telepaths and have a physical body and an energy body.”  

However, not everyone is convinced that telepathy is natural to human beings. According to Dr Praveen Gupta, director neurology, Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurgaon, “In today’s date we are not telepaths and we cannot send and receive messages at will. However, training of brain mechanisms to do so or enhance the means of extra-sensory communication could help reach better social and medical goals.

As our understanding of medical science advances, we could with deeper understanding of quantum physics and human brain see a better understanding of this extra-sensory perception. Not to say it’s telepathy but often out of the blue we get sudden memory of a patient who we have not seen for months and next day the patient comes to see us.”

Explaining telepathy, Dr Gupta says, “Telepathy is the purported transmission of information from one person to another without using known sensory channels or physical means. The first is the Radio Wave Theory, according to which telepathy works like radio waves. People often speak of ‘vibes’ as though there are telepathic ‘brainwaves’ going from one person to another.

The problem with this theory is that if there was some kind of wave, we ought to be able to detect it coming from people’s brains. But we cannot. The brain’s electrical activity can be detected at best only a few centimetres away from the skull. There would also need to be a ‘vibes’ transmitter in one brain and a ‘vibes’ receiver in the other brain. No sign of either has ever been detected in any human brain. Also, the ‘signal’ strength ought to decay with distance. But that doesn’t seem the case.”

He adds, “The second is the Timeless/Spaceless Psychic Field theory. According to this, there is some unknown  ‘psychic field’ in which the impressions of every thought are stored for all time. Telepathy involves picking up these vibes from this psychic field. Science cannot completely rule out such unusual forms of human communication. As we learn more about the brain, perhaps we will one day uncover the full extent of our brain’s communicative ability.”

Disagreeing with Dr Gupta’s remark on how we are not telepaths, Dr Anand says, “I find Dr Gupta’s comment a little contrary when he says we are not telepaths but can be trained to be one. It’s like saying, ‘I am a student and can be trained to be a biologist.’ We all have this ability within us. Unfortunately, we are in an era where we need things to be proved.

I feel advent of science has taken away from other sciences, something that our forefathers knew and dealt with. Ramayana and Mahabharata talk of telepathy, astral viewing, astral projections… the fact is they were written by someone and not mere figment of someone’s imagination, it came from somewhere. The knowledge was there and then came science and people started going down the path saying if it is not proved, it can’t happen.”

She shares, “Nearly 10-12 years ago, when scientists started experimenting with the power of thought, one of the first experiments was with a candle. A person focused his attention on the candle and got the wax to form the shape he had in mind.

As science evolved and started recognising this as a power, more and more people started believing it. To tie this with Hindu philosophy, we have four yugs and we are currently in the end of Kalyug phase, and transitioning into Satyug — Satyug is more mental, people in this phase function on the mental plane. We are slowly transitioning to Satyug, how long will it take no one can say.”

Mind reader Shradha Salla, who’s also a Vastu practitioner, tarot card reader and numerologist in Mumbai, believes we are all born with intuitive abilities but over time, as we grow, because of circumstances, situations, people around us and what we’re taught, our intuition gathers dust. “It gets buried deep down, but to awaken it all we need to do is go within and start wiping the dust. That’s the reason it’s believed that when you do yoga, breathing exercises, meditation and when you’re honest to your feelings, you start getting more positive and intuitive. We’re all ruled by one power and that’s energy. It’s a fact — the entire universe is made up of energies. There is energy in and around us and all we need to do is make a connect.”

Agreeing with Salla, Dr Sharda, medical specialist and healer states, “The mystic and scientist are one in the opinion that all of the universe is energy vibrating at different frequencies. If our body is composed of atoms which are vibrating, our thoughts are also energy albeit of a subtler kind. Quantum physics has proved that the fate of a particle varies and depends on the consciousness of the observer. If thoughts are energy, we seem to be bathing in a swarm of thoughts and probably attract some and repel some. Those of us who are more intuitive than our objectively intelligent friends, know for sure that thoughts are contagious and that we catch good or bad thoughts much like a cold.”

Our chakras transmit our thoughts into the universe, believes astrologer and lifestyle guru Sandeep Bhargava. He explains, “The communication between Manipur chakra or solar plexus and Agya chakra (third eye) goes out into the universe and as soon as the message reaches a person, you hear from that person within 0.1 seconds — either through a phone call or you see a photo or you hear the name. A minimum of three times a day every human being has a telepathic experience, consciously or unconsciously. Our subconscious mind is our slave, but we are slaves of the conscious mind, which is a manipulator. With the help of meditation, we can control the conscious mind and activate the subconscious mind.

Our subconscious mind gets activated at any point in the day, and as our elders say, you should choose what comes out of your mouth as it may come true, when it does it’s the subconscious mind which makes it happen. Come to think of it, how did Sanjay in Mahabharata narrate the war to Dhritarashtra? It was through power of his vision. Human mind is the best machine and telepathy is not magic, it’s inbuilt within us and with meditation and silence, we can activate and hone it.”