Telepathy: Thy thoughts are mine

On a bright summer afternoon, while watching one of the Harry Potter series’ of movies, Order of the Phoenix, a couple of scenes made me start wondering. This happens wherein Professor Snape is instructed by Professor Dumbledore (a major protagonist) to give Harry lessons in Occlumency. However, Harry never made any progress in the skill, and as a result he was lured by Voldemort (the main antagonist in the film) through a carefully calculated vision he falsely believed to be real. Now, Occlumency as described in the movie, is the art of magically closing one’s mind against Legilimency, which in turn is the art of extracting feelings and memories from other person’s mind. Although the movie is a series of fictional events and characters, the concept of legilimency is closely related to what we describe today as Telepathy.


The term Telepathy is derived from the Greek words tele meaning "distant" and pathe meaning "experience". It is one kind of extrasensory perception which forms one of the many interesting topics of parapsychological research. Many studies seeking to detect, understand, and utilize telepathy have been done ever since this paranormal phenomena first became an area of interest. Although not a recognized scientific discipline, parapsychologists claim that some instances of telepathy are real. Some people also believe that technologically enabled telepathy, coined "techlepathy", "synthetic telepathy", or "psychotronics", will be the inevitable future of humanity. They believe that this will become the primary form of human communication directly connecting human nervous systems together with computers and with each other. However, a technique which shows statistically significant evidence of telepathy on every occasion is yet to be discovered. This lack of reliable reproducibility has led skeptics to argue that there is no credible scientific evidence for the existence of telepathy at all. After all, we can’t do much but simply scorn off at the very idea of brainwaves invisibly being controlled by a psychic who openly declares what you might be exactly thinking at the moment by possibly staring into your eyes.

It is however interesting to note that, telepathy finds a significant mention in the ancient Hindu scriptures. According to the Bhagvata Purana and Patanjali, “para citta ādi abhijñatā” or “Knowing the minds of others” is one of the five criterions or siddhis to attain perfect accomplishment in yoga and meditation. It is believed that telepathy was the first wireless telegraphy of the Yogis who used to send their thoughts as electrical messages with unimaginable speed. Their minds used to apparently work as transceivers deciphering the thoughts of others. From the knowledge of chakras it can be deduced that such mind to mind communication must be done through the pineal gland which qualifies as the sixth chakra. It is a small piece of nervous matter that is imbedded in the brain or hind-brain in the floor of the mind ventricle. It is an endocrine gland that is ductless and has got an internal secretion which is directly poured into the blood. Considered by occultists as the seat of the soul, the pineal gland is supposed to play an important part in telepathy by receiving messages. But is it really possible to empower the sixth chakra for telepathy?

One of the many scientific theories in this regard is the Montauk Project alleged to be a series of secret United States government projects conducted at Montauk Air Force Station on Montauk, Long Island for the purpose of developing psychological warfare techniques and exotic research. Various conspiracy theorists claim that experiments began in earnest from 1982 through to 1987-1988. One of the many experiments was the discovery of a “telepathic wave”. Their wavelengths depicted that while a telepathic wave behaved like a radio wave, it wasn't exactly one. Although it propagated in a similar fashion to that of electromagnetic waves and possessed like properties, not all of that fitted into normal wave functions. Some strange phenomenon which was part of the experiments on psychics included their minds getting jammed every day at the same hour. They just couldn't think effectively and were totally non-functional. Radio traces depicted that this happened whenever a 410-420 MHz cycle appeared on the air. When the 410-420 MHz cycle was off, the psychics would open back up after about 20 minutes. If this were to be true, then it seems psychotronics of some sort was already in operation. If our mind can possibly be comprehended using some freak telepathic waves, isn’t it possible that yogis could do the same with the power of their minds? Couldn’t they possibly have the ability to control the subconscious mind to receive messages or impressions and transmit the same to the conscious mind?

Let’s take a look at our normal everyday lives. If you are a pet owner of a dog, you might feel at times that without saying a word it understood what you were trying to impart. Same soulful communication occurs between infants and their mothers. Telepathy seems to be so simple and yet so intricate. We can but possibly tap some of its hidden powers trough meditation.