Telepathy ( Archived) (53)

The definition in the op: 'the purported transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our KNOWN sensory channels, or physical interaction.'

Bear in mind the term 'telepathy' was coined in the 1800's before many things had been observed and recorded; before they were 'known' from a scientific, Western point of view.

Example 1: I had some friends round when my daughter was small. As I reached up and got her a toy from a shelf, one of the mums asked incredulously how I knew that she wanted that particular toy.

I said, "Because she told me."

My friend said, "No she didn't. She didn't say anything!"

I just shrugged. It took me a while to work out what my daughter and I had up until then taken for granted - she was looking at me to get my attention and her eyes ever so slightly flicked to the toy she wanted.

To other people the movement may have been imperceptible creating the impression that we were communicating by some form of telepathy.

If you watch small children who are at the developmental age where they play alongside each other, rather than together, you can observe these almost imperceptible body language and facial expression communications going on all the time.

I think this might be in Oliver Sachs' book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat.

It's thought that some 94% of the nerves from the eye follow the same pathway to the part of the brain which processes sight. The remaining 6% follow a more diffuse route.

If there is a disconnection in the 94% pathway (due to injury, or disease) people, whilst being totally blind, are able to point to objects on request with accuracy.

If there is a disconnection in the 6% pathway, people can see, but appear to lose some sense of reality. This has been famously exampled by a man who was so convinced his father was an android, he cut his head off to expose the wiring inside.

It was hypothesised that this 6% 'non-seeing' pathway may be linked with the concept of 'sixth sense' and may explain phenomena such as becoming aware when someone is looking at you.