Your mind is a powerful tool. As a bridge between your thoughts and your spirit, it converts energy into images, memories, and articulations. You can’t see your mind, although certainly you can show it! Scientists have explored the workings of the mind for decades. Some now believe there are chemicals called polypeptides that conduct the energy impulses we identify as the mind’s functions, activating the brain cells that translate the impulses into perceptions.

Telepathy comes from Greek words meaning “far feeling.” Sometimes called thought transference, it is a process of exchanging energy to communicate, rather than using physical senses. When telepathy takes place between mortals, it’s a psychic skill.

Just as children are sensitive to spirit presence, they have strong telepathic capabilities. The unspoken communication between mother and child can be remarkable to observe. Even more amazing is a mother’s sudden recognition, without physical evidence and often when her child is nowhere in sight, that something is wrong. Every family has its collection of in-the-nick-of-time rescue stories.

Scientists tell us that, at most, we use about 10 percent of our mental capacity. That leaves quite a lot of ability untapped! Surely all those gray cells aren’t just hanging around waiting for electrical impulses to stimulate them. In fact, they might already be hard at work, and you just don’t know it.

How often does something like this happen to you:

All these situations could be examples of telepathy. Telepathy often occurs between two people who are emotionally connected to each other. The deeper the emotional bond, the more likely and frequent telepathic communication is. You think about an event or object, which intensifies its energy in your mind. Someone who is emotionally close to you picks up the signal because it’s a change in the normal balance of energy between the two of you.

What about the last example in the list? This truly is a random event, because you and the stranger don’t know each other. But you’re likely sending messages to each other that arise from the small but nonetheless present anxiety about who should step aside. Each of you picks up the energy signal the other sends—and the signals happen to carry the same message.

The dream state is an environment in which you are particularly receptive to telepathic communication, from other mortals as well as from spirit entities. The filters of your conscious mind are asleep, so to speak. The dream state serves as a telepathic bridge, a communication connection that bypasses the physical senses.

You might awaken from a dream in which you’ve experienced telepathic communication confused about whether you dreamed it or whether it was real. It can be hard for you to tell, but is often easy to confirm if the communication was with someone you know. Ask the other person who was in your dream if he or she had a similar dream. Sometimes it takes several days, weeks, or even months before you recognize the telepathic nature of a particular dream. Telepathic dreams can involve either incarnate (physical) or discarnate (spirit) beings. If your dream involves communication with a spirit being, you can ask the spirit to visit you again (more on this later in this chapter).

Spirits like to visit during your dream state for much the same reason: You’re open to it. It’s common to dream of a visit with a loved one who has passed, and for you to share favorite experiences. If your mother loved flowers, she might come to you in your dreams and stroll with you through elaborate gardens. (See Chapter 17 for more about dreams.)

So is your mind an open book? Are your thoughts available to anyone who chooses to peek at them? Certain thoughts are openly available, if you are not taking any measures to protect them. These are the things that are moving through your consciousness. If someone said, “What are you thinking right now?” these are the thoughts you would mention.

It is unethical to attempt to perceive another person’s thoughts without that person’s knowledge and permission. It’s like walking into someone’s house without knocking or announcing yourself. This kind of “mind reading” is intrusive and is seldom done in goodness.

You can protect yourself from being on the receiving end of psychic prying. Just establish a protection of light around your being. Envision this as a dome that covers you. Establish the intent that only those with whom you wish to communicate on a telepathic level can have access. This creates a shield around your thoughts.

Some people believe that they can use their thoughts to control others. No one can control your thoughts or “will” you to do something you don’t want to do. What a dangerous weapon this could be, were it possible! But even extensive government experiments during the Cold War era proved that it’s not possible.

Various agencies of the United States and the former Soviet Union conducted tests of telepathic communication and control in the 1960s and 1970s. Although psychically gifted test subjects scored high in ESP tests such as perceiving the symbols on cards, they did no better than the odds of chance in using telepathy to “will” other subjects to some sort of action. Mind control is a tantalizing concept of science fiction, and so far it remains safely contained in the realm of fiction rather than exposed in the arena of science.

Many people experience telepathic communication in times of crisis. One friend suddenly perceives that another friend has been in a car accident. A sister living on the West Coast gets a sense of panic about her brother living in the Southeast, then hears on the news that a tornado swept through the town where he lives.

Energy intensifies in times of crisis. When bonds already exist between people, rapid spikes in energy intensity send a psychic alert. Sometimes more than two people are involved in the telepathic communication, as when a crisis involves a parent and the children and all of them experience some form of a connection as a result. Each person’s experience can be different.

Sometimes crisis telepathy presents itself as a warning, a connection of intuition that is sent directly from one person to another without conscious intervention of the mind. You might not even realize that you’ve sent a telepathic warning to someone until that person calls or otherwise contacts you.

The first formal efforts to analyze telepathic experiences and understand the processes of telepathy took place in the 1880s, when the Society for Psychical Research in London began publishing reports about the phenomenon in its journals. As the circulation for those journals grew, so did interest around the world. In these early explorations, researchers used the term extrasensory perception, or ESP, to describe the ability to communicate without using the physical senses.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes detective novels and an early member of the Spiritualist movement (see Chapter 3), was fascinated with what was at the time called thought transference. He and an architect friend in another location decided to see how well and how much faster they could communicate architectural ideas and drawings than through the process of writing and mailing their ideas to each other. They agreed that at a specified time every week, each would sit down and sketch his ideas, then concentrate on sending the images to the other. They would then switch and focus on receiving the images the other was sending, and sketch those.

They were on target with each other far more frequently than the odds of chance, and Doyle became convinced of the scientific validity of telepathic communication. He later continued some of his studies through the Society for Psychical Research, and published many of his writings on the topic.

In 1930, an American parapsychologist, J. B. (Joseph Banks) Rhine (1895-1980), at Duke University began conducting experiments following scientific research conventions. At first, Rhine used common items to test the ability of subjects to telepathically send and receive messages. Among them was an ordinary deck of playing cards.

Then a colleague and fellow parapsychologist, Karl Zener, developed the set of special cards, known today as Zener cards, with five symbols: circle, square, star, wavy lines, and plus sign. The deck contains 25 cards, 5 of each symbol. The odds of randomly guessing the correct symbol are one in five.

In early tests, subjects sat across a table from each other. One subject turned up a card, holding it so the other subject couldn’t see it, and concentrated on sending a mental image of the card’s symbol to the other subject. The other subject then said what he or she thought the symbol was.

A score of 20 percent right is the baseline, because this is the number of right answers likely just on the basis of the odds. Scores higher than 20 percent suggest telepathic ability on the part of one or both subjects. More important, high scores validate that telepathy is in fact a real, observable phenomenon. Because of their simplicity and consistency, Zener cards have become a standard for telepathic training as well as testing.

Later experiments put the two subjects in separate rooms so they couldn’t see or hear each other, or in any other way use their physical senses to communicate. This came in response to criticism that subjects could give each other subtle signals that tipped off which cards were being turned over. Separation didn’t change the results.

You can use Zener cards to improve your personal telepathic abilities. They are available at many metaphysical shops and bookstores. Practice working with a friend to send as well as receive card images. Telepathy is like any other skill. The more you use it, the more proficient you become.

Early in Rita’s psychic development, her friend Judy became convinced of Rita’s telepathic abilities but Rita still felt unsure. So Judy and Rita agreed that, as a test, they would both meditate at 10 P.M. on a Friday to see if they could communicate telepathically. Rita would then call Judy at 10:20 P.M.

At 10 P.M., Rita began to meditate and set her intent on visiting her friend Judy. When she went into meditation, she could clearly see Judy’s apartment. She saw Judy sitting on the left corner of the couch, wearing a geometric print caftan. Rita saw an incredible white glow around Judy.

When Rita called Judy at 10:20 P.M. and described to Judy what she had seen, Judy was delighted. In fact, she was sitting in the corner of the couch wearing that geometric caftan. “I’m glad you could see the glow around me as I was meditating,” Judy told Rita. Rita “visited” Judy telepathically just as vividly as if they’d been physically sitting in the room together.

Do you have a friend who is as interested in telepathy as you are? Here’s an exercise that the two of you can do together to practice and sharpen your telepathic skills.

Generally speaking, if you are on target more often than not, you’ve exceeded the odds of chance. The greater the gap between on and off, the more intense the telepathic experience. Don’t be discouraged if at first you barely hit the odds of chance (or even are below them). You will improve with practice! As you become more proficient, make your messages more complex.

Telekinesis (also called psychokinesis) is the phenomenon of using the mind’s energy to move objects without physical intervention. Perhaps the most famous demonstrations of telekinesis came in the 1970s when a young psychic from Russia named Uri Geller came to prominence for his ability to bend spoons and other metal objects without any physical contact.

How does this work? One theory is that the concentration of energy from your mind alters the energy structure of the object you’re focusing on. At the point when you release your mind’s stream of energy, the object re-forms itself according to the energy pattern you’ve been sending. If you’ve sent bending, the spoon bends. If you’ve sent twisting, it twists.

You can practice telekinesis in a kinder, gentler way. All you need is a quarter. If you toss a quarter ten times, your odds of calling whether it lands heads or tails are about 50-50. There are only two choices, which keep the experiment simple. Calling heads or tails correctly more times than not demonstrates telepathic ability—you are “reading” the energy of the coin to identify which side is up.

Directing the coin to land either heads or tails demonstrates telekinetic ability. You are using the energy of your mind to guide the coin’s fall in a determined way. Go ahead, practice! When you get good with the coin, move on to a pair of dice; or one die, to keep it a little less complicated. Just be sure that you focus on sending energy to direct the number at which the roll will stop rather than trying to determine what the number will be. A fine point, but it’s the point of distinction between telepathy and telekinesis in this context.

Astral projection is the phenomenon of your spirit leaving your body to travel beyond it. You might call this psychic visiting. Sometimes it happens spontaneously. You might have a flash image of a friend working at her desk, and then call and tell her what she’s wearing or what she’s doing. You also can cultivate this psychic skill through practice.

Here are two exercises that you can use to practice astral projection. As always when working with spirit phenomena, start each exercise by asking for goodness and light. Even though with astral projection you’re not asking for spirit contact, you are connecting your spirit with other spirit energy when your spirit leaves your physical body.

How is it that your soul can travel about, and then know to return to your physical body? Doesn’t it seem that the freedom of not having a body would be quite enticing? You have an energy umbilical cord, so to speak, that links your spirit with your body for as long as your body lives. It’s called the silver cord.

This is not a tangible or physical connection, but a link of energy. Your silver cord keeps your body and your spirit connected, no matter what your state of consciousness. It is said that your silver cord appears at physical birth and disappears at physical death.

This exercise requires two people. Choose someone you trust who shares your interest in astral projection. As in the telepathy exercise, be in different physical locations.

This is an exercise you can do by yourself.

How completely were you able to leave your body? How did you feel during the experience? How do you feel about it now?

When telepathic communication takes place between a physical being (like you) and a spirit entity, it becomes spirit communication. Most mediums don’t use the term telepathy in reference to spirit communication, because usually spirit communication takes place using more specific and sophisticated methods, such as clairaudience and clairvoyance. These methods give more extensive information.

The Least You Need to Know