If we were all telepathic, how would the world be different?
Such is the incredibly boring, old-hat #ecotrain question of the week (QoTW)!
lol, j/k #ecotrain QoTWs never seem to be boring!
what do you think?
Before we begin, let us define telepathy:
Telepathy (from the Greek τῆλε, tele meaning "distant" and πάθος, pathos or -patheia meaning "feeling, perception, passion, affliction, experience") is the purported transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction.
First let me start off by saying that the concept of telepathy was coined in 1889 by psychologist Frederic Myers as literally feeling from afar.
Now, he looks like a rather
classical ordinary dude of
his time.
How did a person before the 1900's start gaining an interest in telepathy? How did the idea originate and why did he (and others) risk their lives and devote their careers and research to something as far-out, New Agey, and Skeptical as telepathy?
In fact, why are we writing on this pseudoscientific subject at all?
My Two Cents:
Telepathy remains a much-debated subject. I think this comes down to two things:
- It cannot be tested in a controlled manner because the skill is not provable nor definable.
- Those who experience telepathy become "believers", but cannot explain it or as posited in #1, they cannot demonstrate it on command.
This puts us in an interesting place and it is the reason many who claim to be able to read minds or intuit things are thought of as disreputable.
In our culture, we are too bent on "provable phenomena" and there is not yet an openminded enough stance regarding life itself to sit with the uncertainty and cognitive dissonance telepathic abilities bring up.
That being said, why would we be discussing this subject or I endeavor writing this article or would the millions of people claiming to have telepathic experiences throughout time go to the trouble to make it all up?
balance
In short, they're not, we're not, I'm not making anything up.
Telepathic experiences certainly take place.
As stated earlier, the problem is they don't "happen on demand" and still we cannot explain them so we don't necessarily trust them or quite know what to do with them at all!
In answering the #ecotrain QoTW, I want to take not a sci-fi orientation to this question, but a realistic one. The question asks, if we were all telepathic, how would the world be different?
Instead of assuming a world outside of our own in which everyone is telepathic all of the time, I want to answer this question from the here and now in the world I already inhabit in which telepathy happens often to many of us.
Frequency
If we were all telepathic, which I believe we are to varying degrees, we would not be so all of the time.
Telepathy defined as "distant feeling" is the not-quite-there download of some information. See how difficult this already is? If we can't quite put our finger on it nor define it, we're tempted to throw it out the window! But, what if that is the nature of this skill? What if telepathy isn't always reading people's minds, but the ability to at times receive information in the form of feelings, notions, knowings, intuitions, dreams, and more?
If we can get over the certainty principle of having to know something 100%, I believe we could use these hunches to inform our lives, to get closer to our friends/family/lovers/community and essentially to be more in tune with our lives.
golden
Being In-tune with our Lives or our Lies
This is truly the crux for me. In my understanding and experience of telepathy, this is how I utilize it. Basically it is an extra sensory understanding of our environment, of the information coming to us that helps us "read" and respond to what is happening. I believe we developed this skill in order to survive.
Is it really that surprising? Our bodies and minds are already basically these incredibly magical mysterious workings that we cannot fully understand and certainly cannot replicate. We are walking incredible beings of a magnitude of interplaying happenings! The fact that extrasensory knowings take place that give us information about another or a circumstance in our lives doesn't really surprise me.
We attribute these so-called instinctive skills to animals, after all. Are we truly so divorced from our instinctive nature?
We take it as a given that animals know the weather or can sense things. Just look at Lassie, the wonderdog or animals retreating before a storm or your favorite pet who "knows what you're thinking/feeling"! I believe that we as a species are so cut off the experience of being telepathic, which again just means distant feeling, perception, passion, affliction or experience, that we negate its occurrences in our lives.
If we stopped doing that, we'd see it as a skill or informant in our lives that could help us know what to do in given situations, know if people have good intentions toward us, feel whether to go to an event or not or when is the best time to go to a store, call a friend, write that email, etc. Telepathy doesn't directly relate to only reading another's thoughts, although this is where it gets the most press.
If we are afraid of others "reading our thoughts", what are we hiding? Obviously in some situations, we most definitely don't want people knowing what we're thinking. But why? Are we hiding our true feelings from them or ourselves?
This is a good question for me to ponder. By becoming more in tune with our (or other's) lives and lies, how would that change our (or another's) experience?
Connection or Pain?
Many of the #ecotrain passengers who have already written their post on telepathy focused on the exposure that telepathic abilities would result in.
Not being able to hide our thoughts or true feelings, our lives would necessarily change. While it is within our freedom to withhold information from others, I believe that in being honest or coming to the table with our true feelings, while it would certainly shake up our lives, is ultimately beneficial. I am guessing that many of us hold thoughts in about people we know that may actually help the person. Perhaps someone keeps repeating a pattern in life that you see is harmful (whether thought or deed), but you don't say anything. Someone else has a character trait that others find off-putting, but no one "breaks it to them" so they just keep distancing from their friends.
It can be difficult to communicate these things to each other and if we already "knew" them, it would give us an opportunity to skip the side-stepping bullshit and get on with actually be challenging to grow up as humans. I believe ultimately this would foster connection, deeper relationships and more honest living after the initial difficulties.
In a similar way, if we felt something positive toward another, but perhaps we don't know quite how to say it: this telepathic skill would help us get our appreciation or love across in a fluid way!
spiral
Honest Living
As other passengers have written on regarding this question as well, telepathy wouldn't allow us to be lied to by politicians as much. If we knew we were being duped, goodbye politics as usual! No more pretty lies covered up by the bipartisan political regimes.
This honest living would be more difficult to get used to, but what are we here for as humans anyway? To live lives of deceit, hiddenness, and fear? Waiting in the corners hoping no one knows our true feelings? Of course not! This isn't a dress rehearsal, but the main show!
I can think of no faster way toward evolution than if we all started telling the truth. First to ourselves, then each other!
In closing, telepathy can be perceived as a skill that when practiced, believed, indugled, however you want to look at it, grows and matures.
Changing the question a bit, it is not if we were all telepathic, but if we allow the telepathy that already occurs in daily hunches, knowings, stray thoughts, etc to most of us that the world would change. It doesn't have to be scary or negative to distantly feel or perceive what another is going through.
These are the basic skills we humans developed a long time ago to make it through the hunt, to know where members of our tribe are, to connect and empathize with another or to know mysteriously when to not go over the mountain pass, but to hang out in the valley for another week. These are life-enhancing, even life-saving skills, and I believe the world would be much different in a positive way if we paid attention!!
What do you think? Have a telepathic experience you'd like to share? Think I'm full of shit? Share below!
It always happens coincidently. Never on demand. Excellent post.
thank you. yes, i cannot have telepathy on demand lol... only by magical unplanned occurrence. thanks.
LOVELY POST! It is so hard to imagine this happening of course.. and i really like how you ended it with the idea that we can start nurturing this now.. It can be a very helpful in life, and yes it doesnt have to be scary. It can come bit by bit so we learn how to integrate it and use it in life.. and to know and trust it.
WE can get used to anything, and I know quite a few telepathic people who have to contend with a LOT of incoming stuff .. For that reason they often keep strong boundaries with people and have learned how to prevent themselves from becoming overloaded.
I love how in India telepathy seems quite normal.. Not that they can read each others minds exactly, but there is defiantly some psychic stuff something going on !
thank you! yes i can definitely hear you on the strong boundaries for highly telepathic people. information overload!!
i love this too and definitely thought of the guru relationship when i was writing this. have you ever experienced a guru reading your thoughts?
well my Guru is Sai Baba, and he has absolutely read my thoughts Many times, and actually done way more than that! So many stories there!
i heard a few of them into your supernatural contest entry, but i am always so fascinated by these stories... i'd love more!! :)
oh wow.. i really do have a mountain of stories!
Here's one that happened twice in the same way.
I had bought a white dress for a english friend and wanted to have it blessed by sai baba in Darshan. I wasn't able to get close enough to present it to him myself as there were 10,000 people there.. So i asked someone in front of me to pass it forward about 7 rows to the front so that someone else could present it to him.
When Sai Baba came he saw the dress and immediately bent down to touch it and bless it. At the very same moment, as he touched it, he looked up and started straight at me and smiled. I was quite far away and it was a very intentional look.
The very same thing happened with a ring that I wanted to give to a dear lady in England. Just like the time before, just as he touched it he looked up right at me, quite far from the ring.. and acknowledged how he knows everything.
That is a cute example.. <3
Yes that's life.
sometimes we always telepati not all be real.
success is always for you @mountainjewel
hey! thanks for your comment... what did you mean here?
sometimes we always telepati ngak all be real.
i lost you with ngak.
Telepathy is real and is a trait that every human posses, the question is how you develop it and use it. For me it is pretty simple sometimes I simply know what people really want without them saying
yep exactly. i touch on that in the article. we all have it; it's a matter of "exercising that muscle."
I have no telephatic experience yet but im working to turn on my pineal gland now.
With apple cider vinegar every morning, less processed food and water, sleep with meditating frequency playing and trying to wake up facing the sunrise.
Hope when its on, the third eye will give me some telephatic ability and more lucid dreaming.
I think Ive had some lucid dreaming before but im not sure how it really feels to be honest. Had a slight control of it and I dont know that its a dream
Is that lucid dreaming?
that sounds like a great process! i think eating a healthy diet, drinking a lot of water, getting good rest, all as you say, are how to clear the pineal gland.. plus meditating!! haha right on track!! i too have had a few lucid dreams, but cannot do them whenever i want. i think you can slip in and out of lucid dreaming and call it a lucid dream- it doesn't only mean to have control over it. to me when i have had that, i've been aware i was dreaming and can change the course of events in the dream.. it's more conscious. hope that helps.
Some of what you describe as potential telepathy I understand as intuition, that wisp of knowledge or feeling that helps us read a situation or follow the correct path among many. I also know it as inspiration, where words and thoughts that are not my own find their way through me to a text window.
I also know it as instinct or experience recall, where something now has direct correlation with something that has happened to me in the past.
And, I've known it as anticipation, or being able to read what a person is trying to say because of all kinds of factors, but mainly due to what they're not saying.
Is any of that telepathy? I guess it is, since the definition provided touches on things like that.
However, the way most of science fiction and comic books refer to telepathy is the ability of one or more beings to discern the thoughts of other beings and/or communicate with them via said thoughts.
That I can't say I've ever experienced. And were it the case that I did, I would probably doubt it at first, then unable to deny it, I would probably seek to shut it off. I tend to like my privacy, and too often, and with every increasing encroachment, my thoughts are the only true privacy I have left. And I believe I still have the right to share them or withhold them, or reveal them slowly.
If the entire world was suddenly telepathic, I'm sure many people would be undone by their thoughts. We'd have to change laws to either compensate or include thoughts in law and other social protocols. We'd actually have a thought police, and people could be charged with criminal acts just by virtue of thinking about or entertaining too long an idea considered to be deviant or criminal.
I also think it would be very loud, and very crowded inside your head, and people would try to spread out more to avoid having too many people in their heads.
If we could all just shut it off, or block it out, then it wouldn't be so beneficial to be telepathic, but then it might actually be best for us because then telepathy would be controllable and consensual.
Anyway, just some thoughts on your topic, provided the conventional, boring way. :)
yes definitely i tied in the instinct, intuition, gut feeling into empathy. i wanted to paint a picture of it that isn't so "out there" as direct mind reading is. you certainly raise interesting points! many other ecotrain passengers (@sagescrub and @likedeeler come to mind) brought up the privacy factor; that it is our right and freedom to our private thoughts. i totally agree!
hate the thought of the thought police! lol i can also imagine the pull to think about things you shouldn't just because now people are watching them! haha! that would get us into quite a conundrum. i don't really see how it could be regulation. premeditation takes on a whole new meaning! thanks for your thoughts!
Yeah, premeditation didn't work out so well at the end of Minority Report.
Thank you for the exercise. It was fun. :)
This is a cool article, and what a great question. I love the thought that everyone is a little bit telepathic, just to varying degrees and not all the time. Really insightful and interesting to think about...especially when considering those “gut responses” you get to things sometimes...hm...great post!
Yes! i think the "gut responses" are certainly our inner compasses pointing us in the "right" direction... or giving us information! it's all really cool stuff to me! i feel like i could spend my whole life exploring it :) Thanks!
I'm stunned @mountainjewel! This post came straight from the heart. That is, MY heart! This morning I read the the prompt, and this afternoon the entry by @likedeeler, and both times there were some ideas stirring under the surface, trying to manifest themselves into words. However, there were some other things to take care of, and I got distracted.
The ideas kept stirring though. A few times this evening I even had a moment where I actively caught myself analyzing telepathy, but without reaching a definite conclusion... until I read yours. So now I feel like you've already put these same ideas of mine into words... your words. Did you read my thoughts, or did I read yours, hehehe?
So instead of paraphrasing what you already wrote down so eloquently, I got inspired to make a post in reply to this question, but in a different way.
First of all, I should take a good night's sleep though. Thanks for sharing!
aw so cool! i'm happy to hear that we had similar thoughts on this from our hearts. i'll look forward to reading your post~!!!!
It's not coming... :-(
Reading your post for the first time I really felt like WOW we are thinking the same thing (telepathy). Reading @likedeeler's post regarding killing animals, I had the image of a deer in my mind, running from the hunters ( equally from those with claws and others with guns) thinking and feeling the sensation with the most honesty, and vitality: "Catch me if you can!" If you've ever outrun someone you know the joy of this feeling.
Another image that came to my mind is a dog looking at you... In this case it doesn't matter whether the message is "let's go to the park!" or "please let me have another one of those delicious treats, pretty please." Anyone who's had a dog will be able to relate to it.
As you can see, my inspiration was to interpret our thoughts, which you've already put into words so eloquently, into memes, including human ones: just one look, in the proper situation, can say more than entire paragraphs. And given the right setting it might even be funny.
Well, it's gotten a bit late in the week, and late at night, and honestly, I know how long it would take me to look for good meme material. So sorry, this won't happen. Not now... I'll be happy if I manage to publish a regular text post sometime this weekend.
I'm just super happy to see that there are people out there who think like me, and I want them to know it (without relying purely on telepathy. We are still a bit removed for that to be effective.)
However, the promise of my other post, the ten truths one lie game... that is more likely. Just give me a bit more to think about cool facts. ;-)
Exceptional. I was wowed at every section. The key points you mention - about individuals experiencing telepathy becoming “believers,” but nothing further with lack of scientific “proof.” And, that it would not be at the same degree all the time, if it were a commonly accepted phenomena. I agree that telepathy and intuition + instinct are intertwined, if not facets of the same gem. What I challenge is that with telepathy, we would no longer be able to hide our thoughts and feelings.
The same way we wear masks now, in order to survive and to excel, I’m sure we would manage with an additional sense barking up our tree for truth.
It might sound crazy, but it seems like telepathy is an extended form of empathy; empathy is the misty, un-formed shape of another’s human experience whereas telepathy is a multi-dimensional feedback OF that experience.
Again, well done.
aw thank you dear. i really appreciate your words. i feel like you tied something together for me that was on the tip of my mind while i was writing... and that is the connection between telepathy/empathy and intuition. i did blur the lines here when talking about it in the article because they do all go together for me. i was hesitant to bring up empathy because, as other ecotrain passengers articulated in their responses, can we be sure that telepathy would lead to empathy for others? I know for me i feel that it would. in hearing internal dialogues and seeing how we really are so much the same, it would stir empathy (literally feeling with)... but i do not know how someone else may feel? (they brought up killers, rapists, etc...??) it's certainly an intriguing subject and one i'd love to hear your and others' thoughts on!
good job guys, you took it in a completely different way than me, I really don't identify our intuitive nature as telepathy for me it is something completely different. intuitive to me is never distant, it is always within. It really is great getting so many different takes on this question. I took it as being able to read other people's thoughts which as you said is the sci fi version. But if telepathy is our intuitive nature then we all already have this gift xx
yeah it is cool to read everyone's (will read yours after this comment) as we all looked at it differently. i wanted to take a peek at the concept from a realistic point of view if only to normalize it a little. i think the merger or telepathy/empathy/intuition is very close, to me. hearing others' thoughts comes to me from within like intuition does. i totally agree, we all have these gifts already!
When i was actively cultivating this set of skills, i found myself trading other awarenesses considered vital to success in western civilization like timekeeping, for instance. I could not have told you what day it was within 5 days, but i could find a person in a major city or in the wilderness following their light. Now i am working on calendar and clock and bank account skills, but every now and then there is just a little glance or song or dream comes along to remind me that it is real.
I love that you brought intuition, emotions and dreams into this discussion as a form of telepathy (or result of telepathy) that we already have access to. It already helps me redefine what I thought of as telepathy !
This is my favorite part of your whole post! Let's get past the bullshit! It's there anyway, so why not acknowledge it and move on :)
very interesting
This is brilliant! I love how you started off with what telepathy is and made this post really comprehensive. Feels good to be reading the answers on this interesting question by all of you.
thanks sharoon! wanted to make the concept accessible and not totally something impossible (as i believe it does exist in that realm) :) xo