The psychic abilities focused on perceiving phenomena at a distance, without using known senses—or information transfer at a distance, without using known information transfer mechanisms.
Expert Definitions
“Perception by means that are outside of the recognized senses.” — J. B. Rhine (Parapsychologist, from seminal book “Extrasensory Perception”)
“Those phenomena associated with the obtaining of information through means other than the normal sensory channels.” — Declassified CIA Document (”Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research”)
“Modes of obtaining information about an event, object, or situation outside oneself without the use of any of the known sensory processes.” — The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research
Specific Abilities
There’s many specific abilities which fall under this basic type, like:
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Telepathic Communication — The ability to communicate internal states between organisms, whether thoughts and emotions, bodily sensations (may involve sending or receiving them).
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Clairvoyance (aka “Telesthesia”) — The ability to perceive hidden or distant external events.
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Precognition — The ability to perceive the future.
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Retrocognition — The ability to perceive the past.
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Intuition — Gut feelings or “just knowing” about phenomena.
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Psychometry —
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J. B. Rhine called “clairvoyance with the use of an object of fixation connected with the situation in question.” (Rhine, 1934).
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Dowsing —
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Out-Of-Body Experience — The experience or leaving the physical body, traveling, and perceiving distant places.
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Mediumship — The ability to perceive and communicate with the dead.
Common Characteristics
There’s some common characteristics of ESP abilities that have been observed in both anecdotal reports and controlled scientific experiments. These are the two most fascinating ones.
Different States of Consciousness
Most ESP abilities (especially clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, and retrocognition) can occur in different states of consciousness.
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Waking — The state you’re in right now. Think of inexplicable gut feelings (”Intuition”), thinking of someone before they text or call you (”Telephone Telepathy”), and sudden waking visions (”Waking Clairvoyance”).
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Dreaming — The state you enter during sleep. The most common anecdotal examples of this are dreams of the future (“Precognitive Dreams”), and dreams where one perceives the emotions, thoughts, or internal state of someone else (”Dream Telepathy”). A 2016 meta-analysis of 50 laboratory dream-ESP studies also found statistically significant results across decades of research (1966-2016), showing dream content corresponded with target material more often than would be expected by chance. This suggests the dream state may indeed be conducive to ESP.
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Hypnotic — A relaxed state in between sleep and waking, which is intentionally induced by hypnotists using different methods. This state is known to be highly conducive to ESP. Hypnotists discovered this on accident after patients…...
Not Affected By Space or Time
Experiments have shown that ESP can extend over vast spatial distances, heck even to other planets (e.g., Remote Viewing of Jupiter by Ingo Swann in 1973). They can also extend across time—both the distant past and future (e.g., Remote Viewing of Mars 1 million ago by US Army Viewer Joe McMoneagle in 1984).
Experienced as “Mental Impressions”
In most ESP abilities—other than OBEs—psychic information is received or experienced through subtle mental impressions.
Unlike OBEs, you’re not experiencing leaving the body and perceiving distant places from the point of view of your “astral body.” Instead, you’re remaining in your physical body, and simply experiencing subtle impressions of distant or hidden phenomena spontaneously arising in your mind. Things like pictures in your mind’s eye, a gut feeling, or even a dream.
So, what then is a mental impression? Well, it’s any kind of mental activity—thoughts, feelings, sensations, emotions. It’s the way that the mind packages up and experiences information—including psychic information. This means the information might be the same (”friend in danger!”), but it may come in many impressionistic mental forms (a waking vision, an intuition, a dream).
So, think of impressions like the mental vehicles that carry information, both ordinary sensory and memory-based information, and paranormal or ESP information (which could have not come from your normal senses or memory).
All this leads us to a very important point. ESP or psi information actually takes the same form as the mental activity that we experience in everyday life—sensations, thoughts, emotions. This is why it’s so difficult to tell whether an impression is psychic or not—as both psychic and non-psychic impressions come in the same mental forms. A telepathic thought and a normal thought are both just thoughts arising in the mind. A clairovoyant vision and a normal imagination are both just mental pictures. You get the point.
This is something Louisa E. Rhine, American parapsychologist and psychic researcher, noticed too—after “actual observations” of many cases of ESP. (Rhine, 1891) (Rhine, 2018).
“ESP has no special form of experience of its own. Instead, it uses the normal, ordinary forms of mental action . . Information secured by ESP has to use the same forms or vehicles to get into consciousness that are used for sensory information, since it does not have a special form of its own . . Once this point was recognized it explained why it is so difficult to be sure when an experience does bring an ESP message. The form it comes in does not tell.” — Louisa E. Rhine (“PSI. What Is It? The Story of ESP and PK,”)
So, what makes ESP or psi impressions different? Well, other than their more subtle nature and other characteristics we’ll discuss in ESP training techniques—what really distinguishes them is that psi impressions don’t come from the ordinary senses, nor the conscious and subconscious reasoning processes of the mind and brain. Instead, they come from some mysterious source of information. Hence, why we call them “paranormal” and “extrasensory.”
But, nonetheless, they are still mental impressions—literally the same forms of mental activity that we experience on a regular basis. A fact that many don’t notice, but which is crucial for understanding the phenomenon of ESP.
Foundational Principle — ESP as Information Exchange at a Distance
The defining feature of ESP is the exchange of information without using known sensory or information-transfer mechanisms.
At minimum, this requires two things:
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A Receiver of Information:
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The Mind → always a perceptive mind (although the perception may be subconscious or conscious).
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A Source of Information (which can take several forms):
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Another Mind → Telepathy
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Postmortem Mind → Mediumship
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External Environment → Clairvoyance and Out-Of-Body Experiences
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Time → Precognition and Retrocognition
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The Past → Retrocognition
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The Future → Precognition
Bringing together the Mind as the sole Receiver of Information, and these 5 possible Sources of Informaiton—we get 5 Modes of Information Exchange:
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Mind-to-Mind: Telepathy
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Postmortem Mind-to-Mind: Mediumship
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External Environment-to-Mind: Clairvoyance and Out-Of-Body Experiences
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Future-to-Mind: Precognition
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Past-to-Mind: Retrocognition
In some cases—such as Telepathy and Mediumship—the exchange may be bidirectional, with both sides sending and receiving information. But, in most other cases, it’s unidirectional with simply the Mind passively receiving information.
In summary, ESP abilities are forms of information exchange at a distance, involving a receiving Mind and a Source of information (another mind, a postmortem mind, the environment, the past, the future). The exchange may be unidirectional (just Source sending information and Mind receiving it), or bidirectional (both Mind and Source sending and receiving information). But, in all cases, the defining feature is the exchange of information at a distance—without using known sensory or information transfer mechanisms.
Understanding how ESP works is ultimately about understanding how this exchange of information takes place:
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What are the channels that enable the transfer of information?
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Is there a distinct channel for each of the 5 modes, or do some share an underlying channel?
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Is there really a distinct Source Information for each of these modes, or a deeper unifying Source of Information (e.g., Holographic Universe Theory)?
We’ll explore these fascinating questions later, when we dive into explanatory theories and mechanisms for ESP.