Is telepathy possible? The case of expert meditators

Is telepathy possible? The case of expert meditators

So we’ve seen in a previous article that something like telepathy was possible and it was called quantum non-locality. If you haven’t read it, click HERE.

Brief Summary:

1. Quantum non-locality: an instant transmission of information between two entangled objects regardless of their spatial separation.

2. Transferred potential: In these scientific studies with regular meditators, they saw that the brain waves of the non-stimulated meditators showed spikes shortly after their meditator partner was stimulated with a short flash. So person B (not getting any flashes) gets a change in his/her brain pattern when person A gets a flash. And that didn’t happen just once!

Getting a “Feeling”

In all these experiments, the participants were regular meditators, not long-term meditators. And when a connection was established both subjectively (people saying they felt a link) and objectively (correlation of brain waves), participants could only report feeling a connection.

They couldn’t translate that feeling into other information like for instance sensing that their partner was being stimulated with light flashes. It could certainly come in handy to be able to translate that feeling into something more useful. For instance, if you get a feeling of fear from the person you are connected to, that might signal that your partner is in trouble. You get to do something about it!

And this is where people that have trained their introspection for a long time might be able to acquire more information on this feeling. Let’s explore this a bit more.

Photo by Prince Kumar

Next phase in quantum non-locality: Expert Meditators

So pop psychology would say that expertise is achieved with 10.000 hours of practice. Other authors would think differently and for them it doesn’t take that long. Either way, there’s a lot of practice involved.

So what makes these meditators different and how can those features make them better candidates for telepathy?

First, let’s see some of the effects of long-term meditation:

Expert meditators are much more sensitive to tactile sensitivity [1]. While novices sense two pins placed on top of their skins (set very close to each other) as one stimulus, experts are able to feel two distinctive pins.

Note: Try it at home. Ask someone to place two fingers in your back at a certain distance from each other. You can feel that you’re being pressed at two places. But if the distance between those touch points is reduced, well…it’s not that easy. Try it!

They also increase the quality of their sensations and are able to experience different kinds of perceptions. They manage to reduce the distinction between oneself and others (subject and object) [2]. Like feeling your whole self is mixed with the things around you. And I’m not talking about common drug effects, this is through mental concentration alone.

Expert meditators are also able to change different physiological responses at will. They can increase their body temperature to a feverish 38.3 centigrades and lower it afterwards [3]. They can reduce their amygdala activation [4] which regulates stress and fear response. They can even rapidly access theta wave patterns [5] making them very relaxed but awake (by contrast a regular person would fall asleep). And many more amazing stuff!

Okay, they can do great tricks, but how can they be better candidates? Well, they are actively enhancing their internal perception and physiology. This means that they could be prone to access these subtle changes in the brain activity we saw earlier.

Remember how we say that the brain wave spikes happened in a very brief time (note: 132 microseconds)? I know, I know. You can’t sense microseconds, but maybe if their awareness is enhanced, the process might last longer and they could get to perceive these changes. Or this trained mind can eventually get more information out of it!

That feeling we talked earlier, might just be the surface of a large information network. Maybe there’s much more beneath it but we can’t really access it without proper training. Like peeling an onion. You see the first layer (this vague feeling of connection) and once you start peeling it (entering in a more profound conscious state) you get to see these other layers. This feeling might become a whole new world (yes, just like Aladdin’s song)!

Photo by johnhain

In the transferred potential experiment, the brain transmission was successful when meditators also felt that a connection was established. This feeling might be just the tip of the iceberg. Expert meditators might get a more vast access beside just getting a mere feeling.

Could meditation lead to a new form of communication?

Conclusion

I’m sure you weren’t expecting to read this about telepathy (am I right?).

So what we know so far? There’s some evidence that a new way of transferring information might be possible (quantum non-locality).

This effect states that two objects that have interacted physically can communicate instantly irrespective of the space that separates them.

Studies with meditators have shown that there’s physiological connection between people that remains active even at long distances. And this communication doesn’t use sensory stimuli nor electromagnetic signals, so it might fall into the notion of telepathy.

There’s a whole new field of exploration in which science is required. And I know how scientist react when you start speaking of these esoteric things, but there’s certainly something going on here! So let’s be bold and travel into the unknown.

As Arthur C. Clarke says:

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

 

References

[1] Fox, K. C., Zakarauskas, P., Dixon, M., Ellamil, M., Thompson, E., & Christoff, K. (2012). Meditation experience predicts introspective accuracy. PloS one, 7(9).

[2] Full, G. E., Walach, H., & Trautwein, M. (2013). Meditation-induced changes in perception: an Interview study with expert meditators (sotapannas) in Burma. Mindfulness, 4(1), 55–63.

[3] Kozhevnikov, M., Elliott, J., Shephard, J., & Gramann, K. (2013). Neurocognitive and somatic components of temperature increases during g-tummo meditation: legend and reality. PloS one, 8(3).

[4] Lutz, A., McFarlin, D. R., Perlman, D. M., Salomons, T. V., & Davidson, R. J. (2013). Altered anterior insula activation during anticipation and experience of painful stimuli in expert meditators. Neuroimage, 64, 538–546.

[5] Nair, A. K., Sasidharan, A., John, J. P., Mehrotra, S., & Kutty, B. M. (2017). Just a minute meditation: Rapid voluntary conscious state shifts in long term meditators. Consciousness and cognition, 53, 176–184.