The reason that science hasn’t been able to test telepathy is because they’re looking for the wrong thing. Telepathy isn’t about transmitting messages. In telepathy, there isn’t technically a sender and a receiver. This is because telepathy exists outside of time, in that non-local soup where all our consciousnesses connect.
The Japanese concept of Ishin- is closer to what telepathy actually is than a transmission of messages. It means ‘unspoken mutual understanding’, and is often translated as ‘heart to heart communication.’ In Zen, it means ‘direct mind transmission’, and it is indeed through Zen that this concept found its way into Japanese culture, via China, from India, where Ishin-denshin referred to the first Dharma transmission between Gautama Buddha and Mahākāśyapa in the Flower Sermon.
Recently, neuroscientist Julia Mossberg of IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences) published a cutting-edge textbook, Transcendent Mind: Re-thinking the Science of Consciousness, published by the American Psychological Association. At a recent conference, she acknowledged that scientists are starting to reach the same conclusions as Vedic meditators did over 4000 years ago. It’s the same thing that all meditators who experience non-dual states of awareness, or cosmic consciousness, already know, without a need for data. It concerns the nature of non-local awareness (‘non-conscious’, non-dual, real mind,) and time.
- There are two aspects to mind: a) the consciousness, which includes all states, conscious and unconsciousness, and b) what neuroscientists call the ‘non-consciousness’. We meditators know this realm as cosmic consciousness or non-dual awareness or non-local awareness. Scientists are beginning to understand that it’s the only mind that’s real.
2. Time does not exist in ‘non-consciousness’, and that, simultaneously, all points of time are happening. This includes the deep past, the present, and the future. It is only in the consciousness that mind has the continuous forward progression of time.
3. Consciousnesses connect in non-conscious, non-dual non-local awareness.
4. Consciousness, all self-identification, all egos, are illusory. Consciousness is an illusion. It is a story projected by the non-consciousness. It exists only in the ‘non-conscious’ mind and is refracted out in an infinite projection of forms.
5. Intuition is a ‘messenger’ from non-conscious awareness. It is our access to it. When we meditate, we get stronger, better access.
6. Presentiment, or have a feeling about what’s about to happen in the near future, is possible, because it has already happened in the non-dual realm.
7. Science can’t perform tests on non-consciousness, because all tests only reveal more information about the conscious realm, or the illusion, itself. However, the data does indicate that there is an non-local realm.
Watch Julia’s talk, and keep an eye on her future work at IONS. The possibilities involved in the exploration of non-local awareness through meditation should be more accessible with the scientific articulation of Dr. Mossbridge’s work. I am very grateful to her contribution to science, even if it is an illusory science in an illusory world! It does have the potential to relieve the suffering of all beings, even the atheist ones.
Yes, telepathy is very real within our illusory consciousness – more real than our consciousness. It happens all the time, and when people meditate and spend time together, there is much laughter, and often little need for words at all.