Extrasensory Perception Or ESP | What Is It?
by Malcolm Moorhouse

Countless movies, stories, and tales have spun gold out of the concept of extrasensory perception (often referred to as ESP). Consider popular television shows and films like Medium and The Sixth Sense. People are fascinated with the paranormal – Ouija boards and tarot card readings, once considered taboo and even somewhat dark – are now popular games sold in Toys R Us. But with all this talk and publicity, much of the origin and science of extrasensory perception has been obscured. The actual definition of extrasensory perception is the “ability to acquire information by means other than the five canonical senses (taste, sight, touch, smell, and hearing), or any other sense well-known to science (balance, proprioception, etc)”, but there are several different types of ESP, as well as interpretations of it.

Before getting into all the different ideas and challenges associated with extrasensory perception, let's first consider the history of ESP. The concept itself goes way back, far before popular culture turned it into a cultural phenomenon of sorts. In fact, in many past cultures (i.e. ancient China and Egypt), it was simply expected that people could communicate mentally with others, including the dead, gods, and other supernatural spirits. While this possibility has been heavily criticized as, at best, speculation and at worst, pure superstition, plenty of accounts (both ancient and relatively recent) have described incidents of extrasensory perception, as well as everyday use of it for divination.

So, the big question is: Do people actually have ESP and can it be proved? Many paranormal scientists have run experiments to test the veracity of alleged psychic abilities and many have come out shocked and amazed at the results. It seems that ESP may be a little more likely than anyone previously thought. In fact, some paranormal studies have found that alleged psychics seem able to foretell the contents of sealed envelopes and accurately draw images identical to those of people drawing the same image from a remote locale. Parapsychology (especially the area of extrasensory studies) has grown both in venerability and believer population. In fact, many large universities now have Parapsychology programs including Edinburgh University in Scotland.

Most claims of psychic readings and abilities are similar to the three most commonly reported extrasensory happenings which include telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. Telepathy is defined as mental communication between two or more people. It entails one person sending or receiving thoughts to or from another person via some sort of mental or emotional link.

Clairvoyance is often called a “second sight” or a “sixth sense” -- that is to say, the person perceives events happening in a location other than his or her present one, without having any previous knowledge of the event. For example, a clairvoyant person may sense that something is wrong with a friend or a family member to find that he or she was in trouble. They also may “know” that their house is being robbed as they are out to dinner. Precognition, on the other hand, is also known as “fortune telling” or “foresight” and entails the ability to know or predict what will happen in the future. Many prophets (including very false ones) have risen to fame – and even religious worship -- through their apparent ability to predict the events of the future.

About the Author: Malcolm Moorhouse is a clairvoyant psychic with over 16 years professional experience. Web: http://www.psychicreading4you.co.uk

Article Source: http://newagearticles.com

Hey siris lee...nice intro on Esp.

As for the many confirmations made by scientific method supporting esp etc..
there is many more that refute the evidence,to name but a few would take me forever.

For myself i will let the good scientists carry on with their researches,while we know what our truth in esp matters are. I personally believe the higher ranking scientists of closed institutes Know fine well that esp,psi is validated.More worryingly if they dont and no closed high ranking groups exist.

Future history will reveal all...

Ditto, nice intro.



Actually, understanding the negative feedback regarding evidence is just as important for validating esp than the positive feedback. For example, it is well-known that it is difficult to test esp under controlled conditions.

Performance can be compromised when someone is under the gun of observation, so repeatability is also compromised.

This is a serious monkey wrench for empirical methodology because success is mostly observed under uncontrolled conditions, and as such other explanations and unknown variables can always be substituted.

Another difficulty is lack of a measuring instrument for esp outside the human observer. This makes tests closer to psychological ones (with a high element of subjectivity) rather than those pertaining to natural sciences such as biology, where results are easily quantified.

A still yet other problem is that esp is not necessarily something one turns on or off in that it might always occur at a level below the threshold
of conscious awareness.

In other words a sensitive under observation may be influenced by the doubts of the observers. The observers might also have a psychological bias and their interpretations may be influenced.

IMO, those with the tendency can suppress it, but there are many who feel it as so much a part of their identity they don't proof or no proof. Even they may need a lot of training and practice to overcome the factors inhibiting performance. The funny thing seems that those who do, forgo the desire to prove their abilities to others.

In fact, we might want to consider how our paranoid society might be influenced if esp where officially proven to everyone beyond a shadow of a doubt. I personally see the quality of trusting your own impressions as part of inner development.

It is a challenge most in our day and age with awakening abilities experience, and it is reinforced by the challenge of facing the doubts and judgments of others.

I used to seriously consider devoting time and resources to proving esp. using rigorous scientific methodology. That changed over time, since I grew to regard the challenge of learning to trust yourself in the face of collective denial of such effects as a lesson, test of accomplishment, even a form of natural selection so that experiencing consciously developed ability is not dependent on what others think.

I have met scientists (some from the former eastern block), who have performed enough experiments to validate esp, and these have told me that during the cold war they collaborated with western government institutions in research that was kept under the radar, and that results were both positive and negative.

Positive in that esp was considered real, and negative in that it could not be used for espionage and warfare...and it was for the latter reasons the research was discontinued...although one Russian scientist I met hinted that private institutions were still collaborating in such things with elements of the us government (he mentioned the Ford foundation and implied others)...again under the radar.

Under the radar. That doesn't surprise me one bit. Let's see what else TPTB have hidden from the rest of the world: free energy, antigravity, time travel, stargate technology, the list goes on and on ...

You can add Hollow Earth to the list.