Do you believe this?This is a featured page

Do you believe this? - Saranathan
Most of us have dreamt something that eventually came true, had a correct hunch about an event miles away, or predicted an out-of-the-blue phone call from an old friend. The experience is incredibly strange -- positively spooky -- but it happens all the time.
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So what's going on here? Depends on who you ask. A sizable chunk of the world's population attributes these strange events to extrasensory perception (ESP), a special sense beyond vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste. Unlike ordinary senses, ESP has virtually unlimited range, and it's experienced mainly as thoughts rather than bodily sensations.The other view holds that there's nothing supernatural about these events at all. These things do happen, the skeptics say, but they're perfectly in keeping with conventional science. Extrasensory perception is a collective term for various hypothetical mental abilities. These abilities (along with other paranormal phenomena) are also referred to as psi. A closely related psi phenomenon, not technically part of ESP, is telekinesis, the ability to alter the physical world with mind power alone.All of these abilities are based on the idea that human beings can perceive things beyond the scope of known bodily senses. This concept has been around since the beginning of human civilization, under many different names, but the modern conception didn't develop until the first half of the 20th century. The term ESP itself was coined in 1934, by Duke University professor J B Rhine, one of the first respected scientists to conduct paranormal research in a university laboratory.ESP believers around the world have different ideas of how these abilities manifest themselves. Some people believe everybody possesses these abilities, and we involuntarily experience moments of ESP all the time. Others say only a handful of psychics, shamans or mediums have the special power, and that they can only access this power when they put themselves into a special mental state. Most believers think that everybody has the potential for ESP, but that some people are more in tune with their paranormal abilities than others.Believers also disagree on how ESP actually works. One theory says that, like our ordinary senses, ESP is energy moving from one point to another point. Typically, proponents of this theory say ESP energy takes the form of electromagnetic waves -- just like light, radio and X-ray energy -- that we haven't been able to detect scientifically.This theory was fairly popular in the early 20th century, but it's out of favor today due to several inherent problems. For one thing, the explanation only accounts for telepathy, not clairvoyance or precognition. Presumably, if the information travels as electromagnetic energy, it has to be sent by someone -- it has to travel from mind to mind. It doesn't explain how information would move through time or from an object to a mind.
Secondly, the theory doesn't jibe with what we know about ourselves and the universe. In most reported cases of telepathy, ESP works totally independent of distance. That is, the power of the 'signal' is the same whether the transmitting mind and the receiving mind are in the same room or on opposite sides of the earth. No other form of energy behaves this way, skeptics point out, so it doesn't make sense that 'psi waves' would either. Furthermore, it seems strange that we haven't found any unexplained sense organs in the body that might pick up on this energy, nor any evidence of the energy waves themselves.In light of these problems, the prevailing theory among believers today is that ESP is a result of something beyond the known physical world. For example, many people view it as 'spillover' from another reality.


Sarnath
Sarnath 		Latest page update: made by Sarnath , Jan 22 2008, 4:57 AM EST (about this update About This Update Sarnath new story by sarnath - Sarnath

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