Extrasensory perception

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Extrasensory perception or ESP is a means of gathering information from sources without the use of the five natural senses; namely the sixth natural sense of intuition.

Origins of the term

Extrasensory perception (ESP) was a blanket term created by Duke University researcher J.B. Thine to be applied numerous psychic abilities and their various strengths and types of telepathy, empathy, clairvoyance, clairauidence, dowsing, prophetic dreaming, anticipation, second sight, precognition, retrocognition, and telekinesis. All utilize means of attaining an awareness of events and information without prior experience or the use of the common five senses. This was why ESP has sometimes been referred to as the sixth sense.

Testing extrasensory perception

standard Zener cards

Experimenters in parapsychology have used special decks of cards called Zener cards to test individuals that claim to possess extrasensory perception. The cards were named for Karl Zener, their creator, a perceptual psychologist and associate of J.B. Rhine. The cards are presented one at a time by the experimenter, but obscured from the test subject's view. The subject is expected to correctly identify the cards and place them in the correct sequence. In some studies, it has been claimed that the number of correct "guesses" is greater than the law of averages. (TZDELL: 01: "Journeys into the Twilight Zone")

Other experiments have involved claimants being asked to physically control the outcome of a rolling die using only their mind. Again, a number of studies have shown that those claiming ESP had been able to cause a particular face to be rolled higher than chance should allow. (TZDELL: 01: "Journeys into the Twilight Zone")

Types of extrasensory perception

Precognition

People with the power of precognition have claimed that they can prophesy events before they occur. (TZDELL: 01: "Journeys into the Twilight Zone")

Pyschometry

Pyschometry is the alleged ability for those gifted with the talent to absorb memories and information through the touch of objects or people. (TZDELL: 01: "Journeys into the Twilight Zone")

Telekinesis

Those alleged to move objects using only their mental power are said to be capable of telekinesis—otherwise known as "psychokinesis".

Telepathy

Telepathy is the ability of an individual to see into the mind of another person, sometimes at great distances, and read their thoughts. (TZDELL: 01: "Journeys into the Twilight Zone")

Empathy

Psionic/Mental-related ability to psionically understand, read and even alter the innermost feelings, sensations and emotions of other sentient and auntomous beings to your own will and purposes from a distance by emitting a wave of psychic/empathic energy. One useful empathic skill is healing oneself and those around you by empathically easing or taking away their physical agony into oneself. This is known as "empathic healing" though some consider it with the spiritual ability of "faith healing."