In our day-to-day life we often come across situations where we get the knowledge of an event before it happens or become aware of something that is out of sight, or can read what another person thinks, etc. This happens without the use of any of the five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Hence we call this ability as Extrasensory Perception (ESP) which literally means ‘awareness outside the senses’. Some people also call it as the ‘sixth sense’. Usually we perceive everything around us with the help of our five senses but ESP provides us with information which are normally not conveyed by any of the five senses.
But the scientists as well as psychologists are not unanimous about the existence of ESP. The controversy is that this phenomenon can be explained in other ways and science has not been able to either explain or prove this.
There are four basic areas of experiments in the field of extrasensory perception. These experiments involved telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. The ESP researchers use a special deck of cards. This deck is made up of 25 cards with certain symbols such as a cross, a circle, a star, wavy lines and a square etc. At the Duke University (North Carolina) Professor J.B. Rhine has published a book titled Extrasensory Perception (1934) after carrying on experiments on it for more than three decades.
In the telepathy experiments, a person tries to ‘read the mind’ of the one conducting the experiment by guessing the cards. Telepathy involves sending of thoughts, feelings or knowledge from one person to another without any apparent medium. It is often called thought transference.
Clairvoyance is the state of being mentally aware of something that is out of sight such as an event or a person, without the telepathic help from any other person. In the clairvoyance tests, a person identifies cards through various methods without seeing them. When the number of current guesses is higher than the average person achieves, it suggests that the person has extrasensory perception.
Precognition is the knowledge of an event, by means of telepathy or clairvoyance, before it takes place. In the precognition tests, by using cards or a dice, an attempt is made to predict a sequence of events before they actually occur.
Psychokinesis is the psychological control of physical objects. For example, while tossing a coin, a person might concentrate on the ‘heads’ and cause it to appear.
It is said that all the people do not possess such powers to see the truth directly without reasoning. There are many examples of people possessing such abilities and ESP is a convenient way of acknowledging this.
The scientists have been studying this phenomenon because they feel it has enormous potential for a fruitful research. For example, a person with ESP abilities might be able to predict future wars, locate valuable mineral deposits or even accomplish other things of great importance.