What is Extrasensory Perception (ESP)?

            In our daily life, there are times when we become aware of an event before it actually happens, or we know about events that have taken place out of sight. At other times, we clearly perceive what the other person is thinking about. This happens without the use of any of the usual five senses-sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, hence we call this ability as extrasensory, perception (ESP), which literally means awareness outside the five senses. Some refer to it as the sixth sense.

Telepathy experiments involve reading a person's mind using a special deck of cards

            Usually we perceive everything around us with the help of our five senses, but ESP provides us the information that is normally not conveyed by any of the five senses.

            This is not a common phenomenon, but scientists as well as psychologists differ in their thoughts about the existence of ESP. the disagreement is that this phenomenon can be explained in other ways bout 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 involve telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition ad psycho-kinesis. 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, star, wavy lines, a square, etc.

            In telepathy experiments, a person tries to read the mind of the other person by guessing the cards which the other person is holding. Telepathy involves sending of thoughts, feelings or knowledge form 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 telepathic help form any other person. In clairvoyance tests, a person identifies cards through various methods without seeing them. When the number of correct 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 actually takes place. In precognition tests, by using cards or a dice, an attempt is made to predict a sequence or events before they actually occur.

            Psycho-kinesis 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.

            At Duck University (North Carolina), late professor J.B. Rhine published a book titled extrasensory perception 1934 after carrying on experiments on extrasensory perception for more than three decades. It is said that all people do not possess such powers to predict the truth directly without reasoning. There are many examples of people possessing such abilities, and ESP is a convenient way of acknowledging this sort of occurrence.

            Scientists have been studying this phenomenon because they feel it has enormous potential for fruitful research. For example, person with ESP abilities might be able to predict future wars, locate valuable mineral deposits or even accomplish things of great importance to mankind.