For those of you who don't know yet, here is the plain definition: Telepathy is the ability to communicate without using any of the five senses, namely sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste.

What is interesting is that the telepathic instinct is innate in most, if not in all of us. It surfaces during emergency or need and helps us to employ our potential abilities.

Huge debates have been caused on where the instinct lies. It has been proposed that it might lie in either the huge unused brain space or somewhere in the rest of the body, as it might have evolved long before the evolution of the brain.

Whatever be its source, it exists, and manifests in definite ways.

Examples of your psychic side at work is when you experience déjà-vu, or when you instinctively know that something is about to happen. What happens during these instances is that your mind draws resources from its unconscious and subconscious parts. In a similar way, when two unconscious minds link together on the same frequency, the experience is termed telepathy.

Projective and perceptive are the two forms of telepathy.

The former refers to sending unconscious messages; the latter refers to receiving them. If, for example, you instinctively know who is calling you before you take the call, you are better at perceptive telepathy. On the other hand, if a person calls you just after you think about him/her, you are a projector.

Testing your telepathic abilities is relatively easy. Try thinking of someone. Be patient and focus hard. The person you are trying to contact may not be good at receiving, but regardless of his/her ability, he/she will contact you sooner than you would normally expect. Alternately, try to 'know' who is calling you when the phone is ringing. Don't guess. Try to 'feel' the signal. Try to employ your unconscious while testing your telepathic abilities.

Remember, it is likely that neither of these works for you, but don't worry. Telepathy is most likely to set in during extreme situations. Just because you cannot feel who is calling you does not mean you are incapable of telepathy.

Dreams, being primarily a prerogative of the subconscious and the unconscious, have higher chances of favouring telepathy than conscious activities do. Two people may simultaneously dream of the other and find that their dreams had something in common. These people are probably mutually linking to the unconscious mind. This is, most often a projection of the mind, the consciousness projected beyond the body. It is also believed that through telepathy, conscious minds can link to dead spirits. People have been reported to have dreamt of lost loved ones who seem to try to get a message through to the living world.

To test your dream-telepathy, try sending a message using only your mind to a friend who you know is asleep. Ask him/her later about the dream and whether it involved you. If yes, then you know you have it.

Linking up between loved ones is common primarily because spending a lot of time together tunes each mind to the tones of the other and also because the desire to communicate is directly proportionate to the love shared. A child's desperate need for its mother when it is in danger leads the mother to know her child needs help.

However, be very careful and selective when using telepathy. I doubt whether it would be very comfortable for you to keep receiving messages from all and sundry all the time. Imagine what you feel like when a lot of people talk together, or when your radio is on, your family are watching television and you are on the phone, all together. You certainly would not want telepathy to create such a chaotic situation.