Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp.

493–512, 2020 0892-3310/20

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Psychedelic Telepathy: An Interview Study

Petter Grahl Johnstad

University of Bergen, Norway

Submitted June 18, 2019; Accepted February 13, 2020; Published September 15, 2020
https://doi.org/10.31275/20201747
Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC

Abstract—This article presents an interview study of ostensible telepathy

experiences induced by psychedelic drugs, with the aim of broadening
our understanding of the nature and characteristics of such experiences.
Of 40 anonymous psychedelics users interviewed about their experiences,
16 reported some form of psychedelic telepathy. Respondents were
recruited at various online fora for individual interviews via private
messaging. They reported three main types of telepathic communication:
1) an information-exchange type of telepathy that often enabled people
to communicate in images as well as in words; 2) a state sometimes
referred to as telempathy that allowed for the direct exchange of feeling-
states; and 3) a state of self-dissolution and telepathic unity where one
could not differentiate one’s own thoughts and feelings from those of
the friend or partner. Some participants complained about the lack of
privacy especially in the more intense forms of telepathic states, and were
hesitant to repeat the experience, while others claimed they had become
accustomed to such states and experienced them regularly. The article
concludes that further studies are warranted, and suggests a strategy for
an experimental study of psychedelic telepathy.
Keywords: psychedelic; interview; qualitative; telepathy; self-dissolution

INTRODUCTION
The term telepathy was coined by the early psychical researcher
Frederic W. H. Myers from the Greek (tele), meaning distant,
and (pathos), which in this context means feeling or experience.
494 P e t t e r G ra h l J o h n s t a d

Myers defined his neologism as “the communication of impressions of

any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognized
channels of sense” (1896–1897, p. 174). Psychedelics for their part are
a group of drugs named by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond after the
Greek (psyche), meaning soul or mind, and (delein),
to reveal or manifest, and are known for their powerful effects on
feelings, thoughts, and perceptions (Nichols, 2004, 2016). The classical
serotonergic psychedelics include mescaline (the active constituent
of peyote), psilocybin (the active constituent of “magic mushrooms”),
lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT).
Telepathic communication between research subjects in experi-
mental settings is documented in parapsychological literature, although
this literature has not found much acceptance in the mainstream
academic world. In the past decades, most telepathy research has taken
the form of so-called ganzfeld (a German word meaning ‘total field’)
studies, where research subjects are flooded with unpatterned sensory
stimuli in order to achieve an effect analogous to sensory deprivation
(Cardeña, 2018). The state of mind that results from ganzfeld stimuli
has been found particularly conducive to telepathic receptivity, and
the most recent and comprehensive meta-analyses of such studies
found support for a telepathic effect (Storm et al., 2010; Williams,
2011), although skeptics have challenged these findings (Alcock, 2010;
Hyman, 2010).
These ganzfeld studies indicate that an altered state of
consciousness may be supportive of telepathic receptivity, and perhaps
of paranormal experiences in general. As psychedelics are known
for inducing powerful alterations in consciousness, with effects that
include increases in mental imagery, empathy, alertness, awareness,
attention, spontaneity, suggestibility, openness, intuitive thinking,
and emotional flexibility (see review in Luke, 2012), there is reason
to believe that the psychedelic state could be conducive of telepathic
experience. Neuropharmacological research has demonstrated that,
perhaps counterintuitively, these psychedelics-induced alterations in
consciousness correlate with general decreases in brain activity (Carhart-
Harris et al., 2012), while also increasing the number of long-range
cortical connections (Petri et al., 2014). Thus, a human brain affected by
classical psychedelics will be both relatively quieter and more integrated,
Ps y c h e d e l i c Te l e p a t hy : A n I n t e r v i e w S t u d y 49 5

with an increase in topologically long-range functional connections.

Carhart-Harris et al. regarded their finding of a psilocybin-induced
decrease in overall brain activity as being consistent with the reducing-
valve model of the brain that Aldous Huxley (1954/1994) developed on
the basis of Henri Bergson’s work (1896/1990), which posits that the
brain has an active filtering mechanism constraining our experience
of the world to that which has value for immediate survival. The
observed reduction in brain activity during psychedelic influence may
therefore involve a reduction also in filtering activity, enabling a state
of unconstrained cognition that is perhaps beneficial for experiences of
telepathy and other psi phenomena.
In support of the view that psychedelics could be beneficial for
telepathy, there is a substantial anthropological literature on indigenous
psychedelics use resulting in ostensible psi phenomena (Luke, 2010),
as well as a number of surveys on psi experiences among modern
psychedelics users. One review of surveys of paranormal experience in
relation to psychedelics use found that “of those reporting the use of
psychedelics, between 18 and 83 percent reported ESP experiences—
most commonly telepathy but also precognition—actually occurring
during drug use, with heavier users reporting more experiences” (Luke,
2015, p. 156). On a more anecdotal basis, an Internet search will obtain
a number of trip reports from modern psychedelics users describing
telepathic experiences as one of the effects of psychedelics use.
Despite this promising foundation, parapsychologists have
not been very successful in demonstrating telepathy and other psi
phenomena with psychedelics under controlled conditions (see overview
in Luke, 2012). Most of this research took place in the psychedelic pre-
prohibition era, but when parapsychologists picked up this line of
research during the 1990s findings remained generally unconvincing
(Bierman, 1998; Don et al., 1996; Tinoco, 1994; Wezelman & Bierman,
1997). It has been suggested that the traditional symbol-guessing
procedure employed in some telepathy studies is too dull a task for
psychedelics-affected participants, and that dosage may have been too
low to induce telepathic effects (Luke, 2012). Furthermore, it appears
that most ganzfeld studies have been set up without consideration of
the sender–receiver relationship (Roe et al., 2003), although at least
one study by Honorton et al. (1990) reported improved hit rates when
496 P e t t e r G ra h l J o h n s t a d

participants brought their own senders. Finally, Luke’s (2012) review of

psychedelic telepathy studies found that most such studies were set
up with a sober sender together with a psychedelics-affected receiver.
By contrast, the reportedly very successful psychedelic telepathy
experiences discussed in this article took place between friends and
partners who were simultaneously affected by (generally) high doses of
psychedelics.
The purpose of this interview study of psychedelic telepathy
experiences was to gain insight into how psychedelics users themselves
describe the state of telepathic contact. The study aimed for a deeper
understanding of the characteristics of such experiences that might
allow for a tentative categorization of different types of psychedelics-
induced telepathic communication. It also asked participants to
describe the transition into the telepathic state, and to suggest factors
that might facilitate or abet a telepathic connection. Finally, the study
aimed to identify challenges or difficulties with psychedelic telepathy.

METHOD
Current or past psychedelics users were interviewed about their
experiences in two phases of the study. In the first phase, 26 users
of psychedelic drugs in spiritual contexts were interviewed either
individually or in groups about a broad range of aspects relating
to their psychedelics use. These interviews dealt with psychedelic
experiences in general, and only two of the participants had a telepathic
experience to report. In order to gain more insight, a second phase of
the study recruited 14 users specifically on the basis of their reports
of psychedelic telepathy experiences posted on Internet discussion
fora. These prospective interviewees were approached with a private
message stating the following:

Hello [username]! I read your post from [date] about your

telepathic experience. This is interesting to me as I am starting
up an academic interview study of telepathic experiences
with psychedelics. Would you allow me to quote your post
anonymously in my study and answer a few follow-up questions?
Ps y c h e d e l i c Te l e p a t hy : A n I n t e r v i e w S t u d y 497

Follow-up questions engaged with matters such as dosage and setting,

the transition into the telepathic state, whether their recollection of
the experience agreed with that of their partner, and the long-term
consequences of the experience, all of which were asked as open-
ended questions in a non-judgmental manner. In addition, the study
was informed by a number of reports posted on discussion fora by
users who were either currently unreachable or who did not reply to
recruitment attempts. These reports were often of considerable value
to the study. In order to preserve privacy, however, only reports from
authors who signed (anonymous) informed consent forms have been
quoted from in this article (with ID numbers after the quotes).
Interviews were asynchronous and Internet-mediated, and
participants were encouraged to interact with the interviewer via
anonymized email or messaging that protected their identity from
the researcher. The study was designed in conformity with Norwegian
Social Science Data Services ethical guidelines. It emphasized the
preservation of participant anonymity, and aimed to ensure that no
participant would be identifiable either to the researcher or to readers
of published material. Statements have been edited for brevity and
relevance, and insignificant details have sometimes been altered
to preserve anonymity. Participants were asked to read through
and verify the use of their narratives. As interviews took the form of
written communication, transcription was unnecessary. Data were
analyzed using thematic analysis and Brinkmann and Kvale's (2015)
procedure for meaning condensation, and themes were constructed
in an open-ended, exploratory, and data-driven comparative analysis of
participant narratives. The interview process allowed for the resolution
of ambiguities through follow-up questions. No attempt was made
to verify that the participants’ narratives were truthful, with the one
exception that interviewees were asked about how their telepathic
partner later talked about the experience. This question was asked with
the intent to identify non-reciprocal and possibly imagined telepathy
experiences, but none of the participants indicated that there was a
disagreement between themselves and their alleged telepathic partner
about the nature of the experience.
Because psychedelics use is generally illegal, not all respondents
were willing to provide demographic information. In order to reduce
49 8 P e t t e r G ra h l J o h n s t a d

participation stress, only a minimum of such information was requested.

Of the 27 participants who provided their gender, 24 were male and
three female. The median participant was in their early 30s, with an
age range from 18 to late 50s. Four were married (two with children),
six were in stable relationships (one with children), seven were single,
and one was in the middle of a break-up. Twelve held steady jobs in
retailing, education, music teaching, journalism, industrial services,
IT consulting, carpentry, investment client support, and as a hospital
worker, five were students, one was unemployed, and one used to work
as a kindergarten assistant but was recently disabled because of an
inherited condition.

RESULTS
Setting and Dosage
In all the reports available to this study, psychedelic telepathy
experiences took place between friends or partners who were tripping
together in the same room or area. None of the reports described
experiences of telepathic contact with news presenters on television,
strangers in the streets, or anyone else external to the group of
trippers. With a few exceptions, the telepathy experiences were all
reciprocal, involving two or more people who both felt that they were in
telepathic contact with each other. Of 20 reports that mentioned which
drug was taken, 15 involved LSD as the main psychedelic drug, while
two involved psilocybin, two 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine
(MDMA), and one d-lysergic acid amide (LSA). Doses were generally
described as strong, although we should note that it is difficult to
ascertain the amount of LSD in a blotter without access to a chemical
lab. Nevertheless, about 300 mcg of LSD seemed to be a median dose
for telepathic experiences, with a reported range from 100 mcg to 8
blotters. Some reported combining LSD with cannabis, which is often
said to intensify the psychedelic effects.
Most of the reported psychedelic telepathy experiences took place
with a single friend, often described as a close friend or a partner or
spouse. In some reports, however, the telepathic pair was among a
group of 3–5 friends, the rest of whom were not involved in the telepathic
experience. A few other reports described telepathic communication
Ps y c h e d e l i c Te l e p a t hy : A n I n t e r v i e w S t u d y 49 9

between three or more people, but none of the authors behind these
reports was available for follow-up questions.
When interviews did allow for follow-up questions, I always asked
whether the interviewee had talked to his or her friend about the
telepathic experience, and whether this friend confirmed that it was
a shared experience. With a few exceptions, everybody confirmed that
they had talked about their telepathic experience over the days and
weeks—sometimes for years—after it happened, and that they both
agreed it was a telepathic experience. The most noteworthy exception
was one interviewee who first described the experience as involving
telepathy in a Reddit post, but who later changed his mind about it and
now considered it an experience of communication via face reading
and body language rather than telepathy. When I asked this interviewee
about how the friend he shared the experience with thought about the
experience today, I did not receive a reply. Another participant also
failed to respond to such a question at the start of the interview, and
was not heard from again.

Transition
With one exception, the telepathy experiences in this study all occurred
spontaneously. The transition into the telepathic state was sometimes
a noticeable event, where the trippers suddenly discovered that they
could communicate telepathically, and sometimes a more gradual
process that they did not recognize until it was well-established. One
participant was on a heavy dose of LSD combined with cannabis,
tripping with a single friend around a bonfire at an isolated cabin, and
suddenly found his mind behaving in unexpected ways:

My mind started to say things that I didn’t expect, things that

were in my voice and had my tone quality, but were not what
I was expecting myself to say. So I said to the voice: Is that
you talking to me, or is that me talking to myself? And the
voice said: I think you’re talking to me, dude. (ID06)

He responded with astonishment and resistance, jumping up and

running away. Then he heard the sound of something like a firecracker
going off:
500 P e t t e r G ra h l J o h n s t a d

I felt my head crack, like something gave way. The crack

happened at the height of my astonishment when I ran to
the other side of the bonfire to get away from my friend. It
was like a pressure-release valve blowing. It seemed to be in
the very center of the head, and as soon as it happened I felt
different and I accepted what was happening. It was like my
worldview had expanded. (ID06)

Others described a more gradual transition. In some cases, they

reported being engaged in conversations that gradually changed from
vocalized to telepathic without anyone noticing. In other cases, the
conversation seemed to be fully telepathic from the start, but for a
while the trippers believed they were talking in the usual way:

My girlfriend and I were talking to each other. After about a

20-minute conversation, I said something out loud, and only
then did I realize that during the entire conversation I hadn’t
ever actually said a word. To put it simply, my girlfriend was
actually reading my mind and responding to my thoughts as
if they were words I spoke. She noticed at the same time that
I did. We were both amazed by it and ran to the living room
to tell our other roommates about it. (ID08)

A similar telepathy narrative involved two friends who were using

LSD together. During the trip, one of them entered the room where the
other was sitting with some friends, and the two had a long conversation.
After the first one left again, it occurred to the second that they actually
had not opened their mouths during this exchange. He asked the other
people in the room about this, one of whom was sober, and they said
that from their perspective the first person had entered the room,
stood there quietly for a while, and then left again. Another interviewee
described a different form of unconscious transition, where he was
lying on the floor sleeping or passed out after taking 300 mcg of LSD,
and then woke up in a state of telepathic contact with his friend. While
all of these experiences occurred spontaneously, without any conscious
intention to explore telepathy during the psychedelic trip, there was
also one report of a telepathic experiment. This proto-parapsychologist
Ps y c h e d e l i c Te l e p a t hy : A n I n t e r v i e w S t u d y 501

had taken MDMA and amphetamines, and suddenly felt inspired to do

a little experiment in telepathy:

We sat down in a room and I said to my friend something

along the lines of ‘let’s see if I can telepathically send a
word’, and he was up for the experiment. Always willing to
challenge my own perception of reality, I looked deep into
his eyes, but rather than send a word I chose to ‘send’ a
noise rather than a word, and that was a sort of nya sound.
I then asked him what word I had ‘sent’ and he replied: ‘it
wasn’t a word, but a sort of nya sound’. (ID27)

Other participants who had experienced telepathy sometimes

tried to recreate the experience, but found that these intentional
attempts to make telepathy happen failed to work. Several participants
did describe having further spontaneous telepathy experiences,
however, which usually took place with the same person as their first
experience. Furthermore, a few reported that telepathic experiences
were something they had come to expect from deep psychedelic
trips. Having learnt from their first experience how to enter the
telepathic state, they found it possible to repeat this maneuver in
later psychedelic trips. Unfortunately, the skills involved in this task
were not easily communicated. One described it as becoming aware
of a subtle “sliver” that it was possible to slip through, and having
once recognized this subtle mental phenomenon spontaneously, his
awareness became attuned to it and this made subsequent recognition
easier. On a somewhat more practical level, others recommended
that trippers hoping for a telepathic experience should look deeply
into one another’s eyes, which they claimed serve as a gateway into
other people’s consciousness. Another participant whose intentional
attempts at recreating the telepathic experience always failed, found
that his three occasions of spontaneous psychedelic telepathy with the
same friend had the following in common:

We were completely absorbed in something else, relaxed,

distracted, and in sync. I believe a personal relationship is
very helpful to the process. (ID06)
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Telepathy and Telempathy

Several different forms of telepathic contact were described by the
participants in this study. In its most common form, telepathy was
about a direct, two-way exchange of information. As we saw above,
participants sometimes reported that they were engaged in a telepathic
conversation for a long time before they noticed that they were not
talking in the usual sense, and in these experiences the telepathic
conversation clearly resembled an ordinary conversation. Such states
of telepathic contact typically lasted for several hours.

For the rest of the night we talked telepathically, and it was

effortless and instantaneous. When he went to pee outside,
we were still talking to each other through the walls. (ID06)

The experience lasted about 3–4 hours. I was blown away by

how long it was. When I realized it at first and confirmed
it with my roommate, I burst into tears for the gratitude of
being able to experience such a wonderful thing. We went
outside and smoked a cigarette, thinking that was the end
of that. Then we went back inside and continued to talk
telepathically for the next few hours. (ID05)

One important difference between this type of telepathic

conversation and ordinary conversations, however, was that partici-
pants often found they could communicate in images rather than
words. This was usually found to improve the information exchange,
since trippers who struggled to find words could convey their ideas in
pictorial form:

When I was explaining what I believed to my friend, I was

doing it telepathically until I came to something I couldn’t
describe. When this happened I could picture what I was
trying to say and I would ask, ‘do you see the circle with the
point in the middle?’ etc., and my friend would say, ‘yea I see
it’ and finish saying what I was trying to say. He could find
the words to explain what I couldn’t. (ID05)
Ps y c h e d e l i c Te l e p a t hy : A n I n t e r v i e w S t u d y 503

We could talk without words, transmitting feelings and

picture-ideas directly. (ID19)

Furthermore, as indicated in the last quotation above, the telepathic

exchange sometimes extended beyond thoughts and ideas into the
realm of feelings. Reports of such experiences sometimes referred to
them as ‘telempathy’ in order to differentiate this direct exchange of
feelings from the more ordinary exchange of ideas. One described such
telempathic exchanges as communication on the soul level, taking place
on a level beyond words. Another person similarly found telepathy to be
too mild a word for such communication, which was described as being
able to know at a deep level what the other person means.
Finally, three interviewees described telempathy experiences that
were of such intensity that they felt themselves dissolving into a state
of unity with their partner. In these experiences, participants allegedly
shared their feelings so intimately that it was difficult or impossible to
identify which feelings belonged to whom.

Our consciousness, our thoughts, our feelings merged

into one. This might be hard to visualize if you haven’t
experienced it, but it gives the effect that you literally ARE
the other person. That they may be a projection of your own
mind. I had melded into this person, and he was effectively a
projection of my own mind. (ID13)
The difficulty was when some shadow stuff started coming
up, as there was absolutely no boundary and no way to
close myself off from my friend. He experienced all that
was coming up for me directly and I experienced his stuff.
Frankly, I don’t know whose stuff it was, because there was
one mind only. (ID10)
Differentiating actually became really difficult. In the early
part of the experience it was easy, as the thoughts I would
‘think’ I recognized as my own and the thoughts that I ‘knew’
I recognized as being my roommate’s. But as the night
wore on it became increasingly difficult to differentiate my
separate identity from my roommate’s. (ID05)
504 P e t t e r G ra h l J o h n s t a d

Such states of telempathic unity were sometimes described as

frightening. Psychedelics users who had experienced telempathic
states cautioned against taking high doses of psychedelics with people
one has unresolved issues with, claiming that relationships that are not
ready for such a radical state of emotional openness might be harmed
by it.

Privacy Issues
This piece of advice with regard to emotional readiness for telempathic
experiences brings us to the main challenge reported for psychedelic
experiences, namely the lack of privacy. One participant described how
this feature of psychedelic telepathy made him uncomfortable with the
experience:

You can’t hide anything when you are telepathic with someone,
and that I didn’t like. Understanding how easily a person can
know what you are thinking and infiltrate your mind really
made me uneasy and really really really appreciate sobriety.
People want to know everything, and they want to know how
to be telepathic and that is great, but everything has a dark
side. Ignorance is bliss. Having privacy is awesome. (ID05)

What was the most difficult for this participant was that his
roommate, with whom he shared three telepathic experiences, turned
out to be gay, and in the last experience this roommate started
pressuring the interviewee for homosexual relations. Their earlier
telepathic experiences had convinced the two that, one some level, all
humans are in truth ‘One’, and this became an argument used to try
to persuade the interviewee to agree to having sex. The interviewee
did not appreciate being pressured by this argument, and the
telepathic connection between the two made the situation especially
uncomfortable, since there was no way to escape from the roommate’s
pressure.

The last time was a negative time for me though because he

was gay and I am not, although I’ve played around with the
idea. The entire time he was pressuring me into being gay. I
Ps y c h e d e l i c Te l e p a t hy : A n I n t e r v i e w S t u d y 505

repeatedly told him that I did not want to, I did not find the
male body attractive and just did not want to. And he said
things like ‘well you know we are all One so what is the big
deal?’ I replied ‘it isn’t a big deal except for the fact that I don’t
find men attractive and I don’t want to, I don’t care how One
we all are, right now we are not one and I prefer women.’
That night was awful because I had no way to escape his peer
pressure and wanted it to end. (ID05)

Another participant had a similar story. He shared three telepathic

experiences with a friend who was a closeted homosexual and, as it
turned out, interested in the interviewee. In their last telepathic
experience, the interviewee could overhear his friend’s romantic
scheming telepathically, which the interviewee found to be dishonest
and not forthright. He nevertheless maintained that the fear of losing
one’s mental privacy during telepathy experiences is overstated,
because you would always pick up people’s thoughts from a place of
understanding and acceptance:

You may worry when you speak telepathically that maybe

they will hear thoughts you don’t want them to hear. But you
feel everything in the context of their history and personality.
It is very difficult to judge someone’s thoughts when you
experience that thought as if you are them. (ID06)

A third interviewee experienced a similar dynamic from the

opposite perspective. He went into a state of telepathic communication
with his tripping friend, but this turned out to be a challenge when
unexpected sexual desires rose up:

At some point I told him that I love him. He refused, but

quickly realized that yes this was actually real love. We
admitted love to each other (in no homosexual way at this
point, mind you). But a little later, I started associating
the whole thing with sexuality, started projecting my own
sexuality onto it. Everything seemed very erotic, and I told my
friend what I saw and that I did not want this. At this point, I
506 P e t t e r G ra h l J o h n s t a d

was getting really confused and our connection was broken.

He stayed grounded and kept reminding me that these are
only my thoughts, but I was really afraid. For days or even
weeks afterwards I had this slight paranoia that everyone can
hear my thoughts and feelings. I didn’t feel safe in my own
mind. (ID10)

Some others, however, did not regard the resultant mental

nakedness of the telepathy experience as a problem. These people felt
they had nothing to hide, and sometimes appreciated the increased
openness:

I never felt threatened by the lack of privacy. In fact, it was a

very nice feeling being able to be vulnerable around those I
care about since I’m always so closed up. (ID08)

DISCUSSION
This study has explored psychedelic telepathy experiences among
participants recruited from online discussion fora. Taking no stand on
the veracity of the reports, the aim of the study was simply to explore
how the psychedelic users themselves describe states of telepathy, and
to categorize and compare the main elements of their narratives. All
the narratives of telepathic communication involved communication
between two or more partners or friends—often described as close
friends or best friends—who were tripping on psychedelics together
in the same room. All except two of the experiences were described as
reciprocal. If telepathy is a real effect, it seems reasonable to expect it
to run parallel to other forms of connections between people, which
implies that it should be stronger and more easily identifiable between
people who are emotionally close; this is congruent with tentative
findings by Honorton et al. (1990) and with Roe et al.’s (2003) analysis.
Indeed, one factor that seemed to facilitate telepathy in the reports
available to this study was the wish or desire for a closer connection.
There were several reports of telepathy with one’s partner or spouse, and
the three narratives that involved unrequited homosexual love stood out
as noteworthy. Although there are not enough reports included in this
Ps y c h e d e l i c Te l e p a t hy : A n I n t e r v i e w S t u d y 507

study to draw valid inferences, future telepathy researchers seem well-

advised to study the role of romantic or erotic desire in establishing a
telepathic connection.
The study identified two main forms for transition into a telepathic
state and three main types of telepathic communication. Some
experienced the transition as abrupt and somewhat challenging, while
others described a transition so smooth as to be unnoticeable. It should
be remembered that all the reports in this study were from people
who experienced telepathy while tripping on, for the most part, heavy
doses of psychedelic drugs, and the temporary inability to differentiate
between spoken conversations and telepathic conversations that some
reported should be understood in this context. It was not possible to
identify any explanation for why interviewees experienced the transition
phase so differently.
The three types of telepathic communication were not discrete
states, but rather appeared to lie on a continuum. In its weakest
form, telepathy seemed to resemble an ordinary spoken conversation,
allowing simply for the exchange of verbalized ideas. This information-
exchange type of telepathy often enabled people to communicate in
images as well as words, however. A more intense form of telepathy
was sometimes referred to as telempathy, and reportedly allowed for
the direct exchange of feeling-states. Such experiences were often
described in spiritual terms. Finally, the most intense form for telepathy
was a state of self-dissolution where one could not differentiate
one’s own thoughts and feelings from those of the friend or partner.
These experiences were often regarded as very challenging. Several
interviewees also reported feeling uncomfortable over the lack of
privacy that characterized the telepathic state. For some, this lack of
privacy was sufficient reason to not want to repeat the experience, but
others eventually grew accustomed to it. A few reported a normalization
of telepathy experiences, regarding them as simply one of many
fascinating features of the deep psychedelic state.
Another noteworthy characteristic of the telepathy narratives in
this study is that they were often colorful and remarkable experiences.
This characteristic contrasts with the standardized ganzfeld experiments
conducted in parapsychological research, where the receivers are
reported to pick the correct visual target one out of three times, rather
508 P e t t e r G ra h l J o h n s t a d

than one out of four times as chance would predict. While this effect, at
least according to some studies and meta-studies (Storm et al., 2010;
Williams, 2011), may lie outside the boundaries of normal statistical
deviation, a relatively minor discrepancy in probabilities is not the
type of effect that captures one’s imagination. As the philosopher C.
D. Broad emphasized back in 1949, spontaneous cases of psi are often

much richer in content and more interesting psychologically

than the results of experiment with cards or drawings. In
comparison with the latter they are as thunderstorms to the
mild electrical effects of rubbing a bit of sealing-wax with a
silk handkerchief. (Broad, 1949, p. 297)

However, it should be noted that the present study is subject to a

range of obvious limitations. The study is based on Internet-mediated
conversations with psychedelics users who claimed to have had
telepathic experiences, but it was not possible to independently verify
these reports. While the author had no reason to doubt the sincerity
and truthfulness of the interviewees, neither of these is assured in
principle. Some readers might even find that the fact that respondents
were in a state of psychedelic intoxication while allegedly experiencing
telepathic contact is in itself good reason to doubt the veracity of their
reports.

Further Studies
In conclusion, further studies of psychedelic telepathy are clearly
warranted. Furthermore, seeing that the ganzfeld experimenters, even
when they can point to what appears to be solid statistical results, seem
to have largely failed to convince the academic mainstream about the
reality of psi, it might be advisable for parapsychologists to diversify
their approach. In the following, I will therefore outline a research
strategy for a study aiming to bring psychedelic telepathy into the
laboratory. The final goal of this proposed study is to demonstrate
telepathic communication between two experienced subjects within a
controlled space. This is not an easy study to conduct, however, and will
require long-term commitment from researchers.
Before proceeding, we can examine some earlier advice for
Ps y c h e d e l i c Te l e p a t hy : A n I n t e r v i e w S t u d y 509

parapsychological research with psychedelics. Such advice often

centers on the importance of set and setting, or in other words on
the psychological and physical contexts of psychedelics use. Luke’s
(2015) summary of factors to take into consideration included “the
participants’ expectations, attitudes towards themselves, idiosyncratic
perceptions, and emotional orientation to the experiment,” and he
emphasized the need for researchers to be friendly and supportive
and thereby engender trust and acceptance among the participants (p.
160). This seems like good advice, but I would like to point out that
this set of advice was probably intended for researchers conducting
experiments with telepathically (and perhaps psychedelically) naïve
subjects. For the study I am proposing, I would instead recommend
recruiting participants who have already experienced psychedelics-
induced telepathy and, at least to some extent, have developed skills
allowing them to recreate such experiences. If such participants can
be found, it should be recognized that these participants, rather
than the researchers, are the experts in determining which set and
setting might facilitate a telepathic experience. In the early phase of
the study, it seems advisable for the researchers to proceed more as
anthropologists conducting a field study than as psychologists aiming
for experimental control. Later on, if the field study phase indicates
that the participants are capable of inducing telepathic states, the study
could be moved into the researchers’ laboratory and be repeated under
controlled conditions.
The critical task for this study is to recruit suitable participants.
Recruiting inexperienced participants into the laboratory and
administering large doses of psychedelic drugs is not advisable, as
the likelihood of untoward events rises with dosage (Nour et al., 2016;
Studerus et al., 2012). In addition, the induction of telepathic states
does not seem to be a sufficiently common effect of psychedelics use
that such a straightforward approach is likely to succeed. Most of the
interviewees in the present study found that they could not recreate
the telepathic experience at will, but some of them claimed to have
developed an ability to at least recognize and seize opportunities for a
telepathic connection. The success of the proposed study relies on the
supposition that these individuals were truthful and not deluded, and
that they exist in sufficient numbers that a parapsychological researcher
510 P e t t e r G ra h l J o h n s t a d

will be able to recruit at least a pair of them. Recruitment might take the
form of publishing notices at a range of online psychedelic communities,
although this may result in much attention from pranksters and people
hoping for free drugs. More fruitfully, perhaps, a prospective researcher
may start by inviting online communities to a survey of psychedelic
telepathy experiences, and at the end of the survey invite participants to
follow-up interviews. Candidates for the experimental study may then
be identified based on the information obtained in interviews. As an
alternative, researchers may take a ‘spear-fishing’ approach where they
monitor various psychedelic community fora and search through their
archives in order to identify suitable candidates for the study, and then
approach them individually via private messaging.
Assuming suitable candidates can be obtained, the researchers
will need to engage with a gradual process of inserting themselves
into the psychedelic practices of their subjects. This may be a delicate
endeavor, as many psychedelics users regard the intoxicated state as a
highly sensitive one, and may be uncomfortable with having strangers
present. Unless the subjects are extremely proficient at inducing the
telepathic state, simply transplanting them from their usual tripping
environment into the researchers’ lab and supplying them with
psychedelic drugs is unlikely to work. Instead, the researchers must
gradually earn the confidence of their subjects, starting out with a
minimal presence at psychedelic sessions and slowly allowing the
study participants to get used to their new environment. At some point,
it may be possible to bring neutral observers and recording devices
into the experiment. If telepathy is a real effect, such a study might
be able to demonstrate it in a manner that does not rely on statistical
probability, but rather on interactions with subjects undergoing real-
time telepathic conversations.

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