Mental telepathy involves directly communicating through thought transference without using the normal senses, but that can be a very broad-based definition. Things like getting hunches, or having premonitions could fall under the category, but there are some people that can read a person's inner most thoughts without any other signals and no close relationship to the person. Mental telepathy covers basic functions that could be close to random guesses to very complex levels of thought transfer abilities. Different levels of mental telepathy can best be demonstrated in these instances:

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Being able to use kinesics or non-verbal communication to transfer thoughts between two people has been considered mental telepathy on some level. This can range from simple messages like 'go away' to entire conversations that don't involve language, other than body language or facial expressions. This form of communication is realized more easily and more exactly between people who are very close and familiar, such as spouses, children and their parents and sometimes even friends that are very close.

Some people believe that when the senses (sight, sound, feel, smell and hear) are used or people that have spent years in the company of another are picking up on learned signals, are not using telepathy. To some extent this is correct, as they are using visual ques to communicate. However, mental telepathy could play a role, as it still involves some ability to know what they are thinking. The fact that non-verbal communication occurs most successfully between people who have some type of relationship, like family or close friends, or who have lived together for extended periods of time, like husband and wife, could mean their minds might be more attuned to each other than to outsiders. One could maintain that this merely means the two people know each other well enough to have formulated agreed-upon nonverbal signals to communicate unknowingly.

EMPATHETIC REACTIONS

When you can step into someone else's shoes and completely understand their feelings, then you are said to have an ability called empathy. Not all people have the same kind of empathy. Many people excel in it and many don't. However, for people who do not possess this quality, it can be increased and inculcated with practice and training. A great example are the actors who can even feel the pain and the problems of the characters they play so much so that they can even imitate their emotions in the most lifelike manner.

Sympathetic pain is an empathy feeling of another person's pain as if it were your pain. For example, after witnessing someone that is pregnant and close to you go into labor, you may experience an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach, even though you know its fine. Experiencing an overwhelming emotion, such as joy, grief, or depression can also cause an empathetic level of awareness where you may feel an echo of the same emotion inside you. The phenomena of long distance empathy is where a person suddenly feels that someone close to them has been hurt, or is in pain, even though they have not spoken to or heard anything from the person at the time.

Non believers may scoff at these happenings and call them as just gimmicks of a highly active imagination. Yes, there is some validity in the point since there are other senses in play as well. For example, the question that will we are able to feel the same hurt without knowing that the person is hurt is a valid one. Nevertheless long distance empathy and such related phenomena do not fall in the realms of these explanations.

CONCRETE CONCEPTS

The thought transference of concrete symbols, such as card tricks is considered a higher level of mental telepathy. Mental telepathy at this level moves beyond the regular five senses because it involves un-related and unbiased participants. Intense concentration on an object or symbol is necessary to send the thought or picture using mental telepathy.

A color or shape is easier to convey through thought than something more complex like an animal or a deceased persons name from the beyond.

Zener cards are often used in tests of mental telepathy at this level. They consist of a circle, square, star, plus sign, and three wavy lines, so a random selection or guess is possible according to some critics. Odds are good that several random guesses can select the correct symbol because of the limited number of choices. But when over half of the time the correct symbol is chosen, this is certainly higher success than a random guess would result in and some telepaths have proven these statistics.

ABSTRACT IDEA LEVELS

Mental telepathy at this level uses abstract thoughts, actions and ideas and goes beyond simple colors and shapes. Rarely do telepaths achieve this level of mental telepathy, and experiments have shown that do not do as well on these types of tests.

There are animals which can communicate simple abstract concepts like hunger, thirst and pain and our technology still cannot figure out how. Though the lack of prefrontal lobes makes these concepts exceedingly basic, it still seems to involve telepathy.

Some theorize that at one time humans were once capable of telepathy. However as they evolved, this ability was lost as other forms of communication were developed. If this is in fact true, then humans should instinctively have this dormant ability and should be able to relearn it.

There are others still that theorize that having psychic powers such as ESP and mental telepathy are actually a "future" development in human evolution. If enough people develop these powers, humans in the future could become telepathic in communication as they evolve.