In a new study to examine what he calls “extended mind”, Dr Rupert Sheldrake states that people often know who is calling when the telephone rings :

“By far the most common apparent kind of telepathy in the modern world occurs in connection with telephone calls — when you think of someone for no apparent reason and then they ring and you say, ‘That’s funny I was just thinking about you.’ Is it a mass delusion or is something really happening?”

Extended mind is a phrase used often by Sheldrake, the Cambridge biologist, to explain all kinds of paranormal phenomena. He believes that this mind stretches out beyond us and accounts for the way some of us know when another person is looking at us.

Try watching people on the street as they walk past from a high window. The number who suddenly look up directly at you shows that they “know” they are being “pinged” by you. The only way it could happen is if there is a continuity of “mindstuff” between the two people.

Sheldrake conducts many experiments in this field, with remarkable results. His book, The Sense of Being Stared At, is a classic of the genre. As an accredited scientist, his experiments are always well designed and hard to fault.

His controversial research paper was presented at the British Association’s Festival of Science in Norwich, England.