Telepathy

Telepathy is the ability to mentally communicate with another living organism using only the power of the mind. Individuals who possess this power can not only project their own thoughts into the minds of others, but may also receive the mental impressions or thoughts from someone else. A strong telepath may even broadcast his or her thoughts to a large body of people. Although this is a powerful ability, it often comes at great cost to the wielder. Learning to harness and control telepathic signals takes great concentration and often years of practice. An untrained telepath may easily be driven mad by the influx of mental impressions from those around him.

In the Star Trek franchise, the alien race known as Vulcans practice a level of telepathy, but generally only use it when communicating with other Vulcans. Vulcan telepathy is often tactile in nature, requiring physical contact between two individuals. This particular practice is known as the Vulcan mind meld. An oft-quoted mantra used when engaging in the mind meld with another is "My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts. Some Vulcans can harness telepathic control of such magnitude, that they can actually psionically project their living soul, or katra into the mind of another person. An example of this feat took place in the year 2285 when a dying Spock displaced his katra into the mind of his colleague Leonard McCoy.