I am going to have to preface the following discussion with a couple of crucial personal disclosures. You may complain that the details of my personal life have no place in an objective discussion such as the one I am endeavouring to present to you here. But I believe that you won't be able to understand how I could so casually discuss such a mystical phenomenon as telepathy without knowing these two details from my personal experience. Firstly, let me say that I am in fact a schizophrenic. I was diagnosed with this condition many years ago, and in that time I have undergone a profound perceptual transformation the result of which is the rehabilitation which you may infer from my mental behaviour here. A residual artefact of my psychiatric experience, however, concerns my second disclosure in so far as I rationalise the 'voices' which I hear in terms of the development of telepathic powers. I think of myself as a telepath rather than as a schizophrenic, and I struggle with the social stigma which both telepaths and schizophrenics must endure.

You may be wondering what possible interest you could have in my discussion of the development of telepathic relations, but I've got a pretty good reason why you might take an interest in this subject. It concerns the possibility of developing a relationship with those outside the human family, not only with animals in the near distance from ourselves, but also with larger representations of being, such as the planets, stars and galaxies in the far distance from the domain of our everyday experiences. I don't want to say any more about this until later in this discussion. Suffice it to say for the time being that there are possibilities out there which you may not have had an opportunity to discover.

All this talk of relating to some of the vast cosmic beings who may exist out there will probably seem like the typically bizarre manifestation of a mental disease which is renowned for its expression of this sort of grotesque perceptual deviance. But I think it illustrates a fundamental schism, not necessarily within the affected individual, but between the group and the individual. There a two very different ways of relating to the world, and I believe it is too easy for the group to trivialise the world view of a solitary individual who has difficulty validating the credentials of conventional thinking, and who is consoled by the power of personal perception. It probably never occurs to you to doubt the basis of your perception of the world, but I think you will find that the whole thing is premised on the convenience of reproductive relations. This contrasts sharply with the view of a solitary individual who espouses Death, not for the sake of solving the morbidity which Death seems to hold from the group's point of view, but for the sake of enjoying the grand vista of Eternity which its presence allows the solitary individual to behold.

Were it possible for me to confine myself to representing the wisdom of conventional thinking then I would refrain from allowing any personal commentary to enter into the discussion. But the truth is that I am relating an experience which is very poorly understood in human thinking. There is so little insight into the nature of schizophrenia in the community that I feel the inclusion of some personal anecdote is justified. Were it possible for me to discuss both schizophrenia and telepathy in the third person then I would do so. But in all my experience of these things over the course of more than twenty years I've met very few other schizophrenics, and I've never had the opportunity to rigorously investigate the nature of their psychoses. I have only my own memories to refer to, and so I hope that you will forgive me when I relapse into some very personal story telling. As far as I can tell these episodes are vital components of a rhetorical structure which I hope you will find compelling.