Everyone has had the feeling, occasionally, that they're being watched. It happens so often, most people don't even think about it. When you were riding the train/bus/subway to work today, did you look up from the paper and catch someone's eye for a split second? Why did you look up at just that moment?
I have a personal theory on this. Keep in mind I'm a layman and everything I know about psychology and the human brain I learned from comics, psi-fi books, Star Trek, and trying to figure out what the hell my parents were thinking during certain points in my childhood.
First, consider that the human body is electric. Our brains think by passing electrons around and creating and accepting electronic impulses.
Now, consider a larger example, comparable to your brain (in a few ways): the Earth. The Earth is covered in transmitting and receiving stations (think TV station and television set). All those electronic signals are intended to go from the source to the destination, and for the most part they do - just like the brain. But part of the signal spins off the Earth and out into space.
Along the same lines, I theorize that part of the brain's electronic pattern of thought must spin off the brain and be transmitted into the space around us.
Each of us has our own self-image ingrained in our personality. I know what I look like and you know what you look like. We can recognise ourselves in a mirror. So my theory is that when a person looks at me (for example) the electronic pattern of their thought, which carries the image of me, spins off from that person's brain and is picked up by my brain. See, they're brain transmits the same type of signal (or closely enough) as mine is set to handle or receive: brain waves.
My brain "hears" the signal sent out by the other person's brain, and recognises it as the pattern depicting my outward appearance. Since the original signal didn't come from my brain, I look up, to see if there's someone else who looks like me. Or perhaps I look up out of paranoia or something else (have I been cloned? am I still me?). Who knows? The point is, I look up because my subconscious recognises a pattern of thought floating by, which I've thought of before and I'm interested in the source.
Of course there's probably lots of other patterns floating by: sex, money, food, sex, job security, sex, the train's late, sex, my car sucks, sex... But all that just becomes the regular background noise of the crowd. Some people hate being around other people. Maybe it's because it's noisy in their subconscious. But I digress...
So that's it. But before you go, consider this: Have you ever been sitting with someone and you both thought of the same thing at the same time? "I was just thinking, maybe I'll get a taco". "Really? I was just thinking the same thing". I figure stuff like that is probably along the same lines. We probably share a lot of thoughts with the people around us, but we don't bother to express them.
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