For 12 years I lived in a house museum on top of a hill. The caretaker's apartment was on the top floor.   Outdoor staircases led past me down five streets. These hills are steep. Standing at my living room window, for instance, my feet were approximately level with the flat roof of a 13-floor apartment building three blocks down.

All this to say that, depending on the time of day, there was a stream of people going past the house and trooping down - or up - the stairs. The people who knew they were being watched, even though they could not surmise where the gaze was coming from, were the people I knew I would be interested in meeting.

Anyone can "send", not everyone "receives".

It has been my observation that one can 'turn off' the receptive component; conversely at any given moment one can become consciously extremely sensitive to a gaze or thought.