The Psychic Function of Emotions with Michael Jawer (4K Reboot)

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]There are certain people that are highly thin boundary who are the types that have these instantaneous impressions of pretty much anywhere they go. And you know, they're highly reactive. Uh they're open to experience. They score very high on that uh uh psychological measure, personality measure, openness to experience. Uh they see shades of gray uh to say something that's sort of uh obvious for somebody like that.

[00:00:25]They're they're preoccupied with feelings and um they often ruminate on their feelings. They have very uh colorful, memorable dreams uh that that reflect their feelings and so forth.

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[00:01:52]Conversations on the leading edge of knowledge and discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Michionlo.

[00:02:05]Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Michionlo. Today we will be exploring emotional sensitivity and its relationship to psychic functioning. My guest is Michael Jawer. He is author of the sensitive soul the unseen role of emotions in extraordinary states. He is also co-author with Dr. Mark Mikoszi of your emotional type key to the therapies that will work for you and the spiritual anatomy of emotion how feelings link the brain your body and the sixth sense.

[00:02:44]Michael lives in the Washington DC area.

[00:02:46]And now I'll switch over to the internet interview.

[00:02:52]Welcome Michael. It's a pleasure to be with you.

[00:02:55]>> Jeeoff, it's a pleasure for me as well.

[00:02:57]>> We're going to be looking at emotional sensitivity and its relationship to psychic functioning. I think it's uh sort of an overlooked field in spite of the fact that when you look at the word telepathy uh it by definition implies some kind of an an emotional exchange between people.

[00:03:20]>> Yes. Uh you know when I was first researching this this whole area uh I came across a talk that uh one of your guests uh Dr. Bernard Carr had given to the Society for Psychical Research in the UK back in 1985.

[00:03:36]And uh I had my suspicions that emotion, as he put it, the title of his talk was uh the psychic trigger question mark.

[00:03:45]Well, I thought that it very well might be. U so it's certainly been bandied about uh in um uh these circles, folks that are interested in anomalies and anomalous perception. Uh and in fact another interesting um fact is that uh back around uh I guess the turn of the 20th century the most famous mediums the folks who uh seem to have these telepathic traits uh developed pretty highly they were known as sensitives.

[00:04:14]So um that was the term that was used and my other you know parallel interest is is sensitivity um the physical sensitivities that seem to go along with emotional sensitivities especially in people that seem to have psychical predilctions or talents.

[00:04:29]>> Well it's fascinating and to me in the sense that mainstream psychology has by and large brushed off parasychology is uh not of interest to them. Many psychologists still think in spite of all the evidence that parasychology is a pseudocience, but they do a lot of research in the areas that you've looked into emotional sensitivity.

[00:04:56]>> Yes. It's not just psychologists, it's also increasingly neuroscientists.

[00:05:00]Um, one of the books that I've really leaned on and and cited extensively in my first book which was called the spiritual anatomy of emotion is a book by a neuroscientist named Antonio Damasio called the feeling of what happens. And uh you know he like uh many neuroscientists uh his central concern is consciousness uh and uh he got down to sort of the nub of the matter which is feeling. uh the feeling of what happens is consciousness in shorthand in his view. uh more recently there's been a book I think just maybe two years ago by Kristoff Kulk uh called the feeling of life itself you know and he's concerned with all aspects of the brain and especially you know the computational nature of the brain but even he recognizes that the core of consciousness is feeling and of course psychology is you know the entire field uh was founded I think uh we go back to uh to William James and so forth it was really founded uh on the presumption uh very firm evidence that disorders of feeling uh cause neurosis and psychosis and so forth. So feeling does seem to be uh central to who we are as human beings.

[00:06:14]>> Well, we have a a mamalian brain. It's the feeling brain and uh it's it's a very important part of of the human psyche that it kind of gets overlooked I think uh in the field of parasychology where we're much more focused on the cognitive side rather than the emotional side.

[00:06:36]Yeah, I couldn't agree more and and my work uh I didn't really intend it that way, but I think it could be viewed as a corrective to uh just what you're pointing out is that um psychology uh parasychology, cognitive science um has all focused on the brain and cognition.

[00:06:58]uh and I think that short changed what underlies cognition when you talk about you know the evolution of human beings the evolution of the brain uh you know there there's the reptilian brain which is the the oldest part of the brain the sort of reflexive capacities that we have and then built on top of that uh is the lyic system the emotional brain uh and on top of that is is the neoortex the thinking brain uh and I think people like Damasio have demonstrated conclusively that um you really need to be able to feel before you can think and that feeling informs our thinking. Uh you know we we would be uh robots, automatons if we didn't have feeling.

[00:07:40]That's really what makes us human and the shades of feeling and the the idea of u uh in any given situation. You know, we're feeling our way through it and and our remembrances and uh what's important to us, what we believe, what we strive for is all colored by feeling.

[00:07:56]uh that really is the bottom line reality and uh I I I do believe that psychology, parasychology, cognitive science has has glossed that over to its detriment. You write for example of uh unusual individuals who have extraordinary emotional sensitivity. Uh some people can walk into a room and immediately gauge uh the emotional uh state of other people in the room instantly. I to somebody like me that seems almost miraculous.

[00:08:31]>> It's it's pretty incredible. Uh although there probably more people with that capacity than we might imagine. uh and here I think what's been very helpful for me as I've proceeded with my research and writing is uh a concept called the uh the boundary spectrum thick and thin boundaries which is a concept propounded by uh the late Ernest Hartman of Tufts University and I was fortunate enough to get to know Ernie uh I always called him Ernest but I think his his his longest friends called him called him Ernie uh but we would correspond we would talk a lot on the phone and uh I I had the pleasure of meeting him once up in Newton, Massachusetts where he lived and um he was a psychiatrist who uh really developed the idea of a spectrum that there are certain people that are highly thin boundary who are the types that have these instantaneous impressions of pretty much anywhere they go. And you know they're highly reactive. Uh they're open to experience. They score very high on that uh uh psychological measure, personality measure, openness to experience.

[00:09:37]uh they see shades of gray uh to say something that's sort of uh obvious for somebody like that. They're they're preoccupied with feelings and um they often ruminate on their feelings. They have very uh colorful, memorable dreams uh that that reflect their feelings and so forth. And then you have the spectrum all the way to the thick side. And thick boundary people whom Hartman also studied uh are people who uh for whom feelings are really sort of a foreign language. They're they're rather impassive or stoic. Uh they're highly organized. They're very precise. They divide things into categories. Well, where whereas the thin boundary people uh you know, impressions spill over and categories don't mean nearly as much.

[00:10:19]And the thick boundary people aren't as nearly as conversant with what they're feeling. They may have a sense for things, but they may not know exactly why or how they've arrived at that sense. Whereas the thin boundary person will talk your ear off about it. So this this spectrum of boundaries uh I think has been very useful for me in my research to identify people who um it turns out the thin boundary people of course are are more psychically attuned.

[00:10:46]They seem to rely on this um strong sense of of what's going on in the feeling realm uh to gather some very unique different sorts of impressions than other people along the boundary spectrum would ever guess at. Now, I know there's some fascinating research that uh shows that people who report a lot of spontaneous psychic experiences tend to have had uh emotional and physical abuse as children and u you write about PTSD which is related to that sort of thing. It sometimes people with PTSD get just flooded with emotion.

[00:11:28]>> Yes. Yes. And it's interesting. There are two kinds of PTSD uh which I discuss in in the new book Sensitive Soul. And I certainly wasn't aware of this until I delved into the research, but there's very good evidence that I believe 30 to 40% of people with uh diagnosed PTSD have a dissociative type of PTSD. And that is um uh they're not exactly sure what's affecting them.

[00:11:54]you know, it feels probably like they're they're walking through soup or through, you know, a heavy fog. They're something's weighing them down. Uh they're concerned about something.

[00:12:03]They're distressed to some extent, but they can't quite put their finger on it.

[00:12:07]They might feel somewhat depressed, uh downcast, and that's very different type of PTSD than the majority of people have. And I think the popular conception is sort of the the flashbulb memory. you know, a car backfires and the and the soldier, the guy who was a soldier in Iraq um during that war uh reacts as if gunfire has just occurred and he's back, you know, on the battlefield with all the sights and sounds overwhelming him that occurred at that time. Um so that's the popular conception of PTSD and that is what affects most kinds of people.

[00:12:42]But I think it indicates again that if you take a given condition there are different um uh different uh gradations you might say within that condition and it just points up how uh everybody has kind of a unique perception and window on the world and I would argue a style of feeling all to themselves. So there's a lot to be learned as we look at different types of people with different kinds of conditions that yes plague them and and unfortunately you know uh we want to help them uh but they're highly sensitive in many cases and to me sensitivity is is a window into the anomalous and it's a window into things that we haven't yet explained uh to our satisfaction and the sensitivity the high sensitivity that many people have and the emotional receptivity that they have I think offers a unique window into a lot of things that we haven't yet uh comprehended very well.

[00:13:37]>> You also write about sinthesia and its relationship to emotional sensitivity that uh some people will see colors.

[00:13:47]Well, everybody sees colors. Some people actually see sound. Uh and emotions are that way. They express themselves. For some people, they might hear sounds in relationship to emotion or they might see colors in relationship to emotion. I think this has a lot to do with people who say they see auras around people.

[00:14:09]It's a form of synthesia as best I can tell.

[00:14:13]>> Yes. And and some of the parasychological literature uh backs that up. I think uh um Carlos Alvarado and and others uh going back to perhaps the 1990s um identified uh or at least correlated the seeing of auras with with synthesia and uh it's it's a fascinating capability. I wasn't aware of it, Jeff, actually until about midway through the environmental sensitivity survey that I did uh back in the late 1990s, early 2000s. Um people who responded to that survey uh including a friend of uh uh my wife's uh made it clear that that's what she had. And I said, "What are you talking about?" And it it opened up just a remarkable vista on an incredible capacity that some people have. And um many of the cineates when you talk to them there's so any number of varieties uh under the sun but you know the most common of course is is uh perceiving words and numbers in color. Uh other people um have uh uh colored associations with the calendar and with days of the week and so forth. That's sort of the most uh um uh I don't say popular, the most prevalent. Uh but there are many other kinds of senesthesia and as you point out a lot of them uh sort of have this emotional tint that that people uh who are sinthetic when they hear about someone when they meet someone uh or they conjure up somebody in their memory there is a color that goes with that and it seems to relate to emotionally how they feel about that person or the immediate impressions that they get and you know it's it's entirely automatic uh Senesthesia is a genetically inherited condition. I believe it runs in families and people uh often times uh don't even know that the rest of the world tends not to uh be sinesthetic until they reach a certain age and all of a sudden it dawns on them that people don't have the same perceptions, the same color associations as they do. And it's quite a shock. I gather that people uh who are sinthet uh have perhaps a more complex nervous system, more neural pathways so that uh they're able to to generate these impressions that are uh more varied than um the average person who's not a sinthet such as myself.

[00:16:54]>> Yes. Yes. they uh typically uh become overwhelmed in uh situations that for you and I would be kind of pedestrian.

[00:17:04]Going to the supermarket is a challenge for many sinthet uh just you know the the plethora of impressions that that they gather the sights the sounds the smells the jostling um uh just the whole range of impressions that they get. I don't even talk about going to Disney World or something like that. uh they can be easily overwhelmed and oftentimes are they are highly sensitive people. Um virtually every sinthet who's taken my environmental sensitivity survey uh clearly they're on the thin side of the boundary spectrum and uh as you point out it's it's the way they're wired.

[00:17:42]There are so many more neural connections uh and and this is apparently the way they come into the world. Now what I gather uh is that there's a pruning that typically takes place uh when people are infants and as they're proceeding through childhood on up to and including adolescence. And uh perhaps the pruning doesn't for whatever reason uh proceed at the same pace for sinthet uh I suspect that for uh people that are psychically uh perceptive uh that have this uh a different window in the world that they may have these additional neural connections u akin to synthesia.

[00:18:22]Ideally, if I uh were a practicing psychic, and I'm not, I would want to be able to turn it on and off or up and down and at will and focus it here and there as I please and maybe block out some things that I don't want to have uh come into my awareness and focus on other things that I do. But I gather that a lot of these people with highly developed sensitivities don't have that ability and that's why it's troublesome for them.

[00:18:53]>> Yeah, it really is. And and um you know the number of people uh who have had lifelong psychical impressions um who've said to me that um my research has really helped them to realize that they're uh not crazy and that there's a a genuine emotional, biological, physiological, neurological basis for their impressions and that this is a great comfort to them uh is very gratifying. Um, but you're right. I think that people are are are troubled as as anybody would be. I mean, if somebody's got PTSD, for example, we talked about that. That's that's certainly not um a condition you want to have perennially. Um, but I don't think it's it's uh uh these people's choice, the way they come into the world. It's it's not just nature. Nurture has a lot to do with it as well. But uh however it plays out uh people um have these kinds of impressions and uh it's just part of who they are and I think they just ultimately have to reconcile uh that this is who they are and and accept it and hopefully u uh view it positively cuz I I do think it's it's simply um a a set of u of aptitudes that some people have.

[00:20:12]You also write about savants and uh prodigies of different kinds and uh how their emotions are structured.

[00:20:22]>> Yeah, savants uh prodigies um there's a I gather something of a thin line between them. Um and it's very interesting because uh especially with with the prodigies I'll just mention that for a moment that um the folks I've talked to who work with prodigies um there's a a woman who would Joanne Ruthats Dr. Ruth Sats who formerly I think was at Ohio State University when she was studying prodigies and she said they are to an individual um they have the most u uh keenly developed sensibility uh and and wide appreciation of the way people are connected uh and and um uh the feeling they have for other people and for events and occurrences in the world. It's it's it's very wide ranging and and um unusual certainly to say the least for for kids of that age, you know, 6 8 10 12 years old uh for the them to have this this highly developed sensibility and they have uh in many cases particular kinds of sensitivities uh very strong memories uh apparently prenatal memories in some cases uh sometimes uh memories that seem to uh predate date their birth. Um so these sort of anomalies that that um attach theel themselves to to many prodigies and then savants. The interesting thing about savants is that um they typically uh have had some sort of head trauma uh either directly or when uh their mothers were carrying them and that seems to be a recurring theme or some sort of um trauma around pregnancy uh lengthy pregnancy or conditions like preeclampsia that that affect the pregnancy um again according to Dr. Ruth sats to a much greater extent than you would you would anticipate with just a regular person who's not a sant. Um so there there are certain commonalities certain trends that seem to attach themselves to the kind these kinds of people and you know that's that's the sort of thing that I trace in the book sensitive soul uh trying to account for why certain people become uh highly talented or have these uh uh sensitivities or sensibilities or uh incredible capacities that the rest of us don't. when it comes to looking at the paranormal side of emotional functioning, the I think the most striking cases that you write about are these children who seem to remember a previous lifetime. Uh but even more striking is when uh the lifetime gets identified by researchers and the the details turn out to be correct. But even more than that, when you find that the these young children have birtharks that are associated with often the the death wounds of the previous person as if some strong emotion associated with a bullet or a knife uh actually creates a physiological feature in a young child.

[00:23:35]Yeah, it's it's absolutely astounding to consider this possibility and there are hundreds uh of welldocumented cases thanks to the late Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia and uh Dr. Jim Tucker uh who has carried on his work and does that to this day. Uh there are really intrepid explorers. I mean people that uh have really tracked down as you say uh and have identified and details of these cases that do seem to correspond to particular cases of people who got cut down through uh some sort of trauma. Um they were attacked. There was some sort of you know unnatural demise that they went through. And the number that jumped out at me, of course, in any I think everybody else who's who's looked at this literature, uh Tucker points out that uh over the thousands of cases they've cataloged, uh I believe it's 70% relate to some sort of violent or unnatural end to somebody's life. Uh and and that's got to be hugely emotional. I mean, we talk about the fight orflight syndrome. When somebody's, you know, in uh a life-threatening situation, all of their uh systems are are on high alert. Uh you know, everything is is honed to a to a knife edge. And I think uh again, sort of looking at um uh the body part of the mind body equation. Uh and they're not separate. They're really two sides of the same coin. But, you know, I I I wonder and and have speculated in in this current book and and previously what happens when somebody's in that uh life or death situation. The energy that must be marshaled has got to be incredible. And you know, emotions are really all about energy. Emotion. You know, they they seem to have a very palpable um energy and and flow to them. And if you're in a situation where you you can't escape uh and and that person ends up dying, what happens to that that energy? Um I think of it as a vortex uh and if you think of the conservation of energy, well, what happens to it uh at that at that juncture? And I I think that there is uh uh a likelihood that emotion uh connects to spaceime. And so the anomalies that seem to disobey, you know, our customary uh expectations of spaceime um have been uh conditioned by high emotion. That's that's my view of things anyway.

[00:26:15]>> Well, I gather from your book that you don't necessarily equate these cases with reincarnation, although Stephvenson and Tucker refer to them as cases of the reincarnation type. What you're simply suggesting is that one person emits a very strong emotion and then another person, a fetus or a child somehow receives that and and it affects the actual structure of their body in terms of birtharks and deformities.

[00:26:47]>> Yes. I I mean literally you have um uh trauma transmuted from one person in one local to a nent person in the womb uh somewhere else which just boggles the mind. But as as I say, there's there's uh very strong documentation that Stephvenson and Tucker and others have gone to the trouble uh of u of putting on paper. And this this spans, you know, 30 40 years, I think at least.

[00:27:22]Um and this idea that I have is is not mine originally. I I I arrived at it without knowing that somebody else had, but I think one of the the other researchers um who's still around today, and I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly, Jurgen Keiel, K E I L. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Apologies if I if I'm not. Uh but he came up with the concept of thought bundles.

[00:27:49]um which uh it's kind of a a passive term so I don't really care for it so much because I'm I'm really thinking about how the body and the mind are stuck in this traumatic situation where uh you know the person's going to be killed or is facing the threat of death uh and that's got to be hugely anxiety and stress producing. So thought bundles don't seem to do it for me, but that was the term that he used.

[00:28:17]And and again, the idea is that there's some sort of transference that this energy, the thought, the uh the emotion, the forcefulness of of what's going on in that situation somehow is conveyed um across spaceime uh and is available for another life form to commune with. and somehow bring to fruition. And the interesting thing is these kids who have these these memories, some of them are prodigies by the way. Uh which is quite remarkable.

[00:28:53]Um there's a guy named David Henry Feldman who um has written about this in in his study of of child prodigies. Um it's called Nature's Gambit. I think it was published in the mid 80s and it's a sort of a seinal work that and and a look at prodigies. And the interesting thing is that whether they're prodigies or they're just kids who don't have predigious talent, they tend to forget uh these these apparent memories when they get to around 6 or 7 years old. So it it seems like it's a transient phenomenon, but for the time that it's apparent, it's all consuming. uh the kids are absolutely overwhelmed and and and preoccupied with these recollections and often they demand to know more about who that person was. They don't necessarily believe that it was them but they might view it as you know a friend of theirs or somebody that they they used to know uh and they want to identify who that person in that situation was.

[00:29:57]It's really uh fascinating to consider why one person sometimes dying in another continent or a long distance away that the the energy and the physical structure of that person as they're dying gets transferred to a a young infant or or fetus over a great distance. Why that particular person? It certainly does, I think, make one suspect that there might well be something to the reincarnation hypothesis, al although it's certainly a a severe challenge to anyone who w with a materialistic uh metaphysical ideology.

[00:30:38]>> Yeah. Um I think one um recommendation that I have for research is to administer the boundary questionnaire uh to these these kids. uh and there's a short form and you know it could be adapted I'm sure for for children uh or for young adults uh because my suspicion is that they are thinner boundary than than uh other kids their age. That's simply a suspicion.

[00:31:08]It's a hypothesis. I haven't tested it.

[00:31:11]uh but uh one uh study group that I think does shed some light on this uh is uh adults that have received um heart transplants and that's something that I address in my first book the spiritual anatomy of emotion uh there's a researcher the late uh Dr. Paul Persolaw who wrote about this and and and others u but um he's kind of where I I got my information. Uh he calls them cardioensitives.

[00:31:43]Uh the people who and I I'm trying to remember the percentages but there's a certain percentage of people who get heart transplants. It might be 10% or 20%. Uh maybe that high uh that seem to have um newly found likes and dislikes and recollections, very vivid apparent memories that correspond to the person whose heart they're the recipient of. Uh so Piol and others studied these folks and that was his term for them, cardioensitives.

[00:32:16]uh and they do seem to be although the the boundary questionnaire wasn't a thing for him at that time but they do seem to have particular kinds of sensitivities allergies and and and different um physical sensitivities that go along with the emotional sensitivities that I've cataloged in in my work. So it it raises questions uh that I think are fascinating and and my short form take on all of this uh it may be proven to be correct or incorrect or partially correct is that uh it's the thin boundary people who are the most receptive and uh who have these vivid impressions about um as you say you know they walk into a room or they get a sense for a particular place or person or situation uh and they have anomalous impressions very readily as Well, uh, and it's the thick boundary people, uh, who when they're in an emergency situation, because they're not so conversant with what they're feeling in that, um, highly volatile life or death situation, their feelings go somewhere. They certainly aren't expressed. They're not reconciled. And the feelings that they were not conversant with, I think, have a tremendous potency, is my guess. And that has something to do with u uh with these incredible um uh stories and and and facts that have been documented over the years.

[00:33:44]>> I imagine that uh many of our viewers would like to take that test and it's available on your website as I recall.

[00:33:52]I've taken it myself and I'm you know slightly on the thin boundary side but certainly not at the extreme.

[00:34:01]the short form boundary questionnaire which is only 18 questions. Hartman whittleled it down from I think 145 questions is the full boundary questionnaire but the short form uh is on a website called your emotionaltype.com.

[00:34:17]So if if someone wants to go to your emotional type.com uh the survey is right there when you and you get on to the main page. It takes about 10 minutes on average for folks to complete it. uh you just click your answers and it's scored automatically for you and it gives you a sense of where you are on the boundary spectrum and also uh as you wait a little bit further into that site uh which I put together with uh Dr. Mark Beoszi. Um it's it's our take on the types of um illnesses and health conditions uh that a person on the thin boundary side of the spectrum or a person on the thick boundary side of the spectrum uh might be susceptible to because it's our hypothesis that there are kinds of um illnesses uh and health challenges that affect people depending on where they are um thick or thin boundary.

[00:35:09]>> Let's talk about animals. You've written quite a bit about emotional sensitivity in animals and because animals don't have the cerebral cortex that humans have, their emotions must be much more pronounced. And of course, they have all sorts of sensitivities that humans do not have.

[00:35:32]>> Yeah, there are a tremendous uh range of of stories about animals. Uh, and I've gotten uh, Jeff very interested um, in in animals and what they might be feeling over the last several years. Uh, there's a guy named Yak Pank uh, who did probably more than anybody else uh, to shed light on the feeling nature of animals. He was known as the rat tickler, which sounds like he's somebody out of a Batman cartoon.

[00:36:05]Who are you going after, Batman? and the rat tickler. But that was his that was his nickname. And he got it because he and his uh students tickled rats. Uh they heard rats or or there was something that tipped them off that rats might be emitting high-pitched squeals, ultrasonic chirps um when they were happy. And so they conducted experiments on this. And indeed uh rats do seem to laugh. Um and uh as Panksep put it, um all the indications are that they love being tickled. So that was just some of the research that he did, but he really uh delved into the physiology and the neurobiology of mammals. And uh I believe he went so far as to say that um as we learn more about how our animal cousins feel, we as human beings will draw a a much closer bead on how how we are structured and the meaning of our lives. Um and I really believe that and and animals uh live life as I put it closer to the bone. They don't have um the sort of rumination and the the intricate kind of language that we do, at least verbal sorts of language. They could clearly communicate with one another and with us. Um, you know, our pets certainly make themselves well enough understood, but they seem to have a very um fundamental emotional life uh and and not as highly developed uh um intellectual life uh as as we do. And for that reason, uh it's not surprising to me that that pets figure in many anomalous uh uh paranormal accounts. And my own family has uh has I view it as a privilege that we that we've been privileged to uh to be part of an equation a couple of times with pets that died that in the immediate aftermath of their demise. Uh there were some strange things that went on in this household which I uh can't account for in any other way than to say it has to do with the emotional bonds, the emotional ties that we had uh with um those cats. they were both cats. Uh but certainly, you know, people like Rupert Cheldre uh who's been my privilege to meet and correspond with, you know, he documents again extensively uh accounts of of uh dogs that seem to know when their owners are coming home.

[00:38:42]And we all have heard accounts of of dogs that trek across half the country to be reunited with their families. We don't know how they do it, but they they seem to have this capacity in my uh gut instinct is that it's it's emotional.

[00:38:58]It's tied to their emotional bonds with with their people. And of course, you know, you mentioned at the outset telepathy, uh telepathic impressions, that pathy, you know, pathos relates to feeling. Uh so I think so much of what we take to be paranormal uh or anomalous is uh simply variations on this uh theme of intense feeling uh that people and animals can have for one another.

[00:39:27]You point out that some animals, I think elephants in particular, are are able to pick up on events that are highly emotional, such as the death uh or danger, threats that could be many, many miles away from where they are.

[00:39:48]There are just some incredible stories um and we can call them anecdotes and they they are but you know the compilation of these stories are are data uh and and we ignore them at our peril. Um a couple of stories that come to mind um uh I I believe it was Zambia.

[00:40:09]I'm I'm not 100% sure, but uh uh in in my book, Sensitive Soul, uh I I repeat this this account of elephants who um moved to the far reaches of the sanctuary which they were located in at the same time as um other animals, other others of their species were being called. In other words, they were being they were being shot and killed from helicopters 90 miles away. And um the account uh was that they they they moved as far away as they could uh when that killing spree was taking place. Uh there's another remarkable account. I just finished a book uh called The Elephant Whisperer uh by a guy named um um Lawrence Anthony who alas is no longer with us. Uh a real humanitarian and and somebody uh very dedicated to animal welfare also. and uh he brought a herd of of wild elephants into his uh sanctuary called Tulatula. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Um in South Africa uh and became acquainted with them and has many interesting stories about them. Uh and they really took to him. I think they they realized that they had been saved. They would have been shot otherwise if he hadn't taken them in. And that herd flourished and doubled or tripled in size. Um and then at a certain point Anthony died and um those elephants that herd uh I believe within a day showed up uh on his doorstep his doorstep um where his family lived. and uh his brother I think said at the time and his uh his widow that this was remarkable because the elephants had been gone for weeks or for months out in the bush and uh seemingly uh simultaneous with his death. They made a trek back uh seemingly to pay their respects. I mean it's it's either a remarkable coincidence or there's something more to it than that. And I suspect that the emotional connection again is paramount.

[00:42:14]As I recall about that story, the elephants came back in a kind of procession led by a female matriarch elephant.

[00:42:24]>> Yes. Her name was Nana. And uh she was the first of the uh um of that group to really establish a connection uh with Lawrence Anthony. Uh there are other examples, Jeff, by the way, of of dolphins, um orcas, uh marine mammals, uh having apparently a similar connection with people and awareness of death. Very highly developed sensibility uh to uh to death and and uh uh that's as we might expect. If if animals do indeed live their lives closer to the bone, um they uh they may have a highly much more highly developed awareness of life at a feeling level than than we typically do.

[00:43:09]>> Well, it reminds me now that we're talking about it of an episode in in my own experience when I was much younger.

[00:43:17]I uh participated in a small psychic group called the New Frontiers Institute where we would go into a a group trance together and uh do I guess you'd have to call it group remote viewing together.

[00:43:31]And on one occasion we decided let's all go visit uh the dolphins at Africa Marine World USA in near the San Francisco Bay area. and uh we're in a room together reporting our conversations, what we're experiencing.

[00:43:50]It's all being recorded. And the gist of it was we're in touch with a a female dolphin named D or starts with a D. And uh she's can't tanker us, separated from the other dolphins, won't cooperate with the trainers, is kept in a sec a separate tank and wants us to help her escape.

[00:44:13]So it was such a vivid impression. We called Africa Marine World and to talk to the dolphin trainers and it turned out they had a female dolphin that matched that description. and her name was Dandee. And uh so we began to work with Dundee and uh we did experiments that often trainers were very open to this and uh where we would give Dundee uh telepathic signals to perform different tricks and we would videotape her doing this and it seemed to be quite accurate. And the upshot was we couldn't free Dundie unfortunately but she returned to the dolphin show with the other dolphins. Well, that that's a remarkable experience and I'm glad uh you and your friends had that sort of communion. I think that's remarkable. Um there are some terrific accounts um in a book by um a naturalist named Carl Safhina. Uh the book is called Beyond Words and I believe it was a bestseller about three years ago. Uh and he and I have corresponded a little bit. I've been very priv privileged in the course of my research to reach out to a a wide range of people in a whole variety of fields. And when I read his book, you know, there are really striking accounts of dolphins and orcas and their interactions with people and and similar to yours, uh, um, marine biologists and and trainers of these animals have said at times that they felt like there's a beam of energy that comes from the dolphin or comes from the orca and sort of probes them and they just have this people, you know, report it differently, but uh at least in a couple of cases, they seem to be describing the same thing. So, um you know, who's to say, you know, they've evolved differently than we have. Certainly, there's a a wide variety of of life out there and you know, we're just one species. Um who's to say that another species doesn't have more highly developed capacities um and can feel more things? Um I have a friend and a fellow researcher named Jonathan Balcom who's uh written about um animals uh and their feelings and their different capacities. Um and um I think he's brought up that that same point is that uh certain kinds of other creatures fellow fellow u animals because we're animals too uh may have different shades of feeling more highly developed feelings uh that we can only guess at. Michael, your research suggests that we could learn a lot about uh the vast ranges of of the human mind just by getting more in touch with our emotions.

[00:47:05]>> There are broad possibilities for learning about ourselves and about other life. Um and um I I think beyond that um there are uh implications for the study of consciousness.

[00:47:20]Uh for example, recently um I wrote an essay uh about uh a uh an outlook or or philosophy or or hypothesis called um pansychism.

[00:47:35]Some people know it as cosmos psychism.

[00:47:37]It goes back to antiquity. I think the Greeks at the very least and probably other cultures as well had the idea that uh uh the entire universe u is sensient.

[00:47:49]You know that that uh the capacity for feeling or perceiving is at some in some elementary fundamental way is is part of the fabric of life and part of the fabric of the universe. And this is not known as uh as pansychism or cosmos psychism.

[00:48:07]today when we read about it uh in scientific American or um you know tend to be neuroscientists there's a guy named Philip Goff um who's uh propounded this and I' I've been fortunate to be in touch and I think he's been a guest on your program um they almost always talk about in terms of consciousness it's a conscious universe I think Dean Raiden even with the title of one of his books is the conscious universe and I think that's that's true but it's also misleading eating. I think fundamentally consciousness is supported by feeling.

[00:48:42]You can't be conscious unless you're first sensient, you know. So if you're sensient, you have some sort of a division between you and everything else, you know. So you can be an individual and you can sense what's outside yourself and relate it to what's inside yourself and navigate your way through the world. So that is absolutely fundamental. And then you know feelings go on top of that. Um what we feel again Antonio Damasio the feeling of what happens is is central to our life.

[00:49:13]Kristoff coaul the the feeling of life itself that is so central. So I think in some sense uh the idea that the universe is conscious is a little bit too advanced. I'd actually like to bring people back to this the um uh the approach that that we look at feeling and especially when we look at um at telesomatic experiences that ESP type experiences uh apparitions poltergeist type phenomena uh meaningful coincidence uh coincidences synchronicities which of course Carl Youngung was highly concerned with with and Wolf Gang Paulie the physicists who worked with him on that. Uh if you look at all of these kinds of occurrences, they seem to all relate to uh emotion to feeling uh to um symbolism that relates to feeling. Uh and I I I believe that this is a core part of the universe. It's it's part of the fabric of of what we're born into.

[00:50:13]So to me, cosmos psychicism and pansychism would be uh I think more accurately trained on um the feeling of life uh as opposed to the idea of of conscious experience relates more to our mental life which I don't think is as fundamental.

[00:50:31]>> Well, Michael Jawer, this has been a very profound conversation. you really have your finger on on something very deep, very important and and often ignored uh by us particularly, you know, uh western people in our modern busy world where we often shove our feelings aside. Michael, I want to thank you very much for being with me today.

[00:50:58]>> Oh, Jeeoff, I've appreciated your wonderful questions and the opportunity to have a conversation with you.

[00:51:04]I look forward to future discussions as well. Michael, >> same here.

[00:51:10]>> And for those of you watching or listening, thank you for being with us.

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