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“The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion”

Michael Jawer – Presentation to Parapsychology
Foundation at NY Open Center October 29, 2009

Before I get into the substance of tonight’s discussion, I thought I’d share with you
some Zen sayings to put us in the proper, receptive frame of mind. So, take a
deep breath…let it out…calm yourself…and prepare to be enlightened.

The Master says:

 Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I
may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me alone.

 The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt or a flat tire.

 Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.

 Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That
way, when you do criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Are you feeling enlightened yet? No? Well, someone has taken the trouble to
consider what statements the Buddha would have made, had he been Jewish. I’m
Jewish, so these definitely ring true. For example:

 If there is no self – whose arthritis is this?

 Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

 Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

 Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Forget this, and attaining
enlightenment will be the least of your problems.
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 Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that

every physical sensation is the sign of a terminal illness.

Finally, I wish to share with you my favorite aphorism of all time. It’s not from the
Buddha, it’s from Woody Allen. And it goes like this:

“God is silent. Now if we can just get Man to shut up!”

Well, alas, you’re not going to hear me shut up this evening. I’m here to talk, and
hopefully you’ll find the talk enlightening…provocative, even. What I’d like to do,
I think, is go through my presentation for about an hour and then take your
questions and open it up for discussion.

MAIN POINTS

There will 3 components of my message here tonight. The first is theoretical, the
second is more practical, and the third is undeniably personal.

1) THEORETICAL

My coauthor, Dr. Marc Micozzi, and I advocate a view, not of body and brain as
separate but as one: "Bodymind." We use the analogy of Washington, DC and the
rest of the country. If you really wanted to get to know the nation, you might
start with its capitol – its brain, you might way (though anyone who watches
politicians closely might well disagree). In any event, you'd also have to journey
around: to Poughkeepsie, Chicago, Bismarck, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Raleigh-
Durham (all the parts of the body). We're the "united" states of America - we
function as one country and a foreigner would not understand us by
concentrating solely on DC. The bodymind, as we’ll also see, is a “unified” entity.

2) PRACTICAL

Here’s the second point. What's most important in our lives is our feelings -- and
our feelings are dynamic, energetic. “E-motion” connotes movement, and the
energy of that movement ties us together. Again, take an analogy. Just as with
our feelings, our national currency, our bills and coins, go everywhere and are
handled by everybody. Our bank account may be up one day, down the next, but
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(for all intents and purposes), we need money to exist. Just so, we may feel "up"
one day, "down" the next, but we feel as long as we’re alive. And feelings are part
and parcel of the body - you can't divorce them and say they're solely in the head.

3) PERSONAL

The third takeaway is that some individuals are innately more sensitive than
others. Not just sensitive to others' emotions (and the energy inherent in that)
but to everyday sensory stimuli: some individuals get easily overwhelmed. They
suffer from migraines, allergies, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, PTSD, or even more
exotic forms of sensitivity (electrical, chemical, synesthetic). Some of these
people also - and from a young age - perceive presences, apparitions, and other
psychic impressions. Our strong suspicion is that all these experiences have a
common basis in the way the bodymind works - and specifically in the way we
process feelings.

POINT #1 – THE BODYMIND

YOU DON’T NEED A NEOCORTEX TO FEEL

Today, we know something important that earlier theorists, including Descartes

(“I think, therefore I am”), did not. Namely that over millions of years of
evolution, the brain actually grew from the bottom up, with its higher, thinking
centers developing out of lower, more ancient parts.

Take the most primitive part, the brainstem. Surrounding the top of the spinal
cord, this is the seat of basic functions such as breathing, metabolism, instinct and
reflex. It is often referred to, somewhat disparagingly, as the ‘Reptilian Brain.’
Yet, from this humble beginning emerged the emotional centers – and, more
millennia later, the neocortex or thinking brain. There was an emotional brain
long before there was a rational one.

The more we learn about the brainstem, the more germane to our humanity it
becomes.
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Consider children whose cortex has been nearly destroyed – filled with
cerebrospinal fluid instead of grey matter because of medical problems
experienced shortly before or after birth. In this condition (known as
hydranencephaly), neurologists expect that children will be in a vegetative state
until they die. Not so. Observation of such kids (ages 1-5) discloses that not only
are they alert: they are happy, excited, sad, pained…a whole palette of emotions.
“A three-year-old girl’s mouth opened wide and her face glowed with a mix of joy
and excitement when her parents placed her baby brother in her arms.” Another
child, age 5, “brightened upon hearing happy songs, but often cried during sad
songs…She disliked the loud noises of vacuum cleaners and hair dryers. She
demonstrated understanding of a few words, including ‘bunny rabbit’ for one of
her stuffed toys.” Other children take behavioral initiatives such as learning how
to turn on a toy.

These children aren’t vegetables. They’re conscious. Their brains may be

severely impaired but they can and do enjoy life. They are feeling human beings
capable of integrating sensations gleaned from the environment into behavioral
decision making. They possess an immediate, primary form of consciousness.

THE SMELLING BRAIN

Let’s look at a second primitive structure in the brain. The olfactory lobe – our
‘smelling brain’ – grew in tandem with the brainstem. Around the top of the
brainstem, a layer of cells evolved to take in whatever the organism smelled and
sort it into the relevant categories: edible or toxic, sexually available, enemy or
meal. A second layer of cells sent reflexive messages throughout the nervous
system so that appropriate action would be taken: taste, spit out, approach, flee,
chase.

This discriminatory function developed even before our ancestors lived on land.
Naturalist Diane Ackerman points out that

In the early, fishy version of humankind, we used smell to find a mate or

detect the arrival of a barracuda, or prevent something poisonous from
entering our mouths. And it was invaluable…Smell was the first of our
senses, and it was so successful that in time the small lump of olfactory
tissue atop the nerve cord grew into a brain. Our cerebral hemispheres
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were originally buds from the olfactory stalks. We think because we

smelled.

Today, our feelings – and memories of feelings – remain intertwined with our
sense of smell. Furthermore, since only two synapses separate the olfactory lobe
from the amygdala (a part of the brain critical to the perception of feeling), those
memories tinged with smell carry a greater ‘wallop’ than memories triggered by
our other senses. Marcel Proust never knew this exactly, yet he clearly
understood the relationship between smell, memory, and feeling when he made
an aroma central to the childhood recollections of his narrator in the novel Au
Recherche du Temps Perdu (Reflecting on Times Past).

Even human beings’ highest and most cherished thought process – belief – has
been shown to activate a region of the brain associated with smell. Research
suggests that false assertions, such as “torture is good,” trigger activation of the
anterior insula, an area associated with the pleasantness/unpleasantness of
odors. So when one reacts to a statement by saying “That smells fishy to me,”
something more than metaphor may be at work. The part of the brain that
causes us to go “blecch” is in operation. Our reaction is being conditioned by
neural circuitry drawing not only from long distant smell but the closely
associated felt memories. As one neuroscientist puts it. “When someone says
something you disbelieve, it has a kind of emotional tone…it feels like something.”

THE VAGUS NERVE

Think for a moment about your most indelible lifetime memory. What was it?
[PAUSE] Many people in their fifties and up would say it was John F.
Kennedy’s assassination. For others it might be the explosion of the space shuttle
Challenger. For still others it could be the time they bungee jumped, or skied
down a slope they never thought they could. Or, perhaps it’s when you won
some major award, received a huge ovation, or heard your beloved say “I do.”
The more intense the feeling or the more vivid the encounter, the stronger the
recollection will be. Experiences that scare, shock or thrill us are among our most
indelible lifetime memories.
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Such memories – and this is the key point – are whole body recollections. The
trace probably starts in the amygdala, which triggers the vagus (“Vegas”) nerve,
which extends all the way from the brain to the adrenal glands atop the kidneys.
(Vagus is Latin for wanderer.) The adrenal glands, in turn, secrete the hormones
adrenaline and noradrenaline among many others associated with our ‘flight or
fight’ response. These surge through the body, priming it for an emergency.
Signals from the body are carried back to the brain via the same hormones and
nervous system. The existence of this ‘information loop’ – combined with the fact
that the vagus nerve reaches almost all our internal organs – makes it
understandable that our most vibrant memories are encoded not just cognitively
in the brain, but viscerally in the body.

FEELINGS WITHIN THE UNIFIED ORGANISM

Now, just as our most vivid memories are visceral as well as cognitive, the line
between the brain and the rest of the body is really no line at all. Chemical
messengers are crossing it all the time. While science speaks of the nervous
system, or the immune system, the concepts are metaphorical. Scientists used to
believe there were separate components, separate working systems…but not
anymore.

The nascent field of psychoneuroimmunology is shedding light on the

connections. And, the more that is learned, the more insight is gained on how
extensive the overlap really is. Psychoneuroimmunology – the term itself –
reflects this interface: psycho for mind; neuro for the neural and endocrine
(hormonal) systems; and immuno for the immune system.

That the body's immune system could be influenced by the brain – a truly seminal
discovery – was first brought to light in 1975 by psychologist Robert Ader at the
University of Rochester. He and his colleagues later advanced the idea that cells
are lined with many specific receptors to which only specific molecules can attach
themselves. These chemical messengers circulate throughout the body and are
the vehicles through which the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems
communicate.
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Such communication goes well beyond the immediate physical connection of

neuron to neuron. Within the entire body, a variety of ‘information substances’
are constantly transmitting innumerable messages. Among these substances are
peptides: chains of amino acids that are themselves the building blocks of
proteins. A given peptide’s message is relayed through receptors – sites on the
surface of nerve cells through which a given message is transmitted to the cell
nucleus. (Some of you may know of researcher Candace Part’s work in this area.
She wrote the book Molecules of Emotion – one of many I cite in my book.)

You must have noticed that one consequence of feeling ‘blue’ for an extended
period of time is the greater likelihood of catching a cold or infection. This shows
how our state of feeling influences immunity. Stress, too, suppresses immune
function through the action of adrenaline and noradrenaline along with other
substances released by the adrenal glands. Psychoneuroimmunologists have
found that such chemical messengers act reciprocally on the brain and the rest of
the body -- and that their receptors are most dense in the neural areas affecting
feeling. Candace Pert, when she was at Georgetown University, determined that
the limbic (or feeling) portion of the brain contains upwards of 85 percent of the
neuropeptide receptors her team studied!

Pert and her colleagues also noticed a high concentration of these receptors "in
virtually all locations where information from any of the five senses enters the
nervous system." The entire body can thus be characterized as a single sensing
and feeling organ: a far-flung, unitary, psychosomatic network.

THE MIND OF THE GUT

To compellingly illustrate this body-brain integration, let us now turn to…the gut.

The gut actually possess its own, self-contained nervous system, known as the
enteric nervous system, which can operate in the complete absence of input from
the brain or even the spinal cord. It is huge, encompassing more than 100 million
nerve cells in the small intestine alone. When you add the nerve cells of the
esophagus, stomach, and large intestine, the result is that the bowel contains
more nerve cells than the spine. This makes the enteric nervous system
effectively our ‘second brain.’
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The enteric nervous system is a vast chemical factory within which is represented
every type of neurotransmitter found in the brain. (Ninety-five percent of the
body’s serotonin is manufactured in the bowel, from whence it travels to the
head.) Think of neurotransmitters as the ‘words’ that nerve cells use to
communicate. The lexicon of the brain, then, is fluently spoken by the bowel.
Indeed, the stream of messages between the two is so continuous that scientists
have begun to refer to them as one entity: the brain-gut axis.

The fact that 95 percent of its fibers run from the gut ‘northward’ suggests that
the term ‘gut feeling’ isn’t merely a figure of speech. The field of
neurogastroenterology – the study of the brain-gut connection – is underway,
mirroring strides being made in psychoneuroimmunology. Both have to do with
connections, and both are bringing about a fuller appreciation of the complex and
integrated nature of our perception.

A NEW DEFINITION OF MIND

So, neuroscientists are realizing that the head is not at all divorced from the heart
or the gut, and that our bodily feelings actually underlie and support more
‘advanced’ thought processes.

It seems increasingly apparent that our very definition of mind must change.
A view of mind and body as two fundamentally different things is not just
inaccurate but decidedly unhelpful if we truly wish to progress in understanding
human beings. Robert Ader has remarked: “Nobody working in this field believes
there’s any separation between mind and body. It’s all one.”

In that sense, we’re all psychosomatic. In the past, that term has been used
pejoratively, as in “the symptoms are all in her head; they’re not really real –
they’re psychosomatic.” The assumption is made that something either has
material reality or is made up, imaginary. But ‘psychosomatic’ literally refers to
the whole of who we are: psyche (mental, emotional, psychological) and soma
(molecular, bodily, material). Understood properly, it becomes clear that
psychosomatic is normal!
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Ken Dychtwald, in his pioneering 1977 book Bodymind, expressed a concept I wish
to expand upon. The mind, let us say, is the combination of brain and body: every
aspect of us and everything we feel, think, know, intuit, remember or have
forgotten. Within this concept, the body is central to mind and so are feelings. I
propose that feelings are actually paramount because they allow us to “mind the
body” (as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio so aptly puts it).

Feelings are nothing less than the biological substrate of the mind. They are
inseparable from our health and the quality of our lives – and absolutely essential
to any consideration of what it means to be an embodied human being.

POINT #2 – THE ENERGY OF FEELINGS

EMOTIONAL ENERGY

Many of you will naturally assume that feelings comprise energy. You may work
with emotions with clients in your practice, use techniques yourself to become
more aware of them and channel them, or simply respect them in their own right.
The energetic aspect of feelings is easy to demonstrate. Just envision a time you
became frustrated or angry and impulsively smashed a wall or some piece of
furniture. Or consider how drained one can get after worrying about a loved one
if that person’s health takes a turn for the worse. We might picture joy as
radiating a person's happy energy out into the world, and despair as inhibiting
energy as the individual recedes into him/herself.

The word 'emotion' comes from the Latin emovere, meaning 'to move from' or 'to
move out of.' Such movement is marked by changes in activity within our bodies.
Changes in the body's chemical profile…changes in the organs…changes in the
degree of muscle contractions…and changes in our neural circuitry. Change
connotes movement, and movement connotes…energy. Take the energy
released from crying, or by a good belly laugh, or that liberated during sexual
activity. The amount of energy can be immense – and the effect of such releases
is almost always beneficial. Tension in the body is reduced and a healthier
functioning restored.
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Beyond a measure of calories, perhaps, there is no way to delineate emotional

energy. However, an attempt to capture it linguistically has been attempted by
many cultures and philosophers. The Hindus call it prana, the Chinese know it as
chi, and Freud termed it the libido. Parapsychologists talk about 'psychic energy.'
In my estimation, they are all referencing the same thing. And it’s integral to our
selves, the bodymind language we speak. So long as we live, we feel – and
express those feelings as e-motions.

INDIVIDUAL CASE STUDIES

The energy of emotion can do remarkable things. My coauthor and I propose that
it’s part and parcel of what have been termed ‘paranormal’ experiences. Let’s
consider some specific cases. (Only the names of the people involved have been
changed – with the exception of the final account about an airliner, in which
actual names are used.)

 I’ll start with Adam, a precocious 18 month-old, who lounges in his bathtub
after dinner. He loves the warm, soapy water and the relaxed attention of his
parents. Suddenly he sits bolt upright in the tub, screaming "The men! The men!
They're coming! They're coming!" His eyes appear fixed on some distant object
and, for the moment, he seems unaware of where he is, even who he is.

When asked by his understandably concerned mother who "they" are, he replies
with mounting hysteria about men in uniforms and guns who are coming to get
him. His mother -- a psychotherapist who is well aware of her son's precocious
development (he learned to talk at three months and was reading by his first
birthday) -- tries to assure Adam that he’s safe in his own bathtub with his own
mother and father.

Then, as suddenly as the episode began, it’s over, with the child seemingly
unaware that anything out of the ordinary had taken place!

 Next anecdote. Susan, age 44, is at home one night with the distinct feeling
that someone is in the room with her. She can’t figure out “who” it might be.
The next night, she wakes up with a strong sense of her father's presence in the
room. She is unable to get back to sleep.
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The following night, she wakes up with the same feeling except now she seems to
smell her father's hair tonic. Determining she is fully awake, she sees her father
standing at the door of her bedroom. He looks well, not sickly as he did before he
died. Melanie had been bothered by the fact that her father had been alone
when he died. But now she has the impression that everything is alright and she
shouldn't feel guilty.

 Here’s the next account. Something odd is taking place in Mary's home. She
(62 years of age), her mother Lillian, son Keith, and granddaughter Krista have
been hearing rapping noises emanating from several walls within their house.
Additionally, various small objects have disappeared, turning up later in unlikely
places…strange cold spots and unusual smells are noticed…and, most
distressingly, puddles of water have appeared in several areas.

Over the next month, the frequency and severity of these water 'showers' picks
up. Mary’s mother Lillian seems to attract the most attention, being repeatedly
soaked. Lillian also is nearly hit by a large, gilt-framed mirror, which falls despite
having been securely mounted over the couch for years. No obvious reason is
found, as the wire and screws that had secured the mirror to the wall are intact.

The family decides to call in a plumbing contractor, but he finds no particular

source that would account for the copious amounts of water. One of his workers,
though, has his shirt thoroughly soaked while standing in the living room -- which
so alarms him that he leaves the premises and refuses to return. Another
contractor is brought in to inspect the air conditioning system and cannot identify
a cause either, but all three of his workers are wetted.

A parapsychologist arrives to investigate. Mary tells him that the disturbances

occur only when 11 year-old Krista is at home (though they have occurred when
Krista is being observed or is in another room from where the water is appearing).
The family members complete psychological profiles and are interviewed,
revealing to the investigator a high level of unhappiness despite outward efforts
to appear a 'happy family.' Tension is particularly evident between Krista and her
great-grandmother. Krista appears both passive-aggressive and withdrawn (she
has even written a suicide note), with Lillian constantly vexed at her great-
granddaughter.
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The investigator recommends that the family seek counseling to address this
repressed hostility. Ultimately, the unusual manifestations of water abate -- with
the cause never identified.

 Next, Ron, 29 and a new father, dreams two nights running of his own
father. In the dream, his dad is portrayed in a favorable light, despite the fact that
he is an alcoholic who left the family when Ron was just an infant, and the two
have had almost no contact since. The two dreams strike Ron as peculiar, which
he attributes to being a new father himself.

The following day, Ron's uncle calls to say that the father is dying in a Veterans
Administration hospital, and urges him to go visit. Ron immediately blurts out,
"Would he come and see me now if I were dying?" He tells his uncle he has
absolutely no interest in going. But after wrestling over the rage this phone call
has conjured up, and the sad and bitter memories he has, Ron decides on making
the trip along with his wife and infant son.

Arriving at the hospital, he hardly recognizes the man in the bed, ashen gray and
with tubes connected to his head. Ron's anger and self-pity now dissipate.
Instead, he feels an overwhelming sadness and says a tearful goodbye. That is the
last time he sees his father, who dies a few days later. The night after the hospital
visit, however, Ron dreams of an elegant old black car driving him up to his
grandfather's house (where he had lived in his infancy). Though he can make no
sense of this short dream, it is comforting.

Twenty years later, Ron comes across an old photo of himself, his father, and the
black car and recalls that he had seen the photo in childhood. It is the only
picture he has of the two of them together.

 Next anecdote. Melanie, 21, a biology major at college, is jogging across a

bridge when she’s hit by a truck and hurled onto a concrete embankment.
Around that same time, her parents are at a meeting on the other side of the
continent when her mother jumps up and says to her husband, “Glen,
something’s just happened to Melanie.” She’s right – and, since the interruption
is recorded in the meeting minutes, the coincidence is noted for the books.
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 Ruth, 25 and a mother of three, sees apparitions of her father. She is living in
England and he is living in the United States. She’s had no contact with him for
several years, but he is an alcoholic and molested her when she was young. She
now sees these apparitions at various times of the day and night. They’re
extremely lifelike: they talk to her, move as a person would, and she can even
smell her father's perspiration. Sometimes her father's face is superimposed on
that of her husband who is with her at home. Neither he nor anyone else sees
what she sees. Increasingly anxious and sleepless, Ruth turns to a psychiatrist.

Together, Ruth and her psychiatrist decide that she will try to exert control over
these apparitions by ignoring and/or confronting them. Over a period of months,
Ruth succeeds in 'managing' them. She talks back to her father, telling him he is
not real and will not bother her. Ultimately she’s able to call up this vision of her
father at will and dismiss it at will. She also develops the ability to create lifelike
images of friends and relatives. She and her doctor consider the therapy
successful.

 Here’s a final account. Passengers and crew on board Eastern Airlines L-1011
jets during 1973 and into 1974 see, hear and speak to solid looking apparitions of
two crew members, Captain Bob Loft and Second Officer Don Repo, who perished
following the crash of Eastern’s Flight 401 into the Florida Everglades on
December 29, 1972. The apparitions are readily identifiable as Officers Loft and
Repo. "They…appear and disappear in front of pilots, flight engineers, or flight
attendants completely unexpectedly, and usually in flight."

The reports cease in mid-1974, when Eastern Airlines removes all salvaged parts
of Flight 401 that had been installed in sister ships of its L-1011 fleet.

EMOTION IS THE CATALYST

These seven accounts have two things in common. First, if they are taken to be
truthful, we can soundly infer that something exceptionally strange is going on.
And second, they all have elements of heightened emotion:

 Adam, relaxing in his bathtub, is suddenly and inexplicably frightened -- so

much so that he doesn’t appear to know where he is.
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 Susan, upon smelling her father's after-shave and then seeing him, is
relieved of the guilt she had been feeling over his lonely death.

 Mary's grand-daughter Krista is unhappy and withdrawn, and evidently

antagonistic to her great-grandmother in particular. Tensions within the family --
which has four generations living under one roof -- are evident.

 Ron is enveloped by rage, bitterness and self-pity when he is forced to

consider visiting his dying father. These feelings give way to an overwhelming
sadness as he witnesses the man's final suffering and bids him goodbye.

 Melanie’s mother, attending a meeting 3,000 miles away from her

daughter, is suddenly distraught, certain that something unfortunate has befallen
her child.

 Ruth is extremely anxious in light of the apparitions intruding into her life.
Her relationship with her husband and children is being disturbed by the
turbulent legacy of her childhood molestation.

 In the immediate aftermath of the crash of Flight 401 into the Florida
Everglades, the captain and second officer know they are badly hurt. Almost
certainly they feel pain, fear, and horror over what has happened to them, their
plane, and their passengers.

Throughout my examination of purported anomalies, I’ve been struck by the

number of times intense emotion appears to play a pivotal role. This is far from a
lone observation; researchers into the paranormal have long noted the
conspicuous presence of emotion in accounts given by the people involved.
(The theme resounds through the thousands of reports compiled by J.B. and
Louisa Rhine, continuing through Sally Feather’s own exemplary work.) In many
instances – and the ones I’m especially interested in -- strong feelings wrestled
with or bottled up appear to be an important factor.

A KEY QUESTION

There’s an obvious question, however. If emotion is in some sense a 'psychic

trigger,' why aren’t anomalous experiences more common – since strong
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emotions are part of everyone’s everyday life? True, Gallup surveys show that
anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of the American public say they’ve had
mystical or extra-sensory experiences. And, 23% of respondents to an Associated
Press poll say they’ve seen or felt a ghost. But the most spectacular paranormal
accounts are few and far between.

Take, for example, poltergeist occurrences. The literature is replete with the
observation that a disturbed adolescent is part of the picture. But surely many
adolescents are 'disturbed' if by that we mean overwrought, feeling isolated or
persecuted, uncertain of their place in the world, or hating their parents. If
emotional volatility – combined a hormonal upsurge in adolescence – gives rise to
poltergeist cases, we should expect to see bizarre phenomena pretty much
everywhere each year around exam time! Similarly, why would the presence of a
deceased relative not be apprehended by every close relative who is grieving?

The British researcher, Tony Cornell, expressed the problem this way: "Why
should one person see an apparition in sufficient detail to describe its dress while
another person, at the same time and place, sees absolutely nothing? The
element of contradiction forever plagues psychic research."

In our book, Dr. Micozzi and I propose an explanation, one that revolves around
the concept of sensitivity. This brings us to our third ‘takeaway’ for the evening.

POINT #3 – INNATE SENSITIVITY

The thesis we present in the book – and document pretty extensively – is that
some individuals are innately more sensitive than others. Not just sensitive to
others' emotions (and the energy inherent in that) but to everyday sensory
stimuli. Some individuals get easily overwhelmed by the barrage of sights,
sounds, and smells – or particular ones – that other people take in just fine. The
highly sensitive suffer from migraines, allergies, chronic fatigue, chronic pain,
PTSD, or even more exotic forms of sensitivity (electrical, chemical, synesthesia –
which is overlapping senses, like tasting a shape or feeling a color). Some of these
people also – and from a young age – perceive presences, apparitions, and other
psychic impressions. Our strong suspicion is that all these experiences have a
common basis in the way the bodymind works - and specifically in the way we
process feelings.
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Let me take a fascinating case in point. This is one woman’s account – a writer
who I’d sounded out after reading a travel article in which she mentioned, in
passing, her sensitivity to particular places reputed to be ‘haunted.’ I wrote to
her, and this is what she said:

I've been overly sensitive for as long as I can remember. I was sickly and
deeply affected by any hardships I witnessed as a child. I suffered a lot of
growing pains and what we now call "irritable bowel syndrome." If
someone walked into the room with a headache, I would get a headache.
If they pulled their back, mine would begin aching the minute I made eye-
contact. I was definitely more in tune with my environment and the
feelings of others than almost everyone else I knew. I really envied
everyone else's insensitivity.

My teenage years became an absolute nightmare. I was riddled with

anxiety, which turned into depression. When I was finally treated with
antidepressants, the most extreme sensitivity abated. It seems like the
medication helps control how much sensory input I take in and how I react
to it.

I continue to be sensitive to the pain levels of others, including pets. I give

new meaning to the term "I feel your pain." I am also able to pick up on the
"energies" of my surroundings. For example, when we were looking for a
new home, we found a great fixer upper that we really liked, but the
moment I set foot inside, I could sense a heavy/angry atmosphere that
practically took my breath away. Sure enough, when we went down to the
basement, the walls were peppered with fist-holes. I can also pick up on
the vibes of places that have especially happy or peaceful atmospheres.

I also have had encounters with spirits. I have seen things move, radios
turn themselves on, and other types of phenomena. In such cases, I get a
real picture in my mind of who the spirit is and what they might look like,
but I don't see or speak to them. My husband has seen enough in our 17
years of marriage not to scoff at my experiences.
 17

Despite how this sounds, however, I am skeptical. I've been in lots of

allegedly haunted locations that were definitely not haunted. Since I'm a
writer, I'm always cautious about making any spectral assumptions. A
writer is, by nature, a fantasy prone individual, after all.

What really intrigues me is that, about 10 years ago, I became very ill and
was diagnosed with fibromyalgia (or chronic pain). I'm still somewhat
disabled by it. In researching the disorder, I came across a book mentioning
that people with fibromyalgia are very sensitive to their surroundings and
can even affect electrical appliances by their mere presence. I was floored
when I read this because, at the time, I was unable to touch a lamp without
bursting the bulb and had been in three different buildings where the
generators blew up in my presence within a two-week period. I still have
this effect on light bulbs and small appliances when my symptoms are
flaring.

In conclusion [she said], a lot of people suffering from various mental

illnesses have shown extrasensory abilities and sensitivities and could
probably be helped a great deal if we could figure out what exactly was
going on.

What is going on here? Is this woman suffering from hypochondria? Is she

delusory? Or, is it possible that the people we’re tempted to write off as highly
imaginative or emotionally overwrought (or both) offer a living laboratory
wherein we can forge a better understanding of the sensory components of
anomalous perception? Furthermore, could study of these remarkable cases add
to our knowledge of sentience itself and the mechanisms whereby raw sensation
is transmuted into conscious awareness?

Well, those are set-up questions . As you’ve no doubt guessed, I have an

opinion. Over ten years of collecting such reports and systematically surveying
the people involved, I’ve come to suspect that a ‘neurobiology of sensitivity’ –
combining elements of nature as well as nurture – explains these odd perceptions
better than the old standbys magical thinking, gullibility, hypochondria, self-
deception or outright deceit. Clearly individuals who regard themselves as
anomalously sensitive could be victims of their own internal con job, operating
outside of awareness and calling on a lot of stored-up imagery. But it’s worth
 18

considering whether some of these people, at least, might be reacting to genuine

external stimuli – much as a person with a migraine reacts to lights, sounds,
smells, or changes in barometric pressure. In that sense, what we marginalize as
'extra' sensory may not be so. It may, instead, constitute a highly refined capacity
to fix on a range of stimuli that never really registers with the rest of us.

Individuals differ considerably in the amount and kind of sensory information they
overtly react to. My question is this: can a sentient human being, with a
given genetic inheritance and set of life experiences, perceive things in a way that
differs markedly from the day-to-day awareness of most other people? This is
precisely what happens with synesthesia (such as seeing words and numbers in
color): certain people do perceive the world quite differently, and from an early
age. Why are they synesthetic and others not? For that matter, some people will
swear that they perceive their surroundings –or themselves – much differently
under hypnosis. Before the advent of MRIs and other forms of brain scanning,
it was easy to ignore or deride such reports. Now we see the neural evidence:
they’re telling the truth.

So, too, with chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS. In 2006, a landmark study –
conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and covering more than 200
patients – found that CFS not only a biologically real condition but one that likely
has a genetic basis. This conclusion came from an intensive, multi-dimensional
investigation, studying everything from patients’ cognitive function and sleep
patterns to their pain thresholds, stress response and – especially – the activity of
literally 20,000 genes. Four separate teams of scientists from a number of
different disciplines examined the results. Their finding: people with CFS tend to
have a characteristic set of changes in a dozen genes that help the body respond
to stress. One particular combination of gene sequences was found to predict
with 75 percent accuracy whether a particular person in fact had CFS. A
correspondence was also found between the severity of an individual’s illness and
the cumulative stressors he/she has faced over a lifetime (also known as
‘allostatic load’). Lest you think genetics has the final word, in a separate study, a
CDC researcher found compelling evidence that childhood trauma – especially
sexual abuse and physical neglect – increased the odds of CFS occurring later on
in life four to eight times. And an epidemiologist in Sweden found that high levels
of stress – even if occurring decades before one’s CFS symptoms – made it 64%
more likely that a person would manifest the condition.
 19

These results are striking. They indicate that the body’s stress handling system is
considerably out of kilter in people who suffer from CFS; they are not simply tired
or depressed. The culprit is believed to be an aberrant HPA axis – that’s
shorthand for the brain’s stress handling system. (HPA stands for hypothalamic-
pituitary-adrenal, denoting the three prongs of this system.) The HPA axis triggers
the entire body’s response to a perceived threat. Evidently nature, in tandem
with nurture, sets the threshold unusually low in some people.

Could anomalous perceptions, which have persisted across societies and

throughout history, have a similar legitimacy? And, if so, what would we stand to
learn about perception itself, or memory, or imagination, or consciousness, or
spirituality – or any of the qualities that make us human?

THE SENSITIVITY SURVEY

Well, my own investigation – published in peer reviewed journals within the last
few years – suggests that people with a ‘sensitive’ personality type are far more
likely to report anomalous experience. Such people commonly report
longstanding allergies, chronic pain and fatigue, depression, migraine headaches,
or a pronounced sensitivity to light, sound, and smell. These individuals are also
more likely to report that immediate family members suffered from the same
conditions, raising the nature-nurture question anew.

My thesis came together gradually, and from a most unlikely source. In the
course of my job at the time – which involved developing indoor air quality
guidance for the nation’s commercial building owners and managers – I was
researching so-called Sick Building Syndrome and another poorly understood
condition called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. (In the former, groups of people
feel unwell inside buildings for no immediately discernable reason; in the
latter, people claim to be allergic to trace amounts of chemicals, aromas, even
electricity.) I read various accounts and went on to speak with people who said
they were affected by these conditions. Rather than chalk up their complaints to
a hyperactive imagination or some shade of mental illness, I suspected they might
have a threshold sensitivity much lower than average. When several folks
confided to me that they’d had apparitional experiences, the wheels started
turning. Since then, I have delved deeply into the possibility that a variety of odd
 20

sensitivities may have a common neurobiological foundation – stemming at least

as much from the body as the brain.

The survey I constructed drew 62 self-described ‘sensitives’ along with 50

individuals serving as controls who did not profess any outstanding forms of
sensitivity. Persons in the former group were 3.5 times as likely, on average, to
assert that they’d had an apparitional experience (defined as perceiving
something that could not be verified as being physically present through normal
means). Sensitive persons were also 2.5 times as likely to indicate that an
immediate family member was affected by similar physical, mental or emotional
conditions.

Overall, 6 of the 54 factors asked about in the survey were found to be significant
in the makeup of a sensitive personality:

 Being a woman;
 Being ambidextrous;
 Appraising oneself as imaginative;
 Appraising oneself as introverted;
 Recalling a plainly traumatic event (or series of events) in childhood; and
 Maintaining that one affects - or is affected by – lights, computers, and
other electrical appliances in an unusual way.

Two other factors – being a firstborn or only child and being single – were more
prominent among sensitive respondents but not overwhelmingly so.

Interestingly, synesthesia (a condition I was not familiar with at the outset of the
project) was reported by approximately 10% of the sensitive group but not at all
among controls. This finding gives added weight to the possibility that anomalous
perception has genetic roots. Same with the remarkable result that 21% of
sensitives reported being ambidextrous against just one individual in the control
group. Still, a sensitive neurobiology could be conditioned as easily by nurture as
by nature. Remember the findings I mentioned a few minutes ago about chronic
fatigue syndrome and severe childhood trauma. In my survey, recall of a
traumatic event in childhood was indicated by three times as many sensitives
(55%) as controls (18%).
 21

Furthermore, 14% of sensitives reported having been struck by lightning or

suffering an electrical shock, whereas none of the control group checked this
item. So, perhaps electricity plays a role in acquired sensitivity. The Rhine Center
speaker in July, Dr. Larry Dossey – who graciously provided an outstanding
Foreword for my book – told me that, since ancient times, a variety of native
peoples have noted the powerfully transformative effects of lightning. Being
struck by lightning constituted a way of being ‘called’ to be a shaman, since it was
believed to release the power to heal along with other extraordinary abilities.

Now, electrical sensitivity is a controversial topic. It’s been the subject of a fair
amount of scientific investigation, especially in England and other places in
Europe. Most studies indicate that, while people with purported electrical
sensitivity sincerely believe that they have it, they can’t reliably demonstrate it.
Still, I find intriguing the research from a professor in the UK named Michael
Shallis, who surveyed hundreds of people – 80 percent of them women – claiming
to be electrically sensitive. As with my survey, certain correlations jumped out:
with allergy…susceptibility to loud sounds and bright lights…the claim to have
been struck by lightning…to be affected by advancing thunderstorms…and to
have to have had a psychic experience (which was 69% of Shallis’ group and 74%
of my own sample).

Shallis himself called out a connection between strong feelings, electrical

sensitivity, and reported anomalies. He acknowledged that we don’t know what
we don’t know, remarking that electromagnetism -- "the physical force most
apparent to us at the level at which we perceive the material world" – may be the
vehicle for life forces that, at present, we simply do not comprehend.

My book proposes that electrical sensitivity represents a bona fide aspect of

sensitivity. Two chapters discuss possible links between our bodymind energy,
the dynamics of feeling, the process of dissociation (by which we ‘tune out’ of our
normal feeling awareness, sometimes as the result of extreme shock or distress),
and, literally, the atmosphere that conveys electromagnetic radiation. Like a fish
in a bowl that doesn’t realize the quality of the water it’s swimming in, there may
be influences within our environment that few of us comprehend.
 22

ANIMALS’ AWARENESS

Actually, the fish analogy isn’t quite right since many among our fellow creatures
seem to possess a radiation sense beyond the typical human range. Loggerhead
turtles, for instance, which accomplish prodigious migratory journeys of
thousands of miles, are able to perceive the direction and strength of the Earth’s
magnetic field. It’s likewise been discovered that migratory birds have a molecule
in their eyes that apparently serves as a kind of compass. To them, the Earth’s
magnetic field lines may be plainly visible, like the dashed line in the middle of a
road is to us.

Numerous observations over many centuries support the proposition that a

variety of animals – both wild and domestic – react to impending natural
disasters. Recent evidence comes from two recent tragedies: the earthquake and
tsunami that devastated East Asia in December 2004, and the tremor that struck
Kobe, Japan a month later.

One geophysicist in Japan himself thought it strange that, before that particular
event, so many earthworms dug themselves up in his small garden. Many of his
neighbors noticed the same thing. He didn’t know, at the time, about the folk
tales concerning the meaning of a large number of emerging earthworms. After
further study, this scientist – the late Dr. Motoji Ikeya – proposed an
electromagnetic model for why animals may act strangely before a natural
disaster, namely that they are sensing electrical changes in the air. (This, by the
way, may be why some people are known to feel poorly before a thunderstorm.
The buildup of positive ions in the air is believed to raise levels of the
neurotransmitter serotonin in the bloodstream, bringing on such symptoms as
irritability, nausea, blurred vision, and headache.)

Other researchers have suggested that animals literally feel vibrations in the Earth
itself, or that they are reacting to gas released prior to a quake. Low-level sound,
called infrasound, has also been nominated as the source. A number of species
can hear below the 20 Hertz threshold that distinguishes human hearing, among
them elephants, hippos, giraffes, rhinos, whales, and alligators. As infrasound can
travel vast distances unimpeded by land, air or water, it is thought that these
animals are capable of carrying on long-distance communication. Elephants, for
example, are believed to pick up infrasonic messages through the ground
 23

courtesy of receptors in their feet. The author of a book on this phenomenon –

naturalist Katy Payne of Cornell University – first intuited what might be
happening based on her own reaction standing near an elephant cage at the zoo
one day and feeling a peculiar “throb and flutter” in the air. It reminded her, she
said, of the deep bass notes she experienced as a girl in church.

NOISY AURORAS

Perhaps Payne herself is especially sensitive. If so, she’s not alone among human
beings. One intriguing example comes from the far north. Some people seem to
have an unusual reaction to that most spectacular of displays, the aurora borealis.
Over centuries – and still documented today – noise described as a hissing,
swishing, rustling or crackling has been reported in connection with the Northern
Lights. Tales of ‘spirits’ and ‘spirit voices’ abound in the myths of native people
living in Alaska and Northern Canada. The sounds have been recorded and are
the subject of ongoing investigation and theory.

Interestingly, the noise is not evident to everyone witnessing an aurora. One

person might hear the popping and whooshing clearly while another, standing
just a few yards away, hears nothing. The explanation presumably owes to
something other than imagination since several people have reported hearing
auroral noise before seeing the display itself.

I wonder whether the pronounced electromagnetic nature of auroras allows a

parallel to be drawn with ‘haunted’ locations where electromagnetic anomalies
are so often recorded. Not merely the general location of a haunt is associated
with electromagnetic variations – most often a particular part of the place is
implicated through both recurring ‘ghostly’ reports and on-site measurements.
And, while sound is not itself a form of electromagnetic radiation, I am yet
intrigued by the anxious, unsettled, even sorrowful feelings reported by persons
exposed to infrasound.

So, it’s worth considering that human beings, at least in some extraordinary cases,
could share forms of sensitivity that seem – at the moment, anyway – to be solely
the province of our animal cousins. We might find that, just as every corner of
the earth teems with life, the atmosphere, too, hosts a multitude of messages –
though unseen to our eyes.
 24

A PATH FORWARD

The key is to take seriously what people report. While science has consistently
ignored, dismissed, or explained away reports of the paranormal, it’s worth
noting that so many of the phenomena mentioned this evening – synesthesia,
hypnosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, PTSD
– have only recently merited serious, systematic scientific attention. Synesthesia,
for example, was once thought to be solely metaphorical (like the description of a
wine as “dry”)…chronic fatigue was pilloried as the “yuppie flu”…hypnosis was
regarded as little more than entertainment…and the mysterious symptoms
reported by Vietnam War and Persian Gulf War veterans were greeted, for quite a
while, with incredulity.

Even the study of emotion – now the hot topic in neurobiological circles – was for
the longest time considered off limits. It couldn’t be measured, after all, and
feelings themselves were simply too squishy, too ephemeral, to be respectable.
For generations, scientists concentrated on the mechanical, the material, and the
reproducible. That has all changed now as powerful brain imaging technologies
show what is happening in the brain when musicians perform pieces of music,
teenagers play video games, and couples have sex. Who would have imagined,
just twenty years ago, that such investigations would be considered worthwhile?

In the same way, I suspect it is only a matter of time until science embraces
psychic perception as a fit subject to investigate. The challenge, though, will be
two-fold. First, we must resist the notion – today’s conventional wisdom – that
feelings originate in, and are dependent upon, the brain. In this view of things,
the brain is the be-all and end-all, and the body is given short shrift. I’ve yet to
meet, however, a disembodied brain that could convey what it was feeling. The
entire body is needed to feel and, as we’ve seen, there is so much continuous
communication between the brain and our other organs that divisions between
them are artificial. Brain, body, psyche and soma are all wrapped together. The
bodymind is one.
 25

The second challenge is one of human nature. People who do not walk a mile in
another's shoes (or even a few yards) have little reason to give it much credence.
As my favorite comedian, George Carlin, has noted, “Those who dance are
considered insane by those who can’t hear the music.” Some of those who don’t
hear the music, sadly, are neuroscientists – the very ones in our society who are
leading the charge to define what it is to be human. Philosophers have receded in
importance, as have religious figures. The ball is in the court of neuroscience. But
this discipline’s preoccupation with the brain means that its practitioners will seek
brain-based explanations. Nor will they easily consider the claims of somatic
therapists, for example, or energy psychologists, or anyone who suggests that the
self, the psyche, or the spirit is dependent on anything other than neurons for its
existence.

Yet, in the words of James Alcock, a psychology professor at York University in

Canada, “it is the study of anomalies that drives science forward. The strange and
compelling experiences that people have reported across the ages provide an
important and fascinating field of study. We can only expand our knowledge of
human functioning, and extend our theories of cognition, by coming to
understand the genesis of such experiences.”

That is why the perceptions of highly sensitive people must be given their due.
It will be a major error to marginalize or discount their experiences – or, worse
still, to pathologize their perceptions. We stand to learn a great deal from the
sensitives: about sentience, about the role of feeling, about our place in the big
scheme of things.

We live in an incredible world. As one wag so aptly put it, "The fact that we live at
the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going
around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away, and think this normal is obviously
some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." As the old barriers
within science get broken down – as psycho-neuro-immunology and neuro-
gastro-enterology break new ground – there is the opportunity to reassess our
society's resistance to the anomalous and seek to evaluate what might be
happening in fresh, inventive ways. In the words of author Louisa Young, we need
a “kind of science…which balances what it sees with what it knows, and isn’t
afraid of either.”
 26

A final note. As I was completing my book, I came across the following Letter to
the Editor in Newsweek. Perhaps many of you will empathize with the point he or
she was making. The letter was anonymous. It read:

I am psychic…It is not something I have gone looking for. I have suppressed

and denied it…and I have argued about it endlessly, but only with myself…
I am convinced that there is a silent group of psychics in our culture,
ridiculed and confused, lacking reproducible data and waiting to come into
the spotlight.

Well, the Parapsychology Foundation has for many years given a voice to such
people by collecting their reports and studying their implications. To Lisette Coly,
I say thank you, and to all of you this evening, I say thank you as well. To give
credence to what we perceive and to what we feel – that is about as human as it
gets.

I appreciate this opportunity to speak with you, and look forward to taking your
questions.