Table of Contents
Foreword by Larry Dossey, M.D.
Preface
1. Putting Emotion in a New Light
Seven Individuals and Their Stories
Significant Emotion as a Common Theme
How a Renewed Study of Emotion Can Yield Valuable Insights into Anomalous Experience
2. Feelings and Emotions: The Key to It All
Feelings as the Core of Who We Are
A Distinction between Feelings and Emotions
Feeling States Underlie Consciousness
Disturbance in Feeling as the Key to Understanding a Variety of Illnesses, Conditions, and Anomalies
3. Feeling as the Integrator of Brain, Body, and Self
Emotions Have an Ancient History
Simple and Complex Felt Perceptions
Psychoneuroimmunology and the Unity of the Bodymind
Feelings Comprise Energy
The Benefits of Laughter and Crying
Feeling as an Avenue to the Self
4. Selfhood: Its Origins in Sensation, Stress, and Immunity
Sense Perceptions Allow Us to Be Sentient
Formation of the Self Begins Well Before Birth
Touch as the ‘Mother of the Senses’
The Immune System as a Critical Guardian of Self
5. Energy, Electricity, and Dissociation: Links to the Anomalous
Energy Is the Fuel of Feelings and Emotions
Electricity’s Role at a Cellular Level
Our Innate Stress Response Systems
How Energy “Short-Circuited” Triggers Dissociation and a Variety of Psychosomatic Conditions
6. Feeling and the Influence of Atmosphere
An Introduction to Air and Light
Extraordinary Atmospheric Influences
Experiments with the Brain
Electromagnetism’s Relation to Feeling and the Anomalous
7. Anatomy of a Crisis
Dynamics in the Body and Brain That Account for Energetic Short Circuiting
A Return Look at the Seven Individuals with Anomalous Perceptions
Dream Imagery and the Bodymind
Electromagnetic Oddities
Unexpressed Sexual Energy
8. Sensitivity, Personality Traits, and Anomalous Perception
Sensitivity as a Real Neurobiological Phenomenon
The Environmental Sensitivity Survey
Previous Research into Personality Factors
Standard Causes for Hallucinations
Evidence for Extremely Sensitive Perception
9. Environmental Sensitivity: Attesting to the Bodymind
Findings of Original Research
Correspondence with Anomalous Perception
Synesthesia and Heightened Sensitivity
Implications of Gender Differences
The Link between Migraine and Strong Feelings
The Neurobiology of Childhood Trauma
10. Psychosomatic Plasticity and the Persistence of Memory
The Feeling 'Stream' Flows More Swiftly in Certain People
Their Bodily Memories Surface More Readily
The Crucial Role Played by Respiration and the Heart
The Connections among Immunity, Hypnosis, Trauma, and Reincarnation
11. Time, Energy, and the Self
Time Does Not Exist Outside of Living Beings
The Distinctions between Biological Time, Emotional Time, and Anomalous Time
Energy and the Self
Space-Time Aberrations and Issues of Core Personal Identity
12. Evidence for the Emotional Gateway
Can Feelings Be Perceived Telepathically?
Can Feelings Be Perceived Precognitively?
Does Infrasound Account for Apparitions?
Do Animals Contribute to Anomalies?
What of Out-of-Body Experience?
13. The Mind Reconsidered
The Body and the Brain Are Ultimately Indivisible
The Unwarranted Assumptions of Neuroscience
The Relation among Body, Nature, and Soul
The Promise of the Anomalous
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography