Paranormal researcher, author, educator Morgan Knudsen joins us to talk about the lessons she’s learned through her own supernatural journey.
You can find her latest book, The Gift of Instinct: Paranormal Lessons for an Extraordinary World, at Amazon HERE
Thanks Morgan!
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TRANSCRIPT
MORGAN KNUDSEN: That is not an uncommon thing. A lot of people, once they get their toe into this somehow, they can’t go back. They can’t go back to what they were doing before.
JIM HAROLD: That’s Morgan Knudsen, award-winning paranormal educator, producer, author, and speaker. She’s our guest on this week’s episode of the Paranormal Podcast.
[intro music]
This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.
JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold, and so glad to be with you once again. I love talking with people who I feel are extremely knowledgeable in these areas of the paranormal because, believe it or not, even though I’ve been doing this for 17 years, I don’t think that I am in a sense because I’m not a practitioner. I’m not out in the field; I’m just someone who asks questions. I’ve gleaned some knowledge here and there over the years, but I really like to talk to the experts, the people out in the field who deal with this almost every single day.
And we have such a person with us. I’m talking about Morgan Knudsen. She is co-founder and leader of Entityseeker Paranormal Research & Teachings, and has been since 2003. Her experiences and knowledge have led her to co-creating a unique investigative program called Teaching the Living. It’s been featured and she’s hosted TV specials and shows on networks like Discovery Channel, A&E, Destination America, the Travel Channel, CBC, CTV – it’s an alphabet soup, but it’s very impressive. Of course, she’s been on Coast to Coast AM.
Her programs are now practiced in three different countries and are part of numerous social work and psychology secondary education courses in Canada. She has a podcast, Supernatural Circumstances. She’s a regular contributor to Haunted Magazine. But today we’re going to talk to her about a recent book that she’s written, The Gift of Instinct: Paranormal Lessons for an Extraordinary World. Morgan, thank you for joining us.
MORGAN KNUDSEN: It is so good to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
JIM HAROLD: I flubbed my way through your introduction. There is so much there, but it’s a lot of impressive stuff.
MORGAN KNUDSEN: Well, thank you.
JIM HAROLD: Maybe for people who didn’t hear us last time – you have immersed yourself in this for almost the last 20 years. How did that happen for you?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: It was a really organic thing. Actually, I was out this morning and I had somebody ask me the same question. It really was a very organic calling. What I found, interestingly enough, as I’ve talked to other researchers and researched other researchers in parapsychology and things like that, is that is not an uncommon thing. A lot of people, once they get their toe into this somehow, they can’t go back. They can’t go back to what they were doing before.
For me, it really was that. When I got hooks into it when I was very young – about 10 – it was just such a fascinating and magical thing to me that I couldn’t let it go. It was later on, far, far later on in my career when I decided to really pursue this as a life goal, that I found out my great-great-grandfather was the founder of one of the first parapsychological associations in Canada. He was the president. So it was a really, really interesting process. It was just confirmation to me that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.
JIM HAROLD: In the book – I love it when people bring history into things, because I think it’s necessary to understand the history to understand the present and the future. There’s a name in there that you talk about right away that people have probably heard in terms of things like the Rhine Institute and things like that, but J. B. Rhine. Talk to us a little bit about J. B. Rhine and why he was so important in parapsychology.
MORGAN KNUDSEN: His full name was Joseph Banks Rhine. He really made his mark in the 1950s at Duke University. He started originally as a botanist, of all things, and it was so funny because I don’t think even he could foresee his interest in this. It wasn’t until he ended up attending a lecture by Arthur Conan Doyle on spirituality and spiritism and things like that, and he went home that night to his wife and said, “I’ve got to quit. I know what I want to do. I’ve got to quit.” And she supposed him. Bless her, she supported him.
He gave up a tenured position teaching. I mean, this guy was one of the most respected botanists in his field. He dropped everything and went back to school to pursue psychology so that he could prepare himself for a career in parapsychology. His research today is still referenced. He ended up forming the Rhine Institute, the Rhine Education Center. The classes that are there today are some of the best in the world. But his research into things like ESP and a myriad of other psychic phenomena – it’s gone down in history. It’s really cool.
JIM HAROLD: I have this sense that the question of the paranormal back in the day – you think in Britain, the Society for Psychical Research, and you talked in America about people like J. B. Rhine. There were a lot of very intellectual people, very serious people, who were interested in the question of the paranormal.
It seems to me, unfortunately, like over time it’s become a situation where you don’t see that as much now. In other words, people who are considered intellectuals – and I’ll go back a few years to somebody who’s passed, but like a Carl Sagan, or today – I’m blanking on his name, oh my God – Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Back in the day, those kinds of people might’ve been interested in the paranormal, but today those kinds of people generally pooh-pooh it. Do you think that people don’t realize that serious people were legitimately interested in the paranormal back in the day?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: That’s a really interesting dynamic that you bring up. I think some of what has overshadowed the real research has been the media. You’ve got this overflow, this oversaturation of these almost fantasy-type paranormal horror TV shows that have come up, and many people, when you talk to them about the paranormal, that’s what they go to. That’s their frame of reference now.
And it wasn’t before. Their frame of reference before was legitimate places and organizations and researchers like the Institute of Noetic Sciences or Duke University or Oxford or Yale or all of these different places. Princeton has a lab. But that’s not what’s in the public eye. What’s in the public eye is these very flashy, attention-grabbing television shows that are meant for entertainment, and they’re fun, but that’s not what’s happened.
So I think unfortunately, a lot of the people who are making headway within parapsychology, they’re there – the research is so far beyond now what it was ever back in J. B. Rhine’s time. The researchers that are there – there’s papers and experiments and all of these things that are flooding in from these amazing, amazing resources and academic structures. But when you get these people, especially someone who’s got a media personality, like Neil, like you were mentioning, and he’s the one people are listening to, and then he steps forward and says, “No, this is all silly. That’s not true.” And now all of a sudden you’ve got all these people who love and respect Neil and they’re turning around and saying, “Okay, Neil said it. Therefore, there’s nothing there.”
So there’s a really interesting dynamic that’s going on right now within parapsychology. That’s one of the things I’ve really been trying to bridge with some of my live shows and speaking engagements and stuff like that: to try to make the real information accessible to people, where they don’t have to sit down and read a pile of whitepapers, because that’s a massive problem. There’s this education gap that’s happening between the real researchers that are doing this and then the information that’s being delivered to the public, and it’s like night and day.
JIM HAROLD: I do want to get to the book, but I do want to pick up on something you mentioned there. You said there’s great research being done, great findings. Is there a study – it could be something you included in the book, it could be something that you didn’t include in the book – but is there a particular study or something that really jumps off the page at you that the average person doesn’t know about? A study that really is an attention-grabber in the sense of “wow, this is pretty good evidence”?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: There’s so many, but I think one of the studies that I feel is the most relevant is something called the Philip experiment.
JIM HAROLD: It’s so funny; I was just looking at that one and I was going to ask you about that. That’s kind of weird. [laughs]
MORGAN KNUDSEN: Isn’t it? Hey, great minds. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: Exactly.
MORGAN KNUDSEN: I think that one has to be referenced, and it’s one that has been worked upon and studied further now. For the audience that’s not familiar with it, it actually took place in the 1970s in Toronto, right here in Canada. It was developed by the Toronto Society of Psychical Research and Mensa. The people that were participating in this didn’t have any backgrounds in terms of they didn’t believe they were psychic, they didn’t really have a set belief one way or the other, they didn’t identify that way. They just wanted to participate. There were a lot of nurses and a psychologist and a number of others that did participate.
Long story short, what they discovered was that consciousness can be focused into reality through attention. In other words, what they did was create a character – they called it Philip. Philip had never existed, but they sat down and they wanted to communicate with Philip in the same way that many people in the Victorian era would’ve communicated with spirits: sitting around a table, meditating, focusing, talking to whatever this is.
Lo and behold, after quite a number of attempts, they ended up talking with essentially this entity that called itself Philip. And Philip had measurable responses. It was moving things around tables, it was moving furniture, it was replying to questions with knocks and raps. What was fascinating about this was that Philip himself had never existed. This was something they had concocted as a group. They repeated the experiment again with a new group and created a character by the name of Lilith and had the same result.
For parapsychology, the reason why this was so significant was the fact that they were starting to understand the world in which we are interacting is not something that is asserted on us. It is something that we have full engagement and full interaction with. When we’re dealing with hauntings, when we’re dealing with these bizarre happenings, things like psychokinesis, we have to really begin to understand our integration of our thought and our focus and our emotions that are playing out within our reality right in front of us. I think the Philip experiment was so significant to really put that into focus.
Somebody who really built off of these theories and discoveries in psychokinesis was a fellow who passed away I believe in 2013, Dr. William Rowell. Dr. William Rowell and Dr. Scott Rogo took this a little bit further and really put this into application. Their findings were just phenomenal. Really, really cool stuff. So I think that for me is probably on the top of the list as to parapsychology and where it’s at.
JIM HAROLD: In the book, you talk about trusting your instinct. I know a lot of times, I think almost all of us have had that feeling – “I had a gut feeling. I shouldn’t have done that, but I went ahead and did it anyway.” How does that whole idea play into the paranormal?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: In the book, I really wanted to get across this idea that instinct is truly a connection we have with something that’s greater than us. It’s something that I’ve found throughout my own life. This book was all divvied up into lessons I’ve learned. I’m sure people can add another 30 to the list, but these ones were the lessons that were important to me, and I hope to pass it on to other people.
It was the idea that when we are tuned in to that level of connectedness with who we really are, when we allow our mind to be still, when we are focused inward, that connection has information within it. When we’re able to tap into that, when we’re able to really get a grip on the fact that what we’re receiving is real – it’s not to be dismissed, it’s not to be shucked off, it’s not to be downplayed by other people, because we’re good for that – but once we’re able to tune into that, it really is a doorway into a new level of understanding of ourselves, of the world, and pathways really do start to open up for us when we’re really in tune with who we are.
I find that that level of instinct was such a player for me, just following my own goals and passions into what I knew I was supposed to be doing. I’ve had it play out over and over and over again in my life. So with the book, I really wanted to show other examples of people who were following these similar pathways that I definitely related to, and I know other people will as well, and the fact that this is a repeatable experiment, if that makes sense. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: I’ve always wondered about this: how does one keep the spiritual realm, keep the paranormal realm in mind and firmly believe in it, and – I don’t want to say take advantage; that sounds crass – but utilize those truths to further your life, not in a bad way, but in a positive way, but still maintain your feet on the ground and make sure that you make your car note every month.
What I’m saying is, it seems like to me a lot of times people are at extremes. You’ve got people who totally debunk everything and say, “There’s nothing to this, there’s nothing I the world going on with all this,” and then you’ve got people who are just like woo-woo-woo. Kind of like The Secret to the nth degree, where “I can just sit there and meditate on a Mercedes and it’ll show up in the driveway.” I actually believe in The Secret, but I believe it’s kind of a formula – that it’s hard work, perseverance, and belief and visualizing and all those things. That’s just my personal belief. But how do we maintain that balance, or even should we?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: It’s a really great question, and I think a lot of people fall into those various categories that you’re talking about because I’ve definitely encountered them myself as well. I think what people miss is that this universe really is a co-creative experience. It’s not one-sided; it’s not “I’m just going to is there and whatever.” You kind of have to give the universe some marching orders. What do you want?
Usually when you ask people, “What do you want?”, they’ve got no idea. They can’t answer you. If you ask them what they don’t want, they’ve got a list a mile long. “What don’t you want?” “Well, I don’t want to be broke. I don’t want to lose my house. I don’t like this job, I don’t like this car,” whatever it is. Or “I don’t believe in the paranormal.” But if you ask them, “Then what is it that you do want?”, a lot of people have a lot of trouble answering that question.
But the one thing that I’ve found is that when you are really in touch with the core of who you are and you’ve really developed that center, swinging to these extremes really isn’t an issue anymore. When you’re really in touch with who you are, you’re in touch with not only yourself and what you’ve got going, but there’s a brutal honesty about it. You’re owning where you are; you’re owning what’s going on. It doesn’t mean it won’t change, but there’s an ownership about yourself, there’s an ownership about the environment.
Part of this is really looking around at the environment and saying, “Okay, the things that I love can be great and they’re appreciated, but the things that I am unhappy with, guess what? Those are manifestations, too.” Hauntings are one of these things, and this is where it gets kind of cool. They’re really good measuring sticks as to where you are emotionally. Whenever I’ve been working with clients or anything like that and they turn around and say, “My life is just wonderful and it’s fantastic and everything’s going great, but my house is an absolute disaster and I’ve got this haunting that is just horrific,” you know immediately that the rest of their life is not going well. Something’s wrong.
Because when we are emotionally disconnected, when we’re emotionally disrupted, when we’ve got wounds that are bleeding that we haven’t healed, that ends up reflected within our environment, whether it be through something going on spiritually or whether it be something going on in your life. We all know those people who will walk into an office and they make the office environment the worst place to be, and it turns out later that they’re having this rough time at home, or they’ve got a bad relationship or something like that.
It bleeds. These things bleed into our environment. So I find when people are centered and when they are in tune with themselves and they’ve got their stuff handled, swinging to those extremes really doesn’t happen.
JIM HAROLD: We’re having a great conversation today with Morgan Knudsen. We’re talking about her book, The Gift of Instinct: Paranormal Lessons for an Extraordinary World, and we’ll be back right after this on the Paranormal Podcast.
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JIM HAROLD: We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guest is Morgan Knudsen. She is the author of the recent book The Gift of Instinct: Paranormal Lessons for an Extraordinary World.
You talk in the book about the idea of “dead loved ones aren’t stuck, you are.” I’ve got to tell you, that’s one of the things that really bugs me. I think it’s one of the things that disturbs me the most about the paranormal, is the idea of souls being stuck, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve said this on the show before.
To me, I like to think that the universe is relatively just and that if you are a decent person and you live a decent life and you don’t try to hurt anybody – doesn’t mean you’re perfect, because I don’t believe anybody’s perfect – but you’re generally an okay person, something positive awaits you on the other side. That’s what I like to think. But then I hear these stories of people who died quickly in the sense that it was like a car accident or suicide or something unexpected or particularly traumatic, not a “natural” death as they say, and that they get stuck. To me, that seems like the most unfair thing, if that really happens.
So I’ll ask you two things. One, do people get stuck? And what did you mean by “your dead loved ones aren’t stuck, you are”?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: That’s a really good question. Like you, it’s one of the things that’s really bothered me over the years. It’s a very old trope that goes back into older religions, old belief systems and things like that. Everybody has a version of this, where if you die some horrible death, suddenly your soul can’t move on and so on and so forth.
Instead of arguing with those tropes, I look at the research. One of the best places to go for that research is the Windbridge Institute. Mark Boccuzzi and his amazing wife, Dr. Julie Beischel, have done such extensive work into mediumship and the survival after death hypothesis, and it’s just phenomenal studies. If anybody wants to go and check out their stuff, they have free everything on their site. It’s amazing.
But there’s just no evidence supporting that. All the evidence that has been collected over the years – Dr. Julie Beischel has done an absolutely incredible job on this subject – it has been the complete opposite. It’s been free will and this incredible pure, positive energy that these – whether you want to call it a soul, a spirit, whatever that is, that inner part of who we are, that non-physical part of who we are, really becomes. We really seem to leave the ego behind.
A lot of these stories really do come out of ego, and we can trace them back into different religions – say for example, hundreds of years ago in Christianity, it was, “If you pay us so much money, we can get your loved one out of purgatory.” There’s various ways of interpreting this. When we look at the actual research, the research says no, that’s not the case at all.
The second question – the reason why I titled that chapter the way I did was that what I’ve discovered over the years is that this pure, positive energy that we end up becoming – or we are and then we become more of, I should say – is really something that, unless we can light our own emotions up with that pure, positive energy, it’s really difficult to have the communication that we want with the loved ones who have passed away.
What I mean by that is that many times, you’ll have somebody – and I had actually somebody come to me at one of my last classes. Her father had passed away just months prior, and she was in complete grief, understandably so. She said, “Everybody around me is having these experiences with my father, and I’m not. I don’t understand because it was my dad, and these people who barely knew him are having these amazing apparitions and experiences and stuff like that.”
What often happens is that because we are in that grief process, it holds us back from that connection that they want with us and that we want with them. It’s almost like having a radio signal that’s tuned to the wrong station. When we’re not tuned in to that, that’s what ends up happening. We miss that communication.
Now, interestingly enough, when she was able to heal a little bit and start to let go, when she was doing more meditation and journaling, she had her experience. It showed up. And I’ve seen this over and over and over again. We get stuck in the physicalness of people, and when we get stuck there, we lose the connection with who they really are now.
JIM HAROLD: You talked about the Philip experiment, and I think that’s fascinating. As I said, I was going to ask you about that, but you beat me to it. But what about this idea of tulpas? You could think of maybe the Philip experiment as a possible tulpa – this idea that we create our reality. You said co-create before. What are your thoughts about tulpas?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: It’s sort of a variation of the same idea, this idea that we’re creating these intelligences as we think. What the Philip experiment showed that was so significant was the fact that consciousness doesn’t need a brain to function. That was something that’s very, very unique. This is something that didn’t have an organic brain and yet was replying to questions.
Interestingly enough, it was only replying with answers which the group knew. It couldn’t learn something new, so it wasn’t bringing them information they didn’t already know or they hadn’t known before. If somebody had an error in thinking and would ask a question, they would get the wrong answer back. It was sort of that idea.
But the idea is that these things are thinking, and the current science behind the outlook of humanity and the brain and what that looks like is that consciousness is fundamental to the universe rather than it being emergent from the brain. It’s not actually being created by the brain; it’s being translated by the brain, and it exists in all that is around us in the non-physical space around us.
That’s the idea, and that’s where the Philip experiment is leaning: the idea that it’s not a matter of you need a brain in order to think. You just need a brain in order to translate the consciousness and project it, and then that consciousness with enough focus can become something that is more physical. But it’s a really interesting thought process.
JIM HAROLD: You talk about one of your lessons being our physical experiences about transition: use it. Let me ask you this. Usually I think most people – and I’ll include myself in this – when we think about our existence, we think about right now. Life right here is the main event. Everything or anything that came before it is kind of an adjunct, and anything that comes after is like, “whatever happens next, if anything.” But this is the main event.
But for example, if I were going on a trip to London and I said, “I’m going on a trip,” I wouldn’t necessarily – unless it was something really special – talk about the trip there, about flying over, because flying can be a pain. I would talk about what I’m going to do once I get there, the destination. Is part of this that we have it backwards? That we’re focusing on the trip and we’re not focusing on the destination in terms of our physical experience?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: I don’t think so. I think everything that we will ever do is always in the now moment, and there’s never not a now moment. So the energy that we are putting into our now, no matter what we’re doing, is really determinative of our next moment. Say for example with travel, if you’re not joyful in the travel, you’re probably not going to be joyful when you get back or at the destination or anywhere else.
Being able to bring yourself into the moment is really lining up with not only giving over resistance to the present moment – because as soon as you’re going, “If I just do this, then I’m going to get over here” – if everything is a means to an end, you kind of lose the point because that next step is always going to be the now.
I think with this idea, the point that I had about this idea of “everything is moving in transition” is that everything is moving and shifting all the time. There really is nothing that is stagnant. We might be creating the same thing over and over again, but nothing is stagnant. So the idea that we can bring ourselves into the now and focus there – that really is where our power is. If we can do that and we can find our joy in the moment and accept the fact that everything is transitory, then we are able to pour ourselves into the now a little bit more clearly and in a more focused way than we would if we were just thinking a million years down the road.
JIM HAROLD: In the book you talk about legends and stories and the importance of those. You said “legends could be true, false, but they’re always right.” Does that mean that even if it’s a story that is not maybe factual – ABC didn’t happen – it still provides universal truth?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: Either universal truth or it’s telling you something about those people, that culture, or about that period of time in history. One of the examples I use in the book is the Jersey Devil, for instance. It’s such a bizarre story, and it often gets conflated with this crazy tale about Mother Leeds and how this woman had this 13th child and she didn’t want the 13th child, so she cursed it and it flew up the chimney with wings and a dragon tail and whatever and it’s flying around New Jersey in the Pine Barrens.
Did the baby grow wings and fly up a chimney? No. But at the same time, when you dig into the history of the Jersey Devil and you get into the year 1909, for instance, the entire town was shut down because something was terrorizing the town. And we know that towns don’t shut down for nothing. We’ve been through lockdowns. Something happened to make these people shut down this town.
You go back even further than that and you’ve got the First Nations people of the area, the Indigenous people of the area calling this place “The Place of the Dragon.” And this was long before the Leeds family ever showed up – because they were real. They were a real family. So here you’ve got this situation where you can believe in the Jersey Devil or not, but it’s getting something right about the situation. I think we have to look at cultures and our stories and our histories in a very similar way because it allows us to, instead of pooh-poohing all these things that we consider as just fairytale, it is here to show us something about humanity.
JIM HAROLD: Well, we’re having a great conversation. We’re talking about Morgan Knudsen about her book, The Gift of Instinct: Paranormal Lessons for an Extraordinary World, and we’ll be back right after this.
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JIM HAROLD: We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guest is Morgan Knudsen. The book is The Gift of Instinct: Paranormal Lessons for an Extraordinary World.
This is something I wanted to ask you about, whether it is part of the book or not. People think that they have a haunting. What is some of the basic guidance you would give somebody if they say, “You know what, I’m pretty sure I have a haunting”? Where should .they start?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: I honestly think a lot of it is some of the internal work. A haunting means different things to different people. Sometimes people think “it’s a spirit that’s outside of myself,” and sometimes it’s something that is being reflective of their own moods. They get frustrated or angry and all of a sudden a dish explodes. There’s a number of different things that I think people classify as hauntings that aren’t necessarily what we think of as hauntings.
But my biggest thing is to educate yourself. Start looking inward and start educating yourself. I was mentioning at the beginning the courses from the Rhine Institute, and I really can’t recommend them enough. The fee is usually quite low, and they’re taught by some of the best parapsychologists in the world. They’ll go right back to Parapsychology 101. There’s a great class by Loyd Auerbach.
I really encourage people to get educated from the right resources rather than turning to the TV shows and this kind of thing. Get educated from resources like Windbridge, like the Rhine, places like that. There’s memberships available with the Parapsychological Association. And then I’ve got courses and stuff like that as well. I hold events that are fun ways to explore this stuff.
I really think that once you get into that circle, the idea of a haunting and what might be going on starts to really clear up. But for those who are having a real problem with it, I highly encourage you to take a look at what’s going on and ask yourself, “What about this looks like me?” What I mean by that is, is this in a way reflecting something that you’ve got going on that isn’t being addressed within you?
It’s a place that most people don’t look because we’re taught to fear that thing that’s in our house that’s being asserted on us. But we do play a role with this stuff. So between those two things, that would be my first advice to people.
JIM HAROLD: Something you talk about that I absolutely love, because I think this is so true, and I think sometimes so many of us limit ourselves – as I said before, I believe in The Secret with a little caveat that you have to work, you have to take action towards the direction you want to achieve. But that belief that intention, that visualization – I really do believe that works.
MORGAN KNUDSEN: Absolutely.
JIM HAROLD: I’ve seen it in my own life. There’s an old saying, and I think it was Henry Ford – although he had a lot of other problematic aspects, I think this is a very true saying. “Whether you believe you can do something or can’t do it, you’re right.” Now, that doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to go play in the NBA. [laughs] I’m way too old, way too short, and way too out of shape. That ain’t gonna happen.
But I guess my point is, within reason, I think that your will and your ability to set an intention and work towards it is so crucial to success in any endeavor. Can you talk about that a little bit? I know you talk about, for example, Neville Goddard. Very, very interesting stuff to me.
MORGAN KNUDSEN: Yeah, it’s by far my favorite aspect of parapsychology because it’s the aspect that is the most applicable to everybody. Whether you think ghosts are this or that or whatever, at the end of the day, no matter where you live, no matter who you are, no matter what your belief system is, it doesn’t matter – at the end of the day, whatever you are feeling emotionally, whatever you’ve got going on and the intentions that you set will create. They don’t always create in the way people expect, but they do create.
The last chapter of my book is about exactly this. Interestingly enough, Napoleon Hill, who was also a major supporter of these ideas and wrote the book Think and Grow Rich, was a follower of J. B. Rhine. Most people don’t know that and they think this is just separate stuff, but no. Napoleon Hill was actually watching J. B. Rhine’s work very, very closely because J. B. Rhine was dealing with psychokinesis, which is a form of measurable manifestation that happens immediately. He actually wrote a bit about J. B. and his work in his book Think and Grow Rich. It’s in there.
So this stuff is very much tied into the idea of not only setting an intention and things like that, but it’s becoming backed up by things like quantum physics. We’re starting to understand that there are multiple probabilities that are existing within our environment, and where we put our focus and our attention is ultimately the probability that we’re going to end up with. So if we believe a certain way and we feel something so strongly, oftentimes that’s what ends up showing up in our experience.
There’s a really interesting study that was done a number of years ago. The name escapes me now, but basically the idea was that even the skeptics are manifesting their own results, very similar to the double slit experiment where if you believe that you’re going to get particles instead of waves, you end up with that. So the idea was that even the psychics are manifesting no results because that’s their state of expectation. Even when they go in, “Oh, no, I’m open-minded, I’m open-minded,” they’ve got a paradigm that’s there that says “this doesn’t exist.” And that’s what they get.
Really it’s an interesting universe that we live in, that these things, no matter what you believe, you’re going to find that you’re going to manifest the evidence of it.
JIM HAROLD: Someone you talk about in the book, I’ve had him on the shows before, and I actually have a couple of his CDs floating around and I find it really interesting – and this is someone who really believes in manifestation and has done research on it – Dr. Joe Gallenberger.
MORGAN KNUDSEN: Yeah, he’s fantastic. We’ve had him on Supernatural Circumstances as well. What’s so cool about him – and talk about workshops with audience members that really want to attend something; he actually teaches psychokinesis in Las Vegas. He’s got a program called Manifesting Vegas, and he teaches people psychokinesis and then how to play the craps tables and roulette tables and things like that and start to measure their results in wins. He perfected the idea enough and the process enough that he’s able to teach people how to do that in the immediate, which I think is absolutely phenomenal, and it’s a great way for people to get in touch with that part of themselves.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, I think so. I’ve enjoyed some of his CDs. One of them I remember is Liquid Luck. You visualize drinking a vial of luck, if I remember correctly. Very, very interesting stuff indeed.
We want people to pick up The Gift of Instinct: Paranormal Lessons for an Extraordinary World, and there’s many, many lessons to be gained from it, not just one. But if there’s one little nugget you’d like to share with people in closing, what would that be?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: I think this is one of those books that I encourage anybody who has ever had the thought “I think there’s more to me than what I’ve been told or what meets the eye, and I know I’m meant for something more, and I’m having these experiences” – this is the book for you. And it doesn’t matter what part of the journey you’re on. Whether you’re starting out, whether you’re 20-30 years into it, it really doesn’t matter.
This is about reading about the science, but also reading about other people who have been down this road and the significance that they create within the world when they follow that instinct and they follow the gift of who they really are. When they’re able to do that, the impact that has transpired as they’ve lived their life and then long afterwards, it’s really important. I think if people can pick it up and realize that everybody has this ability, everybody has this journey ahead of them, then that’s what it’s for.
JIM HAROLD: Well, it’s been a great conversation. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you, and I hope everybody does pick up The Gift of Instinct: Paranormal Lessons for an Extraordinary World. And to that point, where can people find the book and connect with everything else you do?
MORGAN KNUDSEN: The one-stop shop is my website, which is entityseeker.ca. The book can be found on Amazon. There’s links to the book on the website as well as all my social media, some of my live shows, my classes, event dates, and all sorts of things. So hopefully people want to come and join and enjoy the journey with me and everybody else that has joined the journey since 2003.
JIM HAROLD: Very good. Our guest has been Morgan Knudsen. The book is The Gift of Instinct: Paranormal Lessons for an Extraordinary World. Do check it out, everyone. And Morgan, thank you so much for joining us today.
MORGAN KNUDSEN: Thank you, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Always great to speak with Morgan. She is so knowledgeable and brings a lot of light to this subject. Really appreciate her and look forward to speaking with her many, many more times.
And thank you for tuning in to the Paranormal Podcast. We certainly appreciate it, and we hope that you will join us this Saturday, as I said earlier, on the 29th of October, 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern for our Virtual Halloween Party at my YouTube channel at youtube.com/jimharold. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Happy Halloween, and stay spooky. Bye-bye.
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