Now residing in Palo Alto, California, Dr. Jane Katra offers higher vibration healings by phone and locally, and workshops in esoteric wisdom, psychic and spiritual development, forgiveness as transformation, facing death and meeting soul, and spiritual healing.

Growing up in a science-minded family with four brothers who played cards, young Jane learned how to play five-card draw before playing with dolls. “They taught me to assess the probabilities of my being dealt the card I needed for a royal flush before placing a bet, but I found my hunches and intuitions to be much more reliable,” she recalls, adding that she often had a feeling of “excitedly just knowing” what the top card was, so much so that her brothers would accuse her of cheating and throw her out of the game.

Those early years of card playing showed Katra the validity of her inner knowing. Her first life-changing intuition occurred when she was a teen, riding in a car with friends. “I had a sudden urge to return home, so I asked to be dropped off at my house. An hour later a phone call informed me that my friends had crashed, killing my boyfriend and another friend. I have always wondered what caused me to change my mind and get out of that car.”

Katra’s psychic ability may have been in her genes, as her mother gave evidence of being highly psychic. “She knew when my brother was in a car accident an hour before receiving the phone call, and she also had an after-death communication from her own mother who died in hospital after being injured in a car crash,” Katra explains. “My grandmother visited my mom as a light being at three o’clock in the morning in mom’s hotel room, telling her that she was free of her pain, and saying goodbye,” she continues. “I believed my mother’s ADC, but when similar things happened to me as an adult, I at first found them unbelievable.”

After receiving her Master’s at the University of Oregon in 1987, Katra went on to earn her Ph.D. from the same institution in 1993 while mothering 3 children. She taught public health at the University of Oregon in Eugene for a number of years, taught therapeutic touch healing to over 700 nurses in the area, and learned how to apply her healing gift “by just trying and seeing what happened” in her off hours.

In 1993, parapsychologist and physicist Russell Targ asked her for spiritual healing for a metastasized cancer for which allopathic medicine had little to offer. When his tumors disappeared, she joined him in doing remote viewing and consciousness research, teaching workshops, and writing two books: Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing (1998) and Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God Without Belief (1999).

Over the years, Jane has participated in research carried out by many parapsychologists, including Helmut Schmidt (RNG PK with dots on a computer monitor), William Braud, and Marilyn Schlitz (distant mental influence), Ed Cox (with an alleged spoon bender in Germany), Russell Targ (remote viewing), Steve Baumann (measuring photons, EM and infrared radiation correlated with healing), and Dean Radin (PK of photons in the double slit experiment.)

This interview appeared in the March 2010 issue of The Searchlight.

Dr. Katra, how did your keen intuition develop into healing, remote viewing, and other psychic gifts?

“My interest in the study of psychic phenomena intensified in January of 1974 when I experienced what I thought was some sort of hallucinatory nightmare resulting from overwhelming pain from an ongoing headache. I was in the Philippines at the time, by myself, locked-in in an old hotel turned into a youth hostel, because it was past the 7 p.m. curfew decreed under Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law. Many years later I learned that my experience that night was what is now called a near-death or fear-death experience, brought on by trauma. In any case, I experienced the bright light and a life review, as well as a life preview; encountered my deceased high school boyfriend, and I received instructions from a kind and patient Asian man who appeared as a cocoon of light and knew all about me and told me that I was not to die yet and that I was to be a spiritual healer when I returned to my life.

“I flatly refused, and told the man that he’d made a big mistake; that I was the wrong person. I didn’t know any Bible verses and I got Noah and Jonah all mixed up and my family believed in science and we didn’t do religion and I planned on contributing to the world by being respected for my intelligence. No way was I going to act like Kathryn Kuhlman, and he couldn’t make me do it. He told me that no one would make me do it, that I would do it on my own accord, and that I would do it the next day but that I wouldn’t remember that he had told me until after I had done it.”

So did anything happen the next day?

“Yes, surprisingly. I offered to help a total stranger who was crying out in pain. I was leaning over her with my hands extended over her head, intending to try to massage her neck if she would just quit writhing around in pain, when she suddenly stopped moaning and told me I had healed her. I told her I had done nothing of the sort, but she insisted, saying, ‘When you brought your hands near my head, it’s as if you opened a dam and all the pain flowed out.’ (This incident is told in more detail in the first of the two books mentioned above.)

“The next day, a backpacker gave me the book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. When I returned to the US I read books by the Rhines, and Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. I feel I was guided to attend a lecture by clairvoyant healer Dora Kunz, who walked up and asked me if I knew I was a healer? I burst into tears! How could other people know something like that about me when I didn’t know it? She encouraged me to attend Theosophical Society meetings, and I also attended my first Parapsychology Association conference in 1975, where Puthoff and Targ gave their introductory slide show on remote viewing. ”

As I understand it, you first sensed the presence of Dr. Elisabeth Targ, your late friend, and then heard her distinctive voice. Would you mind elaborating on that a little?

“I was shocked when in late August, 2002, a month after Elisabeth died, I was eating lunch in a Duke University cafeteria with my physician friend who had just introduced me to two other faculty members. The nursing professor looked beyond me as she carried on talking, saying, ‘and I want you to understand that I am not a medium, but this has happened to me twice before and both times I spoke really fast and had no memory afterwards of what I said.’ Since I didn’t know this woman, I looked around to see to whom she was speaking. Seeing no one behind me, I asked, ‘Are you speaking to me?’ ‘Yes! There’s a spirit behind you who really wants to talk to you!’ I turned around to look. ‘No, dear, you can’t see her, but I can!’ Then the nurse started telling me how intensely the spirit woman was trying to communicate, repeating over and over again, ‘You, Jane! You, Jane! You, Jane!’ (“You, Jane!” was how Elisabeth always addressed me, after her second brain surgery. Her saying those words now was quite evidential for me.) The nurse said the female spirit was standing behind me and trying to stuff information into my head by repeatedly pushing her hands towards my ears with shoving motions. ‘She’s frustrated! She can’t do it. She says she has to go somewhere to learn how to communicate with you directly. You won’t be hearing from her for awhile. But she really wants you to know that she’ll be back. You WILL hear from her again!”

“That was the first of many communications from Elisabeth which occurred in the company of others and also to others without me, insuring that I was not the sole person imagining the surprising ADC phenomena. Mediums and non-mediums alike who sense her presence universally comment on her intensity and strong determination, which were characteristic of her when embodied, and which I interpret as a continuation of her lifetime determination to produce good psychical research data. ”

Has any of it been particularly evidential?

“The most evidential aspects of Elisabeth’s communications are the number and the variety of ADCs she’s produced, which have often included her palpable signature vibrations that ordinary people are able to perceive. A few hours after she died, she silently awakened both her father and me independently, filling the room with pulsating pink light which we both perceived to be emanating from a field of vibrations eight feet above us and to our left. She communicated that she still existed out of her body, and vibed us up with intense blissful love as she said goodbye, leaving us in an orgasmic-like loving state of altered consciousness for many hours.

“In the weeks that followed, family members had the more common ADCs of lights flashing on and off in the house when they were discussing Elisabeth.

“But better evidence of survival from physician Elisabeth has been her giving medical information unknown to anyone at the time of her communication. In dream visitations, she’s diagnosed illnesses of her friend Kate and me. Kate had a dream in which she saw physician Elisabeth with a stethoscope around her neck, sitting at a hospital desk, busily filling out forms. Elisabeth looked up at Kate, pointed to the work at hand, and said clearly, “These papers are for you, Kate!” Kate had recently passed her medical check-up exam with flying colors, so she thought this dream was meaningless. That evening, however, as she was driving home from work, she felt a sudden onset of flu-like symptoms of dizziness and body aches. Ordinarily Kate would have driven straight home, taken some aspirin and gone to bed. Because of her dream of Elisabeth, she instead drove herself to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a heart problem, and the following day had stents inserted into her arteries.

“In my own case, in 2006 I had been diagnosed by three physicians as having multiple sclerosis, despite the fact that I had many symptoms that did not fit that diagnosis. During the night after the last doctor had told me that I needed to start MS medication immediately, I was awakened from a deep sleep by Elisabeth’s voice in my right ear, stating firmly, “You, Jane! You, Jane! (!) ... “You …Have …Lyme …Disease!” She was right!

“More evidence from a dream visitation was Elisabeth’s compelling a woman to write down what the woman thought was a long list of nonsense syllables, all of which turned out to be a meaningful message in Russian, a language in which the living Elisabeth was fluent. So she’s gotten a living person to demonstrate an unusual skill that she had developed. She also foretold behavior she intended to carry out in the future that did, in fact, occur: An amateur medium (a computer program manager by day) phoned me one morning to say Elisabeth had contacted him in a dream, and predicted she would communicate her presence by touching and writing, and had told him to phone me and tell me. I got very excited, and asked, ‘What part of the body would she touch?’ The medium said she was communicating as we spoke: ‘Arm, upper arm, upper right arm; and head, on the top of the head.’ And ‘When would she do this?’ I asked. Her answer: ‘Oh, I’m not telling! It will be a surprise!’ I told my partner this by phone, and no one else.”

Did something happen?

“Yes. The following week I presented a high vibrational healing evening at the Rhine Research Center. One woman unknown to me, while driving to the event, felt fingertips tickling the top of her head and flicking her hair around. She looked into her rear-view mirror and saw a tuft of her top hair sticking straight up while it felt like her scalp was being tickled by fingers. She was so upset when she arrived at the event that she ran to tell the resident medium there about it. The medium told her it was a relative of mine, and that she should tell me what happened. Later in the evening, during a closed eye portion of the event, the woman felt the upper part of her right arm being squeezed repeatedly. She thought I was doing the squeezing, so she opened her eyes and saw me on the far side of the room. In the week following, a woman emailed me from Norway, apologizing for being intrusive, but explaining that she sensed the presence of Elisabeth beside her, squeezing her upper right arm, and dictating a message to me that she was to send to me by email. The content was specific and meaningful for me, referring to a situation that only Elisabeth and I had discussed when she was alive. ”

As I understand it, you had the healing ability before Elisabeth communicated in 2002. I’m unclear, however as to how Elisabeth has changed that ability.

“Sometimes when I did healing (this no longer occurs), her extra-strong pulsating energy would spontaneously course through me so intensely that I’d have tears coming out my eyes. I felt temporarily blasted and assisted by her. Many mediums have independently told me that I was her research project. I interpreted that to mean that she intended not only to communicate with me without a medium, but also to increase the healing love power emanating from me.”

What does Reading Vibrations from a Person Involve?

“We have to develop sensitivity to the vibrations before we can interpret them. It involves developing steady attention with specific intention. Indian mysticism is concerned with the laws of perception of subtle non-physical levels of reality, and the exchange of energies between different levels of being. I spend time every a day in silence, while I direct my attention inward and observe my awareness, which sensitizes me to subtle vibrations inside and outside myself. I started doing this when I became aware of the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, an enlightened saint from India. He silently emitted an intensely vibrating energy that put people near him into a loving blissful state. His teachings changed my life, because he talked of how we are all naturally psychic, but seeking to be so doesn’t evolve anyone or lift the consciousness of the world. He said that the most powerful psychic ability of humans is to radiate a palpable power of peace, and that this was the primary purpose for which we came into a body. Since I radiate an energy that people find healing, and it mysteriously works over the phone, I figured Maharshi could help me understand what was going on.

“Reading people’s vibrations involves feeling distinctions and fluctuations in the quality (harsh, sharp, erratic, coherent, dense, gentle, airy, expansive, tight, prickling, short, etc.); and intensity (intense like Elisabeth, or tentative or weak) of what they radiate. Feelings, thoughts and intentions are of different densities and amplitudes. I now sometimes see colored light shining out of people’s heads and heart chakras, with varying colors and expansiveness. Sensitives interpret what they perceive in their own way, just as we interpret the images and words that appear in our minds when remote viewing. For interpretation, I change intention from being open and attuned to the person, and switch to the ‘analysis channel’ and ask my inner self, ‘What does this mean? and then wait for what I receive. Finding the right words to express my perceptions can be the hardest part. Analogies and metaphors are common.

“Reading vibrations is a different intention and more contracted mind state from doing healing, which is a state of no thinking or interpreting, just letting the energy of consciousness (love) flow through me. When I feel Elisabeth’s vibrations, it’s spontaneous. They are thrust upon me when I least expect it.”

Before Elisabeth communicated, I gather that you were more or less of what might be called the non-spiritistic parapsychology mindset. Am I correct in inferring that you now accept the spiritist hypothesis?

“I wouldn’t expect anyone to believe in the reality of ADCs unless they had experienced one. I never thought ADCs would happen to the likes of me. Before they did, I was never compelled to acknowledge the full implications of remote viewing. It shows that our true nature is nonlocal consciousness which still endures after the body dies. I had never before seriously investigated all the evidence we have for life after death. Because of the more than 30 ADCs I’ve experienced from Elisabeth, I was forced to come to a conclusion that most people think is crazy. I now do believe that some people, for some period of time after leaving their bodies, are able to initiate contact with us in this dimension of being. I think they are motivated by strong love, their desire to let us know that they continue to exist, their desire to help and comfort and protect us, and to carry out unfinished goals. In one of the readings I had with a medium, Elisabeth, who was a proficient remote viewer herself, asked me, ‘Can’t you see that the most important thing about the work you did with my father is that it shows that we don’t die?’ The startled medium jerked her head up and exclaimed, ‘Wow!! What kind of work was that?’

“For most of my life, I did not allow myself to believe in the power of the healing gift I’ve been given. I was waiting for parapsychologists to let me know what was OK to believe. Elisabeth was totally skeptical about her father’s healing. She was so irritated about the idea of spiritual healing that it motivated her to carry out the distant healing research she did with healers from all over the country and men in San Francisco with AIDS. Her own research results convinced her that distant healing was real, and that she wanted to be a spiritual healer, herself. I now believe she has become one. ”