Have you ever had the experience where you think of someone and then the phone rings and it is that person calling you? Or where you talk about someone and that person walks into the room unexpectedly?

And then there are the many instances where people disappear and their loved ones know in their heart of hearts whether they are alive or dead, but have no way of explaining that knowledge. An example is the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal a year ago. I personally am convinced that she is still alive - that is what my gut feel tells me. Many other parents and loved ones are not so fortunate - and they know it, and are just waiting for confirmation. I really feel so sorry for them, but then we all choose our experiences because we need to learn from them.

I have learnt over the years to dread dreaming about people close to me like my son or my partner. I know from experience that those dreams invariably are warnings of trouble ahead. For many years I was only aware of these dreams that came true a few days later, and I did not realize that they were early warnings. Once I have had the dream, all I can do is wait for the trouble to materialize and then deal with it. If I had known this years ago when I first became aware of those particular dreams, I would have made different life choices. My life has turned out to be perfect for its purpose anyway, because those experiences and the warning dreams have been a very important part of my spiritual path and my growing awareness.

How does this work? Here is my unscientific version.

Take a sheet of newspaper. Fold it in half, and then in half again, so that you have four layers of newspaper. Now take a pair of scissors and cut the outline of a person out of the newspaper, but cut it out from the knees upwards. You should end up with four people touching hands, and joined from their knees downwards.

That is a representation of us, the people on earth and in the universe. We are all unique and individual, but at the same time we are all one and linked together. If you want to, you can give names to the people you cut out. How about calling them Me, Sister Teresa, Osama bin Laden and Sarah Jessica Parker? Why not? Why would you want to be one with Sarah Jessica Parker but not with Osama bin Laden? We do not have much choice in this - we are all one. If you had cut out six figures, you could have named the last two Jesus and Adolf Hitler. Or you could have named them after you most and least favourite teachers at school. Either way, this gives you an idea of how we are all linked together in this Universe.

We seem to have stronger links to some people than to others, as if the paper was folded double so that the figures would be joined from the knees downwards but also touch closely on all the other parts. The people that we have stronger links to are those that we associate with on a daily basis. They would for example be lovers, close family, friends and even animals.

I have read about an experiment that was done with a woman and her dog. The woman would leave home to go somewhere specifically for the experiment, in other words not part of her daily routine. She would travel in a random direction, and at some point decide to stop and turn back home. She would note the time when she decided to turn back home.

At the same time there was a person at her home that would observe the behaviour of the dog. Invariably, the dog would get up and wag its tail in anticipation of the return of the woman, a few minutes BEFORE the woman consciously decided to stop and turn back. How did the dog know the woman was on her way back? The dog had no hesitation tuning into the quantum vacuum to ensure that he would retain contact with his owner, because the dog has not learnt yet to fear the unknown. We tune in the same way, but we do it unconsciously, and that is how we become aware of the well-being and distress of those that we feel closest to us.

I grew up in an area where there would regularly be light earth tremors - near the gold fields in South Africa. We could also see in the behaviour of the animals when an earthquake could be expected, and even how severe it would be. If the animals - both chickens and dogs - became restless, there would be a light tremor. If they started behaving completely out of character, that would be the time to go outside and expect a more severe tremor.

The same happened during the tsunami a few years ago. There were a number of elephants with their mahouts or drivers in one area. These elephants were tame and used to having people on their backs. On the specific day, the elephants ran to higher ground and nearly threw the people off their backs. They then ran down again and grabbed unsuspecting people with their trunks and dumped them on higher ground.

The mahouts had no control over the animals, and only realised what had happened when the devastating wall of water came.

Imagine waves of energy around us and emanating from us. Those waves of energy probably have the same strength for each one of us, but we are only tuned into those that we consciously want to pick up, like a radio that is tuned into a specific station. The other stations are there, but if we tune into all the stations, it would be too much for our minds (and our ears) to cope with.

So we simply tune into those people that we care most about, and then we are surprised when we know about their well-being before they know themselves - because we do not understand what we know intuitively. We live on the surface of a sea of information, and we are only aware of a tiny bit of that information.

So when you have a very strong and often apparently completely irrational feeling about something, accept that it is real, and act on it. It will make a huge difference to your life and someone else's life.