1. A childhood experience of understanding animal speech
When Miss T was small she went to the zoo one day, and in the monkey enclosure she suddenly heard one monkey say to another, "Do you want to come over to my place and play?" The other answered, "Sure!" — and the two of them took each other by the hand and hopped off into the cave at the back. After she got home she also understood some of what a father bird was teaching his chicks. This ability to communicate with animals lasted only three months before it faded. The experience stayed with her, and from then on she was set on becoming a vet when she grew up, so she could care for animals in pain.
It recalls a singular figure in Shandong more than 2,500 years ago: Gongye Chang, who by legend could understand the speech of birds. It landed him in prison, and understanding birds was also what got him acquitted and even brought him merit in the service of the state. His teacher Confucius thought highly of him, and in the end he married Confucius's daughter.
In September 2001 Miss T came back to Taiwan from the United States for university. She had wanted to apply to the veterinary program at National Taiwan University, but at the time it did not admit foreign students, and as a US citizen she enrolled instead in the Department of Animal Science. Because she was back at NTU, though, I was able to run a finger-reading experiment with her once a month. By June 2004, when she left to finish her degree at the University of California, Davis, I had gathered a great deal of data on her wanderings through the spirit world, all of it collected in the book The Science of the Spirit World.
2. The arrival of a second master from the spirit world
From childhood Miss T had a master in the spirit world who looked after her and guided her. Between 2001 and 2003 we also spoke with him through the finger-reading experiments, asking all sorts of questions about the universe, human civilization and extraterrestrials, and the answers were collected in the book Unbelievable: In Search of the Gods' Website.
One of the questions we put to him was: "When will Miss T get her ability to communicate with animals back?" The master's answer was, "Don't rush." I was beside myself — she was already at university and would be going to veterinary school in the United States. When on earth would she be able to understand animals again?
The remarkable thing happened during the finger-reading experiment of 1 January 2004. We began at ten in the morning, and it went badly (see Figure 1): she misread even simple numbers, and in the character 輝 the radical 光 came out upside down. Experience told me a spirit had arrived and was interfering.
Sure enough, the rest of the session was a shambles. Even the character for Buddha came through as a ball of light flying about at random. So I decided to stop, and to head up Yangmingshan to Chinese Culture University for the afternoon's eye-movement experiment. But when I went to start the car, it would not fire after more than twenty attempts. I was sweating and desperate, and finally appealed to Miss T in the back seat: could she ask her master what was going on?
After a moment, Miss T's master answered: "All right now!" I turned the key and the engine started. We drove up Yangmingshan in a rush, nerves on edge, dreading a stall on the way.
The afternoon session went no better — nothing came through at all, and the spirit was still interfering. So I gave up on reading characters and decided to communicate with the spirit instead. I wrote out a question, shown in the first row of Figure 2, and what she saw was a man making a cross with his hands, in loose robes rather like a Japanese man's clothing, looking displeased. When she asked him for the answer to the question, he ignored her.
Then I asked a second question, shown in the second row of Figure 2: would he answer questions?
Answer: "No (in Japanese)"
It struck me that this was a Japanese spirit, so I asked: "Does it have to be in Japanese?"
Answer: "No need. Today won't do."
"Today is my day. I don't like you doing experiments today, which is why I did something to the car. Someone told me not to do that, so I stopped."
So the stalled car had been his doing, and he had relented on the advice of Miss T's master, at which point the car would start.
He went on: "Today simply won't do, because Maie (Miss T) has to practice today. (in Japanese)"
Question: "Practice what?" Answer: "You'll know shortly."
"Today is my day", "Enough!!"
And with that the conversation ended.
Miss T then spoke with the great spirit directly through her third eye, without finger reading:
Question: "What is it you want to teach?"
Answer: "The thing you most want to learn."
Question: "Understanding what animals say?"
Answer: "Yes. Sit in meditation before you sleep tonight, and bring every animal you saw today into your third eye. I have placed a message in one of them, and you are to find it. Your consciousness must pass through the animal's body."
At that moment I was standing nearby explaining to students how Sun Chu-Lin communicated with peanuts, so Miss T asked the great spirit:
"Is Prof. Si-Chen Lee right?" Answer: "He is right."
It turned out that this great spirit was Miss T's second master. He had broken in on the human world while she was finger reading with her third eye open, drawing our attention in order to make contact, and then formally took up the role of master and began teaching Miss T to communicate with animals. After a year of sitting practice, she could do it.
Ten years later, in 2014, Miss T graduated from the veterinary hospital at Purdue University, passed the California veterinary licensing exam, and went into practice at a private animal hospital in Los Angeles, where she has produced a great many astonishing cases. The Doctor Dolittle of the storybooks, who understands what animals say, has been born into this world — and animal medicine may well take a great step forward into a new realm because of it.
