Communicating with plants and animals

SARA BUBBER is interviewed by ANANYA PATEL about her experiences of communicating with plants and animals, and how they have enriched her life and her sense of humor.

Q: Hi Sara. You are currently pursuing a doctorate in child development and ecology, but today I'm hoping to focus on another interest of yours. Would it be accurate to say that you are a plant and animal whisperer? How would you describe this gift in your own words?

SB: I would say plant and animal communicator.

Q: Could you explain it, and what is the affinity that you have?

SB: I’ve always grown up with plants and animals in our big garden, and I’ve always had dogs, so my closeness with nature has been since childhood. I used to go out in the garden, but I never gave it a second thought. Then, a couple of years back, one of my dogs developed behavioral issues, and we were worried that we would have to give her up. That’s when I discovered animal communication.

I started to research and do online courses, and I found it can be developed. It wasn’t innate in me as a child, because I was quite unobservant of my surroundings then. I have developed it over the years. We asked another communicator to talk with my dog and found out what issues she faced, and we were amazed at what she revealed about herself. That’s when I decided to go deeper into it. I pursued some courses, and they also talked about plant communication. So since November 2021, I’ve been talking to plants and animals.

I don’t do it so much professionally now, but we speak to our dogs and plants to see if they need anything, and about their well-being.

Q: How did the gift develop over time?

SB: I pursued it professionally for a couple of months, and at that time I saw how the information coming to me was getting deeper, and how the animals and plants would describe some deep incidents in their lives, like traumas. That’s why I felt I should not be doing this professionally, because they trust you with information that perhaps should not be shared, deeper secrets. You can’t withhold the information once you’ve received it. You have to communicate it to the animal’s owner if you’re doing it professionally. I was not comfortable with that, because it was sometimes very close to them. The depth increased, but I decided I wouldn’t practice it professionally.

It is surprising to see the kinds of conversations animals and plants have with me. Now I’m not doing it professionally, there are no limitations to what I can ask, and what they tell me, because it stays only with me. We’ve had some very deep conversations.

The following incidents are with the acknowledgement of those beings I’m talking about. There was a neem tree close to our house, and one day it was cut down during the road development process. There was just a huge stump, because it was a very old tree. Both of us were so upset that somebody came and cut the tree, and we began to communicate with it. The tree said, “You know, it was my time to go, because there’s been so much development, so much urbanization. All my connections through the roots are gone. There’s no point in me staying here.” It shared a very profound line: “Once upon a time there was nothing here, yet there was everything. Now there is everything here, yet there is nothing.”

I’m not a science student, but I learned the scientific knowledge about how trees communicate, about how animals are attracted to trees, and what trees do through communication. The books The Wood Wide Web and The Secret Lives of Trees reveal the same information the tree had already given me. If you talk to nature, if you communicate with animals and plants around you, you'll get a lot of knowledge and insights into compassion, kindness, and the working of the cosmos.

You can talk at multiple levels. Sometimes I simply ask, “Where do you need water? Where do you need fertilizer?” It can be as mundane as that, or it can be deep knowledge, too.

Q: Wow. So there is a lot of wisdom to be gained from communicating with plants and animals. When you interact with these beings, it is like building a relationship with them, right? It’s not always just a one-off conversation. So does the emotional connection build from the get-go?

SB: Yes. If you’re emotionally connected, you’re just like a friend. If you’re having a one-off conversation, they’ll tell you things, but they might not go into deeper aspects of their lives. For example, during professional communications, I would give about 48 hours to the client, and it would take a couple of hours for the animals to open up. If you give them more time, they open up further.

With my own animals, I got to know a lot about their pasts, because I have rescue dogs. Yet even with them, it took them six months to tell me what had happened to them before they came to me, and they had already been with me for four years. After four years, I started communicating with them at their level.

Initially the information was just one way—I would tell them something, and I would not get anything back from them. Then, I started getting things back from them. It took them a while to build trust, and to tell me what had happened to them, what they felt, how we could help them. It takes building a bond with them. Now, anytime I talk with them it’s quick, because we've done it again and again, and they know me.

I’m not a science student, but I learned
the scientific knowledge about how trees
communicate, about how animals are
attracted to trees, and what trees do
through communication.

With other pets, the general process would be to connect with them and try to feel their energy. You don’t need to be around them physically. You need time to connect to the energy, to feel them, to welcome them, and to start talking as if you are meeting a friend for the first time. “How are you? Tell me something about yourself.” Once the connection is built, sometimes I get signals that this animal or this tree is talking to me. It’s just like a friend. You know, your friend calls you at 2 a.m., “This is something I need,” and that’s the same thing my dog does or my tree does.

It’s a very warm feeling, because nature is very vast. The feeling that you get is that it’s an expanse. When a 4,050-year-old tree is talking to you, there is a lot of wisdom coming in. It’s not like they’re just talking to you from a different perspective.

Q: And how is it different from communicating with humans?

SB: Our spiritual teachers have said that there are three bodies, and in plants and animals the subtle body is not as developed as in humans. That makes all the difference—humans can mask a lot of things. Humans tell you what they wish to tell you. They can cover a lot of what they’re doing. Humans can change according to situations. I will talk differently to you than I would to somebody else. Plants and animals are not like that. They are open, and they usually don’t lie unless they see a threat. They don’t withhold information. They share with great frankness and great ease. They are definitely more open to communicating than humans, because humans can alter themselves. That is a function of evolution. It’s a lot of fun talking to plants and animals because of that.

Q: How do you start the dialog? Do you sense that there’s something they want to share? How does it come to you?

SB: It works differently in different situations. Mostly, I let the animal know that I’m available for communication. You open the doors of communication in the beginning, and close the doors of communication at the end. So, you simply say something. Sometimes, if it’s an animal, I’ve literally felt that there’s a point in my head going, “Hi, I want to talk.” That’s when I realize they’re ready to talk. I give them their space. Sometimes they come, talk, go away, and come back later. So for that period of time, the door is open and they are able to communicate with me.

With my own plants and animals, communication is open all the time. If one of them wants to say something, they are welcome to do so at any time. If it is very urgent, I ask, “Okay, what are you feeling? How are you feeling?” and usually they tell me immediately, or they say, “Later, not right now,” something to that effect. I get it as a feeling of what is being communicated to me. That’s how we start and end communication. At the end of a one-off communication, I close the doors of communication, while with my pets it’s usually open.

Q: And does this communication happen telepathically or do you speak aloud?

SB: It is telepathic. I connect with the energy of the animal, even if the animal has passed away and the owner wants to know something. A lot of street dogs die suddenly, and we want to get to know something about them, because we feed street dogs. So we ask them, “What happened? Did you feel any pain at the end?” Even if they have taken rebirth, we are usually communicating with the energy of the animal, and we are able to connect with them. We are able to get answers from the pet.

This can be experienced very well. A lot of people whose pets have passed away have asked me, “Why don’t you give them a message?” or “Why don’t you take a message from them?” In one of my communications, the lady was so grief-struck she wanted me to communicate with her pet for a number of months. Every month, on the date of his passing, she would write to me, saying, “Please take a note.” And the pet guided her out of the grief. The telepathic communication continued when the energy form changed.

My dog and I also communicated after she passed away. We were communicating through her process of passing, also. I understood every minute of her passing, from two or three days before it started. I don’t have words for it, but it was a very different experience. And we could actually feel the energy. We could feel that we were communicating with energy.

They are definitely more open to communicating than humans,
because humans can alter themselves.
That is a function of evolution. 
It’s a lot of fun talking to plants and animals because of that.

Q: How have these relationships you’re building with these souls impacted your own spiritual journey?

SB: First, the wisdom that comes from them is highly spiritual. When pets are passing away, we see a lot of pain. They’re suffering, they’re going to die, and we see their body suffering, but they say, “We are able to detach ourselves from our pain, what you see as the last moments of suffering. Our spirit is already out. It’s hovering around, but it’s already out. So we don’t feel the way you’re looking at it, and that’s why you can see it.” I don’t think you can find this kind of detachment and wisdom anywhere else.

One of our street dogs had passed away in a car accident, and we saw the last ten minutes of his suffering. He said, “You know what? I wasn’t there. You saw it because you could see the body, but I couldn’t feel it.” That’s how it happens with most pets.

Second, “What are your likes and dislikes?” is another question you can ask animals and trees. One tree gave a very profound answer: “Nature never hates anything. We forgive everything.” So these dialogs that have come from trees, from pets, we can’t learn from people. They are deeply spiritual experiences.

Third, you also learn about levels of consciousness, because it’s deeper than the surface but it’s not as deep as meditation. You have to learn to be somewhere in between to be able to communicate. And if you’re not sufficiently devoid of thoughts, not sufficiently clean, you won’t know what you’re perceiving. What are your thoughts and what are the animal’s thoughts? You have to come to a state of balance to be able to communicate.

So, it is very related to spirituality. You’re talking with beings other than human beings. Many aspects of this help in spiritual growth and are coherent with spiritual practice.

I connect with the energy of the animal, 
even if the animal has passed away and 
the owner wants to know something…
We are able to get answers from the pet.

Q: Have you had instances where you had to draw boundaries, either with a human wanting to communicate with an animal, or an animal wanting to communicate with a human?

SB: Yes, usually not with the animals. I have had some instances where the people who own pets are very pushy. To protect the animal, and to protect myself, I draw boundaries. There was a person who kept asking, “Tell my dog to be born again as my pet.” As a pet owner, I understand that completely, but that’s not their choice. And despite communicating with the dog again and again, and the answer being a clear cut “No,” the pet owner kept asking me to order him to come to him. It was just not doable. In instances like this, you draw boundaries.

And in a humorous way I have to draw boundaries with my own pets sometimes, because they listen in on everything, and they are like absorbent sponges. So if there is something I don’t want them to know, I close my communication with them for that period of time. Once, when I had just finished college, I was home for a couple of months, and my dog was talking to me 24/7. It was annoying, because you don’t talk to anyone 24/7. I had to tell him, “Give me a break. Please sit. We’ll talk later. We will have times for communication, so we’ll talk then.”

Q: So I guess it is like any relationship; you need to find your comfort in it.

You mentioned the instance with the roots of the tree. Are there any other impacts on your understanding of ecology and coexistence in this world that you have noticed from this gift?

SB: It’s a very deep question. I’ll give you an instance from the mango tree that is in my garden. It was trying to explain to me how nature works: if there’s a mango that falls from the tree and a monkey eats part of it, it will leave signs that there is a monkey on the tree, because it’s a half-eaten mango, so it’s DNA will be imprinted on it. Say a squirrel eats from the same mango, and leaves her impressions, and birds come and leave their marks. They’ve all eaten bits from the same mango. This way, each animal knows which animals live on that particular tree and visit there. That’s how they show their presence and their coexistence in that ecological sphere. They come to know who is their predator, who will not harm them, and who they need not bother about. With just one piece of fruit, they can do so much. And they usually communicate that way.

They’ve all eaten bits from the same mango. 
This way, each animal knows which animals live 
on that particular tree and visit there. 
That’s how they show their presence and 
their coexistence in that ecological sphere.
They come to know who is their predator, 
who will not harm them, and
who they need not bother about. 
With just one piece of fruit, they can do so much. 
And they usually communicate that way.

Apart from that, we have to learn to coexist in these times, because there is a population eruption; we have too many people, animals, and trees vying for the same resources, and some will definitely suffer. We have a lot of issues with stray dogs, and trees on roads, and these are global problems. So just communicating with these trees and animals gives us hope, and many ideas about how to coexist with them.

Dogs share, “We don’t need much. We just need a little bit of food if you can spare, and we won’t bother you, because if our stomachs are full, we don’t need to be aggressive.” I’m sure most people have extra food at their home to give to these animals. What I’ve observed on the streets is that the people who cannot afford a lot are actually feeding the dogs and animals and not disturbing the trees. In contrast, the people who live in high rise and gated communities have problems with animals because they are coming into those spaces and getting them dirty. I’ve seen watchmen being so friendly with stray dogs.

Now that I’ve started observing nature, it’s not just at a telepathic level, but also at a holistic level, and I’ve learned a lot of things about how we can coexist. Animals and plants are meant to be a part of our society. It’s better that we coexist peacefully, rather than being at loggerheads with each other.

There are also many things we can do at a physical level for their needs without having to communicate. Feed whatever soul comes to you. Keep some water outside. They are minimalists, so they don’t need much of our care. In any society, there are so many people; even if two or three are able to do something, all the stray animals and plants in that area can be well cared for.

Observe and you’ll see 
that you have a lot of friends in the universe. 
Then, you truly can move toward coexistence, 
hope, and a happier future.

Q: Are there any other points you want to mention?

SB: I think animal and plant communication is a wonderful thing. You’re never lonely when you’re in their company. Even if you have an indoor plant, it’s wonderful to make conversation with it; it can be learned and honed. Just by observing, also, you get a lot of information. My suggestion is to observe and you’ll see that you have a lot of friends in the universe. Then, you truly can move toward coexistence, hope, and a happier future.

Plants and animals are so innocent and childlike that you laugh; there’s a lot of humor involved. And when there’s a lot of humor, there’s a lot of joy. Then you pass this joy around. In fact, my dog made her death funny. It was a very sad incident, but she was so upbeat throughout. She did so many things toward the end. She took it lightly. She gave us instructions like, “When I die, this is what I want…” Finally, when she passed over, we didn’t feel the impact because of the way she handled the situation. That is something that has stayed with me.

It is fun communicating with them. You learn a lot about life. You learn a lot of qualities. You learn to be fun.

Q: Thanks so much, Sara.

Illustrations by ANANYA PATEL