If you don't know who that is, this story will completely change the way you view the world. I'm not even exaggerating, you'll never be the same again after this.
In the 1940s Cleve Backster served in the Counter-Intelligence Corps, where he once hypnotised a secretary to leak documents to him, just to prove a point. In 1948 he joined the CIA, where he was a pioneer of polygraph technology, where he was involved in interrogations with sodium pentothal (truth serum) and God knows what else.
He devised what became the worldwide standard for lie detection: Backster Zone Comparison Test.
He left the CIA to start his own polygraph business, which went well until everything changed on February 2, 1966.
His secretary bought a plant, a Dracaena, it was the first plant he ever owned.
He connected it to a polygraph and to his surprise, it was jittery and alive, changing over time.
After a minute, it showed a significant, short spike. If a man had this reaction, he'd be distressed.
He tried dipping a leaf in hot coffee, but nothing happened.
He poked it.
From that moment, Cleve dedicated his life to studying this phenomenon, called 'Primary Perception' which he measured using 'Psychogalvanic Reflex' (PGR). He studied dozens of plant types including lettuces, onions, oranges, and bananas; bacteria strains; human cell cultures such as blood, semen and leukocytes; animals such as cats and shrimp.
I will summarize some of his findings..
The deciding factor is
Interestingly, negative experiences elicit stronger responses than positive ones[2] and I think we can all relate to that experimental truth in our own life experiences. One experiment showed that a plant who witnessed a murder of another plant could idenfity the killer from a line-up of six suspects! In other words, the plant displayed that it had emotional memory. When a professional lawn-mower entered a room with a plant hooked up to an electrode, it registered a very strong reaction. Another experiment showed how plants were distressed when he cracked an egg, and when he dropped live shrimp in boiling water, while dropping placebo registered no response. It is hard to isolate whether the plant is feeling empathy from the shrimp or egg, or copying the researchers empathy when he performed the experiment, slightly ironic since empathy is by definition the mirroring of emotions. We will not know for sure until we have completed experiments to see whether placebo sacrifices would yield equal responses from the plants, if a researcher would kill a culture of placebo bacteria that didn't actually exist.
The well-known TV show Mythbusters successfully replicated this in the following clip:
What's weird is that they followed this successful replication with another "more strict" attempt that was rigged to fail: They changed the methodology in the second attempt, they used an EEG machine, which measures electrical currents instead of a polygraph which measures electrican conductivity. In the episode, they call it a "more sensitive machine" which is ridiculous.
They say Cleve used an EEG machine which is true for human cell samples, never plants. I would expect them to be well aware of this.
Here is an annotated summary of the Mythbusters' results, including the purposefully failed attempt.
Marcel Vogel is a name you would do well to remember, a genius researcher I will mention many times on this website. He read in a magazine about Cleve Backster's experiments and was able to replicate them. He got a psychogalvanic response from his plants when he induced stimuli onto himself, at first when he was next to the plants, and gradually increased the distance up to 8000+ miles with no decrease in the effect size[3]
More importantly than replicating and verifying the veracity of Cleve's results, the keen eye of Marcel noticed something..
The commonly accepted view is that our entire system works in unison to achieve consciousness. Chop your head off and "the machine is disrupted", your consciousness instantly ceases to exist..
Today we have talked about how single-cell life such as bacteria seems to experience consciousness since it is affected by thoughts and emotional stimuli. This is a strong assertion against the idea that your consciousness arises from ayour wholeness.
It's time to play with the thought that consciousness happens on a low level, perhaps even subatomic.
Your body consists of ~40 trillion human cells, and ~100 trillion bacteria cells. The latter are much smaller so they only make up a small fraction of your body weight. Most of the bacteria are in your gut and help break down food, producing neurotransmitters and is the foundation of your immune system.
It's clear from the bacteria experiments that we have strong sync between the bacteria and our body's own cells. The bacteria may not share our DNA, but they do share our feelings. When we feel good, they thrive, we are in the same boat. Very much like you & the people you love! You have different DNA, but it doesn't matter, because you're sharing your journey in life, your experiences and feelings are collective.
Consider that perceived closeness is enough to achieve this kind of emotional bond. Now, I want you to picture a forest. Can you see how every life form there shares emotions, perceptions and work together symbiotically instead of the fierce nihilistic struggle for individual survival we are taught in schools? Nature is collaborative and symbiotic, a beautiful place of friendship and love, and when the lion eats the gazelle, the cells from the gazelle will be built into the lion, which really isn't all that different from what happens in your body: more than
Marcel Vogel whom I previously mentioned having replicated Cleve Backster's experiments, postulated that all of these effects are mediated by Love, which is
While researching plant perception, I stumbled upon an excellent github project about running a live feed of plant perception into an Arduino through running a 2.3V DC charge across the plant.
I have found the
Isn't it beautiful? Reminds me of old movies, and I love how it comes packaged as a suit case. This is definitely the coolest way to replicate the phenomenon above. But you should be able to replicate this with basically any polygraph you can get your hands on. I have bought two different polygraphs, as soon as I start playing around with them I will try to replicate this myself.