Recap

Biocommunication

Cleve Backster (primaryperception) presented an overview of his 37 years of research related to electrical responses in plant life and at a cellular level in other living organisms. Even the tiniest living organisms such as bacteria can demonstrate reactions to their environments in a kind of "primary perception" that comes before the five basic senses, he said.

Backster, a leading expert in the use of the polygraph, first noticed such biocommunication in experiments with plants that were hooked up to a polygraph machine. To his surprise he found the plants seemed to show the ability to read people's minds, in that they demonstrated visible reactions on the polygraph to the mere thought of someone burning one of their leaves, for instance. Later he discovered plants seemingly reacted to their owners' emotional surges, even if they were at an entirely different location.

Discussing his research into human cells, Backster concluded that they are also capable of showing a kind of primary awareness. He noted that the book, The Secret Life of Your Cells by Robert Stone delved into this phenomenon at length.

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Plants & Planets

As part of an article I wrote for After Dark last year titled A Garden of Spirits, I took a look at the unusual theories that Rudolph Steiner had regarding plants. Here is an excerpt:

A clairvoyant, philosopher, artist and scientist, to some Rudolf Steiner was one of the great thinkers of the early 20th century. He created the Anthroposophical Society to study and practice "spiritual science," whereby participants could access their higher spiritual selves.

As outlined in the book by Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Soil, Steiner had some very unusual ideas about the growth of plants. Specifically he believed that the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all had an influence on the plants of Earth. The three bodies closest to Earth (the Moon, Mercury and Venus) had an effect on the reproduction and growth of plants working indirectly through the limestone content of the earth, whereas the outer planets he believed could change the quality of the soil that plants grow in, drawing silica up from the ground.

Steiner believed the Earth itself was incapable of providing these energies. "It requires the cosmic forces shining in upon the earth via the Moon, and in the case of certain plants, via Mercury and Venus. With the moon's rays the whole reflected Cosmos comes onto the earth, so that the force of growth may be enhanced into the force of reproduction," Steiner wrote.

--L.L.