Original headline: What if…? Plants are sentient beings
with emotions, thoughts and even telepathy.
There are some books that are veritable gold mines of information and insights for the person who is seeking to expand their awareness of this awesome realm in which we exist. The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, is one of those books. It was first published in 1973. My wife and I first read this book in 1997 and even reading through it again I am in absolute amazement at the incredible insights into the plant world that are contained in this little paperback! It’s really difficult for me to decide on which experiment or anecdote to discuss in this column. I really want to begin quoting at the beginning of the book and continue right on through to the last page. I would like to be able to read this book to groups of middle school students. They would be sufficiently matured to appreciate it, but maybe their minds would be open enough to accept a new understanding of this dimension in which we live. Well, let’s get on with it.
In 1966, Cleve Backster was America’s foremost lie-detector examiner and such an expert in their use that he taught classes to various police departments and security organizations. He serendipitously discovered that, by using a galvanometer (lie-detector) to measure the minute electrical signals from plants, he could determine their responses to various stimuli and situations. He conducted numerous experiments to demonstrate that plants and humans share similar response patterns. Plants have positive and negative emotional responses to their physical and “mental” environments just like we do. In fact, Backster discovered from his experiments that plants are even more capable than most humans in at least one respect. Plants are capable of telepathy or “reading the minds” of the other beings in their environment. They form bonds with certain individuals and are capable of knowing the intention of those individuals. Intent is a mental activity.
So, we need to ask, where are the sensing organs and emotional response centers for plants? Where is the brain? Since it is communicating without sound and speech as we know it, what is the medium that is used to carry communications? Because there is so much going on here that is not available to our sensory organs, maybe we should accept the notion that we are aware of only a very small part of this realm or dimension in which we live. Perhaps plants do have brains and sensing organs, but they do not manifest in a form that is visible or available to us. If plants, which are a lower form of life than humans, can communicate telepathically, why can’t humans? Perhaps it is because we are taught at a very early age that communication is to be accomplished only with our five “ordinary” senses, hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste.
In Chapter 2 of the Secret Life of Plants, the authors describe the work of Marcel Vogel, an IBM research chemist in Los Gatos, California. Vogel discovered that plants and humans share a type of energy which is not recognized by our contemporary scientific establishment, primarily because if the individual researcher or scientist does not believe in this energy, then he/she cannot “use” this energy to communicate with plants, or other living beings. What do western religions call the belief in something that is not, in the ordinary and daily world, able to be demonstrated? Isn’t that called “faith”? Eastern religions would probably call it “enlightenment” or “semi-enlightenment” because it requires acquiring an awareness or knowledge of something with extra-ordinary means.
One paragraph in this chapter may summarize much of Vogel’s research, “Vogel concluded that a Life Force, or Cosmic Energy, surrounding all living things is sharable among plants, animals and humans. Through such sharing, a person and a plant become one. ‘This oneness is what makes possible a mutual sensitivity allowing plant and man not only to intercommunicate, but to record these communications via the plant on a recording chart.’”
Vogel’s conclusion, as stated above, is why I included this information in the “Anomalies” column. When we are attending the public school system in the United States (and even most private schools) our textbooks or teachers do not mention a “Life Force or Cosmic Energy”. Why is our contemporary scientific paradigm lacking any sort of “Life Force or Cosmic Energy”? What are the long-term effects on our culture as a result of our science’s refusal to accept these concepts?
Will Barkley
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