Cleve backster plant consciousness memory

After graduation he attended Texas University, intending to major in civil engineering. He was selected to attend Middlebury College in Vermont, then run by the US Navy V program, where he continued with a major in psychology. He served in the navy throughout the war, being discharged in This included lectures in his area of special interest, hypnosis.

After this he became a specialist in hypno and narco-interrogation techniques. He also started to investigate the uses of hypnotism more widely, particularly in medicine. Here he developed an interest in the use of polygraph machines. He continued to be involved in private polygraph training organizations from this time onwards. He established his own commercial polygraph consultant business in Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland.

Inhe returned to New York and founded what would eventually become the Backster School of Lie Detectionwhich is still in operation today. During this time he had established himself as an expert in the field using polygraphs and served as chairman of the Research and Instrument Committee of the Academy for Scientific Interrogation for eight consecutive years.

During the course of the experiment he noticed a correlation between his mental intention to burn a leaf and a distinct reaction on the polygraph chart. This suggested that the plant was somehow able to perceive and react to his thoughts. Backster died in However, it is worth noting that he also contributed significantly to the science of polygraph research, where his investigations culminated in the development of the Backster Zone Comparison Technique.

This was the first polygraph interpretation system to use a numerical evaluation and is still much in use. Further experiments, on both plant and animal cells, confirmed that this correlation was consistent enough to warrant further investigation. Based on the hypothesis that the plants were reacting to a perceived threat, he speculated that the unexpected termination of life nearby might elicit a strong response.

This was explored in a series of experiments in which brine shrimp were killed by immersion in hot water while three plants were monitored by polygraph machines. The experiment was set up to exclude the possibility that the experimenters might unconsciously affect the results. An apparatus was devised that enabled the shrimp to be dumped at random times one of six possible time blocks which would be recorded but which would not be known to the experimenters at the time.

In this study, bean plants were set up in close proximity to each other and when aphids attacked one bean plant, nearby plants picked up this system of warnings and then produced plant defenses, chemicals like methyl salicylate that act to repel the herbivores and to attract the cleve backsters plant consciousness memory of aphids. After a couple of days, volatile gases were collected from each of the plants and it was demonstrated that plants connected to the central plant via underground fungal networks were able to produce protective chemicals as opposed to the two unconnected bean plants.

Would it be possible to use a tribute plant far away from commercial crops as a sort of early warning for the others? How plants react to their environment and to each other ultimately comes back to our interactions with plants. Thus, there is even more of a need to study how plants see this consistently evolving world, not through conscience thinking, but through their senses.

Who knows—because after all, none of us are plants. Tompkins, Peter, and Christopher Bird. The Secret Life of Plants. Chamovitz, Daniel. Runyon, J. Helms, Anjel M. De Moraes, John F. Tooker, and Mark C. Bruce, Michael Birkett, John C. They performed some of these experiments using a model of polygraph machine identical to the one used by Backster in his original research, while other experiments were performed with an EEG instrument, which is based on a different technology than the polygraph.

Experiments where the team employed the same model of polygraph machine used by Backster showed positive results with the plant reacting both to actual harm, as well as thoughts of harm. In another segment of the episode, the team tested with an EEG by connecting it to a plant to check whether it would "see" eggs being catapulted randomly into boiling water.

The EEG instrument registered no change in the plant and the myth was considered as "busted" in that particular segment of the episode. The differences between the two technologies likely played a key role in the differing results. In an episode of Adam Ruins Everything that discussed the pitfalls of forensic science, there was a cutaway during the segment which criticized polygraphs and also referenced Backster's Primary Perception experiment.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. CIA interrogation specialist — Lafayette, New Jersey. San Diego, California. Biography [ edit ]. Primary perception [ edit ]. Findings [ edit ]. Reactions by the scientific community [ edit ].

Popular culture and influence [ edit ]. But it was totally foreign to them. So I designed an experiment to explore in greater depth what I began to call primary perception. This perception on the part of the plant seemed to take place at a cleve backster plant consciousness memory more basic — or primary — level. Anyway, what emerged was an experiment in which I arranged for brine shrimp to be dropped automatically, at random intervals, into simmering water, while the reaction of the plants was recorded at the other end of the lab.

Jensen: How could you tell whether the plants were responding to the death of the shrimp, or to your emotions? Even a brief association with the plants — just a few hours — is enough for them to become attuned to you. Then, even though you automate and randomize the experiment and leave the laboratory, guaranteeing you are entirely unaware of when the experiment starts, the plants will remain attuned to you, no matter where you go.

At first, my partner and I would go to a bar a block away, but after a while we began to suspect that the plants were responding, not to the death of the brine shrimp, but to the rising and falling levels of excitement in our conversations. Finally, we had someone else buy the plants and store them in another part of the building.

On the day of the experiment, we went and got the plants, brought them in, hooked them up, and left. This meant the plants were alone in a strange environment, with only the pressure of the electrodes and a little trickle of electricity going through their leaves. Only then did something so subtle as the deaths of the brine shrimp get picked up by the plants.

Jensen: Do plants become attuned only to humans, or to other living creatures in their environment as well? Often, I hook up a plant and just go about my business, then observe what makes it respond. One day, I was boiling water in a teakettle to make coffee. Then I realized I needed the teakettle for something else, so I poured the scalding water down the sink.

The plant being monitored showed a huge reaction to this. It turned out the plant was responding to the death of the microbes in the drain. The first Siamese cat I had would eat only chicken. One day, I had some yogurt hooked up, and as I got the chicken out of the refrigerator and began pulling off strips of meat, the yogurt responded.

Next, I put the chicken under a heat lamp to bring it to room temperature. Anyway, the heat hitting the bacteria produced a huge reaction in the yogurt. Backster: I was unaware of the reaction at the time. You see, I had pip switches set up all over the lab; whenever I performed an action, I hit a switch, which placed a mark on a remote chart.

Only later did I compare the reaction of the yogurt to what had been happening in the lab. Backster: Interestingly enough, bacteria appear to have a defense mechanism such that extreme danger causes them to go into a state similar to shock: in effect, they pass out. Many plants do this as well; if you hassle them enough, they flat-line. There was a flat line from then on.

Jensen: Dr. David Livingstone, the African explorer, was mauled by a lion. He said it would have been no problem to give himself up to the lion. Backster: Once, I was on an airplane and had with me a little battery-powered galvanic-response meter. The point is that the lettuce was going into a protective state so it would not suffer. When the danger left, the reactivity returned.

This ceasing of electrical energy at the cellular level ties in, I believe, to the state of shock in humans.

Cleve backster plant consciousness memory

Backster: And eggs. I had a Doberman pinscher for a while that I used to feed an egg a day. One day, I had a plant hooked up to a large galvanic-response meter, and as I cracked an egg to feed the dog, the meter went crazy. After that, I spent hundreds of hours monitoring eggs, both fertilized and unfertilized. After working with plants, bacteria, and eggs, I started to wonder how animals would react.

In this experiment, the sample from the donor was put in a test tube with electrodes, and the donor was separated from the sperm by several rooms. Then the donor inhaled amyl nitrite, which dilates the blood vessels and is conventionally used to stop a stroke. Just crushing the amyl nitrite caused a big reaction in the sperm, and when the donor inhaled, the sperm went wild.