## Book Review:
Secret Life of Plants

### by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird,
reviewer Eleanor White
This page updated March 22, 2009

Copyright 1973
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York
NY USA 10022
ISBN 0-06-091587-0
Library of Congress number not given
Paperback
402 pages, indexed

###
Why "Plant Emotions" in a discussion
about Electronic Harassment?
Answer: Because the signal type responsible for "plant emotions" behaves like other "ESP-class" signals. The existence of these un- shieldable, un- detectable, un- jammable, self- aiming, not distance- limited signals is confirmed in this book. This in turn supports the idea that countermeasures will likely come (eventually) from the psychic arena, rather than the conventional electromagnetic or acoustic arena. Understanding the nature of the enemy's signals is important for targets as they search for successful countermeasures. Using plants to *verify* our harassment is a promising path to try.

This is an "Eleanor White Book Review". Such reviews are not like what you see in the print media. My emphasis is to provide enough information that an electronic harassment target or supporter can make an intelligent decision as to whether to buy the book (or borrow it). This means most of the reviews are excerpted text, with comments inserted. This type of review is biased in favor of information relevant to electronic harassment technology, and possible countermeasure experiments. Those who are interested in psychic phenomena outside of an electronic harassment context should obtain this book for detailed information.

Note: In the excerpted text from the book, emphasis by way of ALL UPPER CASE LETTERS is mine. The reason for such emphasis is to point up information particularly relevant to mind control.

### About the Authors

## Concepts Table (Relevant Points)

### (Scroll down for book's table of contents)

    Note:  This "Concepts Table" is to speed up access to those points of
    special relevance to electronic harassment targets who are trying to develop
    detection, jamming, and shielding countermeasures.  This table doesn't
    appear in the book itself.

    Backster's first discovery, plant read his mind ...........   5
    Plant emotion readings from shredded leaves too ...........   7
    Plants respond to approach of dogs too ....................   7
    Plants detect spider's emotional responses ................   7
    Plants flatline when person who harms plants visits .......   7
    Plant can accurately function as lie detector .............   8
    Plant in sync at 15 miles .................................   9
    Plant reacts to showing slide of itself at lecture ........  10
    Plant picks up owner's ESP sigs, owner in huge crowd ......  10
    Plant in sync at 700 miles, in airplane ...................  10
    Plant comm. unaffected by EM shielding ....................  11
    Plants react to deaths of cells, bacteria .................  11
    Plants react to random killing of brine shrimp ............  13
    Leaf alive and vigorous for month, by human TLC ...........  19
    Remote viewing enhances microscopy too ....................  20
    Human intent alone produces an energy field ...............  20
    Same plant species, very distinct personalities ...........  21
    Vogel's plant leaf electrode paste ........................  21
    Plant won't respond without an "audience" .................  22
    Plants capable of going into hypnotic trance ..............  23
    Hostility, negativity can prevent plant EEG from working ..  24
    Psychics can view internal details of cells, plant or human  26
    Vogel's pupils learn remote manipulation of plants ........  27
    Secret to successful demonstration of plant comm ..........  27
    Plant sulks for 2 weeks after insult ......................  28
    EEG recorded via plant instead of skull ...................  28
    Egg GSR readings track Vogel's hand movements .............  29
    Liquid helium stops ALL EM signals, even ELF ..............  30
    MEMORY of static spark sensation causes instant response ..  37
    Remote killing body cells causes plants to react ..........  38
    Plants also react to joy and pleasure .....................  38
    Dr. Eldon Byrd's work with plant communications ...........  40
    Dr. Byrd confirms plants flatline ("faint") under stress ..  41
    Hashimoto's plant 'speaks', counts, and adds ..............  43
    George Lawrence's living tissue detectors .................  47
    Lawrence:  Bio-signals outside EM spectrum ................  51
    Gurwitsch's 'mitogenic rays' (from plants) ................  54
    Lawrence:  Genuine love for plants needed for success .....  57
    George Lawrence's advice on handling test subject plants ..  58
    Psychic Jan Merta describes common plant loneliness .......  59
    No water exper. shows neighbor plants help dry 'prisoner' .  73
    Otto Rahn discovers diseased tissue emits radiation ....... 188
    Engr. Monteith confirms Kirlian displays life field ....... 207
    Uri Geller's abilities confirmed .......................... 359

## Table of Contents

    Part  I  -  MODERN RESEARCH  (** AS OF THE EARLY 1970s **)

    1.  Plants and ESP ........................................   3
    2.  Plants Can Read Your Mind .............................  17
    3.  Plants That Open Doors ................................  33
    4.  Visitors From Space ...................................  46
    5.  Latest Soviet Discoveries .............................  63

    Part  II  -  PIONEERS OF PLANT MYSTERIES

    6.  Plant Life Magnified 100 Million Times ................  81
    7.  The Metamorphosis of Plants ........................... 104
    8.  Plants Will Grow to Please You ........................ 120
    9.  Wizard of Tuskegee .................................... 135

    Part  III  -  TUNED TO THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

    10. The Harmonic Life of Plants ........................... 145
    11. Plants and Electromagnetism ........................... 163
    12. Force Fields, Humans and Plants ....................... 178
    13. The Mystery of Plant and Human Auras .................. 200

    Part  IV  -  CHILDREN OF THE SOIL

    14. Soil:  The Staff of Life .............................. 217
    15. Chemicals, Plants and Man ............................. 240
    16. Live Plants or Dead Planets ........................... 259
    17. Alchemists in the Garden .............................. 274

    Part  V  -  THE RADIANCE OF LIFE

    18. Dowsing Plants for Health ............................. 295
    19. Radionic Pesticides ................................... 317
    20. Mind Over Matter ...................................... 343
    21. Findhorn and the Garden of Eden ....................... 361

    Bibliography .............................................. 375
    Index ..................................................... 393

Back to Top of Table of Contents

## Chapter 1: Plants and ESP

The adventure started in 1966. Backster had been up all night in his school for polygraph examiners, where he teaches the art of lie detection to policemen and security agents from around the world. On impulse he decided to attach the electrodes of one of his lie detectors to the leaf of his dracaena. [...SNIP...] Backster was curious to see if the leaf would be affected by water poured on its roots, and if so, how soon.

As the plant thirstily sucked water up its stem, the galvanometer, to Backster's surprise, did not indicate less resistance, as might have been expected by the greater electrical conductivity of the moister plant. The pen on the graph paper, instead of trending upward, was trending downward, with a lot of sawtooth motion on the tracing.

[...SNIP...]

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Backster ... then conceived a worse threat: he would burn the actual leaf to which the electrodes were attached. The INSTANT he got the PICTURE OF A FLAME IN HIS MIND, and BEFORE he could move for a match, there was a dramatic change in the tracing pattern on the graph in the form of a prolonged upward sweep of the recording pen.

[...SNIP...]

When he and his collaborators, using other plants and other instruments in other locations all over the country, were able to make similar observations, the matter warranted further study. More than twenty five different varieties of plants and fruits were tested, including lettuce, onions, oranges, and bananas. The observations, each similar to the others, required a new view of life, with some explosive connotations for science.

[...SNIP...]

[p 7]

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During the next few months, chart after chart was obtained from all sorts of plants. The phenomenon appeared to persist even if the plant leaf was detached from the plant, or if it was trimmed to the size of the electrodes; amazingly, even if a leaf was SHREDDED and redistributed between the electrode surfaces there was still a reaction on the chart.

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The plants reacted not only to threats from human beings, but to unformulated threats, such as the sudden appearance of a dog in the room, or of a person who did not wish them well.

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Backster was able to demonstrate to a group at Yale that the movement of a spider in the same room with a plant wired to his equipment could cause dramatic changes in the recorded pattern by the plant just BEFORE the spider started to scamper away from a human attempting to restrict its movement. "It seems," said Backster, "as if each of the spider's decisions to escape was being picked up by the plant, causing a reaction in the leaf."

[...SNIP...]

Under normal cirucmstances, plants may be attuned to each other, said Backster, though when encountering animal life they tend to pay less attention to what another plant is up to. "The last thing a plant expects is another plant to give it trouble. So long as there is animal life around, they seemed to be attuned to animal life.

[...SNIP...]

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The phenomenon was dramatically demonstrated one day when a physiologist from Canada came to Backster's lab to witness the reaction of his plants. The first plant gave no response whatsoever. Nor did the second; nor the third. Backster checked his polygraph instruments, and tried a fourth and a fifth plant; still no success. Finally, on the sixth, there was enough reaction to demonstrate the phenomenon.

Curious to discover what could have influeced the other plants, Backster asked: "Does any part of your work involve harming plants?"

"Yes," the physiologist replied. "I terminate the plants I work with. I put them in an oven and roast them to obtain their dry weight for my analysis.

[p 8]

Forty five minutes after the physiologist was safely on the way to the airport, each of Backster's plants once more responded fluidly on the graph.

[...SNIP...]

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On one occasion, to show that plants and single cells were picking up signals through some unexplained medium of communication, Backster provided a demonstration for the author of an article appearing in the Baltimore Sun, subsequently condensed in the Reader's Digest. Backster hooked a galvanometer to his philodendron, then addressed the writer as if it were he who was on the meter, and interrogated the writer about his year of birth.

Backster named each of seven years between 1925 and 1931 to which the reporter was instructed to answer with a uniform "No." Backster then selected from the chart the correct date, which had been indicated by the plant with an extra high flourish.

The same experiment was duplicated by a professional psychiatrist, the medical director of the research ward at Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, New York, Dr. Aristide H. Esser.

[...SNIP...]

To see if a plant could display memory, a scheme was devised whereby Backster was to try to identify the secret killer of one of two plants. Six of Backster's polygraph students volunteered for the experiment, some of them veteran policemen. Blindfolded, the students drew from a hat folded slips of paper, on one of which were instructions to root up, stamp on, and thoroughly destroy one of two plants in a room. The criminal was to commit the crime in secret; neither Backster nor any other of the students was to know his identity; only the second plant would be a witness.

By attaching the the surviving plant to a polygraph and parading the students one by one before it, Backster was able to establish the culprit.

[...SNIP...]

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In another series of observations, Backster noted that a special communion or bond of affinity appeared to be created between a plant and its keeper, UNAFFECTED BY DISTANCE. With the use of synchronized stopwatches, Backster was able to note that his plants continued to react to his thought and attention from the next room, from down the hall, even from several buildings away. Back from a fifteen mile trip to New Jersey, Backster was able to establish that his plants had perked up and shown definite and positive signs of response - whether it was relief or welcome he could not tell - at the VERY MOMENT he had decided to return to New York.

[p 9-10]

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When Backster was away on a lecture tour and talked about his initial 1966 observation, showing a slide of the original dracnaea, the plant, back in his office, would show a reaction on the chart at the VERY TIME he projected the slide.

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Once attuned to a particular person, plants appeared to be able to maintain a link with that person no matter where he went, even among thousands of people. On New Year's Eve in New York City, Backster went out into the bedlam of Times Square armed with a notebook and stopwatch. Mingling with the crowd, he noticed his various actions, such as walking, running, going underground by way of subway stairs, nearly getting run over, and having a mild fracas with a news vendor. Back at the lab, he found that each of his three plants, monitored independently, showed similar reactions to his slight emotional adventures.

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To see if he could get a reaction from plants at a much greater distance, Backster experimented with a female friend to establish whether her plants remained attuned to her on a seven hundred mile plane ride across the United States. From synchronized clocks they found a definite reaction from the plants to the friend's emotional stress each time the plane touched down for a landing.

[...SNIP...]

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[p 11]

Backster has no idea what kind of energy wave may carry man's thoughts or internal feelings to a plant. He has TRIED TO SCREEN A PLANT BY PLACING IT IN A FARADAY CAGE AS WELL AS IN A LEAD CONTAINER. Neither shield appeared IN ANY WAY to block or jam the communication channel linking the plant to the human being. The carrier wave equivalent, whatever it might be, Backster concluded, must somehow operate BEYOND the electromagnetic spectrum. It also appeared to operate from the macrocosm down to the microcosm.

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One day when Backster happened to cut his finger and dabbed it with iodine, the plant that was being monitored on the polygraph immediately reacted, apparently to the death of some cells in Backster's finger. Though it might have been reacting to his emotional state at the sight of his own blood, or to the stinging of the iodine, Backster soon found a recognizeable pattern in the graph whenever a plant was witnessing the death of some living tissue.

[...SNIP...]

To begin with, Backster found that plants can quickly become so attuned to human beings that it is not always possible to obtain exactly the same reactions with different experimenters. Incidents such as the "fainting" [EW: Flatlining - no visible EEG activity] which occurred with the Canadian physiologist sometimes made it look as if there was no such thing as the Backster Effect. Personal involvement with an experiment, and even prior knowledge of the exact time an event was scheduled, was often enough to "tip off" a plant into noncooperation.

[...SNIP...]

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The device for "terminating" these playboy creatures consisted of a small dish which would automatically tip them into a pot of boiling water. A mechanical programmer actuated the device on a randomly selected occasion so that it was impossible for Backster or his assistants to know when the event would occur. As a control precaution against the actual mechanism of dumping registering on the charts, dishes were programmed at other times to dump plain water containing no brine shrimp.

[...SNIP...]

Plants selected for the experiment were of the Philodendron cordatum species because of its nice large leaves, firm enough to withstand comfortably the pressure of the electrodes. Different plants of the same species would be used on successive test runs.

[...SNIP...]

The experimental results showed that the plants did react strongly and synchronously to the death of the shrimp in boiling water. The automated monitoring system, checked by the visiting scientists, showed that the plants reacted consistently to the death of the shrimp in a ratio that was five to one against the possibility of chance.

[...SNIP...]

A fortuitous occurrence led Backster into another whole realm of research. One evening, as he was about to feed a raw egg into his Doberman pinscher, Backster noticed that as he cracked the egg one of his plants attached to a polygraph reacted strenuously. The next evening he watched again as the same thing happened. Curious to see what the egg might be feeling, Backster attached it to a galvanometer, and was once more up to his ears in research.

For nine hours Backster got an active chart recording from an egg, corresponding to the rhythm of the heartbeats of the chicken embryo, the frequency being between 160 and 170 beats per minute, appropriate for an embryo three or four days along in incubation. Only the egg was store bought, acquired at the local delicatessen, and was UNfertilized. Later, breaking the egg and dissecting it, Backster was astonished to find that it contained no physical circulatory structure of any sort to account for the [electrical] pulsation. He appeared to have tapped into some sort of force field not conventionally understood within the present body of scientific knowledge.

[...SNIP...]

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## Chapter 2: Plants Can Read Your Mind

[...SNIP...]

That same evening, one student called Vogel to announce that the latest issue of Popular Electronics referred to Backster's work, and included a wiring diagram for an instrument called a "psychanalyzer", which would pick up and amplify reactions from plants and could be built for less than twenty five dollars.

[...SNIP...]

Vogel divided his class into three groups and challenged them to repeat some of Backster's accomplishments. By the end of the seminar, not one of three teams had achieved any success. Vogel, on the other hand, was able to report that he had duplicated certain of Backster's results, and proceeded to demonstrate how plants anticipate the act of having their leaves torn, react with even greater alarm to the threat of being burnt or uprooted - MORE SO EVEN THAN IF THEY ARE ACTUALLY TORN, BURNT, OR OTHERWISE BRUTALIZED.

[...SNIP...]

... Back in her garden, Vivian Wiley picked two leaves from a saxifrage, one of which she placed on her bedside table, the other in the living room. "Each day when I get up," she told Vogel, "I will look at the leaf by my bed and will that it continue to live; but I will pay no attention to the other. We will see what happens.

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[p 19-20]

A month later she asked Vogel to come to her house and bring a camera to photograph the leaves. Vogel could hardly believe what he saw. The leaf to which his friend had paid no attention was flaccid, turning brown and beginning to decay. The leaf on which she had focussed daily attention was RADIANTLY VITAL AND GREEN [after a MONTH!], just as if it had been freshly plucked from the garden.

[...SNIP...]

Vivian Wiley continued her experiments and later showed Vogel the saxifrage leaf which she had kept green and alive for two long months while the control leaf was completely dehydrated and brown.

[...SNIP...]

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While making the slides, Vogel realized that by "relaxing his mind" [a prerequisite for remote viewing too] he could sense activity not visually revealed in the microscopic field.

"I began to pick up things at the microscope which eluded others, not with ocular vision but with my mind's eye. After becoming aware of them," says Vogel, "I was led by some form of higher sensory awareness to adjust the lighting conditions to allow these phenomena to be optically recordable to the human eye or to a camera." [Shades of Ted Serios?]

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The conclusion at which Vogel arrived is that crystals are brought into a solid, or physical state of existence by pre-forms, or GHOST IMAGES of pure energy which anticipate the solids. Since plants could pick up intentions from a human, that of burning them, for example, there was no doubt in Vogel's mind that INTENT PRODUCED SOME KIND OF ENERGY FIELD.

[...SNIP...]

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Vogel also found that some of the philodendrons he worked with responded faster, others more slowly, some very distinctly, others less distinctly, and that not only plants but their individual leaves had their own unique personality and individuality. Leaves with a large electrical resistance were especially difficult to work with; fleshy leaves witha high water content were the best. Plants appeared to go through phases of activity and inactivity, full of response at certain times of the day or days of the month, "sluggish" or "morose" at other times. [Surprised? May have implications for plant-based experiments.]

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To make sure that none of these recording effects was the result of faulty electroding, Vogel developed a mucilaginous substance composed of a solution of agar, with a thickener of karri gum, and salt. This paste he brushed on to the leaves before gently applying carefully polished 1-1/2 inch stainless steel electrodes. When the agar jelly hardened around the edges of the electronic pickups, it sealed their faces into a moist interior, virtually eliminating all variability in signal output caused by pressure on the leaves when clamped between ordinary electrodes. This system produced for Vogel a base line chart that was PERFECTLY STRAIGHT, without oscillations.

[...SNIP...]

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In another experiment, Vogel wired two plants to the same recording machine and snipped a leaf from the first plant. The second plant responded to the hurt being inflicted on its neighbour but only when Vogel was paying attention to it! If Vogel cut off a leaf while ignoring the second plant, the response was lacking. It was as if Vogel and the plant were lovers on a park bench, oblivious of passers by until the attention of one lover became distracted from the other.

[...SNIP...]

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Asked to describe the process in detail, Vogel said that first he quiets the sensory responses of his body organs, then he becomes aware of an energetic relationship between the plant and himself. When a state of balance between the bioelectrical potential of both the plant and himself is achieved, the plant is no longer sensitive to noise, temperature, the normal electrical fields surrounding it, or other plants. It responds only to Vogel, who has effectively tuned himself to it - or perhaps simply hypnotizes it.

[...SNIP...]

For the producer of ABC's television program You Asked For It, Vogel also demonstrated the plant's response to another person's thoughts, including a sudden release of strong emotion on command, followed by the act of his quieting the plant to normal reactions to the environment.

[p 23-24]

Invited to lecture to audiences who had heard of his experimentation, Vogel said unequivocally: "It is fact: man can and does communicate with plant life. Plants are living objects, sensitive, rooted in space. They may be blind, deaf, and dumb in the human sense, but there is no doubt in my mind that they are extremely sensitive instruments for measuring man's emotions.

[...SNIP...]

They radiate energy forces that are beneficial to man. One can feel those forces! They feed into one's own force field, which in turn feeds energy back to the plant." The American Indians, says Vogel, were keenly aware of these faculties. When in need, they would go into the woods. With their arms extended, they would place their backs to a pine tree in order to replenish themselves with its power.

[...SNIP...]

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"The feeling of hostility, of negativity, in an audience," says Vogel, "is one of the main barriers to effective communication. To counteract this force is one of the most difficult tasks in public demonstration of these plant experiments. If one cannot do this, the plant and therefore the equipment will 'go dead' and there is no response until a positive tie can ge reestablished.

[...SNIP...]

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Vogel has since tried the same experiment with dozens of other people, having them go to a single leaf and look at the individual cells within it. All gave CONSISTENT DESCRIPTIONS of various parts of the cellular body DOWN TO THE DETAILED ORGANIZATION OF THE DNA MOLECULES. From the experiment, Vogel came to the conclusion: "We can move into individual cells in our own bodies and, depending on our state of mind, affect them in various ways.

[...SNIP...]

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Vogel noticed that those children who felt the strongest sensations were wholly engrossed in what they were doing. Once they felt the tingling he would say: "Now completely relax and feel the give and take of the energy. When you feel it pulsing, gently move your hand up and down over the leaf." Following his directions, the young experimenters could easily see that, when they brought their hands down, the leaves fell away. By continued repetition of this motion, the leaves would begin to oscillate. With the use of both hands, the experimenters could actually get a plant to sway. As they gained confidence, Vogel urged them to move further and further away from the plant.

"This is basic training," says Vogel, "to develop an expanded awareness of a force which is not visible. The awareness established, the see they can operate with this force."

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Adults, according to Vogel, are much less successful than children, which leads him to surmise that many scientists are not going to be able to repeat his or Backster's experiments in their laboratories. "If they approach the experimentation in a mechanistic way," says Vogel, "and don't enter into mutual communication with their plants and treat them as friends, they will fail. It is essential to have an open mind that eliminates all preconceptions before beginning experiments."

[...SNIP...]

"Hundreds of laboratory workers around the world," says Vogel, "are going to be just as frustrated and disappointed as these men until they appreciate that the empathy between plant and human is the key, and learn how to establish it. No amount of checking in laboratories is going to prove a thing until the experiments are done by properly trained observers. SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT IS INDISPENSABLE. But this runs counter to the philosophy of many scientists, who do not realize that creative experimentation means that the experimenters must become part of their experiments. [EW: That is true in order to make any scientific progress past 1950s style science.]

[...SNIP...]

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Vogel says that even when a person can affect a plant, the result is not always a happy one. He asked one of his friends, a clinical psychologist, who had come to see for himself if there was any truth to the plant research, to project a strong emotion to a philodendron fifteen feet away. The plant surged into an instantaneous and intense reaction and then suddenly "went dead." When Vogel asked the psychologist what had gone through his mind, the man answered that he had mentally compared Vogel's plant with his own philodendron at home, and thought how inferior Vogel's was to his. The "feelings" of Vogel's plant were evidently so badly hurt that it refused to respond for the rest of the day; in fact, it sulked for almost two weeks[!]

[...SNIP...]

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This being true, Vogel considered it possible, one day, to read a person's thoughts through a plant. Something of this sort had already taken place. Vogel had asked a nuclear physicist to mentally "work" on a technical problem. As the man was cogitating, Vogel's plant registered a series of tracings on the recorder for 118 seconds. When the tracing fell back to base line, Vogel informed his scientist friend that he had stopped his train of thought. The friend corroborated.

Vogel wondered if he had actually captured a process on a chart via a plant. After a few minutes, he asked the physicist to think of his wife. When the physicist did so, the plant again recorded a tracing, this time for 105 seconds. It seemed to Vogel that, right before him in his living room, a plant was picking up and passing on a man's mental impressions of his wife. If one could interpret such tracings, could one not now what the man was thinking?

After a break for a cup of coffee, Vogel almost casually asked his friend to think once more of his wife in the same way he had thought of her before. The plant registered another 105 second long tracing very similar to the first. To Vogel, this was the first time a plant seemed to have recorded a similar thought spectrogram AND DUPLICATED IT.

[...SNIP...]

Dr. Hal Puthoff [One of the original Star Gate remote viewing experimenters] a physicist at the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto, invited Vogel and five other scientists to witness the effects he was getting by hooking up a chicken egg to the electro psychometer, or "E-meter" developed by L. Ron Hubbard [EW: Don't panic - it's just a GSR meter.] the founder of Scientology. The E-meter's function is almost identical to that of the psychoanalyzer which Vogel had first used with his seminar students. Puthoff attempted to demonstrate that the egg wired to the E-meter would respond when another egg was broken. He broke three separate eggs, but nothing happened.

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After asking Puthoff if he could try, Vogel put his hand over an egg and related to it exactly as he had learned to relate to his plants. In one minute, the needle on the E-meter's galvanometer dial began to move and finally "pinned". Vogel backed ten feet away and got gyrations from the needle by opening and closing his hands. Though Puthoff and several others tried to do the same, all failed.

[...SNIP...]

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With nothing but his will power, Swann has been able to affect a mechanism in the university's most thoroughly shielded "quark" chamber, buried deep underground in a vault of liquid helium, IMPENETRABLE TO ANY KNOWN WAVELENGTHS OF THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM, astonishing the academic physicists who watched him perform what they considered to be an impossible feat.

[...SNIP...]

Two young Californian students of humanistic psychology and Hindu philosophy, Randall Fontes and Robert Swanson, have now pursued Vogel's quarry into unbeaten ground. Using sophisticated equipment lent them by the IBM researcher, they have made a series of discoveries so surprising that despite their youth they have been granted funds and equipment by established universities to further probe the mysteries of plant communication.

Fontes' and Swanson's first discovery came virtually by accident when one noticed the other's yawning was being picked up by a plant in the form of energy surges. Instead of ignoring the phenomenon as improbable, the two students followed up the clue remembering that in ancient Hindu texts an exaggerated yawn was considered a means by which a tired person could be recharged with vivifying shakhti, a postulated energy filling the universe.

[...SNIP...]

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## Chapter 3: Plants That Open Doors

[...SNIP...]

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[Electronics engineer Sauvin] also found in the course of his various experiments that the simplest signal he could transmit to his plants, extrasensorily, to which they would respond with a sharp enough reaction, was to give himself a light electric shock, the very simplest method being to swivel his desk chair and then ground the accumulated static charge by touching his finger to his metal desk. His plants several miles away would react with an instant surge.

[...SNIP...]

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As his plants reacted most strongly to any damage done to himself or to any part of his own energy field, he experimented with remotely killing a few cells of his body in the presence of the plants. The system worked admirably.

[...SNIP...]

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Sauvin soon found that his plants DID react to joy and pleasure, but with wave patterns that were not sharp enough to trigger a switch reliably.

[...SNIP...]

By a slight adaptation to his transmitter equipment Sauvin is able to start, stop, or affect the speed of a model plane in flight by transmitting a thought to the plant.

[...SNIP...]

Already [1970s material] the U.S. Army has taken an interest in the project. At Fort Belvoir, Virginia, funds have been provided for research on plants. The Army is interested in devising ways of measuring the emotional responses of people via plants, without having to sensitize the plants to a special person beforehand.

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The Navy is also showing interest. Eldon Byrd, an operations analyst with the Advanced Planning and Analysis Staff of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland, has been duplicating Backster's experiments with some success. A member of the American Society for Cybernetics and senior member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Byrd attached the electrodes of a polygraph to the leaves of a plant, and has been observing definite fluctuations of the polygraph needle as the plant responds to various stimuli. Like Backster, Byrd found that MERELY BY THINKING OF HARMING A PLANT'S LEAF IT WAS POSSIBLE TO MAKE A POLYGRAPH NEEDLE JUMP. Byrd's experiments involved monitoring a plant's reaction to stimuli from water, infrared and ultraviolet light, fire, physical stres, and dismemberment.

[p 40-41]

Byrd believes the galvanometrical effect produced by a plant is not caused by electrical resistance in the leaf, but by a change of bio-potential in the cells from outside to the inside membrane, as defined by the Swedish Dr. L. Karlson, who has shown that a cluster of cells can change polarity, though the energy which causes cells to become polarized is not known. Byrd believes that a voltage change in the cells is what is being measured, and that it is the mechanism of consciousness which causes the change in potential.

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Byrd's research supports Backster's observations that plants exhibit a quality of awareness an an empathy to other organisms that are stimulated in their presence. Like Backster, Byrd also found a major problem in his experiments to be the plants' tendency to "faint" under excess stress, suddenly ceasing to respond even to the most basic stimuli, including his intent to burn the plant. On camera Byrd got a plant to respond to his shaking a spider in a pill box. The plant responded with about a second's delay, the response continuing as long as a minute. He also got a strong reaction when cutting the leaf from another plant.

Byrd, who has a master's degree ni medical engineering from George Washington University and is a member of Mensa, a worldwide organization whose primary requirement is an extremely high intelligence quotient, has no ready solution to explain the apparent response of plants to human thoughts, and is open to widely disparate explanations, including alterations of the Earth's magnetic field, supernatural and spiritual phenomena, and the mysterious mechanics of bioplasma. In a paper presented in 1972, to the American Society of Cybernetics, Byrd reviewed numerous Russian experiments with thought transmission via "bioplasma," which certain Soviet scientists claim to be a previously undiscovered form of energy. [See also Rifat: Remote Viewing and Ostrander/Schroeder: Psychic Discoveries for more information on bioplasma.]

[p 41-42]

In May 1973, Byrd began to set up an experiment to instrument the tiny leaves of Mimosa pudica, which are so sensitive that they collapse when touched. Byrd believes that, by using a thin wire barely touching a mimosa leaf, he can pick up through a special amplifier minute changes in voltage or resistance. Also available to Byrd is one of the world's finest chart recorders, made in West Germany by Siemens, which shoots out more than three feet of recording paper per second with the patterns recorded by a jet of ink only a few microns wide. With these devices Byrd hopes to be able to pick up plant reactions which have hitherto gone unnoticed.

Byrd is also planning to work with a primitive marine alga, Acetabularia cremulata, which, though two inches long, is made up of only a single cell. If this monocellular plant exhibits the "Backster Effect," Byrd will then surgically remove its nucleus. If it then fails to respond, Byrd hopes this will offer proof that the genetic material in the nuclei of plant cells is chiefly responsible for plant response.

A revolutionary new lie detector device known as a Psychological Stress Evaluator has also been made available to Byrd, along with lab space and facilities, by Allan Bell, inventor of the device, who is president of Dektor Counter Intelligence Systems, a firm he recently [1970s material] formed with two other ex-intelligence officers. The device, tested by monitoring twenty five segments of the television program To Tell The Truth, is said to have picked the persons who were telling the truth with 94.7 percent accuracy. The theory behind the device is that the human voice normally operates both in audible and INaudible frequency modulations except when a person is under stress. According to the inventors of the device, when the inaudible FM vibrations disappear from the voice under stress, the ear does not note the difference, but the machine can trace the fluctuations on a chart. Byrd is now working on a means of adapting the device for employment in conjunction with plants. [1970s material]

[...SNIP...]

Transformed and amplified by Dr. Hashimoto's electronic equipment, the sound produced by the plant was like the high pitched hum of very high voltage wires heard from a distance, except that it was more like a song, the rhythm and tone being varied and pleasant, at times even warm and almost jolly.

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John Francis Dougherty, a young American from Marina Del Rey, California who witnessed one of these conversations, says it sounded as if Mrs. Hashimoto, speaking in modulated Japanese, was being answered by the plant in modulated "cactese". Dougherty further reports that the Hashimotos became so intimate with the plant that they were soon able to teach it to count and add up to twenty. In answer to a query as to how much two and two make, the plant responds with sounds which, when transcribed back into inked tracings, produced FOUR distinct and conjoined peaks.

[...SNIP...]

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## Chapter 4: Visitors From Space

[...SNIP...]

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An important difference between Lawrence's apparatus for capturing plant signals and that of Backster, Vogel and Sauvin is that it incorporates, in a temperature controlled bath, LIVING VEGETAL TISSUE shielded behind a Faraday tube that screens out even the slightest electromagnetic interference. Lawrence found that living vegetal tissue is able to perceive signals far more delicately than electronic sensors. It is his belief that biological radiations transmitted by living things are best received by a biological medium.

[...SNIP...]

As Lawrence checked his instrumentation, the audio signal, to his amazement, continued to produce a distinct chain of pulses for over half an hour before even the whistle returned, indicating that nothing more was being received. The signals had to be coming from somewhere, and since his device had been continuously pointed up toward the heavens, Lawrence was faced with the fantastic thought that something or someone was transmitting from outer space.

[...SNIP...]

Aligning his telescope - coupled with the Faraday tube, a camera, an electromagnetic interference monitor, and the tissue chamber - to celestial coordinates 10 hours 40 minutes plus 56 degrees, which gave him the general direction for Ursa Major, Lawrence switched on his audio signal. After a ninety minute interval, his equipment again picked up a recognizable, though briefer, pattern of signals. According to Lawrence, the periods between rapid series of pulses ranged from approximately three to ten minutes over a stretch of several hours as he monitored a single spot in the heavens.

[...SNIP...]

Deciding that his findings may be of crucial significance and could herald a new and as yet unimagined system of communication, Lawrence has sent a copy of his October, 1971, tape, together with a seven page report, to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, where it is preserved as a potentially historical scientific document. The report concludes:

"An apparent train of interstellar communication signals of unknown origin and destination has been observed. Since interception was made by biological sensors, a biological type signal transmission must be assumed. Test experiments were conducted in an electromagnetic deep fringe area, the equipment itself being impervious to electromagnetic radiation. Follow up tests revealed no equipment defects. Because [BIOLOGICAL DETECTOR] interstellar listening experiments are not conducted on a routine basis, the suggestion is advanced that verification tests should be conducted elsewhere, possibly on a global scale. The phenomenon is too important to be ignored."

[...SNIP...]

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Lawrence's most important conclusion, that biological type sensors are needed in order to intercept biological signals, applies particularly to communications from outer space. As he puts it: "Standard electronics are next to worthless here, since 'bio-signals' apparently RESIDE OUTSIDE OF THE KNOWN ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM."

[...SNIP...]

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When he began to study the problem in 1963, Lawrence found that he could get no help from plant specialists and biologists because none of them knew enough physics, and especially electronics, to visualize what he was driving at. In his search for a biological system for radiating and receiving signals, Lawrence began by going over the experiments made in the 1920s by the Russian histologist Alexander Gurwitsch and his wife, who proclaimed that all living cells produce an invisible radiation. Gurwitsch had noticed that the cells in the tips of onion roots seemed to be dividing at a definite rhythm. Believing this is due to an extra unexplained source of physical energy, Gurwitsch wondered whether it might not come from nearby cells.

To test out his theory he mounted one root tip in a horizontally oriented thin glass tube to act as a ray gun. This he pointed at a similar onion root tip, also protected in a tube, but with a small area on one side exposed naked to serve as a target. After three hours of exposure, Gurwitsch examined sections from the target root under his microscope. When he compared the number of cell divisions, he found 25 percent more in the exposed, irradiated area. The receiver root had seemingly picked up a vital energy from its neighbour.

To try to block the emission, Gurwitsch repeated the experiment with a thin shield of quartz between the roots, but obtained essentially the same results. However, when the quartz was coated with gelatin, or a simple sheet of glass was substituted, no enhanced cell division could be observed. Since glass and gelatin were known to block various ultraviolet frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum, Gurwitsch concluded that the rays emitted by the cells of an onion root tip must be as short or shorter than ultraviolet. Because they apparently increased cell division, or "mitosis,", he called them "mitogenic rays."

[...SNIP...]

Continuing to probe further with a sensitive high impedance device of his own design, Lawrence sought to discover whether individual cells in a quarter inch slice of onion, attached to a Wheatstone bridge and electrometer [sensitive voltmeter, basically], would react to various stimuli. He found that they seemed to respond to irritations such as a puff of smoke, or even to his MENTAL IMAGE of their destruction, in about one hundred milliseconds, or one tenth of a second.

What seemed most odd to Lawrence was that the reaction of the onion tissue seemed to change depending on whether he, or someone else, was directing THOUGHT at it. People with "psychic gifts" seemed to elicit much stronger responses than the practical minded Lawrence. As he commented: "If one can cause, or get something to cause, harm to a cell - assuming that the cell has a cellular consciousness - the reaction pattern in it will change from experimenter to experimenter."

[...SNIP...]

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Lawrence warned his readers that work with plant was not just a matter of electronic expertise and that working with the Backster Effect involved much more than the mere ability to construct top quality electronic equipment. "There are certain qualities here," he wrote, "which do not enter into normal experimental situations. According to those experimenting in this area, it is necessary to have a 'green thumb' and, most important, a genuine love for plants.

[...SNIP...]

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Warning that constant repetition was an important factor in such testing, Lawrence stated that if a plant specimen is stimulated continuously, badly injured, or infrequently watered, it would tire quickly, or even lapse into shock and die. Researchers were therefore cautioned to be gentle with their plants and allow them to recuperate after experimentation. The area in which plants live must be quiet, added Lawrence, "so that the stimuli can be effectively applied with a minimum of power line noise or disturbances from radio frequency transmission to cause faulty indications."

[EW: Luckily, the less sensitive and less affected by RF signals GSR units are adequate, per the first two chapters.]

[...SNIP...]

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Freshly settled in Canada, Merta supported himself for two months by working as a troubleshooter for a large Montreal grower and importer of tropical plants. When clients in office and residential buildings complained that their plants were getting sick, Merta was sent to ascertain the trouble. Because he also took care of thousands of plants in the firm's extensive greenhouses, Merta noticed that the effects of LONELINESS produced when a plant is taken away from its friends often caused it such shock that it would pine, even die; however, when returned to the greenhouse, it immediately perked up and regained its normal green health. On June 5, 1973, the research division of Anchor College of Truth in San

[...SNIP...]

Bernardino announced that it was inaugurating the world's first biological type interstellar communications observatory under the direction of L. George Lawrence, now also a vice president of Anchor. For the new research program Lawrence has designed what he calls a Stellartron, which combines in one three ton instrument the features of a radio telescope and the biological signal receiving system of the biodynamic field station. [EW: Refers to Lawrence's early living tissue detectors.]

[...SNIP...]

[p 61-62]

Lawrence's research, suggesting as it does that intelligences are communicating INSTANTLY across distances requiring millions of light years to reach, indicates that what is needed is not space ships but the proper "telephone numbers" to contact them.

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## Chapter 5: Latest Soviet Discoveries (1970s)

[...SNIP...]

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In addition to a plant's ability to recognize friend and foe, Soviet researchers also noted that one plant supplied with water CAN SOMEHOW SHARE IT WITH A DEPRIVED NEIGHBOR. In one institute of research a cornstalk planted in a glass container was denied water for several weeks. Yet it did not die; it remained as healthy as other cornstalks planted in normal conditions nearby. In some way, say Soviet botanists, water was transferred from healthy plants to the "prisoner" in the jar. Yet they have no idea how this was accomplished.

As fantastic as this may seem, a kind of plant to plant transfer has been taking place in England in experiments begun in 1972 by Dr. A. R. Bailey. Two plants in an artifically lit greenhouse in which temperature, humidity and light were carefully controlled were suffering from lack of water. Bailey and his collaborator measured the voltages generated between two parts of both plants. When one plant was watered from the outside through plastic tubes, the other plant reacted. As Bailey told the British Society of Dowsers: "There was no electrical connection between them, no physical connection whatsoever, but somehow, one plant picked up what was going on with the other."

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## Chapter 12: Force Fields, Humans and Plants

[...SNIP...]

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[p 187-88]

... Meanwhile, the research of the Russian Alexander Gurwitsch, which inspired L. George Lawrence to begin his study of the potentialities of biocommunication, despite its rejection by the U.S. Academy of Sciences, began to get a new lease on life. The distinguished bacteriologist at Cornell University, Professor Otto Rahn, was amazed to find that whenever any of his laboratory workers fell ill THEY APPEARED TO CAUSE THE DEATH OF YEAST CELLS WITH WHICH THEY WERE EXPERIMENTING. A few minutes' exposure to their fingertips EVEN AT A DISTANCE would kill vigorous cells of this carbohydrate fermeniting fungus. Further investigation showed that a chemical compound excreted from the hands and faces of the sick technicians was responsible; but how it ACTED AT A DISTANCE was a mystery. Rahn went on to prove that the continually renewed tissue of the cornea of the eye, as well as most wounds and cancer tumors, EMIT RADIATION; he set these and other findings down in a book, Invisible Radiation of Organisms, which on the whole was ignored by his colleagues. [EW: But NOT THE PERPS!]

[...SNIP...]

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## Chapter 13: The Mystery of Plant and Human Auras

[...SNIP...]

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[p 207]

Henry C. Monteith, an electrical engineer in Albuquerqur, New Mexico, working at home, put together an apparatus consisting of two 6-volt batteries, a vibrator used to power automobile radios, and an ignition coil sold at all auto supply stores. Like the Russians, Monteith found that a LIVE leaf gave beautiful and varied self-emissions that cannot be adequately explained by any conventional theory. He was further mystified when he discovered that a DEAD leaf gave, at most, only a uniform glow. Exposed to only 30,000 volts, the dead leaf did not reveal anything at all on film, EVEN WHEN BATHED IN WATER, but the life leaf shimmered in a radiance of self-emissions.

[EW: The reason this information is so important is that at least one scientist made a claim on a popular nighttime radio talk show that live leaves and dead leaves showed identical discharge patterns. Those who have been active in the anti-electronic harassment movement for some time have heard many disinformational claims designed to keep every small bit of advanced scientific discovery discredited in the mind of the public. Since the electronic harassment crimes depend on the public being ignorant of the advanced "ESP-class" technology being used, the visitor should realize that such discreditation statements are disinformation. We who are targetted know this first hand.]

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## Chapter 20: Mind Over Matter

[...SNIP...]

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[p 359]

[Dr. Andrea] Puharich has now discovered a truly remarkable psychic in the body of a young [1970s material] Israeli, Uri Geller, whose abilities have startled hundreds of audiences and left most open minded scientists [EW: You mean there are some?] aghast at their implications.

Under rigorous test conditions, Geller has been able to UNFAILINGLY locate an iron ball or water hidden in one of ten identical sealed metal cans without touching the cans, to move solid objects at a distance WITHOUT THE USE OF ANY ENERGY KNOWN TO PHYSICS, to bend AT A DISTANCE dense metal objects, such as a solid silver Mexican coin, as if they were plastic in his hands, to repair broken watches and get them running without having ever opened their cases, to shatter a set of watchmaker's screwdrivers made of a special alloy steel, and EVEN TO CAUSE OBJECTS TO VANISH FROM THEIR LOCATIONS AND REAPPEAR SOMEWHERE ELSE. Geller can also affect at will the material recorded on a magnetic tape, such as that used in television.

[EW: I have personally witnessed two "objects disappear then reappear at some other location" (one in a moving vehicle) events. Some have said Uri Geller was a hoax, but this attestation by Dr. Puharich counters that. Furthermore, my father was an acquaintance of Uri Geller and in spite of trying hard to find any trickery in Geller's demonstrations at my Dad's home, found no evidence of any hoax.]

### END OF TRANSCRIBED MATERIAL

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ELEANOR WHITE TALKING:

This book promises potentially important clues about today's advanced mind/body weapons, clues that may spark important ideas in electronic harassment targets who take the trouble to acquire or borrow the book. There are further sections on a range of topics in the psychic arena. It may take me some time to complete the book and post a publicly accessible review of it, because of competing needs for time.

** AS ALWAYS, BE VERY CAUTIOUS BEFORE SPENDING MONEY ON COUNTERMEASURE EXPERIMENTS.