December / January 2003-2004

PRIMARY PERCEPTION: Biocommunication with Plants, Living Foods and Human Cells
BY CLEVE BACKSTER
White Rose Millennium Press,
2003, $15.95, 160 pp., ISBN:
0-966435435.

Reviewed by Paul Von Ward

Clive Backster

My plant reads my mind! On February 2, 1966, this realization forever changed the life of the FBI’s and CIA’s foremost polygraph researcher, and reintroduced modern science to the sentient nature of our universe. On that date the brilliant and disciplined mind of Cleve Backster conceived an irrefutable paradigm-busting scientific protocol. With straightforward electronics that a student or garage scientist can replicate, he proved to humans that their thoughts and emotions affect the behavior of their own and other living cells.

For millennia traditional peoples have known that all life forms—plants, animals, and even single cells—are not only sentient and intelligent, but that they communicate with one another. This fact got lost a few centuries ago along with the mechanistic focus of industrial science and the modern human view of reality that ascribed consciousness only to the human brain. A few 20th century scientific pioneers, such as Chandra Bose in India and the Kirlians in the former Soviet Union, had earlier developed technology to demonstrate energy fields and basic emotional responses in plants and animals. Backster’s experimental work took the next step and documented a heretofore unrecognized cellular level of interspecies biocommunication.

Many writers have described specific aspects of Backster’s research over the years. Most readers will remember the stillpopular, best-selling, The Secret Life of Plants by Chris Bird and Peter Tompkins, first published in 1973. It capitalized on Backster’s early work. Some will have read Robert Stone’s 1989 The Secret Life of Your Cells which focused on his in vitro testing of human cells. Others may recall media attention to Backster’s work in the late 1960s and 1970s.

This new book is the first extensive and progressive account of the work of a man who should soon receive the Nobel Prize in biology. By Cleve Backster himself, it includes welldesigned graphics and historically valuable photographs that portray a lifetime of groundbreaking research. Backster explains to the reader how plants perceive and react to human thoughts about them. He then illustrates how electroded eggs react to other eggs being dropped into boiling water. And how plants react to the eggs’ reaction to the experimenter’s intentions. He shows how yogurt cells communicate with one another and other species. Backster then describes the collection of human cells (leukocytes and blood) and the instrumentation that records their reactions to the thoughts and emotions of their donor.

THE PLANT THAT GAVE UNEXPECTED RESULTS ON A POLYGRAPH MACHINE

In an easy-to-follow style uncommon in today’s scientific literature, Backster takes the reader step by step through his thinking about the design of the protocol, the selection of scientific equipment, and the practical execution of the experiment. He then explains the data and its implications. The reader in effect becomes a collaborator in Backster’s research.

Nothing is kept in a black box. Backster describes (and includes photographs of) the experimental process. He gives enough detail so that the motivated reader can replicate the experiment or create his own variation. He does not expect you to take his answers because he is such an august authority. Cleve Backster wants you to develop proof of your own communications with and influence on other life forms. He wants you to feel the excitement for yourself.

Over 35 years of meticulous research, Cleve Backster has progressively undermined the notion of a universe comprised of discrete units. He has done for biology and psychology what quantum and standing wave concepts have done for physics. He has documented the connectedness of all life forms and the interactivity of their consciousness. In the light of his work, no rational scientist can any longer deny that the living foods upon which we depend anticipate our actions by perceiving our spontaneous intentions. No medical researcher, sports trainer, or psychologist can ignore the evidence that our thoughts influence the activity of our cells, and, thus, the performance of our bodies. His research has given credence to many theories of mind-body reciprocity, as in “inner tennis,” use of psychic energy or prayer in distant healing, telepathy, dowsing, and other thought-matter interactions.

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Unfortunately, after the abovementioned, widespread early media attention to Backster’s discoveries, he received a cold shoulder from the scientific establishment. To understand why, we must discuss a limitation in conventional science’s model of reality. Most scientific disciplines, from physics and chemistry to biology, started with the assumption that the universe was comprised of discrete and independently functioning entities, from subatomic particles and cells to separate organisms. In this model, these separate units (at whatever level) operate mechanistically on the basis of visible and physically measurable interactions. This is known as the Newtonian model. Thus, conventional research protocols used to test Backster’s hypothesis would by definition preclude any possible role for the intervention of spontaneity and conscious intention. A science not designed to deal with these self-evident aspects of human experience does not have the capability to theorize about and to test such fundamental questions.

Backsters’ work, therefore, does much more than document various aspects of primary perception (his term for the most basic level of interspecies and intercellular interaction). It demands an expansion of the boundaries of scientific theory and the creation of research protocols that can encompass the full range of human experience in the universe. His new book is that fundamental to the future of science, yet, it can be understood by the intellectually curious layman. It deserves to be on the reading list both for high school science classes and for the graduate schools of renowned universities.

PAUL VON WARD is author of Our Solarian Legacy: Multi-dimensional Humans in a Self Learning Universe and the forthcoming Gods, Genes, and Consciousness: Nonhuman Intervention in Human History in March 2004. www.vonward.com