But, when he took his hands away, as the spider became conscious that it was able to run, you’d see a huge chart reaction just prior to its attempt to escape. This sequence was repeated several times.
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Backster soon appeared on numerous television shows to demonstrate this effect, including ones hosted by Johnny Carson, Art Linkletter, Merv Griffin and David Frost.
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Frost asked Backster if his plant was male or female. Backster and his plant both had an amusing response to this rather personal question.
I suggested he go over and lift up a leaf and take a peek. Before he even approached the plant, [it] . . . showed a wild reaction, evoking a very amused reaction from the studio audience.
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Backster’s results were replicated by Russian scientist V. N. Pushkin in 1972, using EEG instrumentation. People under hypnosis were brought into a powerful state of emotional stimulation, and a nearby geranium would have a strong reaction each time this occurred.
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Despite all these intriguing results, the scientific community was predictably severe in its criticism. Dr. Otto Solbrig of Harvard University’s biology department was not amused.
[This is a] waste of time. This work is not going to advance science very much. We know enough already about plants—so that when someone comes up with something like this, we say it’s quackery. You might say we are prejudiced. Maybe we are.
Yale professor Arthur Galtson was a little more polite—but still not supportive.
I don’t say Backster’s phenomena are impossible. I just say there are enough other things of more value to work on. . . . It’s attractive to think that plants are listening to you or that they respond to prayer, but there’s nothing in it. There’s no nervous system in a plant. There are no means by which sensation can be transferred.
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Others, like Stanford Research Institute’s Dr. Hal Puthoff, were more encouraging.
I don’t regard Backster’s work as quackery. The way he conducts his experiments is pretty good. It’s not the sloppy thing that most people believe who think the work’s no good.
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All of Nature Is in a Constant “Conversation”
Backster also connected yogurt bacteria, ordinary chicken eggs from his refrigerator and even live human cells to his polygraph—and continued to get stunning results. Consistently, what he found was that every living thing is intimately attuned to its environment. When any stress, suffering or death occurs, all the life-forms in the surrounding area have an immediate electrical response—as if they all share the pain.
Backster first got the idea to wire up chicken eggs when a philodendron plant had a strong reaction—right as he cracked one open for breakfast.
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Even though he used conventional, non-fertilized eggs from the grocery store, Backster’s electroded eggs displayed unexpected behavior—including patterns similar to a heartbeat on an EEG, and complex “cycles within cycles” on an EKG.
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One of Backster’s electroded eggs had a sudden shock when he picked up his Siamese cat, Sam, and startled him out of a deep sleep. Even more impressive is the graph of an electroded egg “screaming” each time its former neighbors are dropped into boiling water, one by one. This egg was kept inside a lead-lined box that screened out all electromagnetic fields. That meant this effect could not be due to any radio waves, microwaves or other electromagnetic frequencies.
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Backster clearly understood the importance of shielding out electromagnetic fields in an experiment like this.
At the suggestion of several scientists, and the physicists in particular, I later attempted to shield the smaller electroded plants from electromagnetic interference by using a copper screen cage [also known as a Faraday cage]. . . . The plants behaved as if the screen cage enclosure did not exist. Much later I had the opportunity to confirm this using [a] state-of-the-art shielded room. . . . I felt certain [the information passing between plants, bacteria, insects, animals and humans] was not within the known electromagnetic frequencies, AM, FM or any form of signal which could be shielded by ordinary means. Distance seemed to impose no limitation. I made observations that suggested that this signal could traverse dozens, even hundreds of miles. It seemed that the signal may not even fall within the electromagnetic spectrum. If not, this would certainly have profound implications.
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This is one of many such investigations that proved the Source Field is almost certainly not electromagnetic (EM). Every scientist knows EM waves cannot penetrate through lead-lined enclosures, copper-screened Faraday cages and/or shielded rooms.
Backster’s experiments with human cells made his discovery far more personal. In these experiments, Backster would obtain living cells from someone’s mouth by having him swish a little water around and spit it into a test tube. This tube was then whirled in a centrifuge, bringing the living white blood cells to the top, which Backster extracted with an eyedropper. The cells were then placed into a tiny one-milliliter test tube and electroded with very thin gold wires.
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These living samples could survive this way for “ten to twelve hours,”
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giving high-quality reactions the entire time.
My favorite example of Backster’s work with human cells was performed with NASA astronaut Dr. Brian O’Leary in 1988, who served on the faculties of Cornell University, California Institute of Technology, University of California and Princeton University. O’Leary brought an ex–lady friend along to the lab and apparently they had a strong argument—which “provided ample opportunity for him to witness firsthand extremely high quality chart reactions.”
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O’Leary then left for the San Diego airport so he could fly back to Phoenix, Arizona—some three hundred miles away. He synchronized watches with Backster, and his cells were monitored in the lab the entire time.
It was previously agreed that [Dr. O’Leary] would keep an accurate log of events which might have caused him momentary anxiety. These included missing a turn on the freeway while returning his rental car to the airport, nearly missing his flight because of the long line at the ticket counter, his flight’s departure and landing in Phoenix, his son’s failure to meet him on time at the airport, and a number of other logged events. Later when comparisons were made by transferring the logged events to the appropriate portions of the chart recording, there was a good correlation between chart reactions and nearly all of the perceived anxieties. His chart became very quiet after he returned home and retired for the evening.
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I discussed this experiment with Dr. O’Leary over a private dinner in Zurich, Switzerland, while we were both speaking at a conference—and he confirmed to me how amazed he was by it. His own mind was broadcasting waves of information that were being picked up by his living cells in a lab three hundred miles away. The effect works just as well if the cells are kept in shielded rooms, again proving the signals are not being transmitted by electromagnetic energy. There is something “out there,” some energy field, that allows our thoughts to propagate through space—even over vast distances. The implications of this are stunning—particularly when you start to consider how it seems that every living thing in nature is listening to everything else. We are definitely not excluded from this process.
I’ve lectured on this subject a number of times, and invariably the audience groans when they find out that vegetables, fruits, yogurt, eggs and the living cells in raw meat are all “screaming” when they are cooked and/or eaten. Even hard-core vegan/vegetarian/raw foodists who consider themselves to be on a “cruelty-free” diet are now faced with the fact that the food they eat must go through measurable distress—at least from a human’s perspective. Even if you do not cook your vegetables, your digestive activity still has a “burning” effect. Backster did tell me that if you “pray” over your food, by sending it positive, loving thoughts, it then seems to accept its role in helping you stay alive—and these severe reactions no longer occur on the graph paper.
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Many cultures and spiritual traditions encourage us to “thank our food.” With Backster’s research we now see that this seemingly unimportant behavior—from a scientific standpoint—has a definite purpose in our new model.
Free Energy—and the Consequences
At this same Zurich conference, Dr. Brian O’Leary revealed a wealth of information suggesting “free energy” devices have been invented, again and again, but are invariably suppressed by corporate power brokers. According to the Institute for New Energy, as of 1997, “the U.S. Patent Office has classified over 3,000 patent devices or applications under the secrecy order, Title 35, U.S. Code (1952) Sections 181-188.”
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The Federation of American Scientists revealed that by the end of Fiscal Year 2010, this number had ballooned to 5,135 inventions—and included “review and possible restriction” on any solar cell with greater than twenty percent efficiency, or any power system that is more than seventy to eighty percent efficient at converting energy.
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According to Dr. O’Leary, some researchers are bought off and their discoveries put on a shelf. Others are threatened into submission, while others die under strange circumstances. Dr. O’Leary then brought me up onstage for a panel discussion, and he mentioned how Dr. Stefan Marinov—“the head of the European free energy movement”—allegedly jumped to his death from the tenth story of the library building at the University of Graz in Austria. Marinov flew out of the window backward, as if he had been shoved. And according to Dr. O’Leary, “He left no suicide note, and he was one of the most positive, highly spirited persons I’ve ever met.”
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O’Leary also mentioned Dr. Eugene Mallove, arguably the world’s leading figure in alternative energy research, during this same time.
Overwhelmed with emotion, I actually burst into tears onstage in front of this four-hundred-person audience while I discussed my own personal experience with Dr. Mallove. I’m sure you could have measured a huge electrical surge in the plants that were around me onstage when this happened. Dr. Mallove started out as the head science writer for Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s own journal. Mallove claimed he was ordered to suppress research into cold fusion—during which they had gotten positive results suggesting free energy was being generated from the reaction.
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From there, he quit his job and went on to start
Infinite Energy Magazin
e
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—and became arguably the top coordinator, publisher and liaison for alternative-energy inventors worldwide.
On May 15, 2004, I was a featured guest on an episode of
Coast to Coast
, the largest nighttime talk-radio program in the United States, with Art Bell and Richard Hoagland.
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I found out a few days before airtime that Dr. Mallove was going to come on as our surprise special guest. We were about to make a stunning announcement: Hoagland and Mallove were going to visit Washington, D.C., the following week, and bring along a working, tabletop free-energy device. This device apparently would begin spinning by simply being stared at and did not use any conventional power source. I wasn’t sure how it worked but it sounded fascinating—and I knew such things were theoretically possible from the Source Field investigations I had been doing already. Hoagland had lined up meetings with various senators and congressmen to demonstrate the device—and push for these breakthroughs to be released to the public for study and commercial application.
Less than twenty-four hours before we were about to go live on the air, Dr. Mallove was bludgeoned to death outside his parents’ home.
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I found it quite suspicious that this happened right before the announcement to the public of Dr. Mallove’s secret device—and of his imminent political mission to Capitol Hill.
Certain groups do appear to have a serious, vested interest in suppressing the Source Field Investigations. I am aware that any discussion of these issues invariably gets you labeled as a “paranoid nutcase,” but the events surrounding the death of Dr. Mallove have made it much more personal for me.
Regardless of the skepticism, sarcasm, ridicule, humiliation, and threats that may be associated with the Source Field investigations, there is real truth to be found—hard science you need to know, today, to help make a brighter future for everyone. And best of all, these discoveries are very positive—ultimately proving that most people’s idea of a loving God is, in fact, alive and well.
CHAPTER TWO
Consciousness, Eternity and Universal Mind
W
e are on a quest to discover if a Source Field really does exist—and our investigation is starting to uncover surprising information. Dr. Cleve Backster’s research gives the compelling suggestion that all living things—bacteria, plants, insects, animals, birds, fish and humans—are in some form of constant communication with one another. This communication involves the use of a field that is not supposed to exist—because it cannot be found in the conventional electromagnetic spectrum of visible light, radio waves, infrared, microwaves, X-rays, and others. Furthermore, Backster is only one of a variety of hypnosis researchers who have discovered that we can become completely unaware of signals in our environment if we are simply told, while in trance, that we will not be able to see or hear them. If all living things are sharing a constant, psychic attunement with one another, perhaps our minds deliberately screen out most of this information for our own sanity.
In Mexico, there lived a remarkable female healer known as Pachita—born Barbara Guerrero—who was a practitioner of psychic healing. Pachita discovered in childhood that she had a profound healing ability, and practiced it on animals while she worked as a high-wire acrobat for the circus. She later fought alongside Pancho Villa as a teenager, sang in cabarets and sold lottery tickets before recovering her abilities as a thirty-year-old housewife. For the next forty-seven years, she strictly avoided publicity as she practiced her skills, and helped many different people with seemingly incurable medical problems. Only in late 1977 did she become open to the idea of her talents being scientifically studied—and asked Dr. Andrija Puharich to investigate her psychic healing powers with a team of specialists from the United States.
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