Approved Fo^e^ea^0^03/07 ; C|k4fe^?§-Q^87^004ft01 00022-
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Imagine
attempting
a
wheelie
on
your bike in. the driveway and ending
up
doing
a
crashie
into
a
bed
of
geraniums. You’d probably
feel
pret-
ty bad. But how do you think the ge-
raniums would feel?
Geraniums?
They
can’t
feel—can
they? A man named Cleve Backster
claims plants can
feel. He’s done ex-
periments proving, he says, that plants
have emotions just as humans have.
They
“faint” when
threatened,
feel
sympathy and appreciation, and even
have a
sort of memory, according to
Mr. Backster.
It all began in 1966 when Mr. Back-
ster, a lie detector (polygraph) expert,
hitched up an electrode from his poly-
graph to the leaf of a houseplant. Mr.
Backster had just poured water on the
plant’s
roots, and he wanted
to see
how long it would take for the water
to reach the tip of a leaf. (Polygraphs
measure
and
automatically make
a
chart of changing electrical impulses.
A
freshly watered plant would grad-
ually show a pattern of less and less
electrical resistance.)
Suddenly the chart became full of
squiggles.lt wasn’t measuring root-to-
leaf time. It was producing the same
pattern
that
appears on
a person’s
polygraph
when
he’s
emotionally
moved. Was
the
plant
saying,
“Thanks for the drink”?
Mr. Backster decided to try some-
thing else. He thought of a threat to
the
leaf:
touching
it with a burning
match. But before he could do any-
thing, the graph’s curve shot upward
almost off the chart. The plant seemed
afraid!
That was enough for Mr. Backster.
He began a series of hundreds of ex-
periments with plants and polygraphs,
and he’s had some weird results:
• Someone selected one of three fresh
vegetables to be dropped into boiling
water. The one selected went into a
polygraph
“faint”
(a sudden upward
movement followed by one continuous
straight
line)
before
it
was
even
touched.
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: CIA-RDP96-00787R0004001 00022-5
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: C IA-RDP96-00787^00^01 00022-5
Your garden might be doing a
lot more than just growing.
It might be reading your mind.
• One of six students was given the
task of tearing into shreds one of two
plants alone in a room. After the plant
was demolished, the students, one by
one, walked by the
surviving
plant.
The plant showed no reaction whatso-
ever to five of the students. But when
the
killer
approached,
the
plant
“fainted.”
• While tiny shrimps were being boiled
alive
in one room, plants in another
reacted with intense emotion.
Grad-
ually,
however,
as
more
and
more
shrimps
were
cooked,
the
plants
stopped being so excited.
Mr.
Backster
also
says
that
the
polygraph has charted reactions from
cooked
vegetables. And rotted
ones.
He says he’s also recorded eggs “faint-
ing” just before being cracked into a
waiting skillet.
Mr. Backster has had
lots of en-
thusiastic followers. Twenty or 30 in-
stitutions
are
at present reproducing
some of his experiments in their own
labs. A reported 7,000 scientists have
requested copies of his research. And
some
people
have
tried
to
actually
make plants do things by thought con-
trol.
An inventor named Paul Sauvin re-
cently
conducted
an
experiment
in
which an indoor plant, controlled only
by Sauvin’s thoughts, supposedly trig-
gered a device that started a car in an
outdoor parking
lot. Sauvin was 2 Vi
miles away at the time.
But what does it all mean? One in-
terested party thinks there might be
a “primary form of instant communi-
cation between all
living things that
goes beyond everything we now know
about science.” Scientists in the So-
viet
Union, who have done research
similar
to
Mr.
Backster’s,
are
con-
vinced that plants possess
electrical
impulses
similar to man’s nerve im-
pulses.
We don’t know where
it
all could
lead. Just remember all these things
the next time you’re around a willow
tree. The wrong thought might make
it weep.
Approved For Release 2001/03/07
: CIA-RDP96-00787R0004001 00022-5
Can a person's
spirit leave tn^rbody
see events somewhere else? Some
people believe so—and
^
V
claim to have done
it.
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Approved For Release 2001/03/07
: CIA-RDP96-00787R0004001 00022-5
Approved For Relea^0^03/07
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It
was
late
at
night and
Robert
Monroe was lying in bed awake. His
wife
had
already
fallen
asleep
be-
side him. Suddenly a surge of power
began in his head and spread through-
out his body. Trying to analyze what
was happening, Robert
let his mind
ramble.
A moment
later, he felt something
pressing
against
his
shoulder.
He
reached back and felt a smooth wall.
He
tried to see in the dim
light. He
thought he had fallen out of bed.
Then
he
looked
again. Something
was
wrong.
This
wall had no
win-
dows, no furniture against it, no doors.
It wasn’t a wall—it was the ceiling.
Robert
was
floating
against
. the
ceiling,
bouncing
gently
every
time
he moved. Startled, he rolled over and
looked down. Below him he could see
two
figures
lying
on
the
bed—his
wife and his own body.
“My reaction was quick,” he later
said. “Here I was; there was my body.
I was
dying,
this was
death, and
I
wasn’t ready. Desperately, like a diver,
I swooped down to my body and dove
in. Then
I
felt
the bed and
covers.
When I opened my eyes, I was in my
body again.”
ASTRAL PROJECTIONS
A
dream?
Hallucinations?
Fake?
Not
to Robert Monroe, who lives in
Virginia. He
claims
that
this mind-
out-of-body
event
really
happened.
In the world of ESP, such experiences
are called astral projections.
Some scientists in psychic research
believe that in an astral projection
or out-of-body state—the spirit or soul
of a human moves out of the body and
goes to another location. From that lo-
cation, the spirit can then look back
and see
its own body. The spirit can
also see other locations that might not
be
visible
to the body—such
as the
next
room.
In
addition,
scientists
claim that the spirit can go thousands
,
of miles away without harm—perhaps
even into deep space.
The body, in the meantime,
is not
dead.
It
is suspended in a state that
resembles
a
coma.
Breathing
con-
tinues, with the heart and other organs
functioning properly.
INGO SWANN
-
Robert Monroe’s experience
is not
supported by scientific evidence. But
another man’s experiences supposedly
are. He
is Ingo Swann, and many of
Mr.
Swann’s
out-of-body
trips have
occurred
in a
laboratory, with
s$ien : ,,
- entists hovering close by to study the
effects.
In one
case,
Mr. Swann
sat
in
a
dimly
lit room. Above him, out of his
view, a shelf suspended from the ceil-
ing held three objects—an umbrella,
a
black
leather
case, and an
apple.
While scientists watched, Mr. Swann
went into a trance,
When he awoke, he was able to de-
scribe
all the
objects
in
fine
detail.
He explained that
his
spirit had
left
his body, traveled to the ceiling, and
studied the objects.
Scientists cannot say for sure that
Mr. Swann’s
spirit
actually
left
his
body—there
is no definite proof. But
they
feel that such an experience
is
possible if a person believes in having
a soul or spirit that
is separate from
the body.
In any case, scientists warn experi-
menters that astral projection can lead
to harm without a trained person near-
by. For one thing, since the body is in a
coma,
it could be mistaken
for dead
and could be buried. When the spirit
returned, it would logically awaken in
a
coffin!
B
Approved For Release 2001/03/07
: CIA-RDP96-00787R0004001 00022-5