Primary Perception

Back in 1966 when Jose Silva was teaching his first public course, most people didn't believe in ESP. This was true of Cleve Backster, a polygraph expert in New York who used to teach agents from the FBI and CIA how to use the "lie detector." He wouldn't have believed you if you told him that it was possible for human beings to communicate with plants. But when it happened to him...

But late one night in his New York City office, he made a startling discovery that persuaded millions of people that at some level, there is a connection among all living things.

Here is how he described his landmark experiment to us in a presentation he made at the 1995 Silva International Convention in Laredo:

"For whatever reason, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to see how long it took the water to get from the root area of this plant, all the way up this long trunk and out and down to the leaves" he said.

"After doing a saturation watering of the plant, I thought, 'Well gee whiz, I've got a lot of polygraph equipment around; let me hook the galvanic skin response section of the polygraph onto the leaf.'

"Now this is a whetstone bridge circuit that is designed to measure resistance changes, and I felt that as the contaminated water came up the trunk and down into the leaf that the leaf, becoming more saturated and a better conductor, it would give me the rising time of the water....I would be able to get that on the polygraph chart tracing.

"Now the thing trended downward rather than upward, which amazed me a little bit because it should have been going slowly upward on the tracings, if it was going to show a drop in resistance" he continued, using slides of the polygraph chart to help illustrate what he was saying.

"I moved it up here - this was my move - and then it came down again, and this is the thing that amazed me right here because this contour right away...I'm looking and thinking, 'That's got the contour of a human being tested, reacting when you are asking a question that could get them in trouble.'

"So I forgot about the rising water time and said, Wow, this thing wants to show me people-like reactions. What can I do that will be a threat to the well being of the plant, similar to the fact that a relevant question regarding a crime could be a threat to a person taking a polygraph test if they're lying.

About fifteen minutes along - thirteen minutes and fifty-five seconds along in this initial observation - I had tried different things to try to get a reaction from this plant. I had even dipped a neighboring leaf into a cup of rather warm coffee - and the plant didn't show me any reaction. It showed me, if anything, boredom, and just continued to go downwards. If this thing were an individual, it would have indicated that they were getting bored and sleepy.

"But over here," he said pointing to a sudden jump in the graph, "the idea occurred to me - and only the idea - 'I know what I am going to do: I am going to burn that plant leaf, that very leaf that's attached to the polygraph.'

"Now I didn't have matches in the room. I wasn't touching the plant in any way. I was maybe five feet away from the desk. I was essentially away from the plant.

"The only new thing that occurred was my intent to burn that plant leaf.

"Right here, split second-wise, was when I thought of burning that plant leaf and the image entered my mind. I wasn't using words at all.

"And up that the thing went into a wild agitation.

"Now this was very late at night and towards morning. The building was empty and there was just no other reason for this reaction. This had been going along at a fairly stable level all the way up to this point.

"So this amazed me.

"This, I would say, would be a very high quality observation, and my consciousness hasn't been the same since. And this happened in 1966.

"I thought, 'Wow! This thing read my mind!' It was that obvious to me right then.

"So then I went to get some matches from the next room. The secretary was a smoker, and I got some matches out of her desk and brought them in.

"The next will show where I came back in the room, right about here. I lit the match. I was even into burning a neighboring leaf rather than the leaf I had hooked up. Somehow that was already a special leaf.

"Even before I had a chance to do this I thought, 'Well, this massive degree of reaction that I'm getting here, I wouldn't be able to see any additional reaction if it did occur.'

"So I thought, 'Well, let me reverse the process and remove the threat from the room.'

"I took the matches back out of the room here, came back in at this point, and the thing just evened right out again, which really rounded it out and gave me a very, very high quality observation.

"Now when my partner in the polygraph school we were running at the time came in, he was able to do the same thing also, as long as he intended to burn the plant leaf. If he pretended to burn the plant leaf, it wouldn't react.

"It could tell the difference between pretending you are going to, compared to when you actually intend to do it, which is quite interesting in itself from a plant psychology standpoint."

Cleve Backster has appeared on all the major television talk shows. His work was featured in the book The Secret Life of Plants in 197?. Largely as a result of this publicity, many people began talking to their houseplants to get them to grow better.

Research with human cells

Here is what Cleve told us about his work with human cells during his presentation at the 1995 Convention, using slides to illustrate his points:

"These white cells are so instrumental in the immune system that they are very important" he said.

"The work that we've done in hundreds of hours of testing of the white cells is just absolutely fascinating.

"There's no doubt about it that your thoughts can permeate every cell of your body, without going through any of the conventional communications systems.

"In other words," he emphasized, "if your thoughts, when your cells are separated from your body and being tested, under glass or in vitro, if they can react to your emotions when you are separated from them, you know in your body that they are going to react to emotional changes, particularly the negative emotions.

"The problem is, nothing is quite as disruptive as negative thinking.

"We use negative thinking to see these reactions when they do occur.

"The positive stuff you don't see. It shows a free flowing changes on the chart.

"But the negative stuff, right away you these bursts of electrical activity from the cells that have been separated from the donor.

"So it means that when you are thinking negative thoughts, you are not doing yourself any favor. This would certainly bear that out.

"The Silva Mind training, all the way through, is always talking about the quality of your thoughts, the positive thinking, better and better. This is so important. And it does have a scientific basis...there is no doubt about it whatsoever.

"The next slide is an example of the first time when I got the technology of how to collect these cells - these are my own white cells that I'd collected, and I'd bought myself a centrifuge do this work.

"Here I was going through a shelf and looking for some little sterile lancets. I wanted to cut my hand just a little bit with these sterile lancets and put some iodine in there because I'd always been able to get good reactions with plants when I did that.

"Here is the thought of doing this. While I was looking on the shelf for the lancets, it caused this reaction here. Not when I did it, because the cells were prepared; it wasn't spontaneous. It was spontaneous as I thought about doing this and was looking for these lancets on the shelf.

"You can see the size: These are not subtle reactions, these are huge reactions.

"So this was my first experience with the white cells, and it started in a whole bunch of white cell testing that grew to be very important."

Backster said that it is sometimes difficult to persuade other scientists that the material you are working with - plants, white cells, yogurt - can determine what your real intentions are, and this affects how they react to your experiment.

One researcher complained that when he sat and thought about burning the leaves of a plant, using the same kind of plant and polygraph equipment that Backster had used, there was no reaction.

"I asked him if he actually intended to burn the plant," Cleve explained. "He said he didn't intend to burn it, because I hadn't burned my plant. But I pointed out to him that I had intended to burn my plant. The plant can tell the difference between pretend and intend."

Another time Backster was working late at night in his laboratory (he is now located in San Diego, California) and his plants were hooked up to the monitoring equipment, as they usually are. He suddenly got a big reaction. The only thing he had done was pour some stale coffee down the drain so he could make a new pot.

"I found out that the drain in your kitchen sink is a veritable jungle," he said. "There are a lot of bacteria in there, and the hot coffee evidently was killing them."

When he tried to replicate the action to see what would happen, there was no response from the plants. Here is his explanation:

The first time he poured the hot coffee down the drain, it was just a spontaneous act. Suddenly bacteria were suffering and dying, and the plants reacted to this.

The next time, it was a premeditated act. He planned it. He prepared the materials. During all of this, the plants had plenty of time to prepare themselves. They were not taken by surprise, and therefore did not act with alarm when it happened, as they had the first time.

You can read all about Cleve Backster's more than thirty years of research in the book that he did with Dr. Robert B. Stone: The Secret Life of Your Cells (publisher, date). The author, Bob Stone, was another good friend - a Silva instructor for twenty years, and coauthor of several books with Jose Silva.

Scientist investigates "Laying on of hands"

Back to Better Health page

To learn how to fully develop your ESP, and how you can use Jose Silva's powerful MentalVideo Technique to obtain guidance and help from higher intelligence, please visit the UltraMind Mall. Thank you.

This web site developed and maintained for Silva UltraMind Systems by Avlis Publishing