The Backster Effect
(How conscious are plants?)

Late one night in 1966 Cleve Backster, a well-known American lie-detector examiner, was at his school for polygraph examiners. On impulse he decided to attach his Galvanometer to the leaf of a plant he had in his lab. He thought of burning a leaf on the plant but before he could do anything the tracing pattern on the graph changed dramatically. He hadn’t done anything yet. Had the plant sensed what he intended to do to it? When he didn’t intend to burn the plant but had a match in his hand and went through the actions as if he was going to the needle on the graph didn’t move. After many experiments Backster concluded that plants could actually discern real intent from pretend. He recorded the behavior of other plant species of plants and their reactions in many experiments. One of his experiments led him to discover plants have a memory. Not just a simple memory that allows them to remember the direction of their light sources. He also discovered sometimes plants go unconscious when threatened. This is only a small summary of his work. To read more about Backster and his experiments read the book “The Secret Life of Plants” which also has many other scientists accounts of the physical, emotional, and spiritual connections between plants and man.