My Library

horrified scientists of all kinds, and Backster was pilloried in the media -- much to the enjoyment of hard-core parapsychologists who, back then, had nothing good to say about him. To help correct this dismal rejection of Backster, it wasn't until the late 1980s that neurobiologists discovered and confirmed that plants do possess "primary perceptions" because they have "rudimentary neural nets." The same recent encyclopedia mentioned above states that Backster's plant experiments "generated great interest among parapsychologists and the public alike." Well the public was all agog because "green thumb" people were excited. But parapsychologists pinched their lips and were NOT "greatly interested." I know. I was around at the time, and deeply immersed in most of the relevant gossip networks. I really find it disgusting when later writers and encyclopedia compilers can't get their facts straight and attempt to revise history. I mention this here because much the same was to plague the topic of remote viewing. Backster was (and still is) one of America's most noted polygraph experts who had refined and improved lie-detecting methods. But at some point he began experimenting by hooking plants up to polygraphs. He lit matched and burnt their leaves, and the polygraphs reacted. At some point after that, he began noticing that when someone merely THOUGHT about lighting a match to burn the plant, the polygraph readout showed big spikes in it. The plants were reacting to THOUGHTS -- or so the evidence implied. This was more or less like a human reaction under the stress of being caught in a lie. You see, the polygraph indicates stresses in human THINKING and emotional reactions.