Secret Life of Plants   Cleve Backster

Welcome to the Baxter School of Lie Detection. I'm Cleve Baxter and during the next six weeks here in San Diego you're going to be involved in a very intensified instructional course in the use of the polygraph or so-called lie detector. In the course of a career dedicated to investigation for federal and municipal law enforcement agencies, Cleve Baxter has earned a reputation as the world's foremost authority on the polygraph. Well as of February 2nd, 1966 I'd been in the polygraph field full time for 18 years and this particular morning I'd been working all night in the laboratory and I decided to water a plant in the lab, very similar to the plant here, the Sena cane plant. My thought was that as the moisture arrived to the leaf of the plant I should, the plant should be a better conductor. I should get a reading on the chart. Well strangely enough I didn't get this at all and in fact it did just the opposite. Instead of tracing, edging upward as it should have on the chart, it went into sort of a wild excitation very similar to the first part of a human taking a polygraph test. But then it occurred to me just about 14 minutes along what would be the real optimum threat to the well-being of a plant. In fact the imagery of fire entered my mind and I not only thought but I fully intended to burn the very leaf that was being tested with a match. Now I had no matches in the room at the time and I don't smoke and I had to go next door to my secretary's area to get a match. But the interesting thing is that right at the split second that that imagery of fire entered my mind, the tracing reflecting the changes in the plant just went right off the top of the page. And the only thing that occurred at that time, no lighting of a match, nothing else, merely the imagery of fire. And I must say that as of 14 minutes along in that initial observation in the morning of February 2nd, 1966, my life just hasn't been the same. Responding to the initial experience when a plant apparently read his mind, Baxter works nights on his own in his small laboratory. His goal is to perfect an experiment that will satisfy the rigid criteria of the scientific establishment. Baxter hopes to show that plants react to any termination of life in their immediate environment. During the next six hours, at some undetermined moment chosen by a randomizer, these brine shrimp will fall to their deaths in boiling water. By totally automating his equipment, Baxter is determined to eliminate human influence. In another room, completely separate from his laboratory, Baxter has placed the philodendron plant, a polygraph, and a videotape recorder. Carefully, he places a leaf between a pair of electrodes that will monitor the electrical activity of the plant. As he has done during countless police interrogations, Baxter establishes a baseline on his polygraph to get an accurate recording of the reaction of his subjects. The video recorder will tape the details of the experiment in Baxter's absence. For the automation of this experiment to be successful, I have to get a certain distance away from my lab so that my consciousness won't affect the results. I hadn't previously experienced any direct or indirect exposure to mystical philosophies. My contacts had been well within the establishment, particularly federal government agencies and law enforcement. Before working with plants, I hadn't really thought much about the idea of greater consciousness or awareness. Now I look around, and I realize that I'm not the only one who has but what I see has a different meaning. So the California Dawn often finds Cleve Baxter still at work in a small room behind his laboratory. The results of each night's work must be carefully analyzed and recorded. In spite of his high percentage of successful results, only a few daring individuals from the scientific establishment have come forward with offers to replicate his experiments or test his results. The great majority are content simply to condemn his efforts without taking the trouble to If a few brine shrimp die and the plant feels their death, I think it's the smallest of the event that makes it so significant. It means that even on the lower levels of life, there's a profound consciousness or an awareness that binds all things together.