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The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins (31-Mar-1989) Paperback
The classic exploration of the world of plants and their relationship to humankind, as revealed by the latest insights of science and technology “Almost incredible. . . . [The Secret Life of Plants] bristles with plenty of hard facts and astounding scientific and practical lore.” -Newsweek Authors Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird reveal why the most pivotal revolution of the twenty-first century-one that could save or destroy the planet-may begin at the bottom of your garden. The Secret Life of Plants invokes the latest scientific discoveries to rewrite our understanding of plants and the natural world, offering insights about the unforeseen reach of sentience among plants, their ability to communicate and adapt, and their function as ecological sentinels.
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First published September 1, 1973
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About the author
Peter Tompkins
52 books89 followersPeter Tompkins was an American journalist, World War II spy, and best-selling author.
His best known and most influential books include The Secret Life of Plants, published in 1973, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, reprinted in paperback in 1997, and Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, published in 1976. He is the father of author Ptolemy Tompkins.
His best known and most influential books include The Secret Life of Plants, published in 1973, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, reprinted in paperback in 1997, and Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, published in 1976. He is the father of author Ptolemy Tompkins.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 351 reviews
May 28, 2008
To be completely honest, I truly wanted to believe that some of the “secrets” in this book are true. Perhaps some are, but even with a very open mind I had a hard time swallowing most of this “new age” pseudo-science. In addition this book is poorly organized, in a dire need of editing and at times deadly boring.
The authors’ propose that we/human beings have a conscious connection to the plant world. This I believe is possible – although the premises presented here attempt to convince that the plant/human relationship is detectable, personal, and not limited by distance. The research was not done under double-blind rigorous scientific protocol.
I do however think that there is an important connection between plant life beyond sustenance, photosynthesis and aesthetic value. To quantify a connection measured between two different types of consciousness- I would imagine would have to be very detailed and complicated. Something that is definitely beyond reach of the scientists which are presented here.
I think it’s safe to say that some people are connected to the plant world and can communicate with effectively with it…i.e those with a green thumb. But this ‘natural’ connection isn’t proven in this book.
Please read the following paragraphs below, if you plan on purchasing or reading this book. The following paragraphs are MUST READ excerpts – and if you have a quirky twisted humor, could be considered downright hilarious…. Or at least I thought so.
“As Sauvin's main problem remained that of getting his plants to be sharply attuned to his person rather than to their immediate environment, when he was away for several days, he had to devise some means of attracting his plants' attention even more effectively than addressing them over them on long-distance phone.
As his plants reacted most strongly to any damage done to himself or to any part of his own energy field, he experimented with remotely killing a few cells of his body in the presence of the plants. The system worked admirably. The problem was to obtain cells that would remain alive for protracted periods.
Blood worked well enough, hair was difficult to kill, (isn’t hair dead?)but sperm worked best of all, because, as Sauvin explained, it was easier to obtain than bleeding, and much less painful. (very true!)
These experiments led Sauvin to wonder if plants might not react just as well to emotions of pleasure and joy as to pain and shock. Not only was he tired of shocking himself, he was afraid that repeated shocks to his plants, even indirect ones, might be UNPLEASANTLY LOADING HIS KARMA. … Sauvin soon found that his plants did react to joy and pleasure, but with wave patterns that were not sharp enough to trigger a switch reliably. Undaunted, Sauvin decided on a more daring experiment. “
(This is where things get very strange – I wonder if his plants got jealous?? Ha!)
“ During a holiday with a girlfriend at his lakeside cottage he established that his plants, 80 miles away, would react with very high peaks on the tone oscillator to the acute pleasure of sexual climax....”
This is where I burst out laughing and thought how this story would be some good raw material pathological erotic thriller or satire.
April 24, 2012
I grew up next door to a tree nursery, and spent my childhood running up and down rows of azaleas and camellias, and reading books in the branches of an old apple tree. Perhaps that is what made me so receptive to this book. I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not talk to plants.
Granted, this is a kooky book, and it has not aged all that well. It would be interesting if someone updated it, and maybe fine-tuned it. I actually got to see some of the ideas from these pages put into action, and ... they worked. I had the opportunity to garden with a man who had lived at Findhorn, and used the bio-dynamic gardening methods of Rudolph Steiner. I must admit, the day we used the ball of cow dung that had been buried on a full moon and left in the ground for a year or so before we dug it up was something else. We took the bolus and mixed it in a bucket with gallons of water and walked all around the farm sprinkling this magic elixir on the ground. We also planted by the phases of the moon. I have never seen such a lush, productive garden or such beautiful grounds,
Of course we are connected to the plants. All life is one.
Granted, this is a kooky book, and it has not aged all that well. It would be interesting if someone updated it, and maybe fine-tuned it. I actually got to see some of the ideas from these pages put into action, and ... they worked. I had the opportunity to garden with a man who had lived at Findhorn, and used the bio-dynamic gardening methods of Rudolph Steiner. I must admit, the day we used the ball of cow dung that had been buried on a full moon and left in the ground for a year or so before we dug it up was something else. We took the bolus and mixed it in a bucket with gallons of water and walked all around the farm sprinkling this magic elixir on the ground. We also planted by the phases of the moon. I have never seen such a lush, productive garden or such beautiful grounds,
Of course we are connected to the plants. All life is one.
February 1, 2008
This book is profound. I know you're thinking of course a vegan is going to like this book. But, it almost scares me. I mean..if I can't eat plants what can i eat? I need another copy of this book though cause I didn't finish it. I ended up giving it away...seriously not because I didn't want to finish it but b/c the other person NEEDED TO READ this book.
April 6, 2008
I don't know where I found this book, what compelled me to buy it, or why I started reading it, seeing that I had never sought it out or knew anybody else that had ever read it. It's almost as if this book found me. Or maybe a plant willed it to happen somewhere. This book follows the studies of various scientists that have proposed that plants not only have the ability to feel pain and other human emotions, but can also anticipate them, adding psychic and telepathic to the list of abilities that plants have. In one of the experiments, a plant could anticipate and feel the pain of some live brine shrimp getting boiled in the next room. Amazing. It is full of crack-pot scientific ideas that have been dismissed by the scientific community because of their unprovability. I loved every chapter of this book.
June 6, 2020
En la web de la editorial está clasificado como "biología", "ciencia" y "ecología". Nada más lejos de la realidad. Debería estar en "magufeo", "ciencias ocultas" y "espiritualidad chorra". Los autores desprecian a la comunidad científica por su estrechez de miras al no querer aceptar maravillosos descubrimientos. ¿Que los experimentos que llevaron a tales descubrimientos carecen de lógica y repetibilidad más mínima? No pasa nada, I want to believe. Mientras se hacen afirmaciones condescendientes hacia el método científico, se alaba la homeopatía, la antroposofía, la agricultura biodinámica y chorradas de similar calibre. Entiendo que es un libro antiguo, pero me sorprende que semejante mondongo esté traducido y reeditado en el siglo XXI. Cada editorial que imprima lo que quiera, pero al menos que lo clasifiquen bien. Nada de ciencia aquí.
January 23, 2011
This is a weird and amazing book. I would recommend this book only to people who love plants and gardening. Basically, the book is trying to prove that plants have "feelings" and are extremely sensitive to human thought. They back up many of their theories with scientific studies...some more credible than others. I was reading this book in my living room near my houseplants and at one point, looked up to apologize to how poorly I treat them! Poor darlings...would it kill me to water and fertilize them more often?
Much of this book connects directly to what I am doing with my artwork, so I found it extremely interesting and enjoyable. I was able to mine a lot of ideas for future projects. There are several things that he touched on that I would like to investigate further.
All living things respond to kindness and concern, why not plants? It's not such a strange idea. I, for one, have started paying better attention to my houseplants and plan to extend some of the ideas in the book to my vegetable gardens. It can't hurt and it just might help. A gardener can always dream!
Much of this book connects directly to what I am doing with my artwork, so I found it extremely interesting and enjoyable. I was able to mine a lot of ideas for future projects. There are several things that he touched on that I would like to investigate further.
All living things respond to kindness and concern, why not plants? It's not such a strange idea. I, for one, have started paying better attention to my houseplants and plan to extend some of the ideas in the book to my vegetable gardens. It can't hurt and it just might help. A gardener can always dream!
January 18, 2009
It is kind of hard to stomach. Not a science book. The claims that are made from the experimental evidence described here are in the realm of pseudoscience. They dont follow guidelines of science. I started it but I probably will not finish it. It has an annoying chauvanistic undertone which begins in the introduction, when a general statement is made about women liking to decorate their houses with plants. Then they have to point out when a person is a female, and then they talk about brine shrimp with a wink-wink suggestion that to know if brine shrimp are healthy, that is when the males try to mount the females. I dont know if it is true, but I have seen a number of brine shrimp, and I would like to know how they know which are males and which are females just by looking at them swim around. Sexism is annoying and helps to invalidate their claim to "science" as far as I am concerned.
September 11, 2021
Pensavo di aver scelto un saggio che esponesse nuove e inconsuete relazioni biofisiche tra mondo vegetale e animale, mi son trovato invece tra le mani un volume in stile Giacobbo (Voyager). Strane teorie, esperimeti a dir poco estemporanei e via di questo passo. Non penso di essere refrattario alle nuove teorie, per sorprendenti che siano, ma mi piacerebbe che almeno fossero supportate da qualcosa di piu' del solito "un giorno J.J contadino del Nebraska si accorse che..." o "F.K. medico condotto bavarese del XVII secolo, ma anche valente fisico e sensitivo, scopri' che....". Abbiamo insomma un libro da leggere col freno a mano tirato (o per altro verso senza farsi troppi problemi) con la perenne sensazione di essere presi per il didietro.
November 6, 2014
I came across this book in a second-hand bookstore in Antigua, Guatemala, complete with colourful wild crayon scribblings inside the covers. The previous owner was obviously a precocious four year old.
What an extraordinary book this is. It doesn't follow the orthodox well-trodden scientific pathway. Some parts are recognisably connected to "regular" science, and some are plainly looney. Mainstream science in many ways is blinkered, and incapable of considering a lot of the radical material covered here.
The most important thing however is that throughout runs a thread which recognises the undeniable connections that exist between all living things, human beings and plants obviously included.
This is an astonishing audacious fascinating and gorgeous book. With or without crayon drawings.
What an extraordinary book this is. It doesn't follow the orthodox well-trodden scientific pathway. Some parts are recognisably connected to "regular" science, and some are plainly looney. Mainstream science in many ways is blinkered, and incapable of considering a lot of the radical material covered here.
The most important thing however is that throughout runs a thread which recognises the undeniable connections that exist between all living things, human beings and plants obviously included.
This is an astonishing audacious fascinating and gorgeous book. With or without crayon drawings.
March 28, 2008
This book is what really excited me so much, I chose to study Plant Genetics. To learn that plants communicate when they're either stressed or happy. Yes, plants have feelings too - we just have a hard time understanding them - in many ways plants are alien creatures. They live, act (yes, they act), and reproduce in ways very strange to mammals.
If you think plants are boring and totally uninteresting (like my college zoology instructor), give this book a try. You'll be surprised at the atypical research presented in this book.
If you think plants are boring and totally uninteresting (like my college zoology instructor), give this book a try. You'll be surprised at the atypical research presented in this book.
September 2, 2008
This is a great book to peruse so long as you don't get hung up on the over-evaluations of the authors. It is very important to keep an open mind throughout the entire read, as the authors use quite an open dose of Writer's License, and many of the intended hypotheses have since been proven one way or the other (some of the major and emotional hypotheses having since been proven false) and other things are just downright incorrect (Washington-Carver and peanut butter). There are some marvelous insight, however, despite all of those oversights (and do please remember the amount of scientific discoveries since the early 1970s)...
Overall a great read for open-minded individuals, but there are points that will make you cringe if you are used to scientific process or involved in any way with studies in Biology.
Overall a great read for open-minded individuals, but there are points that will make you cringe if you are used to scientific process or involved in any way with studies in Biology.
December 23, 2007
This non-fiction book discussed totally ridiculous, yet amazing research from the 70s regarding the empathetic and telekinetic powers of plant life.
December 30, 2012
this review hinges on the first 100 pages or so, cause i didn't make it past there.
tomkpkins' and bird draw on extensive fringe research on the parapsychological and superscientific (that is, both of/within and above/on the fringe of "science") to ground their convictions and central claim that plants are sentient, feeling, communicative beings which can communicate with mindful humans who tap into their energetic frequencies. plants become tuned in and "loyal" to their caretakers and can energetically/psychically communicate across thousands of miles. tompkins and bird support their claims with research findings and laboratory experiments which were continually suppressed by the academic and scientific establishment/elite for their groundbreaking (no pun intended) implications. (this makes for a compelling and conspiracy-theory-wingnut sort of tone. how much do you believe, what have you experienced? tompkins and bird are in it full-throttle, as the leap from chapter 3, "plants that open doors," to chapter 4, "visitors from space," evidenced to me.) while the particular intent of their revelations is not immediately clear, it seems to include both harnessing plant-power to do such things as open garage doors and start a coffee machine in the morning, to shifting the oppressive and species-ist existing relationship between plants and humans.
this book is indeed quite different than most well-accepted mainstream ideas about plants and interspecies communication, and of course it's possible that it might all be "true." (i think the same of aliens, ESP, intergalactic travel, etc.) my expectations and hopes, based on the title, were for a different sort of book--not so much scientific or pseudoscientific striving for methodologically sound proof of energetic experiences but rather something more like a story or manifesto of plants' inner lives. the lens of science keeps this book ironically solidly oriented from humans' perspectives, at least for the first 100 pages.
if you're more like me, i'd recommend steven buhner's "the lost language of plants," which is anthropological, ethnobotanical, historical in its lens of looking at plant and human communication and medicinal uses of plants.
tomkpkins' and bird draw on extensive fringe research on the parapsychological and superscientific (that is, both of/within and above/on the fringe of "science") to ground their convictions and central claim that plants are sentient, feeling, communicative beings which can communicate with mindful humans who tap into their energetic frequencies. plants become tuned in and "loyal" to their caretakers and can energetically/psychically communicate across thousands of miles. tompkins and bird support their claims with research findings and laboratory experiments which were continually suppressed by the academic and scientific establishment/elite for their groundbreaking (no pun intended) implications. (this makes for a compelling and conspiracy-theory-wingnut sort of tone. how much do you believe, what have you experienced? tompkins and bird are in it full-throttle, as the leap from chapter 3, "plants that open doors," to chapter 4, "visitors from space," evidenced to me.) while the particular intent of their revelations is not immediately clear, it seems to include both harnessing plant-power to do such things as open garage doors and start a coffee machine in the morning, to shifting the oppressive and species-ist existing relationship between plants and humans.
this book is indeed quite different than most well-accepted mainstream ideas about plants and interspecies communication, and of course it's possible that it might all be "true." (i think the same of aliens, ESP, intergalactic travel, etc.) my expectations and hopes, based on the title, were for a different sort of book--not so much scientific or pseudoscientific striving for methodologically sound proof of energetic experiences but rather something more like a story or manifesto of plants' inner lives. the lens of science keeps this book ironically solidly oriented from humans' perspectives, at least for the first 100 pages.
if you're more like me, i'd recommend steven buhner's "the lost language of plants," which is anthropological, ethnobotanical, historical in its lens of looking at plant and human communication and medicinal uses of plants.
March 10, 2021
Wow, I don't understand how this book has so many good ratings. It's full of so much pseudoscience and nonsense. I lost track of how many times I read "no one was able to repeat this experiment."
I was hoping for some cool plant facts, not "maybe we can use plants to contact aliens."
I was hoping for some cool plant facts, not "maybe we can use plants to contact aliens."
September 6, 2017
I came across this book by pure accident and was drawn into it in a way I cannot explain. On the one hand I felt a salivating fascination and on the other it made me want to laugh hysterically at the absurdity of it. That being said, I felt almost comforted by the unsophisticated 70's vibe of the book. What I walked away with was the knowledge that we do only KNOW in part. Plants are way more intriguing to me now. I watch my sugar snap peas send out their tendrils which then search for and curl around the wire I strung up and I recognise that the plant is a living thing. But then, I do pop a fresh crunchy pod into my mouth. Sorry plant...
March 7, 2018
This book is life-changing. You will never consider your interaction with plants/nature the same afterwards. Study after study, experiment after experiment - this book is full of the indisputable evidence that plants are sentient and possibly communicate with other worlds. While the reading can be a bit heady, it covers such a fascinating topic so broadly, it doesn't matter. Artists, scientists, and students all have contributed to incredible work with plants to reveal just how alive they are. Highly recommend.
September 1, 2009
Reading this book makes me feel stoned. In a good way. A lot of sentient root-tubules seeking sunlight, and responding via ESP. Hard to tell if there's any science buried in all the pseudo-science, but it seems likely. In any case the more far-fetched stuff is I can't read this on my way to work, it'll ruin my ability to focus. But it's a great weekend read... and may convince me to change my life back to the plant-loving hippie lifestyle I should be living.
I love it.
I love it.
December 3, 2021
I started off enjoying this book, but it soon became a mixture of science and spoon-bending that I didn't know what to do with. I love the idea that plants are sentient. I want to believe that it's true. I thought the chapters on pesticides and soil quality were important. But in the end I wasn't sure what to believe, and that devalued the book altogether.
January 1, 2024
pseudoscientific throughout and chauvinistic at times. good to read if you aren’t inclined to critical thinking.
abandoned
August 18, 2021Premetto che ho abbandonato il testo a metà...
Il motivo per cui ho abbandonato questo libro è che dopo una prima parte incentrata effettivamente sulle piante e su alcuni aspetti intriganti riguardo ad esempio la sensibilità dei vegetali, citando scienziati e i loro esperimenti, gli autori hanno cominciato a virare in un'apologia delle pseudoscienze dove le piante c'entrano qualcosa ma solo relativamente. Oltretutto non c'è nulla di scientifico e quindi, per me, di interessante in questo testo.
Francamente mi è sembrato anche molto confusionario e disorganizzato.
Il motivo per cui ho abbandonato questo libro è che dopo una prima parte incentrata effettivamente sulle piante e su alcuni aspetti intriganti riguardo ad esempio la sensibilità dei vegetali, citando scienziati e i loro esperimenti, gli autori hanno cominciato a virare in un'apologia delle pseudoscienze dove le piante c'entrano qualcosa ma solo relativamente. Oltretutto non c'è nulla di scientifico e quindi, per me, di interessante in questo testo.
Francamente mi è sembrato anche molto confusionario e disorganizzato.
May 8, 2023
WTF did I just read? Ok. In truth I had to skim a lot of it because the writing is almost as awful as the content. I read this book for the research I'm doing on the year 1973 (related to a larger project on how we went from the civil rights era to the conservative/neoliberal one). The thousands of positive reviews of a book that speaks highly of known quacks, implies famines are just a lack of positive energy, and generally supports a lot of navel gazy bs seems like a pretty big clue as to how so many ppl do nothing useful when faced with horrible shit. The thousands (?!?) of positive reviewers seem to ignore the plants talk to aliens stuff and just focus on the support for organic agriculture. To me this book is so batshit it almost makes me question my support for organics. Honestly, the spooks who wrote this thing trying to make organic sound nuts seems like one of the only logical explanations for why this book exists. I really need to go find something to read that will restore some faith in humanity now.
January 31, 2009
Comprehensive info about--you guessed it--PLANTS. Contains some nonsense (in part due to the book being so old), as well as some wisdom, so pick and choose what chapters you would most like and then skip the rest. I appreciated the admirable account of George Washington Carver, noble genius, and also liked the idea that people should approach eating plants with a feeling of reverence. After all, plants are living things that die in order for us humans to live. I found my prayers over meals became more thoughtful as I considered the soil, air, sunlight and water that had all gone into the material I now consume.
April 2, 2012
This is an older book that I think was published in the 70s, if I remember correctly. I include it under the bookshelf of shamanism because it explores the level of Consciousness within the Plant Kingdom.
The authors set many different environments for the plants and recorded how the plants responded. It goes to how plants develop relationships with their environment and even with animals and people.
Our human senses are very limiting and just because plants may not respond in a manner that we can easily observe does not mean that they do not respond. Plant Consciousness is just different than ours!
The authors set many different environments for the plants and recorded how the plants responded. It goes to how plants develop relationships with their environment and even with animals and people.
Our human senses are very limiting and just because plants may not respond in a manner that we can easily observe does not mean that they do not respond. Plant Consciousness is just different than ours!
August 29, 2024
I thought this would be a science book. I expected, when the book is talking about 1960s pseudoscience, that it would take a critical stance and make comparisons to actual science. I thought it would be a bit more serious than lamenting over several pages how it would be so much more entertaining for immature teenagers if we used the same words for the reproductive organs of plants as for those of humans. The tone of the book does not belong in the 21st century. I'm disappointed and did not finish the book.
December 24, 2009
Some might say this book is airy fairy la la hippy crap. Personally I like the thought that plants are sentient in ways people don't fully understand. Science and evolution are clearly valid explanations, but there is much left unexplained and its prudent to keep ones mind open to other more ethereal possibilities.
November 14, 2012
I read this book a long time ago and was taken aback with the amazing research and the implications. Luckily, I now have a better grounding in reality and a better understanding of science research. This book is great for the young and naive, and terrible for anyone interested in reality and truth. Overall, then, the book is garbage as non-fiction, but fine as fiction.
May 27, 2013
The Secret Life of Plants
The book covers experiments from around the world and features many familiar names from the scientific and philosophical communities such as Alessando Volta, Edgar Cayce, Franz Anton Mesmer, George Washington Carver, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Luigi Galvani, Manly P. Hall, Rudolf Steiner, and Thomas Edison.
This 1973 book begins with Cleve Backster, America's foremost lie-detector examiner, connecting his galvanometer to a house plant called Dracaena massangeana. He tried applying various stimuli to illicit a response from the plant to avail, until the moment when he thought about burning the plant with an open flame and then there was a dramatic change in the tracing pattern on the graph. I was fascinated with the experiments in this book (and a little skeptical) so you can imagine how pleased I was to find a documentary of the same name from 1979 which actually showed many of these experiments being reproduced. So much of it seemed incredible but seeing is believing. The final portion of the book covered nutrition and soil fertility. Here are some highlights from book:
Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose was able to demonstrate visually that all the characteristics of the responses exhibited by animal tissues we also found in those of plants. He also found that plants became intoxicated when given shots of whiskey or gin, swayed like any barroom drunkard, passed out, and eventually revived, with definite signs of a hangover. These findings together with hundreds of other data were published in two massive volumes in 1906 and 1907. "Plant Response as a Means of Physiological Investigation" ran to 781 pages and detailed 315 separate experiments.
George Washington Carver's students were greatly impressed that each morning he would rise at four 0' clock to walk in the woods before the start of the working day and bring back countless plants with which to illustrate his lectures. Explaining this habit to friends, Carver said, "Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill."
A Canadian engineer and gentleman farmer, Eugene Canby, of Wainfleet, Ontario, broadcast the violin sonatas of Johann Sebastian Bach to a test plot of wheat and produced a crop not only 66 percent greater than average but with larger and heavier seeds.
George E. Smith continuously broadcast music to a small plot of Embro 44XE hybrid corn from the day of its planting to harvest time. The plot produced 137 bushels to the acre as against only 117 bushels for an untreated plot of similar corn growing under the same conditions. Smith noted that the musically entertained corn also grew more rapidly and uniformly and silked earlier. The larger yield per acre was due not to an increase per plant but to a greater survival of plants in the plot. To make sure that his tests were not due to chance, Smith laid out four corn plots in 1962 planted not only with the same Embro 44XE but also with another highly prolific hybrid, Embro Departure. The first plot was treated to the previous year's music, the second left silent, and the third and fourth offered only ear-splitting continuous notes, one with a high pitch of 1,800 cycles a second, the other with a low pitch of 450. At harvest time the Departure plants stimulated with music produced 186 bushels per acre as against only 171 for the silent plot. But those exposed to the high note outdid themselves to achieve nearly 198 bushels; those subjected to the low note topped 200.
Selim Lemstrom, made four expeditions to the subpolar regions o Spitsbergen, northern Norway, and Lapland from 1868 to 1884. An expert on polar light and earth magnetism, Lemstrom theorized that the luxuriant vegetation in those latitudes, which popular opinion ascribe to the lengthened days of their summers, was actually attributable to what he called "that violent electrical manifestation, the aurora borealis." ... Lemstrom connected a series of flowers in metal pots to a static generator by an overhead network of wires sixteen inches above them and a pole set into the soil as a ground. Other pots he "left to nature." After eight weeks, the electrified plants, showed gains in weight of nearly 50 percent over their electrically deprived neighbors. When he transferred his apparatus into a garden he not only more than doubled the yield of strawberries but found them to be much sweeter; his harvest from barley plants increased by one-third.
In his L 'Origine de la Vie, published in 1925, Georges Lakhovsky set forth a number of startling experiments upholding the idea that disease is a matter of disequilibrium in cellular oscillation, that the fight between healthy cells and pathogens, such as bacteria or viruses, is a "war of radiations." If the radiations of the microbes are stronger, cells begin to oscillate aperiodically and became "diseased." In 1923, Lakhovsky designed an electrical apparatus emitting very short waves (with lengths of two to ten meters) which he called a "radio-cellulo-oscillator." In the surgical clinic of the famous Salpetriere hospital in Paris he inoculated geraniums with cancer-producing bacteria. When the plants had developed tumors the size of cherry stones, one of them was exposed to radiation from the oscillator. During the first days the tumor grew rapidly, but after two weeks it suddenly began to shrink and die; after a second two-week period it fell off the afflicted plant. Other geraniums treated over different time periods also shed their cancers under the effect of oscillator radiations.
Dr. Joe Nichols, a physician and surgeon who founded the Natural Food Associates in Atlanta, Texas, reported that a survey on farms throughout the Middle West disclosed that the corn growth was so heavily fertilized with synthetic nitrogen that it was unable to convert carotene into vitamin A and that the cattle feed produced from it was also deficient in vitamins D and E. In modern processed foods the vitamins, trace elements, and enzymes are arbitrarily removed, mostly so as to render the food more durable. As Nichols puts it, "They remove the life, in effect, killing it, so that it will not live and die later." ... Wheat germ is one of a very few places in nature in which the entire vitamin B complex is found ... In so-called "enriched" white bread, with the vitamins and minerals removed, nothing is left but raw starch, which has so little nutritive value that most bacteria won't eat it. Into this insipid starch synthetic chemicals are arbitrarily injected, which form only part of the missing vitamin B complex.
Men from northern England and southern Scotland, large and powerful during the Napoleonic Wars, became short and frail and unfit for military service by the time of the Boer War. A commission set up to investigate the phenomenon concluded it was caused by men moving to the cities, where they lived not on wholesome country bread but on white bread and white sugar. In 1919 when the U.S. Public Health Service announced a definite connection between over-refined flour and the diseases of beri-beri and pellagra - vitamin-deficiency diseases of which over 100,000 cases were reported in Mississippi alone -the millers went into action, not to change the Hour, but to get the Public Health Service to shut up. Within six months the Public Health Service abjectly issued a "correction" to its bulletin. White bread, they said, was perfectly wholesome if eaten in conjunction with an otherwise adequate diet of fruit, vegetables, and dairy products. As Gene Marine and Judith Allen were to remark in reporting the story in their recent book Food Pollution: "So is cardboard."
The book covers experiments from around the world and features many familiar names from the scientific and philosophical communities such as Alessando Volta, Edgar Cayce, Franz Anton Mesmer, George Washington Carver, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Luigi Galvani, Manly P. Hall, Rudolf Steiner, and Thomas Edison.
This 1973 book begins with Cleve Backster, America's foremost lie-detector examiner, connecting his galvanometer to a house plant called Dracaena massangeana. He tried applying various stimuli to illicit a response from the plant to avail, until the moment when he thought about burning the plant with an open flame and then there was a dramatic change in the tracing pattern on the graph. I was fascinated with the experiments in this book (and a little skeptical) so you can imagine how pleased I was to find a documentary of the same name from 1979 which actually showed many of these experiments being reproduced. So much of it seemed incredible but seeing is believing. The final portion of the book covered nutrition and soil fertility. Here are some highlights from book:
Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose was able to demonstrate visually that all the characteristics of the responses exhibited by animal tissues we also found in those of plants. He also found that plants became intoxicated when given shots of whiskey or gin, swayed like any barroom drunkard, passed out, and eventually revived, with definite signs of a hangover. These findings together with hundreds of other data were published in two massive volumes in 1906 and 1907. "Plant Response as a Means of Physiological Investigation" ran to 781 pages and detailed 315 separate experiments.
George Washington Carver's students were greatly impressed that each morning he would rise at four 0' clock to walk in the woods before the start of the working day and bring back countless plants with which to illustrate his lectures. Explaining this habit to friends, Carver said, "Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill."
A Canadian engineer and gentleman farmer, Eugene Canby, of Wainfleet, Ontario, broadcast the violin sonatas of Johann Sebastian Bach to a test plot of wheat and produced a crop not only 66 percent greater than average but with larger and heavier seeds.
George E. Smith continuously broadcast music to a small plot of Embro 44XE hybrid corn from the day of its planting to harvest time. The plot produced 137 bushels to the acre as against only 117 bushels for an untreated plot of similar corn growing under the same conditions. Smith noted that the musically entertained corn also grew more rapidly and uniformly and silked earlier. The larger yield per acre was due not to an increase per plant but to a greater survival of plants in the plot. To make sure that his tests were not due to chance, Smith laid out four corn plots in 1962 planted not only with the same Embro 44XE but also with another highly prolific hybrid, Embro Departure. The first plot was treated to the previous year's music, the second left silent, and the third and fourth offered only ear-splitting continuous notes, one with a high pitch of 1,800 cycles a second, the other with a low pitch of 450. At harvest time the Departure plants stimulated with music produced 186 bushels per acre as against only 171 for the silent plot. But those exposed to the high note outdid themselves to achieve nearly 198 bushels; those subjected to the low note topped 200.
Selim Lemstrom, made four expeditions to the subpolar regions o Spitsbergen, northern Norway, and Lapland from 1868 to 1884. An expert on polar light and earth magnetism, Lemstrom theorized that the luxuriant vegetation in those latitudes, which popular opinion ascribe to the lengthened days of their summers, was actually attributable to what he called "that violent electrical manifestation, the aurora borealis." ... Lemstrom connected a series of flowers in metal pots to a static generator by an overhead network of wires sixteen inches above them and a pole set into the soil as a ground. Other pots he "left to nature." After eight weeks, the electrified plants, showed gains in weight of nearly 50 percent over their electrically deprived neighbors. When he transferred his apparatus into a garden he not only more than doubled the yield of strawberries but found them to be much sweeter; his harvest from barley plants increased by one-third.
In his L 'Origine de la Vie, published in 1925, Georges Lakhovsky set forth a number of startling experiments upholding the idea that disease is a matter of disequilibrium in cellular oscillation, that the fight between healthy cells and pathogens, such as bacteria or viruses, is a "war of radiations." If the radiations of the microbes are stronger, cells begin to oscillate aperiodically and became "diseased." In 1923, Lakhovsky designed an electrical apparatus emitting very short waves (with lengths of two to ten meters) which he called a "radio-cellulo-oscillator." In the surgical clinic of the famous Salpetriere hospital in Paris he inoculated geraniums with cancer-producing bacteria. When the plants had developed tumors the size of cherry stones, one of them was exposed to radiation from the oscillator. During the first days the tumor grew rapidly, but after two weeks it suddenly began to shrink and die; after a second two-week period it fell off the afflicted plant. Other geraniums treated over different time periods also shed their cancers under the effect of oscillator radiations.
Dr. Joe Nichols, a physician and surgeon who founded the Natural Food Associates in Atlanta, Texas, reported that a survey on farms throughout the Middle West disclosed that the corn growth was so heavily fertilized with synthetic nitrogen that it was unable to convert carotene into vitamin A and that the cattle feed produced from it was also deficient in vitamins D and E. In modern processed foods the vitamins, trace elements, and enzymes are arbitrarily removed, mostly so as to render the food more durable. As Nichols puts it, "They remove the life, in effect, killing it, so that it will not live and die later." ... Wheat germ is one of a very few places in nature in which the entire vitamin B complex is found ... In so-called "enriched" white bread, with the vitamins and minerals removed, nothing is left but raw starch, which has so little nutritive value that most bacteria won't eat it. Into this insipid starch synthetic chemicals are arbitrarily injected, which form only part of the missing vitamin B complex.
Men from northern England and southern Scotland, large and powerful during the Napoleonic Wars, became short and frail and unfit for military service by the time of the Boer War. A commission set up to investigate the phenomenon concluded it was caused by men moving to the cities, where they lived not on wholesome country bread but on white bread and white sugar. In 1919 when the U.S. Public Health Service announced a definite connection between over-refined flour and the diseases of beri-beri and pellagra - vitamin-deficiency diseases of which over 100,000 cases were reported in Mississippi alone -the millers went into action, not to change the Hour, but to get the Public Health Service to shut up. Within six months the Public Health Service abjectly issued a "correction" to its bulletin. White bread, they said, was perfectly wholesome if eaten in conjunction with an otherwise adequate diet of fruit, vegetables, and dairy products. As Gene Marine and Judith Allen were to remark in reporting the story in their recent book Food Pollution: "So is cardboard."
June 11, 2021
I loved this book. It has its detractors, not gonna lie. But I learned a few things that have greatly added to my gardening and indoor plants’ beauty. I have my mother’s 1st edition and love the illustrations.
February 16, 2023
I have been struggling to find motivation to finish this book. My only problem is that I have an e-book version of it and it's turning out to be a problem with respect to convenience of reading. I think I've spent enough time trying to read it, but I think I will step back, shelve it for now and restart once I buy a physical copy.
As for the book, I've managed to read hardly 62 pages, but I've genuinely loved it all. Too bad that my e-book issues are really coming in the way here. Without being too hard on myself, I'm just going to move on to another physical book for now.
Update:
After 2 years, I finally found a paperback version of this book! Loved it, to say the least. The information, experiments and research shared in this book are astonishing. I was truly awestruck with all the special abilities that plants possess. Most of what is covered here may 'seem' to fall into the metaphysical realm, but it's truly science, with experimental evidence to support the scientists' findings.
Everyone should definitely try reading this book atleast once in their lifetime. You'll be amazed to know how powerful the plant life is!
As for the book, I've managed to read hardly 62 pages, but I've genuinely loved it all. Too bad that my e-book issues are really coming in the way here. Without being too hard on myself, I'm just going to move on to another physical book for now.
Update:
After 2 years, I finally found a paperback version of this book! Loved it, to say the least. The information, experiments and research shared in this book are astonishing. I was truly awestruck with all the special abilities that plants possess. Most of what is covered here may 'seem' to fall into the metaphysical realm, but it's truly science, with experimental evidence to support the scientists' findings.
Everyone should definitely try reading this book atleast once in their lifetime. You'll be amazed to know how powerful the plant life is!
July 6, 2009
Cleve Backster invented the Galvonometer otherwise known as the first "Lie Detector" before the advent of the polygraph being developed for use of studying the most fragile admissions of hopeful intelligent life and extra sensory perception(with plants). The book proves that since 1966 and the dawn of Botanical research Backster and his research of all species of plants are entirely sensitive to any mirroring human emotion.
Later engineers had touched upon Backsters creation to make yet even more sensitive instruments for more acute research into exploring the depths of the sensory perception;extra to Humans- that would lay within all plant life. The following Scientists to follow Backster have served to prove such things. Plants are psychic,they all-ways know what your thinking; even from miles away, and they love music and water. A very revealing book.
Later engineers had touched upon Backsters creation to make yet even more sensitive instruments for more acute research into exploring the depths of the sensory perception;extra to Humans- that would lay within all plant life. The following Scientists to follow Backster have served to prove such things. Plants are psychic,they all-ways know what your thinking; even from miles away, and they love music and water. A very revealing book.
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