Cell Music
July 21, 2010

“The secrets are in the plants. To elicit them you have to love them enough.”
- George Washington Carver

In the 1950's, a Indian botany professor named, Dr. T.C. Singh discovered that plant protoplasm accelerates under the influence of music and that that plants repeatedly exposed to it grow noticably larger than without. Inspired by his research, numerous scientists throughout the world devoted themselves to learning more about this phenomenon, which lead some to the determination that plants sense human emotions. My investigation into this subject took me on a fascinating journey into plant-human biocommunication which became the basis for my album called "Cell Music."

Recently, a friend asked if I would create some sounds that she could play in her greenhouses, in hopes that this might positively influence the growth of the plants. I thought that this would be a great opportunity for me to learn if it is actually possible to influence plant growth with sound waves. I agreed to create some sound for her, but I had no idea how to approach it so I bought some books on the subject.

I am the type of person that cannot cut a flower from its roots. In fact, I cannot even buy a flower arrangement for my wife unless the flowers are rooted in a pot – the thought of a plant slowly dying because of something I did disturbs me.

In 2006, I wrote a short article on natural resonance. During the research I learned about a woman in the early 1970’s who exposed plants to different types of music to see which types of music, if any, would stimulate plant growth.  She followed scientific method and got results proving that plants prefer Ravi Shankar over Jimi Hendrix. This made me laugh and I knew that it was just a matter of time before I made my own plant music.

Studying how sonic plant growth stimulation (SPGS) works introduced me to basic cell biology. In order to find out how plants respond to sound, I wanted to learn how plant, animal, and human cells communicate. Most books state that cells communicate chemically. However, I read in “The Secret Life of Plants” about someone who proved onion cells are able to communicate through quartz. This suggests that a chemical exchange is just a portion of the entire signal.

One thing lead to another and soon I was researching strange topics like telepathy, auras, and cell consciousness. Interestingly, I found there is a common thread connecting all the strange phenomena relating to biocommunication with plants: electromagnetic signals. Being that so many of the eccentric theories of cell communication had this one thing in common, it seemed like too much of a coincidence to ignore.

I read books that most scientists would laugh at but as I am not a scientist I have an open mind and I found the material engaging. So I kept reading. As my curiosity grew, I got my hands on more and more books, and delved deeper and deeper into the world of plants and cells. After some time, I looked outside and noticed an immense crowd of ancient, curious, and intelligent green beings looking back at me through the windows of my home and from the tops of cabinets and tables in my kitchen. My understanding of plants was changing. That is to say, I was becoming aware of my relationship with plants, and their relationship with the universe. Soon it was easy for me to believe that a plant could respond to music. But I still did not know how.

Green Beings

	A Venus flytrap moves quickly enough to catch flies. This is possible because there is a spring loaded force stored inside. When a spider or fly lands on the leaf, the stimulus makes the leaf rapidly swell with water which forces the leaf to flip shut.

At the beginning of the twentieth century a gifted Viennese biologist with the Gallic name of Raoul France put forth the idea, shocking to contemporary natural philosophers, that plants move their bodies as freely, easily, and gracefully as the most skilled animal or human, and that the only reason we don't appreciate the fact is that plants do so at a much slower pace than humans. “The roots of plants”, said France, “burrow inquiringly into the earth, the buds and twigs swing in definite circles, the leaves and blossoms bend and shiver with change, the tendrils circle questingly and reach out with ghostly arms to feel their surroundings. “Man”, said France, “merely thinks plants motionless and feelingless because he will not take the internal time to watch them.” (Tompkins ix)

It is hard to imagine that seemingly motionless life forms such as trees and vegetables could possess the ability to think. However, watching high speed footage of plants suggests that they are keen, sensitive, curious and exuberant. Mimosa pudica, a perennial herb that folds its leaves together when touched, seems aware of the world, purely because the plant’s sensory activity is so forthcoming. In another example, desmodium motorium, otherwise known as the dancing plant, rotates its leaves quite perceptibly when heated by sunlight. Perhaps reflexive reactions such as these are preprogrammed into the nervous system of plants. But for characteristically inattentive humans, nimble, spontaneous movement is an evocation of mental responsiveness.

By looking at the motion of plants, one cannot deny that they are able to learn and adapt to their surrounding environment. But looking more patiently one will notice that they can also solve complex mathematical problems. Patrik Jonsson, a journalist for the Christian Science reports,

The ground-hugging mayapple plans its growth two years into the future, based on computations of weather patterns… Not only can plants communicate with each other and with insects by coded gas exhalations, scientists say now, they can perform Euclidean geometry calculations through cellular computations and, like a peeved boss, remember the tiniest transgression for month.

The common belief is that these are genetically encoded reactions but I can not imagine that this sort of  behavior could exist in an unconscious organism. According to many spiritual teachers, consciousness exists at all levels and that even the cells within our bodies are self aware. In The Eternal Validity of the Soul, the entity known as Seth explains,

Nothing exists - neither rock, mineral, plant, animal or air - that is not filled with consciousness of its own kind. So you stand amid a constant vital commotion, a gestalt of aware energy, and you are yourselves physically composed of conscious cells that carry within themselves the realization of their own identity, that cooperate willingly to form the corporeal structure that is your physical body.

Biocommunication with Plants

Polygraph machine.

Many scientists have witnessed plants respond to human thoughts but have had no success in convincing this to the scientific world at large. The first person to bring the profound theory of plant telepathy public was a leading polygraph scientist named Cleve Backster.

A polygraph is a lie detection device which measures heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and electrical conductivity in skin. A galvanometer is part of a polygraph device that uses very small electrical signals to make a pen move back and forth on paper. During polygraph testing, a galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor, which often looks like a small band is attached to the subjects finger and is wired to the galvanometer and measures electro-dermal activity (sweat conductivity) on of their fingertips. Since fingers are so porous, when the subject is under stress, sweat is instantly produced and picked up as low resistance by the galvanometer’s sensor electrodes. A voltage change is then sent to a chart recorder, which draws a continuous trace on a roll of paper.

On February 2nd in 1966, after Backster had been working throughout the night in his polygraph lab, he took a coffee break and noticed that one of his dracaenas needed watering. A dracaena is a small palm tree with flowers, also known as a “dragon tree”. He wondered what would happen if he used a GSR sensor to measure electrical conductivity in one of the dracaena leaves as he watered its roots. He connected the galvanometer to a chart recorder and slid the sensor onto a rolled up leaf, expecting to measure decreasing electrical resistance as the plant absorbed the water, which would be indicated by an upward line contour on the chart recording. To his surprise, the sensor picked up the exact opposite, a downward slope, indicating increasing resistance. Backster continued to watch the plant’s response and after one minute he saw a brief contour change similar to the way a human might behave if they feel a wave of apprehensiveness or fear of detection. He thought to himself, “Well, if this plant wants to show me some people-like reactions, I’ve got to use some people-like rules on it and see if I can get this to happen again.” (Backster 23)

He casually dipped one of the dracaena’s other leaves into his hot coffee but nothing happened. The tracing continued to fall, which for a human subject would indicate increasing boredom or exhaustion. About fifteen minutes later he thought to perhaps find a match and burn the leaf that the galvanometer was attached to. After no more than thinking about doing this, the polygraph pen jolted to the top of the chart. In amazement, he watched the pen continue to scribble out a response near the top of the chart. A few moments later, he left the room to look for matches, and he found some in his secretary’s desk drawer. When he returned, the tracing was still jumping around and he realized that he might not be able to notice any further changes in the polygraph recording. He decided to put the matches back and when he returned, the trace had fallen back to a “calm” position. Later that morning, he informed his associate, Bob Henson, about this bizarre experience and they were able to reproduce the same effect, this time with Henson’s own thoughts of harming the plant (none of these intentions were actually carried out).

For the next few years, using different types of polygraph machines and plants, Backster conducted tests to determine the nature of these responses. He confirmed that even at great distances, plants can sense genuine thoughts of harm, that they feel a bond with their human caretaker, even reading their thoughts from many miles away, and that they can even sense the death of microscopic life-forms. In one famous series of experiments, Backster and Henson set up an automated machine with a mechanism to drop a few brine shrimp into boiling water at a random time, while no humans or animals were present. Three plants were monitored for their reaction to the termination of the shrimp.

Leaving the plants no opportunity to become attuned to us we would quickly activate the randomizer and set the time-delay switch as we left the laboratory, and exit the building, going at least a full avenue away. The plants were left alone in the lab. Only when we were extremely careful to follow this procedure did we get really good data. When the brine shrimp died, the electroded plants reacted on a statistically significant number of occasions. On the basis of preliminary observations, to address the possible problem of habituation, it was determined that the same three plants were not to be used for more than one research session. (Backster 47)

Backster’s work became a matter of interest to a handful of scientists, including a research chemist named Marcel Vogel who was able to replicate these experiments perfectly. He spent many years studying psychic communication between plants and humans and made some interesting discoveries supporting Backster’s theories.  Most importantly, Vogel found that plants respond more to the thought of harm, rather than to the physical act. For example, one plant would respond to a leaf being cut from a second plant, but only if Vogel focused his attention on the second plant. If he ignored it, there was no response.

Vogel found that that in order to receive clean signals from the plant on his chart recorder, he had to direct feelings of caring and well-being at it. This “hypnotized” the plant into reacting only to Vogel’s thoughts, and not to temperature, noise, electrical fields and other life forms. An outpouring of loving thoughts seemed to charge plants with the ability to communicate with him, which could also be expended, as if the plants he tested were psychic batteries. According to Vogel, negative or hostile thoughts create a communication barrier, which explains why skeptical scientists are not able to replicate these experiments accurately.

Hundreds of laboratory workers around the world are going to be just as frustrated and disappointed as these men until they appreciate that the empathy between plant and human is the key, and learn how to establish it. No amount of checking in laboratories is going to prove a thing until the experiments are done by properly trained observers. Spiritual development is indispensable. But this runs counter to the philosophy of many scientists, who do not realize that creative experimentation means that the experimenters must become part of their experiments. (Tompkins 27)

"I don't believe the signal, whatever it is, dissipates over distance, which is what we'd get if we were dealing with electromagnetic phenomenon." - Cleve Backster (www.primaryperception.com)

Throughout history, many experiments have been done, in an attempt to demonstrate that sound can induce or repress cell reproduction in plant life. Although the majority are skeptical, many scientists agree that sound does have an influence on growth. However, there doesn’t seem to be any specific sound that works for all plants and little is known as to why plants react to it.

Around the same time Backster was doing his experiments, Dan Carleson, a world famous plant breeder and research scientist, began developing an SPGS system called Sonic Bloom, which is used by farmers and gardeners all over the world.  Sonic Bloom consists of a battery powered device producing a 5000 Hz sound based on bird song frequencies and a special fertilizer of amino acids, seaweed, and trace minerals. According to Carleson, the harmonic nature of this sound stimulates the stomata (pores) so that they open up, accepting 700 percent more nutrients during fertilization. His first experiment was performed on a purple passion vine which he says under normal conditions grows no larger than 18 inches, and lives for 18 months. After exposing the vine to the sound and fertilizer, it grew 600 feet long, living long enough to set a 1979 world record, and then grew another 600 feet during the next 22 years.

The effect of music on plants has attracted little attention from scientists. Most scientists vehemently disregard this type of research, claiming that it is just make-believe nonsense but others are absolutely convinced that music can also make plants grow faster.

In 1950, Dr. T.C. Singh, a botany professor from Annamalai University in India, observed the reaction of an electric tuning fork on a type of water plant called Hydrilla. Using a microscope, he observed the hydrilla’s protoplasm while the tuning fork resonated about six feet away. He did this just before sunrise, when the protoplasm was in a state of rest.

Protoplasm is the living, animated matter inside cells, which for plants looks like green translucent grains endlessly tumbling or streaming around in clear liquid. It is essential to the plant’s ability to ingest and assimilate food and grow. During the evening and in cold temperatures protoplasm is calm and in the warmth of daytime it travels about in fast moving streams, graceful circles, or more complex undulating oscillations, depending on the geometry of the cells.

To Singh’s amazement, under the influence of this sound, the protoplasm accelerated to a speed that it would normally achieve much later in the day. In response, he asked one of his assistants, a gifted violinist, to play a raga to his mimosas. A raga is a form of devotional song from South India that, according to ancient myth, could “vernalize plants and induce them to blossom.” (Tompkins 146) After two weeks of repeated music, Singh noticed that the palisade cells had grown 50 percent longer, with thicker walls, and 66 percent more stomata than the control plants.

In another experiment a fretted instrument called the veela was used to play ragas to balsam plants for about one half hour each day, just before sunrise. After five weeks, the plants had grown 20 percent taller than the control plants, and the leaf quantity had multiplied by 72 percent.

As time went on, Singh’s experiments expanded to include more songs and instruments and more plants, such as cosmos, petunias, common asters, spider lilies and even sweet potatoes, radishes, onions, sesame and tapioca. In a magazine publication of Bihar Agricultural College, Singh stated that he had “proven beyond any shadow of doubt that harmonic sound waves affect the growth, flowering, fruiting, and seed-yields of plants.

Confident of his findings, his tests became larger in scope. He actually began to broadcast music via loudspeakers to rice, peanut and tobacco crops which yielded 25 to 60 percent higher growth than ones without the music.

Singh explained that in his laboratories he could visually demonstrate that the fundamental metabolic processes of plants in relation to transpiration and carbon assimilation under the excitation of musical sound or rhythmic beat were very much accelerated and increased over 200 percent compared to controls. (Tompkins 148)

In 1960 an agricultural researcher named George E. Smith attempted to replicate Singh’s tests. He planted soybeans and corn in two identical greenhouses having the same humidity and temperature. In one of the nurseries he played Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” continually for weeks. The seedlings exposed to music sprouted first and had thicker stems and tougher, greener skin.

Smith tried this on outdoor corn plots by broadcasting music over speakers. He laid out four plots of corn, playing Rhapsody in Blue to the first, a high 1800Hz note to the second, a low 450Hz tone to the third, and he kept the fourth in silence. The results showed that plants exposed to music produced 186 bushels of corn per acre. Plants exposed to the high note produced 198 bushels and the low note 200 bushels. The control crop that grew in silence produced only 171 bushels.

In the early 1970’s, through some very carefully controlled experiments, a Denver music student named Dorothy Retallack proved that plants have varying musical preferences. By closing different types of plants off in soundproof chambers with grow lights and speakers, she was able to observe their behavior after repeated exposure to acid rock, jazz, European classical and Indian classical music. The music of Led Zepplin, Jimi Hendrix and Vanilla Fudge caused many plants to die and others to appear thin and scrawny with tiny leaves. Under the influence of rock, their stalks grew 180 degrees away from the speaker even when rotated back towards the sound. They seemed to like the music of Bach, slanting 35 degrees towards it in unanimous resolve, and all species responded positively to Ravi Shankar, bending over 60 degrees towards the speaker, then inquisitively circling their tendrils around it. When exposed to jazz music, only about 55 percent of the plants leaned towards the music but the growth was noticeably more accelerated than the adjacent silent chamber. Even the dissonant neo-classical string music of Schoenberg was favored over rock music, which suggests that it might be the drum beats in the rock music that had such a negative affect.

Vibration

Sound and Music is what fascinates me most in the world and I am quite pleased to know that everything in the universe works on the same principles as a loudspeaker – a device that turns vibration into imagined places and things; sound interpreted as time, space, color, texture and emotion.

The tangible world is movement, say the Masters, not a collection of moving objects, but movement itself. There are no objects “in movement,” it is the movement which constitutes the objects which appear to us: they are nothing but movement. (Janis 22)

A vast space exists within and around us, containing an assortment of diminutive particles called atoms, which are held together by invisible shells of electromagnetic energy. If one could shrink in size and enter a pure hydrogen atom to probe its contents, they would be disappointed to find that it contains nothing. Upon closer examination they might be fortunate enough to notice the ball of matter at the atom’s center, the proton, taking up a mere ‘one 1000 billionth’ of its interior. Holding this ball, the proton, in one hand, they might notice the faint high-pitched whine of the electron gyrating around them, eleven miles away. Further examination might reveal that the proton oscillates too, albeit at a much higher frequency. Shrinking down and entering it would be even more disheartening because, as it turns out, the proton is just another empty electromagnetic field, comprised of a number of other non-material things including something called gluons – strings of energy that blink in and out of existence.

When an atom is chemically bonded with other atoms to form a molecule (such as water), a vibration occurs which is caused by a constant stretching and bending of their relative positions. My textbook explains it like this:

Atoms are held together in molecules because the negatively charged electrons in one atom are pulled toward the positively charged nucleus of another and vice versa. But at the same time, the electrons in one atom repel those in the other, and the protons in the nuclei do the same. This constant push-pull can create a vibration, as if the atoms were connected by tiny springs in constant motion. (Steele par. 4)

The Song of Cells

	Hair cells, the sensory cells of the auditory system, have tiny rows of feelers protruding from them called stereocilia. The sounds we hear are the electrical signals produced by stereocilia. Hair cells decode these signals into information about the frequency and amplitude of sounds, which in turn is sent through the auditory nerve to the brain.

To hear music, the mind listens to the song of cells. It is the cells that experience vibration unmediated.

It could be said that we do not actually experience these vibrations, rather our own interpretation of them. In “Conscious Evolution: Exploring Who We Are and Why We are Here”, Sharon Janis describes how, “Our eyes translate particular patterns of energy as visual information; our ears transcribe other energies into sound. Through the body and brain, external energies are translated into the subjective experiences of sight and sound, along with an intricate blanket of interpretation, memory, and meaningfulness.” Furthermore, “it is our sensory translation devices that we experience, not the pure energy as it exists independent of ourselves.” (Janis, 19)

Beneath our mental representation of reality, 100 billion nerve cells are receiving and transmitting data across several thousand miles of web-like tissue that converge in our brains. 100 trillion other cells harvest energy, regulate bodily processes, watch for enemies, and use a single DNA blueprint to reproduce so frequently that 98 percent of their atoms were not there a year prior.

Every cell is an alert member of a large social community, working together with the ultimate purpose of continuing to be. It can be said that they have human-like qualities such as the desire to “unite with others”, explains Seth. “They naturally communicate. They naturally want to move. Period.” (Roberts, The Individual Nature of Mass Events)

Each cell undergoes, on average, some 100,000 chemical reactions per second – a process that repeats itself simultaneously across every cell in the body. At any given second, billions of chemical reactions of one sort or another occur. Timing must be exquisite, for if any one of the individual processes in all the millions of cells in the body is off by a fraction, humans would blow themselves up in a matter of seconds. (McTaggart, The Field 45)

Deepak Chopra, a medical doctor and spiritual writer from India, describes biological cells as possessors of utmost wisdom. He looks upon cells as being “sentient beings” with consciousness similar to our own, but more intimately harmonious with life. Central to this belief is that cells perform creative actions for the well-being of all other cells, without the physical and emotional struggles associated with self-importance. A balanced system of cooperation takes place, which Chopra says, is a “direct reflection” of human consciousness. He states:

Consciousness conceives, governs, constructs, and becomes the activity of the body. And in every human body, or for that matter, in every biological organism, there is an inner intelligence that reflects the wisdom of the universe and is, in fact, the ultimate and supreme genius. (Chopra, Spirituality in a Material World, 1)

Cells react willingly to emotions. Chopra believes that emotions become imprinted in the cells much like “memories” and are recalled for later use. For example, worry may bring about a growing lesion in the stomach, or a long-standing addiction to nicotine. Even as cells die and are replenished by new cells, the memory survives. In Quantum Healing, Chopra explains, “If you take an addict, detoxify his body, and keep him away from alcohol or drugs for several years, all the old cells that used to be “chemically addicted” are totally gone”, says Chopra. “Yet the memory persists, and if you give it a chance, the memory will latch onto the addictive substance once again.”

Molecules

Within each cell exists a world of even smaller entities called molecules. A molecule is a stable group of two or more atoms that serves a highly specialized duty such as delivering a specific message, building a type of tissue, or transporting a chemical. Cells hold as many different types of molecules as there are varieties of  plants and trees in a forest. There is a distinguishing factor between non-organic molecules and those that are part of a biological organism. The molecules of living things are much more complex in structure and are able to perform more “intelligent” tasks than earthly ones such as water and crystals, for example.

When hungry, we build tough, bean-shaped chymotrypsin to digest our food. When ill, we build Y-shaped antibodies to fight the attacking bacteria or viruses. With every thought, we build tiny neurotransmitters to communicate one portion of the idea. The instructions to build our personal molecules, finely honed over the course of evolution, are stored in every cell, available on demand. (Goodsell 2)

In order for molecules to be triggered into action, they must exchange information. It is commonly believed that this is achieved through direct contact between the molecules. The problem with this theory is that there is only about 1 molecule of protein per 10 thousand molecules of water. The likelihood of molecules being able to randomly bump into one another at the right moment is highly unlikely. Emotional responses would not be so instantaneous if the molecules could not touch each other at lightning speeds.

Electromagnetic Communication

Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known in nature. – St. Augustine

"Water is everywhere; it covers 2/3rds of the earth's surface and makes up 60-70% of the human body.

In 1985, a prize winning French scientist named Jacques Benveniste, working for the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM), discovered a mysterious behavior while watching the reaction of basophils (white blood cells) to allergens. His assistant had made a miscalculation, and ended up measuring the cell’s response to an over diluted solution of the allergen, which yielded figures that did not make sense. The results showed that the allergen was concentrated in the water but in actuality it was barely present at all.

In an effort to reproduce this effect he mixed a molecular antibody called anti-IgE with water, then diluted the mixture with 9 parts water to 1 part of previous solution. He repeated this over and over, and the antibody quickly disappeared. Each time the mixture was diluted with water, it was shaken vigorously and then introduced to bosophils (a type of white blood cell). The basophils continued to react to the water as if it contained the antibody, even after the dilution had been performed 120 times and no trace of it could possibly have remained. Most unusual was that after the ninth dilution, which was 1 part antibody to 1000 parts water, the potency of the diminishing anti-IgE began to increase continually. Five laboratories scattered around the world were able to reproduce his results

When this study was published in Nature Magazine it was said that Benveniste had uncovered ‘the memory of water’. The authors stated:

Specific information must have been transmitted during the dilution/shaking process. Water could act as a template for the molecule, for example, by an infinite hydrogen-bonded network, or electric and magnetic fields…The precise nature of this phenomenon remains unexplained. (McTaggart, The Field, 63)

Benveniste’s experiment created such a huge controversy that the magazine appointed a so called ‘fraud squad’ which included a journalist, a magician, and a professional ‘quackbuster’ named Walter Stuart.

The team taped his formulas to the ceiling, changed the test protocols and, despite their inexperience with laboratory experimentation, took over some of the test procedures, against Benveniste’s wishes. It seemed that they already had their minds made up to disprove Benveniste’s theories and claim him a fraud. Nature soon posted an article with the title ‘High dilution experiments a delusion’ which ruined his reputation. Soon his work was censured.

Despite an unfortunate turn in his career, he could not turn away from this compelling discovery. Everything he had learned about cell communication had to be re-evaluated. He soon embarked on a scientific journey to reveal the secret of molecular communication. After eight years of research working with DigiBio, Benveniste made another compelling discovery, one that unobjectionably supported his discovery of ‘the memory of water’.  He observed that molecules communicate via electromagnetic waves.

It is known that molecules and intermolecular interactions create signature vibrations, emitting electromagnetic signals. This energy can be detected by radio telescopes from billions of light-years away. In an effort to learn how molecules exchange information, Benveniste recorded sound from some molecules, stored them on a computer and played them back through electromagnetic coils. By using a recorded .wav file, in place of the actual molecule, he was able to “fool” biological systems into thinking that the molecules were present, which ultimately triggered the same action in cells. In order to completely rule out human error and inconsistent testing procedures, DigiBio developed robot to automate the proceedure. A complete demonstration of this device, narrated by Benveniste, is available here.

Benveniste died on October 3, 2004. Despite making what could be some of the most important scientific discoveries in history, he had still not won respect from the scientific community. A portion of the press release read:

How many times must an experiment be carried out before a scientific fact is considered to be “reproducible”?  Controversies on the subject have always detected errors, artifacts, or untruths, but all of which were set straight within months. For the past 15 years, nothing has disproven Dr. Benveniste’s findings.

DigiBio continues research in ‘digital biology’, with a mission to develop and commercialize the technology and prove “that it is possible to record, transmit and amplify this information, as can be done for sounds and music”. As Benveniste’s findings go against the long accepted theories of molecular physics, DigiBio is faced with an uphill battle of skepticism.

In the 1920’s, embryologist Alexander Gurwitsch discovered that all living things emit small amounts of photons in the UV range. He believed that these emissions stimulate cell activity, but failed to prove the concept out and so it remained a mystery for the next fifty years. In the mid 1970’s, a biophysicist named Fritz-Albert Popp began investigating this phenomenon and discovered that these particles also exist in the range of visible light. Quite simply, he discovered that living things such as plants, animals and humans have auras. He called the emissions “biophotons”.

Using a supercooled charge-coupled device (CCD), which is an extremely expensive camera used with telescopes to photograph distant galaxies, he began to record the biophotons radiating from plants.  His first test was a five hour exposure of a geranium leaf in total darkness.

When the computer displayed the final photograph, it was dazzling: a perfect image of the leaf in light, like a shadow in reverse, but in incredible detail, each of its tiniest veins delineated. Surrounding the leaf were little white spots, like a sprinkling of fairy dust – evidence of high-energy cosmic rays. (McTaggart 29)

Visible light is a specific range of electromagnetic radiation as biophotons are a wavelength of electromagnetic radiation beaming from living things. The question remained: what is the purpose of these signals?

Working with a parapsychologist named Gary Schwartz, Popp arranged to photograph the hands of a group of healers. A 10 minute exposure was made of their hands laying flat on a platform beneath the camera. The photograph showed concentrated streams of light flowing from their fingertips in organized patterns. The biophotons seemed to correlate very strongly with thoughts of healing.

The responses from the scientific community towards Popp’s work are mixed, but unlike Benveniste’s , his finding have not been so completely discredited. Nobody has been able to come up with a compelling argument against the existence of ultra-weak photon emissions from living things (the word ‘biophoton’ is not wholly accepted), however most scientists do not believe thoughts create electromagnetic waves, visible or not.

Since 2007, Lynne McTaggart, author of The Field, and a group of respected physicists, including Fritz-Albert Popp, launched a series of web-based experiments hailed as the world’s largest mind over matter experiment in history. It is called “The Intention Experiment” and is based on McTaggart’s latest book of the same name. In the experiment which is directed by several famous and highly respected scientists, thousands of participants from around the globe are asked to direct their thoughts toward “scientifically quantifiable targets” such as plants, leaves, water, and human beings. The testing is being managed through www.theintentionexperiment.com.

The pilot experiment involved a group of 16 people in London who were asked to meditate on four targets which were located 300 miles away in Neuss Germany, the location of Popp’s laboratory. The targets included two types of algae (acetabularia and dinoflagellates), a jade plant, and a woman named Annemarie who is a colleague of one of the scientists. The goal was to determine if the meditators could lower the targets’ biodynamic processes at six specific intervals within a two and a half hour period.

Compared to the times when the meditators were resting, “something in the light was profoundly altered”, said McTaggart. When the data was examined, significant changes could be seen in the light auras corresponding with the meditation time blocks. The data was consistent with data Popp had recorded when photographing emissions from the healers’ hands.

“Achieving a positive result didn’t really surprise me”, McTaggart admitted. “For more than thirty years Popp, Schlitz, Schwartz, and all their fellow scientists have been amassing unimpeachable evidence in other experiments that has stretched credulity.” Furthermore, she says, “at least forty top scientists in academic centers of research around the world have demonstrated that an information transfer constantly carries on between living things.” In consideration of what a larger scale test could demonstrate to science, she explained that the discovery of quantum effects “will demolish the entire edifice of present day science”, and “could signal an end to the divide in modern physics between the laws of the large and the laws of the quantum particle.” She believes that these discoveries mark “the beginning of a single rule book defining all of life.” (McTaggart, The Intention Experiment 193)

Conclusions about SPGS

Efforts to prove that a given sonic vibration will affect plants or man may, far from resolving the interaction of music and life, be only unraveling a wondrously resonating tapestry of influences into its separate, unrelated threads. (Tompkins 162)

Whether biophotons have a connection with SPGS should be called into question. Marcel Vogel believed that the physical act of harming plants produced less of a GSR effect than the thought alone. He also believed that “experimenters must become part of their experiments”, which implies that the thoughts of the caretaker, researcher, musician and skeptic all contribute psychic messages to the plant. As Backster and Vogel have determined, plants are very receptive to the emotional state of humans. Perhaps it is not the music that affects the plant but the way those who direct their thought energy at the plant respond to the music.

It is my conclusion that music creates a bridge of intent between caretaker and plant, and furthermore, the character of the music helps determine what the intent is. As music can invoke feelings of well-being and health, for example, if the energy of these thoughts is directed at a plant, health becomes the intention.

I do believe that in order for SPGS to work predictably, the caretaker must feel a strong emotional bias towards the music. Only then can the music help to focus intent. For instance, one could not play raucous music next to a plant that went unnoticed, and then discover that the plant had wilted because of it.

It so happens that plants are highly sensitive emotional receptors. When we project our emotions at the life-forms around us we cause things to happen that we can not explain objectively. The concept of stimulating plant growth with music does not fit well within the given mathematical rules of science but these rules mean nothing to a world we cannot explain.

References:

Backster, Cleve. Primary Perception. Anza: White Rose Millennium Press, 2003.

Chopra, Deepak. Interview. Schneider, Lisa. Spirituality In a Material World. Beliefnet. pag. 1. Online. Internet. Available: www.beliefnet.com

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' George Washington Carver: The Secret Life of Plants (New York: Harper) 141.
'' Saint Augustine: The Intention Experiment (New York: Free Press) 197.

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