It is often said that everything on earth is connected through a higher power – That at some level everything in ONE! Try telling that to a group of skeptics; Jose Silva did. Back in 1966 when Jose Silva was teaching his first public course, most people didn’t believe in ESP.
This was true of Cleve Backster, a polygraph expert in New York who used to teach agents from the FBI and CIA how to use the “lie detector.” He wouldn’t budged if you told him that it was possible for human beings to communicate with plants. Until it happened to him…
One late night in his New York City office, he made a startling discovery that persuaded millions of people that at some level, there is a connection among all living things. What you’re about to discover below is his personal encounter.
Cleve Backster description of landmark experiment to us in a presentation he made at the 1995 Silva International Convention in Laredo:
“For whatever reason, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to see how long it took the water to get from the root area of this plant, all the way up this long trunk and out and down to the leaves” he said.
“After doing a saturation watering of the plant, I thought, ‘Well gee whiz, I’ve got a lot of polygraph equipment around; let me hook the galvanic skin response section of the polygraph onto the leaf.’
“Now this is a whetstone bridge circuit that is designed to measure resistance changes, and I felt that as the contaminated water came up the trunk and down into the leaf that the leaf, becoming more saturated and a better conductor, it would give me the rising time of the water….I would be able to get that on the polygraph chart tracing.”
“Now the thing trended downward rather than upward, which amazed me a little bit because it should have been going slowly upward on the tracings, if it was going to show a drop in resistance” he continued, using slides of the polygraph chart to help illustrate what he was saying.
“I moved it up here – this was my move – and then it came down again, and this is the thing that amazed me right here because this contour right away…I’m looking and thinking, ‘That’s got the contour of a human being tested, reacting when you are asking a question that could get them in trouble.’
“So I forgot about the rising water time and said, Wow, this thing wants to show me people-like reactions. What can I do that will be a threat to the well being of the plant, similar to the fact that a relevant question regarding a crime could be a threat to a person taking a polygraph test if they’re lying. About fifteen minutes along – thirteen minutes and fifty-five seconds along in this initial observation – I had tried different things to try to get a reaction from this plant. I had even dipped a neighboring leaf into a cup of rather warm coffee – and the plant didn’t show me any reaction. It showed me, if anything, boredom, and just continued to go downwards. If this thing were an individual, it would have indicated that they were getting bored and sleepy.”
“But over here,” he said pointing to a sudden jump in the graph, “the idea occurred to me – and only the idea – ‘I know what I am going to do: I am going to burn that plant leaf, that very leaf that’s attached to the polygraph.’
“Now I didn’t have matches in the room. I wasn’t touching the plant in any way. I was maybe five feet away from the desk. I was essentially away from the plant.”
“The only new thing that occurred was my intent to burn that plant leaf.”
“Right here, split second-wise, was when I thought of burning that plant leaf and the image entered my mind. I wasn’t using words at all.”
“And up that the thing went into a wild agitation.”
“Now this was very late at night and towards morning. The building was empty and there was just no other reason for this reaction. This had been going along at a fairly stable level all the way up to this point.”
“So this amazed me.”
“This, I would say, would be a very high quality observation, and my consciousness hasn’t been the same since. And this happened in 1966.”
“I thought, ‘Wow! This thing read my mind!’ It was that obvious to me right then.”
“So then I went to get some matches from the next room. The secretary was a smoker, and I got some matches out of her desk and brought them in.”
“The next will show where I came back in the room, right about here. I lit the match. I was even into burning a neighboring leaf rather than the leaf I had hooked up. Somehow that was already a special leaf.”
“Even before I had a chance to do this I thought, ‘Well, this massive degree of reaction that I’m getting here, I wouldn’t be able to see any additional reaction if it did occur.’
“So I thought, ‘Well, let me reverse the process and remove the threat from the room.’
“I took the matches back out of the room here, came back in at this point, and the thing just evened right out again, which really rounded it out and gave me a very, very high quality observation.”
“Now when my partner in the polygraph school we were running at the time came in, he was able to do the same thing also, as long as he intended to burn the plant leaf. If he pretended to burn the plant leaf, it wouldn’t react.”
“It could tell the difference between pretending you are going to, compared to when you actually intend to do it, which is quite interesting in itself from a plant psychology standpoint.”
Cleve Backster has since been featured in the book The Secret Life of Plants in 197?. Largely as a result of this publicity, many people began talking to their houseplants to get them to grow better.
One of the most popular exercises in the Silva Method Children’s Course is the “Bean Experiment”. In this experiment, the instructor has two ziplock bags of bean wrapped in a moist cloth. Both bags of beans were cared for in the exact same manner. The only difference was that one of the bags of beans was given positive energy by the kids. As the children did this, the were asked to visualize the chosen bag to grow big and strong. They did this everyday for 3 days and to their amazement the beans they sent energy to grew significantly more than other bag.
We invite you to try this little experiment or simply send positive energy to your own plants. See if you notice any fascinating changes. We personally believe that everything is one and connected. And we’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Share your stories below in our comment section or at our Silva Method fan page
