Science
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
Spirituality and science are often separated because they argue like children. In this subject spirituality and science argue but when stripped of their presumptions and superficial surfaces, they agree on the most basic Earth Mother concepts. In any biology book it is common knowledge that life feeds on life and the Earth supports all forms of life. The complex cycles of air, water, soil, and food (or life force exchange) are taught in elementary school. However, it is usually a lightly taken matter. The fact that every thing we do to anything on the planet will cycle back to us eventually is often overlooked. The very air we breathe comes directly from plants and vise versa. We could not breathe or live without the rest of creation. The web of life, or the food chain which is studied in biology, shows us that we will eventually eat ourselves, metaphorically. Pollutants (such as herbicides) not only poisons the plant it is put on, but it travels throughout the food chain by collecting in the fat cells of the mammals that eat it. While traveling in the food chain, the poison grows stronger because it concentrates in the fat of each creature. It cannot be denied that there is interconnectedness among all individual things. This concept is extremely important to science because some people have grown to glorify complexity to such an extent that they see themselves as separate from the rest of the complex world. This separateness has given people a superiority complex that allows them to destroy the Earth Mother without believing it impacts their own body. However, science has proven this assumption false.
To begin with the most basic components seems necessary. Because hydrogen is believed to be the first element, it seems that water would be the preliminary element to examine. Water covers most of the earth's surface and also makes up most of the human body. Even though water is at the base of everything, we know little about it. Scientists in Asia have begun a project called Hado in which they examine the life force of water. Dr. Masaru Emoto studied water molecules, at the moment of being frozen, with a high speed camera and a high powered microscope. He discovered that water molecules look different under various conditions. Water that is first blessed or imbued with loving thoughts of thanks before it is examined will appear to have a beautiful, intricate, and symmetrical snowflake pattern. On the other hand, if the water is neglected, thought about in a negative way, or polluted, then there is no such pattern. Therefore, water reacts to our emotions, thoughts, and treatment. Because water is the most basic element on the Earth Mother and in all life, water could be affecting everything. Though this concept is new to science, people have worshipped water throughout the ages, but that is another story.
The study of plants is the next basic topic. Plants have, not only, made a strong impression upon the cultures and religions of people all over the world, but the importance of plants has also begun to leak into science. Obviously, plants support the entire food chain, thus all of life. Herbalists have recognized the power of medicinal plants to heal the body for centuries. Now the energy and sentience of plants is a concept that is becoming accepted as well. Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird wrote a book called The Secret Life Of Plants (1973) which documents many accounts of different relations between plants and people as well as their environment.
Some of the oldest accounts found in The Secret Life Of Plants (1973) are of physicians and doctors. Paracelsus was a doctor who believed in the healing powers of plants which he adopted from herbalist, old lore, and wise men of the East and of Europe. Paraclesus claimed to feel a plants healing power just by holding it in his hand. This was the beginning of the idea of magnetism which a Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer developed into what he called, "animal magnetism." He also claimed to be able to feel magnetic forces the same way Paracelsus and others did. Though these ideas were accused of being witchcraft, they inspired many other doctors such as William Gilbert, who referred to these feelings he sensed as "soul-like." In 1930 Edward Bach was so inspired by Paracelsus' teachings that he began wandering the Earth searching for wisdom and the secrets of plants. Then he developed an idea of learning from plants about how to heal yourself with your mind. He saw sickness as a mental problem. He wrote extensively about the power of plant energy and its ability to heal by sun light, dew drops, and energy alone, healing the ill person's mental condition.
One of the most remarkable accounts to science in The Secret Life Of Plants (1973) was written about a man named Cleve Backster. In 1966 Backster was teaching the art of lie detection with the assistance of a lie detector device called a "galvanometer." The basic idea of the device is that it hooks up to a human's body and detects the electrical potential or the energy fluctuations, which are indicators of thought and emotion. Out of curiosity Backster attached the electrodes of the device to a leaf of a tropical houseplant called a dracaena. Backster noticed, in astonishment, that the plant was making the device react similarly to the way it would if it was hooked up to a human. Backster decided to do an experiment. First he dipped a leaf of the plant into his hot cup of coffee. But there was no significant reaction. Then, without moving or doing anything, Backster thought about burning the leaf with a match. As soon as the image of fire entered his mind, the device's recording pen showed an unmistakable sweep. This amazing discovery made Backster want to run through the streets screaming about how that plants not only think and feel but that they read minds! Instead of running around like a mad man, Backster plunged into an in-depth investigation filled with experiments.
Backster came upon many important discoveries, of which are recorded in great detail in The Secret Life Of Plants (1973). Many of his experiments were done in a professional laboratory where he came to conclusions such as, "Maybe plants see better without eyes… better than humans do with them," Backster said in his book, "If you don't like the looks of something…you can look the other way, or not look. If everyone were to be in everyone else's mind all the time it would be chaos." Other accounts recorded in The Secret Life Of Plants (1973) are less scientific. For instance, Backster was eating yogurt when he noticed that his plants reacted. He realized later that when he put jam into his yogurt there was a chemical preservative in the jam which killed some of the live bacilli. The plants also reacted to hot water flowing down the drain, killing bacteria. It even reacted when Backster cut his finger and dabbed it with iodine, which killed cells. These at-home experiences inspired Backster to design an experiment that would monitor plants while a machine killed brine shrimp at random (so human involvement was not be a factor). The results of several scientific experiments showed that the plants reacted strongly to the deaths of the shrimp.
In The Secret Life Of Plants (1973) the authors quote Backster saying, "Sentience…does not seem to stop at the cellular level. It may go down to the molecular, the atomic and even the subatomic. All sorts of things which have been conventionally considered to be inanimate may have to be reevaluated." This was the catalyst for many scientists, who once laughed at Backster, to eat their words and reevaluate all aspects of the natural world, discovering that science can not define life, let alone sentience, so easily.
While Backster was doing his research, a professor Marcel Vogel, who was also featured in The Secret Life Of Plants (1973), did many interesting experiments with the help of his students. One of his students, Vivian Wiley, tried a simple experiment with dead leaves. She took two leaves and set them beside her bed. Each morning she would look at one of the leaves and will it to live. Though both leaves were disconnected from their plant bodies at the same time, the leaf that she paid close attention to continued to look as if it was picked recently. After a month she brought Vogel to her house to photograph the two leaves. The one she had willed to live was still a vibrant green, as if it had just been picked, while the ignored leaf was brown, dry and obviously decaying. This convinced Vogel that there had to be "psychic energy" which kept these plants from decaying. Vogel preformed further experiments by giving energy to plants and recording their responses with electrical devices. He declared in a lecture, which is recorded in The Secret Life Of Plants (1973), "It is fact: man can and does communicate with plant life." Furthermore, in the same lecture he says that plants "radiate energy forces that are beneficial to man. One can feel these forces! They feed into one's own force field, which in turn feeds back energy to the plant." This is comparable to the wisdom of native and indigenous cultures, where people energetically charged themselves by embracing trees and other forms of nature.