**“In the plant it is that vital and intelligent Force which informs the seed and develops it into the blade of grass, or the root and sapling” (H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Private Commentary, 1:291)
Darwin even considered the threadlike roots a kind of brain that searches and burrows downward into the soil. There is the suggestion here of a consciousness diffused throughout the whole plant, focused in its most vital parts such as the shoots or root tips, leaves, and especially the flowers.
The great Bengali scientist, Sir Jagadis Chundra Bose, conducted fascinating experiments with plants nearly a hundred years ago. Dr. Bose combined physiology, physics, and biology in his research and discovered universal relationships. He devised a way for a plant, by reacting to electrical and other stimuli, to “write” its signature on a piece of smoked glass. He observed that the sensitive mimosa has a reflex arc like an animal, and a type of nervous system of its own corresponding to certain cells. He also found that in the cortex tissue of the growing layer plants have pulsing heart cells that help pump the sap up through the stem. Among his many experiments he noted that the carrot was the most excitable of vegetables, and celery one of the least. Bose quotes the following from Henri Bergson:
. . . it by no means follows that a brain is indispensable to consciousness. . . . If then, at the top of the scale of living beings, consciousness is attached to very complicated nervous centres, must we not suppose that it accompanies the nervous system down its whole descent, and that when at last the nerve stuff is merged in the yet undifferentiated living matter, consciousness is still there, diffused, confused, but not reduced to nothing? Theoretically, then, everything living might be conscious. In principle, consciousness is co-extensive with life. – Mind-Energy, Lectures and Essays, pp. 7-8; quoted in Plant Autographs and Their Relationships, “Response of Inorganic Matter,” ch. viii.
Bose went even further in his experiments showing us new interrelationships between the “living” and “non-living” that are not yet fully recognized, and that consciousness is in all matter. His experiments primarily reveal a plant awareness very sensitive to other types of electromagnetic frequencies or waves besides those of visible light.
In the early 1950s Dr. T. C. Singh, head botanist of the Annamalai University, India, discovered that the hydrilla, a water plant, reacted to Indian ragas played on violin, flute, and vina. Further experiments with various pitches of sound caused certain plants greatly to increase their yields. Around the world this research continued in the '60s and ’ 70s with mixed results. Plants responded to most kinds of music or sound, to magnetic and electric fields or current, all of which favored growth under certain conditions. It was discovered that jazz and classical music in general gave better results than hard rock, which produced an adverse effect.
Cleve Backster used a polygraph (lie-detector) to test plants, attaching electrodes to the leaves. By recording electrical impulses he found the plants to be extremely sensitive to his thoughts, particularly thoughts that threatened their well-being. Backster also observed a reaction in a plant when even the smallest cells were killed near it. He noted that they have a kind of memory, reacting to someone who earlier had done harm to another plant nearby: in a line-up of anonymous people the plant could pick out the one who had performed the act.
Marcel Vogel, a contemporary, performed most of Backster’s experiments successfully. He came to an interesting conclusion: that there is a life force, a cosmic energy surrounding living things, shared by all kingdoms including the human. He said:
this oneness is what makes possible a mutual sensitivity allowing plant and man not only to intercommunicate, but to record these communications via the plant on a recording chart. – The Secret Life of Plants, p. 24**