The Unity in Creation

In my previous blog, I talked about how we are connected to each other through a so-called "collective consciousness."

It goes further than that. We also have a connection to plant life. This was discovered in 1966 by Cleve Backster. It goes back to the early days of the polygraph machine.

Backster began working with the newly-formed CIA on April 27, 1948 as part of their program to develop enhanced interrogation techniques. He left in 1951 to become the director of the Keeler Polygraph Institute of Chicago and later started his own polygraph consulting business in Washington D.C.

By 1958 he had enough free time to do further polygraph research. Finally, in 1966 he made the most significant discovery ever, insofar as our purpose is concerned. His secretary had purchased a rubber plant and a dracaena cane plant for the office. On Feb. 2, 1966, after working at the lab through the night, he took a coffee break about 7:00 a.m. It was then that he got the unusual idea to hook up the polygraph to his new dracaena plant.

He was surprised that the plant recorded electrical activity that was jagged and not smooth or flat. It was constantly changing. About a minute later, he noticed that the polygraph showed the kind of electrical patterns resembling "fear of detection" in humans who had just been asked a question that made them afraid of being found telling a lie.

He tried dipping a leaf in the hot coffee and tapping another leaf, but got very little response. Then he had an idea. He would light a match and burn a leaf. The moment he thought this, the polygraph's recording pen spiked to the top of the chart. Surprised, Backster later confessed, "Gee, it's as though this plant read my mind!"

Further experiments showed that the threat had to be real in order for the plant to "scream." If someone were just play-acting, the plant somehow knew this and would not react. But if the plant were convinced that the threat was real, it would react wildly, and every impulse was recorded on the polygraph. Backster also found that expressions of love and concern would calm the plant after such threats.

Another time a plant "screamed" whenever a certain man came near. He made his living mowing lawns.

He also discovered that once he had started to take care of the plant, it seemed to track his thoughts even when he was out of the lab. At one point he left the lab to run an errand, leaving the polygraph hooked up to the plant. When he returned, he noticed that the plant had reacted the moment he had decided to return. The plant did not need to wait to see him. It "knew" the moment he made the decision to return.

Backster soon appeared on various television talk shows, such as Johnny Carson and Art Linkletter. On one of the shows, the plant was asked, "Do you believe in God?" The plant showed an immediate reaction, and the audience was stunned.

Soon Backster began to monitor living cells (animal and human) and found that the cells also showed the same kind of reactions. He wired living cells with very thin gold wires. In 1988 Dr. Brian O'Leary left his own cells in a lab near San Diego to monitor carefully while he took a trip to Phoenix. When O'Leary missed a turn on the freeway, and when his son failed to meet him at the airport, and other stress-events, the plant reacted to his stress each time, though it was hundreds of miles away.

Vegetarians often avoid eating meat in order to live a "cruelty-free" diet. They may have to rethink their arguments. Whether they are vegetables or living cells in raw meat, they all "scream" when they are cooked or eaten. The stress is all measurable on the polygraph. However, Backster says, when you pray over your food, it has a calming effect, as it seems to understand its role in keeping us alive.

This seems to add new meaning to Paul's statement in Rom. 8:22 that "the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now" as they await the manifestation of the sons of God. The groans and "screams" of nature are now measurable in this way.

Scientists soon discovered that distance was meaningless in these experiments. All that was required was a "connection" between plant and person, such as, in Backster's case, owning and taking care of "his" plant. Plant reactions were just as strong regardless of distance.

Likewise, they discovered that plants would react to nearby animals who were in danger. Backster had decided to leave the polygraph wired to the plant all the time just in case something might occur that was unusual and interesting. One day he poured some hot water down the smelly, dirty sink at the lab in order to clean it. When all of the bacteria were dying, the plant "screamed." So they dumped a pan of shrimp into hot boiling water to cook them, and again the plant "screamed."

This shows that creation itself is interconnected in some way. In my view, everything is part of Creation and is made out of "God Particles." God Himself feels everything, all the pain and all the pleasure, all the sin and all the good stuff that is going on in His Body. God, then, is the common denominator between all things. Distance does not matter, because God is spirit, and the spiritual realm recognizes no distance.

Further, we must recognize that we are not separate from creation but are intertwined with all things as in a single Body. Though sin and selfishness has divided us, these divisions are not permanent. It is a sickness, as described in Isaiah 1:5 and 6,

⁵ The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint, ⁶ From the sole of the foot even to the head there is nothing sound in it, only bruises, welts, and raw wounds, not pressed out or bandaged, nor softened with oil.

But "there is a balm in Gilead (Jer. 8:22) that makes the wounded whole," as the old hymn says. Neither is the pain permanent that God Himself feels in His Body throughout history. It all came out of Him, it is all going through Him, and ultimately, it all goes back to Him (Rom. 11:36). The reconciliation of all things is the moment when every particle of God's Body returns to full unity and pain-free harmony.

We are here to forgive, heal, and reconcile God's Body. That is what happens every time we care for someone else or resolve problems that divide us. Truth ought to be used to bring unification, not to divide further. This is what Paul meant in Eph. 4:15 and 16,

¹⁵ But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

In other words, truth in love is the key to healing the whole body, so that it is without division, and so that each individual part (organ and cell) works properly and can grow and build itself in love. Our growth is dependent upon this love, because not truth alone, but "truth in love" is the measure of spiritual growth.

To accomplish such spiritual growth in love, we need a new understanding of ourselves and the unity of all things. To know its origin as coming "out of" God and to know that in the end all things go back "to Him," gives us the proper perspective for the interim of "through Him." Our place in God's history--His Book of Life--will ultimately be measured by how well we healed, not how well we divided God's Body into good guys vs. bad guys.

Discerning good and evil (Heb. 5:14) is the ability to properly diagnose the illness, so that we know how to bring healing.