blood pressure through operant conditioning techniques in patients with essential hypertension’, Science, 1971; 173 (3998): 740–2.
3. E. E. Green, ‘Copper wall research psychology and psychophysics: subtle energies and energy medicine: emerging theory and practice’, Proceedings, First Annual Conference, International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM), Boulder, Colorado, 21–25 June 1991.
4. This research was eventually published as G. Schwartz and L. Russek, ‘Subtle energies – electrostatic body motion registration and the human antenna-receiver effect: a new method for investigating interpersonal dynamical energy system interactions’, Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine, 1996; 7 (2): 149–84.
5. E. E. Green et al., ‘Anomalous electrostatic phenomena in exceptional subjects’, Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine, 1993; 2: 69; W. A. Tiller et al., ‘Towards explaining anomalously large body voltage surges on exceptional subjects, Part I: The electrostatic approximation’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1995; 9 (3): 331.
6. William A. Tiller, ‘Subtle energies’, Science & Medicine, 1999, 6 (3): 28–33.
7. A. Seto et al., ‘Detection of extraordinary large biomagnetic field strength from the human hand during external qi emission’, Acupuncture and Electrotherapeutics Research International, 1992; 17: 75–94; J. Zimmerman, ‘New technologies detect effects in healing hands’, Brain/Mind Bulletin, 1985; 10 (2): 20–3.
8. B. Grad, ‘Dimensions in “Some biological effects of the laying on of hands” and their implications’, in H. A. Otto and J. W. Knight (eds.), Dimension in Wholistic Healing: New Frontiers in the Treatment of the Whole Person, Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979: 199–212.
9. L. N. Pyatnitsky and V. A. Fonkin, ‘Human consciousness influence on water structure’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1995; 9 (1): 89.
10. G. Rein and R. McCraty, ‘Structural changes in water and DNA associated with new physiologically measurable states’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1994; 8 (3): 438–9.
11. W. Tiller would eventually write about the effect of shielding psychics in his book Science and Human Transformation, Walnut Creek, Calif.: Pavior Publishing, 1997: 32.
12. M. Connor, G. Schwartz et al., ‘Oscillation of amplitude as measured by an extra low frequency magnetic field meter as a biophysical measure of intentionality’. Paper presented at the Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference, Tucson, Arizona, April 2006.
13. Sicher, Targ et al., ‘A randomized double-blind study’, op. cit.
14. See McTaggart, The Field, op. cit.: 39, for a full description of F.-A. Popp’s earlier work.
15. S. Cohen and F.-A. Popp, ‘Biophoton emission of the human body’, Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology, 1997; 40: 187–9.
16. K. Creath and G. E. Schwartz, ‘What biophoton images of plants can tell us about biofields and healing’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2005; 19 (4): 531–50.
17. S. N. Bose, ‘Planck’s Gesetz und Lichtquantenhypothese’, Zeitschrift für Physik, 1924; 26: 178–81; A. Einstein, ‘Quantentheorie des einatomigen idealen Gases [Quantum theory of ideal monoatomic gases]’, Sitz. Ber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. (Berlin), 1925; 23: 3.
18. C. E. Wieman and E. A. Cornell, ‘Seventy years later: the creation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an ultracold gas’, Lorentz Proceedings, 1999; 52: 3–5.
19. K. Davis et al., ‘Bose-Einstein condensation in a gas of sodium atoms’, Physical Review Letters, 1995; 75: 3969–73.
20. M. W. Zwierlein et al., ‘Observation of Bose-Einstein condensation of molecules’, Physical Review Letters, 2003; 91: 250401.
21. H. Fröhlich, ‘Long range coherence and energy storage in biological systems’, Int. J. Quantum Chem., 1968; II: 641–9.
22. For this entire example, see Tiller, Science and Human Transformation, op. cit.: 196.
23. M. Jibu et al., ‘Quantum optical coherence in cytoskeletal microtubules: implications for brain function’, Biosystems, 1994; 32: 195–209; S. R. Hameroff, ‘Cytoplasmic gel states and ordered water: possible roles in biological quantum coherence’, Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Advanced Water Sciences Symposium, Dallas, Texas, 1996.
CLEVE BACKSTER WAS AMONG THE FIRST to propose that plants are affected by human intention – a notion considered so preposterous that it was ridiculed for 40 years. Backster achieved his notoriety from a series of experiments that purported to demonstrate that living organisms read and respond to a person’s thoughts.
Plant telepathy interested me less than a tangential discovery of his that has been sidelined amid all his adverse publicity: evidence of a constant two-way flow of information between all living things. Every organism, from bacteria to human beings, appears to be in perpetual quantum communication. This relentless conversation offers a ready mechanism by which thoughts can have a physical effect.
This discovery resulted from a silly little diversion in 1966; Backster, at the time a tall, wiry man with a buzz cut and a great deal of childlike enthusiasm, was easily distracted. He often carried on working in his suite of offices when the rest of his staff had gone home and he could finally focus without the constant interruptions of colleagues and the tumultuous daytime activity of Times Square, four storeys below.1
Backster had made his name as the country’s leading lie-detector expert. During the Second World War, he had been fascinated by the psychology of lying, and the use of hypnosis and ‘truth serum’ interrogation in counter-intelligence, and he had brought these twin fascinations to bear in refining the polygraph test to a high