blended several techniques: photography, measurements of light intensity and computerized pattern recognition. Korotkov’s camera would take pictures of the field around each of the 10 fingers, one finger at a time. A computer program would then extrapolate from this a real-time image of the ‘biofield’ surrounding the organism and deduce from it the state of the organism’s health.
Korotkov went on to write five books on the human bioenergy field.26 In time, he managed to convince the Russian Ministry of Health of the importance of his invention to medical technology, diagnosis and treatment. His equipment was initially employed to predict certain clinical situations, such as the progress of recovery of people after surgery.27 It soon became widely used in Russia as a diagnostic tool for many illnesses, including cancer and stress,28 and was even used to assess athletic potential – to predict the psychophysical reserves in athletes training for the Olympics and the likelihood of victory or exhaustion from overtraining.29 Eventually, some 3000 doctors, practitioners and researchers worldwide came to use the technology. The National Institutes of Health got interested and funded work on the ‘biofield’, which employed Korotkov’s equipment.30
While officially exploring these practical applications, Korotkov privately carried on with his own studies of what had really captured his imagination: the connection between biofields and consciousness.31 He took GDV readings of healers and a Qigong master while they were sending energy, and discovered remarkable changes in their corona discharges. Korotkov then explored the effects of a person’s thoughts on the people surrounding him. He asked a number of couples to ‘send’ a variety of thoughts to their partners, while they were standing within close range. Every strong emotion – whether love, hate or anger – produced an extraordinary effect on the light discharge of the recipient.32
Some 40 years after Backster first employed his crude polygraph mechanism to register the effect of thoughts, Korotkov verified those early discoveries with state-of-the-art equipment. He hooked up a potted plant to his GDV machine and asked his researchers to think of different emotions – anger, sadness, joy – and then positive and negative intentions towards the plant. Whenever a participant mentally threatened the plant, its energy field diminished. The opposite occurred if people approached the plant with water or feelings of love.
Largely because he lacked scientific credentials, Backster was never recognized for his contributions. He had stumbled across the first evidence that living things engage in a constant two-way flow of information with their environment, enabling them to register even the nuances of human thought. The more advanced scientific knowledge of physicists Fritz Popp and Konstantin Korotkov was needed to uncover the actual mechanism of that communication. Their research into the nature of quantum light emissions from living organisms suddenly made sense of Backster’s findings. If thoughts are another stream of photons, it is perfectly plausible that a plant could pick up the signals and be affected by them.
The work of Backster, Popp and Korotkov suggested something profound about the effect of intention. Every last thought appeared to augment or diminish something else’s light.
Notes - Chapter 3: The Two-Way Street
1. For all history of Cleve Backster’s discoveries and experiments, interview with Backster, October 2004 and his Primary Perception: Biocommunication with Plants, Living Foods, and Human Cells, Anza, Calif.: White Rose Millennium Press, 2003.
2. As Obi-Wan Kenobe tells Luke Skywalker, after Alderan has been blown up by the Empire in Star Wars part IV: A New Hope: ‘I feel a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.’
3. Presentation given at the Tenth Annual Parapsychology Association meeting in New York City, September 7, 1967. Also published as C. Backster, ‘Evidence of a primary perception in plant life’, International Journal of Parapsychology, 1968; 10 (4): 329–48.
4. P. Dubrov and V. N. Pushkin, Parapsychology and Contemporary Science, New York and London: Consultants Bureau, 1982.
5. P. Tompkins and C. Bird, The Secret Life of Plants, New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
6. ‘Boysenberry to Prune, Boysenberry to Prune: Do you read me? Lie detector expert Cleve Backster reported in the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that he had detected electrical impulses between two containers of yogurt at opposite ends of his laboratory. Backster claims the bacteria in the containers were communicating.’ Esquire, January 1976.
7. Backster, ‘Evidence of a primary perception’, op. cit.
8. Backster, Primary Perceptions, op. cit.: 112–13.
9. Backster, Primary Perceptions. See also Rupert Sheldrake, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals, London: Three Rivers Press, 2000.
10. This and other personal details of events resulted from interviews with Ingo Swann, New York, July 2005.
11. See McTaggart, The Field, op. cit.: 39 for a full description of F.-A. Popp’s earlier work.
12. All details of these experiments resulted from an interview between the author and Fritz-Albert Popp, January 2006.
13. R. M. Galle et al., ‘Biophoton emission from Daphnia magna: A possible factor in the self-regulation of swarming’, Experientia, 1991; 47: 457–60; R. M. Galle, ‘Untersuchungen zum dichte und zeitabhängigen Verhalten der ultraschwachen Photonenemission von pathogenetischen Weibchen des Wasserflohs Daphnia magna.’ Dissertation. Universität Saarbrücken, Fachbereich Zoologie, 1993.
14. F.-A. Popp et al., ‘Nonsubstantial biocommunication in terms of Dicke’s Theory’, in M. W. Ho, F.-A. Popp and U. Warnke (eds.), Bioelectrodynamics and Biocommunication, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 1994: 293–317; J. J. Chang et al., ‘Research on cell communication of P. elegans by means of photon emission’, Chinese Science Bulletin, 1995; 40: 76–9.
15. J. J. Chang et al., ‘Communication between Dinoflagellates by means of photon emission’, in L. V. Beloussov and F.-A. Popp (eds.), Proceedings of International Conference on Non-equilibrium and Coherent Systems in Biophysics, Biology and Biotechnology, Sep. 28–Oct. 2 1994, Moscow: Bioinform Services Co.,