Most people are now aware that the plant kingdom also enjoy listening to music just as we do – depending upon the type of music of course. Research seems to show that leaves and stems grow towards the speakers when classical music is played and grow away when heavy metal is used. In my research on plants, I can assume it has something to do with a combination of the shape of theelectromagnetic waveform that is emitted from the speaker’s coil of wire and the vibrations from the speaker’s cone that moves the air molecules. Then there are pure spiritual naturists who feel classical music lacks the hard rock vocal lyrics that offend the plants.
For those of you that believe in the magic of quartz crystals and that music is good therapy for sick plants, you will be pleasantly surprised to hear that I have discovered a process to allow plants to compose and perform healing music for you. My claim may sound totally bizarre to you at first and I still am coming to terms to explain scientifically or spiritually how this happens, but I have decided to go out on a limb and share this research with you in the hope that someone can explain to me what is going on. To do this I need to start way back and give a brief history of my music carrear.
I graduated high school at 15 years of age after skipping 2 grades. I was not fond of school as I found it too slow for me so I taught myself how to play music and became a professional musician at the age of sixteen. My father had saved for me to go to university but after he saw that I learned to play bass, guitar and keyboards on my own, he gave me my tuition so I could purchase the latest and greatest analogue track recording studio equipment so I could start my own recording studio business. I produced my own album and took it to Los Angeles but soon suffered the perils of Hollywood that the world is just learning about now. I felt better behind the mixing board than being on stage.
When the Macintosh Plus computer came to market I bought one, fell madly in love with it and mastered it’s use in digital music production. I became an Apple evangelist and wrote articles that that were published in trade publications right beside the Apple advertisement for the MAC. One of the first interactive CDROM’s ever made featured my TV series called The Search for Ancient Wisdom and it was licensed by Apple and bundled with their first computers that had a CDROM drive. I was a die hard MacHead.
When the internet came about I embraced it, not for web pages but to deliver interactive rich media video embedded eBooks and this technology will play a major part of the Healing Fields project. I have collected the content and have edited it up into bit size chunks and am preparing to insert it into the pages of the eBooks for delivery via the Apple book store. This current film series features an episode and companion book chapter called “The Healing Fields of Nikola Tesla.” That episode centres around the obscure lost medical inventions of this up and coming cult hero.
Being ever fascinated with how his electromagnetic technology has rapidly changed the way we communicate with each other wirelessly, I felt the time was right to reintroduce the western world to another side of this inventor who used crystals of ultraviolet light andelectromagnetic field therapy to treat a wide variety of disease.
In my country, Health Canada has recently started to licence medical devices that use pulsed electromagnetic fields to treat health problems but currently there are no medical institutions of higher education that teach it’s use in medicine. My company pdfPictures specializes in the production of interactive educational text books that can be delivered for use in long distance education and I thought that the time was right to make a book about it.
I approached Dr. Magda Havas, a professor at Trent University in Peterborough Ontario Canada who taught courses on the effects of bio-electromagnetic fields on humans and asked her if she would be interested in writing a book on the subject and partnering with our company to produce a companion film and offer it online. Dr. Havas thought it to be a good idea and approached the dean of her school which resulted in a 2 year sabbatical from Trent to study the healing effects of electromagnetic fields.
Off we went to Europe to film the medical clinics where this technology was used – mainly in Switzerland where magnetic field therapy is extremely popular, especiallyin the private clinics where the rich and famous are treated for cancer. I decided to return to Europe several times to tour the factories that produce the medical devices. All were pleased to hear Health Canada was now licensing the devices to be used by doctors and the general public so they were more than pleased to provide samples of their products for us to do studies on. Several companies asked for my professional help to create marketing materials in English for them to use to promote their products in North America.
Now that we had all of our medical devices back in Canada at Magda’s personal laboratory, The Rose Lab which stands for Research Of Subtle Energy, we wanted to film the effects that magnetic fields produce. Our historical research showed that magnetic fields were first tested on plants, then animals and finally humans. Since we are not medical doctors, Dr. Havas felt that it would be wise to first confirm studies that had been previously carried out on plants as that is one of the main features of Trent University.
We could prove that plants do not do well when placed in close proximity of wireless technology such as WiFi because seedlings would wither and die. When seeds were watered with magnetically charged water from the medical devices, they grew much larger and healthier than the control subjects.
The next test was to see if the plants could respond to external stimuli and then measured using human bio-feedback devices. CIA polygraph expert Cleve Backster (often misspelled as Baxter) attached lie detectors to various house plants to prove that plants do indeed have some sort of a electrical response system just like humans do. His polygraph machines registered reactions within the plants if they were put under a stress test. His CIA government credentials resulted in favourable reviews and was widely reported by the media. The research proved that when plants felt threatened with harm, the plants would respond on his polygraph machine. The problem with Backster’s continued research which was discredited mainly by botanists that tried to confirm them, was that he made statements that his plants could read his mind at a distance. Yes, he stepped over that line…..and our curiosity got the best of us and we wanted to test it for ourself.
We purchased a modern version of the polygraph machine that Cleve Backster used on plants, hooked it up to the same plants he used in his experiments and proceeded to run similar tests to see if plants feared things like cellphones or liked the electromagnetic fields the medical devices. We failed in this area of research because we could not detect a change in response. Holding a live cell phone up to them did nothing. WiFi base stations same thing.
We did however to our surprise, confirm without a doubt that plants do indeed know if you are present and in close proximity. We speculate that they seem to be able to feel the bio-electro magnetic fields that are emitted from your body. If you move your hands toward them quickly in an attempt to scare them, the polygraph machine will show a strong reaction. Do this again – and you get a smaller reaction. The next time you try, the plant usually does not respond because it thinks that you mean it no harm. The waveform sort of flatlines. Bring another person into the room to frighten the plant, that stress process starts all over again. The needle jumps strongly the first time and gradually is less responsive each time you try to frighten the plant.
As a film producer that attempts to document the science behind the experiment accurately, I feel its important to present the audience with good quality moving pictures and sound. There must be a better way to show the plant’s stress response to the audience other than just filming the computer’s monitor – a wavy line is jus so boring. For some strange reason that happens frequently around this production, I sort of get an idea out of nowhere that pops into my head and eventually it leads me down a path that seems to be fruitful.
In this case I called the company that manufactured the polygraph machine we had just purchased and asked them if they could enhance the software so that when the waveform changed, a sound could be heard. Something that I could record as audio, simple and inexpensive. That idea eventually became a major turning point in my life that would eventually alter the entire scope and direction of the film. The polygraph company, Limestone Technologies in Kingston Ontario purchased The Backster School of Lie Detection from the estate of Cleve Backster whom had recently passed away. Limestone was excited that Dr. Havas was going to attempt to confirm Backster’s studies so they ended up going well beyond what we asked for.
It just so happened that their lead programmer was also a MIDI expert (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) so the company decided to version their lie-detector biofeedback software to allow a MIDI interface connection with my Macintosh digital music audio workstation that I use to compose music for my films. Instead of a simple wavy tone, we now had the sound of real digitized musical instruments to listen to. The plants could respond as musical tones.
It took about one year and lots of synchronicity to fine tune the software/hardware interfaces and but the result was quite astounding. I was lucky that I am good at systems integration and had all of the gear at my disposal. Initially the General MiDi sounds were quite crude as they are built into the PC computer that had contained the polygraph software. Eventually we interfaced the PC and the Macintosh via midi which opened up a whole world of digital sounds and it was indeed amazing to hear not one – but four plants perform music in unison, all in key using the same tempo. No one payed attention to the wavy line of the custom polygraph software, it was the music the plants could generate that got our attention.
To get them to play music, you would wave your hands around in front of them in an attempt to get their attention, but unfortunately soon after the plants calmed down, knowing that you meant them no harm, the plants became silent for most of the time. When a new person came into the room they seemed to lighten up and start to make music for a while and then seemed to go to sleep.
What we did confirm from Cleve Backster’s studies, is that some people effect the plants more than others and we wanted to learn why this happened so we booked a booth at the Total Health Show at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre and put up a sign thatsaid “Meet our Singing Plants.” Our booth was quite crowded with people who all looked and listened in wonderment as the plants performed music to each person that we selected from the crowd. We just asked a member from the audience to stand in front of the plants and think different thoughts. Send love to them etc.
We were looking for people that could keep the plants playing music for extended periods of time without frightening them. We needed a “plant whisper.” When a good test subject was found that the plants responded to, they were asked to participate in a scientific experiment, and if they agreed, they placed their business card inside of a quartz crystal singing bowl that was situated beside the plants. The audience assumed that the bowl was a prize for the person that made the best performance with the plants. It became a real side show.
To attract the attendees attention in the crowded convention centre I would strike the crystal singing bowl and then announce – “step up and conduct the singing plants.” It was lucky for us that our neighbours were enjoying the overflow crowd we were bringing to their booths, but the striking of the bowl was getting boring. About half way though the event I decided to resonate the singing bowl so that it would play one continuous therapeutic tone – a D note.
Suddenly the plants went dead silent for a few seconds and we thought something was wrong with the software. Ever so slowly and gradually they started to perform the most amazing music I had ever heard from them up until that time. We had just discovered that when I resonated the quartz crystal singing bowl, the plants duplicated the sine waveform that the crystal singing bowl makes. It looked like waves on the ocean and they were consistent. I had just discovered that I could get the plants to perform at my command just by resonating a quartz crystal singing bowl.
Tesla is most known for giving birth to electromagnetism via his patent of the Tesla Coil that was used to develop the AC power distribution system. He was also the first to broadcast electricity wirelessly which eventually became AM radio. A Tesla coil antenna transmits the high frequency radio wave which is then captured by a crystal that demodulates the high frequency down into the lower audio frequency spectrum so our ears can hear it. Jagdish Chandra Bose, an Indian inventor whom seemed to understand the forces of nature found that a galena crystal worked best inside home radio receivers that came to be a.ectionally known as “The Crystal.” Fast forward 120 years where quartz liquid “Time Crystals” are now replacing rare earth crystals for use in AI – Artificial Intelligent quantum computers. Tesla knew all about the importance of quartz crystals a long time ago.
“In crystal we have a pure evidence of the existence of a formative life principle, and although in spite of everything we cannotunderstand the life of crystals – it is still a living being.” (Nikola Tesla, 1900)
In addition to his work with crystal technology, Jagdish Chandara Bose also discovered that plants do have some sort of acomplicated electrical system and manufactured a sensitive device to measure it. After several attempts to get the scientific community to believe that he was indeed monitoring the plant via bio-feedback, he decided to abandon the research which was considered to be “pseudoscience”at that time.
We seem to have accidentally stumbled upon some bizarre connection between the world of crystals and plants. This new finding, that the plants could feel the vibrations of the crystal led us down a very different path of research, one where quartz crystals would play an important part in our film. Was the sound of the crystal bowl causing the electrodes on the plant to vibrate? Could the plants feel the piezo-electric fields that quartz makes when vibrated? I would eventually wave many things in front of them such as metal, plastic, glasses of water, rubber – all with no effect. The plants would only respond to the quartz crystal singing bowl and they would perform this way for hours!
The crystal bowl that we used at the Total Health Show was about 14 inches in diameter and very heavy to lift. I ended up purchasing a small hand held 6 inch singing bowl so that I could wave it in front of the plants like an orchestra conductor does. Just like learning to play any instrument, I had to learn how to move the bowl closer and away from them to get different higher and lower notes. Some plants we found were more responsive than others. I never had to strike the bowl to get a sound. I could just rub it with the mallet or stress the crystal and the plants would respond immediately. It must have something to do with the piezoelectric effect of quartz crystals, but we found that just stressing a quartz crystal does nothing. The plants wanted the singing bowl.
It was now easy to get the plants to play on command and the next step was to get them to perform on their own without my involvement. As you could imagine over the 4 years that I was nurturing the plants I had become very fond them which initially started with a dieffenbachia because that is the first plant CleveBackster used in his experiments. Since there were four channels in the custom polygraph software, a snake, aloe and a palm plant were added and they all seemed to respond well to my commands. I had purchased many different types of plants of all shapes and sizes to test and even went deep into the forest with portable computers to measure weeds and trees.
My singing plants are charged every week with portable magnetic field devices and I give them a good dose of magnetic water as needed. This water seems to not evaporate as quickly. Indoors, we grew plants using magenta coloured LED lights that were developed by NASA. Since plants are green, their leaves reflect green light and absorb red and blue. When these two colours are combined, they produce the colour magenta and I found that the plants perform well when bathed in that light. Just like musicians do – they like to be in the spotlight.
The most interesting part of the study is in the way we play audio to them – using light. In Germany we visited a medical electronic company that specializes in light therapy. Their light devices allow for audio modulation and they are used for super-learning. The process works this way. You feed pre-recorded spoken words or music from your phone or MP3 player into the light device which causes the lights to flicker or modulate to the waveform of the audio.
If you attach headphones to a small solar panel and hold it up to this modulating light – you will hear that music coming from the light. It mainly used for super-learning, or in a negative way, subliminal programming. You look into the light while you listen to the sound and the combination of the two places the information deep into your conscious and subconscious mind. Great way to learn to speak a language. They have also been used to bring people out of a coma in much the same way music helps to bring consciousness and memory back to Alzheimer patients.
In our study with the musical plants, we take the output of the audio playback monitors and feed it into the lights that are focused on the plants. In this way, in addition to hearing the sound coming out of the speakers, the plants can feel the flickering photon light on their leaves. Just like singers have monitors that face them on the stage so they can hear what they are singing, the musical plants have lights that modulate to their musical performance so they can feel the frequencies that they are producing on their leaves.
That modulated light seems to have made all of the difference in regards to having the plants play music consistently without having me conduct them. You can just start them up and in most cases they are happy to entertain themselves for hours and jam with eachother;) Certain plants seem to prefer one musical instrument over the others just like musicians. They are just producing a small electrical waveform consisting of frequencies that have been limited to particular notes so they stay in key, and then the signal is converted into MIDI notes by the lie detector software. I assign each plant a timbre or tone of a digital musical instrument or vocal style – that’s my art.
Sometimes I will assign a particular plant the sound of a real sampled viola or violin hoping that I can create a small four part symphony orchestra – and it will gradually go silent and no amount of waving the crystal bowl will get it to respond! Very puzzling and almost spooky. I then go though my library of hundreds of sampled sounds until it picks one and comes back to life. It may be more lively controlling a Hammond organ once it feels the modulated light the organ makes on its leaves. It seems to “resonate” well with them and perks up to come alive again. It’s really a hit and miss.
I am particularly proud of getting the plants to sing like real humans do. This is accomplished by digitizing real chamber choirs, tibetan monks chanting, rappers and even opera singers and assigning them appropriately to plants that can work together. You can’t have everyone singing solos – you have to have some that lay back and hummm… Over the 4 years that I have been developing and nurturing them, you get to know the plants they seem to have distinct personalities too. Some don’t like it when you put them beside other plants.
It even seems that there are times when they play jokes on you. There are rare occasions when I invite people to come over to my home studio and get all of the plants set up and then try to start a performance and they all just flatline…Most puzzling. The guest either thinks that the plants don’t like them or I am playing one big practical joke. I then grab my crystal singing bowl and try to coax a performance out of them and they light up like this is their swan song performance. Usually the guest pays attention to the effect that the quartz crystal singing bowl has on the plants and this often changes their belief system towards crystals in general. It certainly changed my view of singing bowls:)
My main objective is to create music with them and use it as a sound track for the Healing Fields films and then release an album for sale. Perhaps a YouTube Channel called Nature Music with the plants playing ambient relaxing meditation scenes that can be used in places like yoga studios spas etc. Places were people appreciate nature. I will also go into forests by a stream, set up a video camera on a tripod and hook upsome plants and trees to provide the sound of nature – musical trees:)
For for now, the plants have become my extended family and fellow musicians that I jam with. It’s better than playing alone as a solo artist. Tesla had his quirks with pigeons that could read his mind. I guess I have my plants to keep me company in old age. Maybe this is another form of AI artificial intelligence and the plants are connected to the quantum world.
Until I figure this all out, I’ll call it the Baxter effect;)
