|
March 11, 2013
from
Shift Website
Spanish version
Plant consciousness is the process of bio-communication in plant
cells, which has come to mean that plants are sentient life forms
that feel, know, and are conscious.
The scientific field of neurobiology has
been effective in demonstrating plant consciousness.
Consciousness exists in everything, but manifests itself in
different ways. With the reality that all matter is energy vibrating
at different frequencies, it is reasonable to say that all matter
has consciousness in its unique way, since all matter comes from the
same source and is comprised at its basics level of the same
building blocks.
This can be seen in DNA consciousness as
well.
This would be a universal principle that
would be true for any state of energy, be it a solid, liquid, gas,
plasma and then as crystalline, plant, animal, human, and higher
dimension life forms.
Plants communicate just through feeling. They are purely
feeling beings, they do not even know what "thinking" is (except to
the extent that they can get a taste of what "thinking" means when
they connect with a human). You have to get in touch with your own
feelings in the moment in order to communicate with a plant.
You have to be there in the moment and be aware of what you are
feeling right then when you are in contact with the plant. Not the
feelings about what is going on yesterday and tomorrow, but the
feelings of Now, in the present moment. It is one of the things that
plants can teach you. Not just entheogens, but any plant who shares
your life with you.
Each species has a distinct personality
that you can get to know just by being open to "feeling" it.
Scientific
Evidence of Plant Consciousness
Although it is not commonly discussed for various socio-political
reasons, there is an ample amount of scientific evidence that
has proven that plants do indeed have some sort of consciousness.
An enormous amount of research was
provided in the revolutionary book on this subject entitled The
Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and
Christopher Bird.
There was a documentary film created
parallel to the book's findings, which is
viewable here.
Plant Nervous System
Each root apex harbors a unit of nervous system of plants.
The number of root apices in the plant
body is high and all brain-units are interconnected via vascular
strands (plant nerves) with their
polarly-transported auxin (plant
neurotransmitter), to form a serial (parallel) nervous system of
plants.
The computational and informational
capacity of this nervous system based on interconnected parallel
units is predicted to be higher than that of the diffuse nervous
system of lower animals, or the central nervous system of higher
animals/humans.
Plant Pain
In the research of Jagadish Chandra Bose, in plant stimuli,
he showed with the help of his newly invented
crescograph that plants responded
to various stimuli as if they had nervous systems like that of
animals.
He therefore found a parallelism between
animal and plant tissues. His experiments showed that plants grow
faster in pleasant music and its growth retards in noise or harsh
sound.
His major contribution in the field of biophysics was the
demonstration of the electrical nature of the conduction of various
stimuli (wounds, chemical agents) in plants, which were earlier
thought to be of chemical in nature.
He claimed that plants can,
"feel pain, understand affection
etc., from the analysis of the nature of variation of the cell
membrane potential of plants, under different circumstances.
According to him a plant treated
with care and affection gives out a different vibration compared
to a plant subjected to torture."
Plant Painkillers
A team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR)
in Boulder, Colo., discovered by accident plants in the wild
emitting
methyl salicylate - a form of the painkiller known as
aspirin.
They set up instruments in a walnut
grove near Davis, Calif., to monitor plant emissions of certain
volatile organic compounds (or
VOCs).
VOCs emitted by plants can actually
combine with industrial emissions and contribute to smog. To their
surprise, the NCAR scientists found that the emissions of VOCs their
instruments recorded in the atmosphere included methyl salicylate.
They noticed that the methyl salicylate emissions increased
dramatically when the plants, already stressed by a local drought,
experienced unseasonably cool nighttime temperatures followed by
large temperature increases during the day.
At this current point in time,
scientists think that the methyl salicylate has two functions:
"These findings show tangible proof
that plant-to-plant communication occurs on the ecosystem
level," said study team member Alex Guenther. "It appears that
plants have the ability to communicate through the atmosphere."
Plan Communication
Research findings that have been published in the
journal Oecologia have noted that
plants talk amongst themselves to spread information, much like
humans and other animals.
A unique internal network apparently
allows plants to warn each other against predators and potential
enemies. Plants have an early warning system, very much like in
military defense, but more effective: each member of the plant
network can receive the external signal of impending herbivore
danger and transmit it to the other members of the network.
The attacked leaf is lost. However, the
remaining leaves are protected against predators.
In another study, whose research findings were published in the
journal Ecology Letters, it was found that plants engage in
self-recognition and can communicate danger to their "clones" or
genetically identical cuttings planted nearby. The findings were
found while studying
sagebrush.
Richard Karban and fellow
scientist Kaori Shiojiri of the Center for Ecological
Research, Kyoto University, Japan, found that sagebrush responded to
cues of self and non-self without physical contact.
The sagebrush communicated and
cooperated with other branches of themselves to avoid being eaten by
grasshoppers, Karban said. The scientists suspect that the plants
warn their own kind of impending danger by emitting volatile cues.
This may involve secreting chemicals
that deter herbivores or make the plant less profitable for
herbivores to eat, he said.
"Plants are capable of responding to
complex cues that involve multiple stimuli," Karban said.
"Plants not only respond to reliable
cues in their environments but also produce cues that
communicate with other plants and with other organisms, such as
pollinators, seed disperses, herbivores and enemies of those
herbivores."
Plant Hereditary Awareness
Some more amazing research has shown that plants actually know their
own siblings and kin, with the help of chemicals released from the
roots.
This way, if siblings of the plants are
growing alongside them, the plants will grow their roots more
downward and be taller, whereas if alien plants are living beside
them, they will grow their roots outward and the alien plants will
be shorter and grow less.
Plant Thinking & Memory
Recent research has uncovered that plants transmit information about
light intensity and quality from leaf to leaf in a very similar way
to the nervous system of human beings.
In the experiment that found this,
scientists showed that light shone on to one leaf caused the whole
plant to respond and the response, which took the form of
light-induced chemical reactions in the leaves, continued in the
dark.
This showed that the plant remembered the information encoded in
light. Plants seem to be able to perform a sort of biological light
computation, using information contained in the light to immunize
themselves against diseases.
These "electro-chemical signals" are
carried by cells that act as "nerves" of the plants.
The Secret
Life of Plants
In the documentary entitled
The Secret Life of Plants, which is
based on the book with the same title, several scientific studies
were shown and discussed that showed enough evidence to remove all
doubt of an ancient truth; that plants have a consciousness.
Below are a few of the scientific
experiments presented in the film that have a revolutionary impact
on how we view plants.
-
When a plant was put into a
Faraday tube, and a telescope pointed at Ursa Major, hooked
up to an instrument that converted plant consciousness
expressions into audible tones, it was demonstrated that the
plant was communicating with something in that star system…
most likely something in the plant kingdom. This must have
been happening since plants have existed… always constantly
communicating with each other since all is one.
-
A Russian experiment was done
with two cabbage plants… one hooked with electrodes to a
machine that converted its energetic expressions into
audible tones. When the cabbage that was not hooked up to
any instrument was being destroyed at random by a human
scientist, the plant hooked up to the machines was heard
screaming or crying, with a very high pitch tone.
-
Another Russian experiment put a
cabbage on a plate that measured changes in energetic
vibrations and when cut into small bits with a machete, it
was expressing a similar type of screaming/crying sound that
the previous plant made.
-
A plant was hooked up with
electrodes on a leaf and a vial of small shrimp were set up
in a mechanism over boiling water that would release at a
completely random time into the boiling water. When this
moment happened, and the shrimp started dying, the plant was
seen to go frantic, on a polygrah-like graph paper and
needle setup.
-
Another study had a man watch
film clips on a projector of events ranging from children
playing to nuclear bombs destroying things. The plant
adjacent to the man was seen to mirror the needle movements
on the graph paper of the man, exemplifying their emotions
were changing and changing to the similar energetic
vibrations.
-
A Chinese woman hooked up a
cactus to an instrument that created an output of the plant
essentially speaking, or at least making audible tones. She
would talk to the plant and attempt to teach it Chinese and
it would reply with what seemed like answers to the woman's
requests.
-
Through a series of experiments,
the authors portray the sentient quality of common plants.
The simple fact that a plant "knows" when you are thinking
bad thoughts. They respond to external stimuli much like any
human would. In fact, it seems as if their "awareness" is
heightened to include those in the psychic categories.
-
In one experiment, they have a
random selection of men. One is chosen at random to go in
and destroy one of three plants. The other two plants
(common rhododendron) are then hooked up to
electro-encephalographs (EEG - brain wave monitors.) and
they march the men in one by one. The plants exhibit no
alarm, but as soon as the one responsible for the plant
death enters the room, the other two plants start
registering wildly on the graphs. Basically, they knew who
it was that killed their friend. Or, too be more blunt, they
read his mind.
Some researchers have used polygraph
instruments connected to leaf surfaces to observe responses through
electromagnetic activity to various stimuli such as:
raucous, loud music compared with
mellow, harmonious music.
The results are always the same: plants
react favorably to mellow music while continuous raucous sounds can
actually kill them.
Even more amazingly, perhaps, is that
plants accurately react to good or bad thoughts directed at them or
other biological life forms and even at great distances.
Global Support
for Plant Rights
Very recently, the notion of plants being conscious life forms has
become a legal affair.
In 2007, the government of
Switzerland had issued a bill of rights for plants. Swiss
Government's
Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human
Biotechnology concludes that plants have rights, and we
have to treat them appropriately.
A majority of the panel concluded that,
"living organisms should be
considered morally for their own sake because they are alive."
Another country that has officially
declared plants and ecosystems having rights is Ecuador.
The Ecuadorian population voted to
change their constitution to proclaim that nature has,
"the right to the maintenance and
regeneration of its vital cycles, structure, functions and
evolutionary processes."
Almost 70% of Ecuadorians voted in favor
of protecting nature in this method. Ecuador drafted the changes
with the help of the U.S. based Community Environmental Legal
Defense Fund.
Along with it's work in Ecuador the Fund,
"has assisted more than a dozen
local municipalities with drafting and adopting local laws
recognizing Rights of Nature."
The basis of these rights,
"change the status of ecosystems
from being regarded as property under the law to being
recognized as rights-bearing entities."
It is not surprising for a country such
as Ecuador to embrace this decision, since they are a country with a
culture dating back to prehistory
of
shamanism and treating plants, especially
entheogens, as if they had their
own spirits.
Implications
of Plant Consciousness
There is an energy that flows throughout everything on this planet
and throughout
the entire multiverse.
There is one invisible energy that ties
us all together. Humans, cats, dogs, trees, rocks, and any other
manifestations of energy are all interconnected. The principle of
oneness is found in all ancient religions.
The new evidence implies that these
ancient beliefs, which were answers that mystics found by going
within and accessing higher knowledge, were true in the sense that
all is one and all is connected.
The whole multiverse is, in this case, a
sentient organism.
Never treat a plant like it is an inanimate object. It is just as
alive as you are, just in a different way. It's consciousness is
basic but it does exhibit feelings of fear, empathy, happiness, etc.
-
Is it not best to respect
everything and everyone the same way you respect yourself?
-
Why must it only involve human
beings?
-
Why not broaden the criteria to
everything with a consciousness?
It is the right thing to do that you can
see in the deep of your soul.
If we treat all manifested Reality as if
it was us, but in a different manifestation, then imagine how
different life would be.
Insights From
Plant Consciousness
The purity and unselfishness of plant existence can be pondered
upon.
Plant life can be seen as a model for
ideal human conduct; unlike animals and humans, most plants do not
kill and do not live at the expense of other organisms. They are in
direct contact with all four elements (earth, wind, water, and fire
i.e. sun) and their ability to transform cosmic energy is absolutely
indispensable for life on this planet.
Plants are uncontaminated by questions about purpose, awareness of
goals, or concerns about the future; rather they seem to represent
pure being in the here and now, the ideal of many mystical and
spiritual schools of thought.
Not exploiting and hurting other
organisms, most plants serve themselves as a source of food and
bring beauty and joy into the life of others.
References
|
