Do plants have souls?
Do plants have souls?
The doctrines on which much of modern culture was founded, with its sectoral visions, and the consequent scientific epistemology are born and are strengthened, in large part, by the Galileian and Newtonian model.
Such models have developed good approximations of the universe until they dwell on the experience and the measure of the single object or phenomenon.
The advent of quantum mechanics, starting from Max Planck, through the theory of relativity of Albert Einstein, the mathematical proofs of Erwin Schrödinger, to get, among others, to Werner Karl Heisenberg, with the uncertainty principle, has substantially changed the perception of the sensitive universe of which we are an integral part but the philosophical and cultural consequences must still see most of its fruits.
Modern science and, consequently, even technique are still, for the most part hinged on mechanistic reasoning and applications, so that even the comparison of experiences, methods, data and, therefore, of conclusions, between mechanistic theoretical models and quantum theoretical models.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, in particular from 1840, the year of publication of The chemistry in its application in agriculture and physiology of Baron Justus von Liebig (subsequently repenting), Tompkins and Bird recognize that man, instead of collaborating with nature, has preferred to start using it with additives and artificial fertilizers to get the maximum productivity, with the result of a progressive impoverishment of the land, if not of a real pollution as in the case of the nitrogen used for the corn fields in Decatur.
Yet nature, if respected, would be able to regenerate itself with its own strength. According to the writings of the late nineteenth century by Albrecht von Herzeele, plants can transmute nitrogen into potassium, phosphorus into sulfur, calcium into phosphorus, magnesium into calcium, carbonic acid to magnesium, this is because plants are able to make transmutations of the elements, for example from iron manganese, for which nuclear science would employ gigantic energies.
For example, Louis Kervran, observing that chickens were capable of transforming the silicon contained in mica crumbs into the limestone of their eggs, deduced that matter has unknown properties, and that the transformations operated by living organisms within them cannot be just chemical nature.
For this reason the perception of the observed reality is affected by that old Galilean dress, which has the great merit of having invented the scientific method but which now has to find new forms of scientific representation and verification.
Thus in the field of ecology the “dysfunction” of the mechanistic model has produced the concept of pesticides or of certain soil fertilization models, without understanding the “whole one” which is the ecosystem where, as in a wave function, if we change a factor it totally varies the whole equation and the consequent equilibria.
Also the approach with living beings, with their functions, roles, characteristics, essence, and so on, has been addressed, above all in the past, for individuals; within this representation, numerous factors were then neglected that could have said more about the profound nature of every living being.
This is the case, among other living beings, of plants, which have been observed fundamentally in their external appearance and of direct but often unrelated and in-depth data and information.
In this sense, many jobs and many different approaches that have sought, or begun to probe, aspects that until today were considered almost taboo or the result of a subculture, come to meet us in this sense.
This is the case of bees that exploit their very thin hairs that cover the whole body, capable of vibrating at different frequencies depending on the electric field they are sensing. This is the secret that allows bees and hornets to “communicate” with flowers, interpreting the electrical signals emitted by them to understand when it is the best time to pose.
In this sense, the publication by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, concerning their research in the world of plants, is aimed precisely at the possibility that plants are not only passive organisms similar to automata, subjected to environmental forces, but that they have the capacity to to communicate, to perceive events, to memorize them, and even to feel emotions.
The idea of the book was born following the experiments of an American police operator on the electromagnetic reactions of a plant recorded by a truth machine.
In the introduction Tompkins and Bird explain that already the Austrian biologist Raoul Heinrich France had theorized that “the conscious state of plants could have originated in a supernatural world of cosmic beings which the Hindu sages, long before the birth of Christ, gave the name of devas and that, like fairies, elves, gnomes, sylphs and a host of other creatures, were part of the direct vision and experience of clairvoyance between the Celts and other psychics “.
In the study by Tompkins and Bird, we first examine the figure of Cleve Backster, with his experiments with the galvanometer aimed at recording the variations of the electric field emitted by the plants with respect to the intentions and moods of men, through electrodes applied to the leaves.
Backster’s conclusion was that vegetables are capable of capturing human intentions, and of distinguishing whether they are true or simulated. Japanese doctor Ken Hashimoto also translated their life activity recorded by the machine into a kind of music or song.
The authors deepen the analysis coming to the researcher Jagadish Chandra Bose, who showed that plants use electrical signals for internal communication, theorizing a form of intelligence that allows them to learn from experience and adapt to the environment your own growth and attitude.
In addition, Tompkins and Bird also illustrate the possibilities of a relationship between musical harmonies and plant shapes, citing among others the works of Hans Kayser, and two Canadian researchers, Mary Measures and Pearl Weinberger and other research that we reported in the contribution “plants’ favorite music”.
Mary Measures and Pearl Weinberger found that plant growth is sensitive to the type of music to which they are exposed: the classical melodic one produces positive effects, allowing to increase the harvests, the harsh to percussive rock is instead cacophonous.
The anthroposophist Rudolf Hauschka added that plants not only generate matter, but spiritualize it again, according to a rhythm dictated also by the phases of the moon.
Not only when we feed or live among the plants we assimilate in various forms (food, electromagnetic, etc.) the information that they transmit to us, information that is all the more complete and corroborating if we are in the presence of a high biodiversity and all the poorer if we are in the presence of low genetic variability and biodiversity.
In this sense, plants help us to live, not only food, decoctions or herbal teas, but as natural elements able to mediate between heaven and earth, between air and water, and for the impulses of certainties and information that they can give to the human soul and perhaps also to other living beings.
The work also mentions the biochemist Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, a biodynamic agriculture practitioner, who discovered ways to reveal what Rudolf Steiner called the etheric formative forces of living forms, using chromatography.
Tompkins and Bird’s book ends with a vision that must completely change our paradigm of life and therefore also the perception of nature and the future applications of agriculture.
“The attraction of the hypersensitive world of the seer, or worlds within worlds, is too strong to give up, and the stakes are too high as they could include the survival of our planet. Where the scientist is disoriented in front of the secrets of plant life, the seer offers solutions that, although incredible, are more logical than the whispers of the academics; they also give a philosophical meaning to the totality of life. This hypersensitive world of plants and men, barely touched in the present volume, will be explored in the next, The cosmic life of plants. ”
A conclusion much more in line with quantum mechanics which is probably not the last frontier of science.
In my publication “Plan of Experiences and levels of well-being” this new approach to perception of reality is strongly underlined, conducted at a higher level of understanding of Reality.
Interesting is the work of 1848 when Gustav Theodor Fechner, physicist and philosopher, boldly contests the rigid hierarchy that places living beings – animal men and plants – on a descending scale, from the superiors to the inferiors, placing them at the service of the former: ” Why should there not be, besides the souls that walk, they cry, eat, even souls that silently bloom and spread smells?”.
Starting from the panpsychist conception of the universal animation of nature, Fechner proceeds through scientific observations, logical refutations and, on occasion, provocations: after all even “plants feed on men and animals”, or carbon dioxide produced by the lungs and the effects of decomposition. But his intent is not to subvert, but to lead back to unity. The analogy, poetry as an instrument of knowledge, then acquires supreme value, as “nature that makes its way through the ideas of which education has artificially imbued us”.
Thus began to take shape and better understand the ancient cultures, such as the Celts, a people who lived in strong symbiosis with the forest. The Celts had a horoscope in which they entered as many as 21 trees, which give their characteristics to those born at certain times.
Ultimately it is perhaps impossible today to say whether plants or other living beings have souls because, as a matter of fact, science has not defined (and could not define) the concept of soul, and also because the definition of soul is also affected by a old anthropological dress that is not in contrast with religions but suffers from a materialistic culture that is dying to die.
The matter is only the expression perceivable by our radar of the senses but very well beyond them.
In this sense, matter is only the most superficial expression of a universe where everything is one and, for this reason, each component is made up of tangible aspects and aspects that are not “visible”.
For this reason everything, even the plants, are the perceptible manifestation of an upper floor of which perhaps science cannot probe all levels; today, however, it must necessarily begin to approach them in a totally different way.
Guido Bissanti