A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [143]
"In 1987 I participated in a University of Missouri program that included a talk by Dr. Sidney Fox, then connected with the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Evolution at the University of Miami. Fox had recorded electric signals from proteinlike material that showed properties strikingly similar to those of living cells. The simplicity of the material he used and the self-organizing capability it displayed suggest to me that biocommunication was present at the earliest states in the evolution of life on this planet. Of course the Gaia hypothesis—the idea that the earth is a great big working organism, with a lot of corrections built in—fits in nicely with this. I don't think it would be a stretch to take the hypothesis further and presume that the planet itself is intelligent."
I asked how his work has been received in other parts of the world.
"The Russians and other eastern Europeans have always been very interested. And whenever I encounter Indian scientists— Buddhist or Hindu—and we talk about what I do, instead of giving me a bunch of grief they say, 'What took you so long?' My work dovetails very well with many of the concepts embraced by Hinduism and Buddhism."
"What is taking us so long?"
"The fear is that, if what I am observing is accurate, many of the theories on which we've built our lives need complete reworking. I've known biologists to say, 'If Backster is right, we're in trouble.' It takes a certain kind of character and personality to even attempt such a questioning of fundamental assumptions. The Western scientific community, and actually all of us, are in a difficult spot, because in order to maintain our current mode of being, we must ignore a tremendous amount of information. And more information is being gathered all the time. For instance, have you heard of Rupert Sheldrake s work with dogs? He puts a time-recording camera on both the dog at home and the human companion at work. He has discovered that even if people come home from work at a different time each day, at the moment the person leaves work, the dog at home heads for the door.
“Even mainstream scientists are stumbling all over this biocommunication phenomenon. It seems impossible, given the sophistication of modern instrumentation, for us to keep missing this fundamental attunement of living things. Only for so long are we going to be able to pretend it's the result of 'loose wires.' We cannot forever deny that which is so clearly there."
It was good to receive this validation, but I didn't want to trust Backster: he could be lying, or he could be crazy. Just because the story hangs together doesn't mean it accurately represents reality.
We went to dinner, and then I took a long walk. I returned late, and Cleve set me up on pads in the basement. I slept fitfully: the room was too large, too unfamiliar, and with too many corners and too many doors. At last I dragged my sleeping bag into a small room off to the side, barricaded one door with a chair and the other with my feet, and began to doze.
He awakened me early, and we returned to the lab. I wanted to see "the Backster Effect" for myself. He hooked up a plant, and I watched the paper roll out of the recorder. I couldn't correlate the movement of the pen with anything I was feeling, or with the conversation. One of his cats began to play with the plant. The oscillations of the pen seemed to increase in magnitude, but I couldn't be sure. Halfheartedly, I suggested burning the plant. No response from the plant. Cleve responded, "I don't think you really want to, and besides, I wouldn't let you."
We moved to another part of the lab, and he put yogurt into a sterilized test tube, then inserted a pair of sterilized gold electrodes. We began again to talk. The pen wriggled up and down, and once again seemed to lurch just as I took in my breath to disagree with something he said. But I couldn't be sure. When we see something, how do we know if it is real, or do we see it only because we wish so much to believe?
Cleve left to take care of business elsewhere