The secret life of plants – Cleve Backster

Plants have feelings, extrasensory perception, and sensitivity to life on a microscopic level. Plants are experts at detecting lies. Plants can be happy, recognize people, and have close ties with their owners. They remember.

Eindtijdnieuws.com
June 17, 2026

A CIA agent turned researcher made one of the most startling and significant discoveries of the 20th century…

The secret plant life

The late Cleve Backster was a former CIA agent, FBI trainer, and world-renowned polygraph expert. In 1966, using a lie detector, he accidentally discovered that plants have high-level emotional activities that were kind of similar to those of human beings. He then conducted a series of studies that amazed the world, but which angered scientists. 

Plants have feelings.

One day, Cleve Backster connected a lie detector to the leaves of a dracaena [a Dracaena fragrans massangeana]. He wanted to see how long it would take for the leaves of the plant to react when he poured water on the plant’s roots. In theory, a plant will increase its conductivity and decrease its resistance after it absorbs water, and the curve recorded on graph paper should have gone upward. But in actuality, the line that was drawn curved downward.

Plants can be happy.

When a lie detector is connected to a human body, the pen records different curves according to the changes in the person’s mood. The reaction of the dracaena was just like the fluctuations of people’s mood swings. It seemed that it was happy when it drank water. 

Plants have extrasensory perception (ESP).

Backster wanted to see if the plant would have any other reactions. According to past experience, he knew that a good way to elicit a strong reaction from a person is to threaten that person. So Backster dunked the leaves of the plant into hot coffee. No reaction. Then he thought of something more terrifying: burn the leaves that were connected to the lie detector.

With this thought, even before he went to get a match, a bullish curve rapidly appeared on the graph paper! When he came back with a match, he saw that another peak appeared on the curve. It was likely that when the plant saw he was determined to start burning, it got frightened again.

If he showed hesitation or reluctance to burn the plant, the reactions recorded by the lie detector were not so acute. And when he merely pretended to take action to burn the leaves, the plant had almost no reactions. The plant was even able to distinguish true intentions from false ones! Backster nearly rushed out into the street to shout, “Plants can think! Plants can think!”

With this astonishing discovery, his life was changed forever.

Later, when Backster and his colleagues did experiments around the country with different instruments and different plants, they observed similar results. They discovered that even if leaves were picked off from a plant and cut into pieces, the same reactions were recorded when these pieces were placed near the lie detector electrodes. When a dog or an unfriendly person suddenly came in, the plant reacted too! 

Plants are experts at detecting lies.

Generally, for experiments involving lie detectors, electrodes are connected to a suspect, and then the suspect is asked meticulously designed questions. Everyone has a conscience given by God. Therefore, no matter how many reasons and excuses one gives, when lying or committing a bad deed, that person knows clearly that it is a lie, a bad deed. Hence, the body’s electric field changes, and this change is what is recorded by the equipment.

Backster did an experiment in which he connected the lie detector to a plant and then asked a person some questions. As a result, he discovered that the plant could tell if the person was lying or not. He asked the person what year he was born in, giving him seven choices and instructing him to answer No to all of them, including the correct one. When the person answered No to the correct year, the plant reacted, and a peak was drawn on the graph paper!

Plants are honest.

Dr. Aristide Esser, the director of medical research at the Rockland State Hospital in New York, repeated the experiment by asking a man to incorrectly answer questions in front of a plant the man had nurtured and cared for since it was a seedling. The plant did not cover up for its owner at all! Incorrect answers were reflected on the graph paper. Esser, who had not believed Backster, saw for himself that Backster’s theories were correct.  😊

Plants can recognize people.

To test how well a plant can recognize things, Backster called six students over, blindfolded them, and asked them to draw lots. One of the choices involved uprooting and trampling one of the two plants in the room. The ‘murderer’ had to carry out the act alone, and no one else was allowed to know the perpetrator’s identity, not even Backster. In this way, the remaining plant could not sense who the ‘murderer’ was based on the thoughts of others. The experiment was set up so that the plant would be the only witness.

When the remaining living plant was connected to a lie detector, each student was asked to walk past it. The plant did not react to five students. But when the student who had committed the crime walked past, the electronic pen began drawing wildly. This reaction gave Backster the idea that plants are capable of remembering and identifying the person or thing that harms them.

Remote sensitivity

Plants have close ties with their owners. For example, when Backster returned to New York from New Jersey, he found from the records on the graph paper that all his plants had reactions. He wondered if the plants were indicating that they felt ‘relieved’ or were ‘welcoming’ him back. He noticed that the time of the plants’ reactions was the moment when he decided to return home from New York. 

Sensitivity to life on a microscopic level

Backster discovered that the same fixed curves would be drawn on the graph paper when plants seemed to sense the death of any living tissue, even on the cellular level. He noticed this by accident when he mixed some jam into the yogurt he was going to eat. Apparently, the preservatives in the jam killed some of the lactobacilli in the yogurt, and the plants sensed this!

Backster also found that the plants reacted when he ran hot water in the sink. It seemed they reacted to the death of bacteria in the drain. To test his theory, Backster did an experiment, and found that when brine shrimp were put into boiling water via an automatic mechanism that did not require human intervention, the plants had very strong reactions.

The heartbeat of an egg

Again by accident, Backster noticed plant reactions one day when he cracked an egg. He decided to pursue this experiment and connected the egg to his equipment. After nine hours, the graph paper records indicated the heartbeats of an embryonic chick – 160 to 170 beats per minute – the same as a chick embryo that had stayed in an incubator for three or four days. However, the egg was an unfertilized egg that was bought from a store. There was no circulatory system inside it either. How could Backster explain the egg’s pulse?

Watch the video:

Plants are Sentient – Cleve Backster

Translation => Click on the CC (subtitle) button > then click the Gear wheel > Subtitles > Automatic translation > Choose your language

Comments

Note: Backster was not a Christian, nor is the author of this article (source) a Christian.

Now, don’t let this information send your mind racing, as the followers of the New Age movement do, who believe in so-called ‘reincarnation’ and the like. Unfortunately, Backster started to believe in reincarnation as well.

Also, there is a lot of scientific controversy around this subject. I think due to the fact that the creation points to their Maker!
Yes, the Bible does use language describing trees and plants (fields) as praising God. No, this is not poetic nor metaphorical. Just one of the Bible verses:
And so you will go forth with joy and be guided with peace. The mountains and hills will sing with you for joy, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.  Isaiah 55:12

See also:

https://eindtijdnieuws.com/tuinmythen-ontkracht-compost-mythen-en-diy-compostthee-videos/

https://eindtijdnieuws.com/hoe-vertaal-ik-iedere-website-die-ik-bezoek-in-2026-vertalen-ai/

Source:

The Secret Life of Plants