The Strange White Doves (7 page)

Morey Bernstein, author of
The Search for Bridey Murphy,
is one of many people who have good cause to remember Lady Wonder. On a plane trip from Denver to Houston, his bags, containing valuable business papers, were lost. The airline looked long and hard, but was unable to find them. Later, while Bernstein was in the East, a friend suggested that Lady Wonder might be of help. She was. Though it seemed impossible that the lost bags could be in a New York airport as she told him, that is where they were found. When an airline official asked if there was anything they could do to make up for all the trouble, Morey Bernstein said yes, he would like a letter from them admitting the fact that it had taken Lady Wonder, the clairvoyant horse, to find his luggage. They gave him the letter.

How did Lady Wonder do it?

12

EVEN THE TREES

O
NCE, IN A SMALL ITEM
buried in the back of a newspaper, I read of a doctor in India who had made a wonderful discovery about trees. The rest of the world paid little attention to him, and both his name and his work have long been forgotten. But I'll always remember what he said and did.

Trees, he wanted people to know, are sensitive and have feelings just as all other living things have. When hurt, they are subject to shock, just as people are. And shock can kill.

Moving a tree, even when it is dormant, or pruning it drastically, is a great shock. Many trees die from such treatment, and all of them suffer for a long time afterward. So, he thought, why not give them an anesthetic to put them to sleep before any sort of operation? Wouldn't they recover more quickly and grow faster?

The very idea that a tree might have feelings has long been considered laughable to a great many people. But the doctor was sure that trees—in spite of having no sign of a nervous system—are extremely sensitive and would benefit tremendously if a pain-killer could be found for them. After much experimenting, he came up with an anesthetic that would actually put a tree to sleep. Trees anesthetized before surgery, or before being moved, recovered in a remarkably short time and grew much faster than trees that had not been treated this way.

So the Indian doctor proved that trees and plants are able to feel, and that they are as sensitive as many other forms of life. However, we still go on whacking away at trees with never a thought that they may be silently screaming every time we approach them with an ax.

Yet how can a tree know anything? It has no brain. And how can it possibly know ahead of time that someone is going to harm it?

The astounding evidence really gave scientists a jolt. It was the sort of thing they have always scoffed at. According to their rules, if you are unable to detect something through one of the five senses, or if you cannot put it through a repeatable laboratory test, then it doesn't exist. That's why ESP has had such rough going in the scientific world. Like quicksilver, it is hard to put your finger on it.

Then along came a man named Backster, who said, in effect, that a tree not only is highly sensitive, but it also can read the human mind.

If he had not been Cleve Backster, it is doubtful that anyone would have listened to him. Backster happened to be one of the world's top polygraph experts, and he proceeded to back up his statement with rolls of polygraph charts from a series of experiments that could easily be repeated under laboratory conditions. By the time he had repeated them, with witnesses, the scientific world was goggle-eyed.

It all came about in this way: Cleve Backster was watering a plant in his office one morning when he suddenly wondered how long it would take for the moisture to travel from the dirt to the ends of the leaves. Would the electrodes on one of his polygraph machines be able to make the test?

A polygraph is more commonly known as a lie detector. It is a complicated electrical apparatus used in measuring the breathing, pulse, and blood pressure of a person being questioned. The resulting record made on a moving paper chart shows the person's emotional reaction to each question.

Cleve Backster thought that by attaching two electrodes to a leaf he would be able to tell when the water reached that area. Since water is a good conductor of electricity, he reasoned that the resistance should go down. If it did, then the inked graph line on the moving paper chart would go up.

However, it didn't work out that way. For reasons still unknown, the resistance increased when he watered the plant, and the graph line went down. Stranger still, the graph line showed a peculiar movement that should have come from a human instead of a plant. Cleve Backster, an expert in these matters, recognized it instantly as the result of an emotional reaction.

An emotional reaction in a plant? Something must be wrong!

He decided to test the plant thoroughly. If he threatened its existence in some manner, for instance by burning, perhaps the danger would trigger an emotional response—that is, if the plant really could respond. There must be a mistake somewhere.…

Backster was forced to leave the room for a few seconds to find a match. Returning, he lit the match and held it near the leaf with the electrodes. Instantly the moving chart showed a reaction. The reaction was automatically timed on the chart itself, which is marked off in five-second sections.

This exact timing is very important. When Cleve Backster stopped to examine the chart, he was thunderstruck to discover that the plant's main reaction had already taken place. It had happened
before
he had left the room to get the match. In fact, it had come the very instant he decided to burn the leaf.

The plant had read his mind.

This incredible event took place on February 2, 1966. The scientific world, which for so long had refused to credit ESP, was given a rude shaking, for this and later experiments give proof of a mysterious power that is entirely beyond the sphere of established science.

How this knowledge may actually affect our future is anyone's guess, for man is a curiously selfish creature. But it brought a complete change in Cleve Backster's life, for he knew he had stumbled upon something tremendous that should be carefully investigated. Before announcing what he had learned, he spent three years devising new experiments and putting scores of plants through an exhaustive series of tests. When he was finished and told in a detailed statement what he had learned, scientists were staggered.

Plants, he found, are mind readers and have ESP to a high degree. If anything happens around them that affects the emotions, they know it instantly. The killing of a living creature in their area, even though it is smaller than a fly and the killing takes place beyond thick walls, will produce a violent reaction on their chart. They also have memories, for if another plant is destroyed in their presence, they know who did it for long afterward and can actually pick this person out of a crowd.

But most incredible of all is the feeling plants have for certain people, especially those who love and care for them. Distance seems to have no effect on their awareness. If a plant's owner is nervous about making a long flight on a plane, the plant knows it. Likewise it knows immediately when the plane lands and its owner is safe on the ground. These reactions have been timed and checked over and over on the charts of many plants.

Of course, it has been known for a long time that plants—and by this I mean all plants from tiny grasses to trees—respond to love and prayer. Countless tests both here and abroad have shown that a well-prayed-over garden always has a remarkably higher yield than another exactly like it that has been given only an equal amount of ordinary care.

It is also a fact that a much-loved plant or tree often withers and dies when its owner dies. When I first heard this I thought it was just a silly superstition, the sort of thing old mountaineers whisper to each other after a funeral. But I have learned better. I have seen it happen a number of times, and now I know the staggering truth behind it.

The green holly beyond my terrace, the big sycamore tree near it, and the potted oleanders here in the studio—they are not just woody growths, dull and insensitive. They are living creatures. That is how I have come to think of them.

I have also begun to suspect that, like some of the animals I have mentioned, they are aware of certain events well ahead of time. I have no acceptable proof, but I am sure Cleve Backster will uncover that fact. After all, if they can read minds.…

Some plants and trees apparently also know when they are going to die. When death is on the way, these trees will put forth a great wealth of blossoms, more than they have ever had before. When summer is over and the seeds are mature, they drop their leaves for the last time.

Whenever there is a big fuss over a new road—especially one that cuts through forest that a few earnest souls are trying desperately to save—you will hear a lot of outraged screaming on both sides. The majority, of course, practically roar that only people are important, and that trees do not count.

To whom are people important? Only to other people, I fear. If all of us were to vanish suddenly, our battered planet would begin to thrive and bloom as it has not bloomed for a long time. The air would become pure again; soon dirty streams would run clean, and hundreds of creatures that are now nearly extinct would flourish once more.

But suppose all the trees died—and don't think such a catastrophe isn't possible—what would happen then? Everything would die, for trees are the key to life. Without them, the earth would become as barren as the moon.

13

THE LANGUAGE OF THE WILD

H
AVE YOU EVER
camped by a stream in the woods, well away from the sounds of man, and listened to the voices of the night?

If you never have, you have missed something tremendous. Not that you will know it is tremendous all at once, the first time you have the experience. The feeling steals over you slowly and captures you. You may not realize the precise moment, but suddenly you are part of it all—you are one with the trees around you, the whispering water and the wind in the leaves, the tick-tocking frogs and countless katydids and crickets, and all the other creatures that make up the orchestra of the living dark. As the dark trembles with their music, you are caught up in it, and you are one with it, and at the same time, without quite knowing what it is you know, you are aware of your place in the entire great scheme of things.

More than that, you find yourself realizing that everything around you is interrelated and is a pulsing, feeling part of a vast enfolding whole. As it throbs with life, you are conscious of the mighty heartbeat under it all.

A heartbeat? Yes, nature has a pulse, and every natural sound you hear will be in time with it.

Go out into the night and listen. Soon you will pick up the rhythm. On Very quiet nights even the rustling of a leaf or the breaking of a twig will be in time with the chirping crickets. If there is a note of discord, it will come from man himself.

Only man, and man alone, is out of step with the marvelous natural world around him. He has locked himself away and become insensitive to most of it, blind to its wonders. Though it cries to him in a multitude of languages for the ear and in one great language for the heart and mind, he cannot hear it.

But the wild hears him. Everything around him knows exactly how he feels and whether his intentions are good or bad. Wild creatures are always aware when something is wrong, and if man's need is great, they are often willing to help.

Nearly everyone has heard of dolphins coming to the rescue of drowning persons. They have been known to save exhausted swimmers by keeping them afloat and nudging them toward the nearest beach or shoal. How does a dolphin become aware that the situation of a tired swimmer is suddenly desperate?

I have known people to drown with bathers all around them. When I was very young it almost happened to me, because no one realized what was going on. It was impossible to cry out for help. My strength was gone and it was all I could do to gasp for breath. I remember the terrible silent prayer and cry that came from somewhere deep within me. Had there been a dolphin handy, or even a friendly dog, I am sure they would have heard, although the humans around me were deaf to the cry. Yet my prayer was answered, for somehow I managed to reach the dock and cling to it until my strength returned.

A far more anguished prayer and cry must have poured from a Canadian boy named Rheal Guindon, one bitter night back in 1956, because it brought immediate help from the wild. Rheal, a long way from home on a fishing trip with his parents, had the shattering experience of watching their boat turn over and seeing both of them drown. One can imagine how he felt when he finally set out alone through the woods for the nearest town, many miles away.

This happened in November. When night came the temperature went down below zero. By then Rheal was exhausted and shaking with the cold, and all he could do was fall to the ground and pray.

His prayer was quickly answered, for suddenly in the pitch-black darkness he felt the warmth of furry bodies pressing close around him. In the morning he discovered that his protectors were three beavers that had kept him from freezing during the night.

Young Rheal made it safely to the town, and his strange story was checked and reported by the Central Press of Canada.

How did the beavers know that the boy was in such desperate need of help? In his very anguish, coupled with a prayer—which is a call for help—Rheal, without realizing it, was using the silent language of nature that every creature understands.

Knowing the independence of cats, it is startling to learn how often they have come to the aid of people. In
The Strange World of Animals and Pets,
Vincent and Margaret Gaddis report a typical incident. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, an elderly woman who had been trapped alone in her home by a sudden illness would have frozen to death except for the help of six stray cats. She was unable to leave her bed when the furnace went out, but the six cats, with the help of her own cat and dog, kept her warm until the neighbors came to investigate. The same authors tell of another cat who helped a dog that had gone blind and forever after guided the dog away from danger.