Primary Perception Experiment
I have a couple of good friends who believe that there is some kind of interconnection between living things - commonly called Primary Perception.
I had lunch with one of them yesterday and he said he’d tried an experiment many years ago where he had placed a number of leaves in separate envelopes and focussed positive thoughts on one of them over a period of time and when he removed them from their envelopes the one that had been the focus was noticeably more healthy than the others.
So, I decided that it would be a fairly easy experiment to replicate with a fairly simple claim to test. Rather than dismissing it out of hand, and in the name of true scepticism, I am going to perform the following experiment and record the results regardless of the outcome:
The claim:
If you think positive thoughts toward a pruned leaf over a period of time the leaf will respond by remaining healthier than the control leaves that don’t receive the same positive focus.
The setup:
I have selected six similar-sized new-growth leaves from a single area of a hedge and cut the stems at the same location.
I numbered six identical envelopes and got Sally (my lovely assistant) to randomly place a leaf in each envelope and seal the envelopes.
I then threw a dice to choose which envelope I will focus my attention on, wrote the number on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope in the drawer beneath the leaves. No one else knows which number was thrown.
In Progress:
I will continue to send positive thoughts toward the leaf in the selected envelope over the next week or so without opening any of the envelopes. The thoughts will be a mixture of happiness and goodwill toward the leaf as well as thoughts of nourishment and growth.
When the time is up I will get Sally to take the leaves out of their envelopes and have her determine if any of them look noticeably healthier than the others and which one/s they are. Without knowing the results I will then tell her which one I was focussing on and she will tell me whether there was any correlation. I will then take photos of the results and update this blog posting (probably on Wednesday 24th October).
If the results are that the one I was focussing on is noticeably healthier than the others it will be counted as a probable success and I will repeat the test to see if I can replicate the results. If I can replicate the results I will probably commit a significant portion of my life to researching the phenomenon.
If anyone has any issues with the methodology or any suggestions please let me know.
[edit: I've published the results in a new post]
