Love, an attracting and cohering force present at every level of existence.

Marcel Joseph Vogel (1917–1991) was a research scientist working at the IBM San Jose Advanced Systems Development Division Los Gatos Lab (actually located in San Jose) for some 27 years. He is sometimes referred to as Dr. Vogel, this title was an honorary doctoral degree, Ph.D..


It is claimed that Vogel started his research into luminescence while he was still in his teens. Luminescence is emission of light by a substance not resulting from heat; it is thus a form of cold body radiation. It can be caused by chemical reactions, electrical energy, subatomic motions, or stress on a crystal.

He received numerous patents for his inventions during this time. Among these was the magnetic coating for the 24” hard disc drive systems still in use. His areas of expertise were phosphor technology, liquid crystal systems, luminescence, and magnetics.

But it is not his scientific but his work with Spirit, his great spiritual strength, his wonderful capacity to love that were his legacy.

Through Vogel, his students began to learn the process of transmitting thought, especially loving thoughts, unconditionally, to their patients. It brought an even greater capacity to appreciate the power of the mind to influence illness, the power both to heal and exacerbate disease. And, most important all, to appreciate the incredible presence of unconditional love and it’s capacity to trigger transformative shifts in a patient’s psyche.

He was able to duplicate the Backster effect [1] of using plants as transducers for bio-energetic fields that the human mind releases, demonstrating that plants respond to thought. He used split leaf philodendrons connected to a Wheatstone Bridge that would compare a known resistance to an unknown resistance. He learned that when he released his breath slowly there was virtually no response from the plant. When he pulsed his breath through the nostrils, as he held a thought in mind, the plant would respond dramatically. It was also found that these fields, linked to the action of breath and thought, do not have a significant time domain to them. The responsiveness of the plants to thought was also the same whether eight inches away, eight feet, or eight thousand miles! Based on the results of the experiments the inverse square law does not apply to thought. This was the beginning of Vogel’s transformation from being a purely rational scientist to becoming a spiritual or mystical scientist.

Basically it was found that plants respond more to the thought of being cut, burned, or torn than to the actual act. He discovered that if he tore a leaf from one plant a second plant would respond, but only if he was paying attention to it. The plants seemed to be mirroring his own mental responses. He concluded that the plants were acting like batteries, storing the energy of his thoughts and intentions. He said of these experiments:

“I learned that there is energy connected with thought. Thought can be pulsed and the energy connected with it becomes coherent and has a laser-like power.”

He discovered that the greatest cohering agent is love. To Vogel, love was a pure force. He likened it to gravity, an attracting and cohering force present at every level of existence.

[1] Plant perception or biocommunication may denote not only that plants are sentient - they can certainly communicate through chemical signals and have complex responses to stimuli - but that may respond to humans in a manner that amounts to ESP and that may be interpreted as experience of pain and fear.
The notion that plants are capable of feeling emotions was first recorded in 1848, when Dr. Gustav Theodor Fechner, a German experimental psychologist, suggested that plants are capable of emotions and that one could promote healthy growth with talk, attention, and affection.
Indian scientist Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose began to conduct experiments on plants in the year 1900. He found that every plant and every part of a plant appeared to have a sensitive nervous system and responded to shock by a spasm just as an animal muscle does. In addition Bose found that plants grew more quickly amidst pleasant music and more slowly amidst loud noise or harsh sounds. He also claimed that plants can "feel pain, understand affection etc.," from the analysis of the nature of variation of the cell membrane potential of plants under different circumstances. According to him, a plant treated with care and affection gives out a different vibration compared to a plant subjected to torture.
Bose's experiments stopped at this conclusion, but Cleve Backster an Interrogation Specialist with the CIA, conducted research that led him to believe that plants can communicate with other lifeforms. Backster's interest in the subject began in February 1966 when he tried to measure the rate at which water rises from a philodendron's root into its leaves. Because a polygraph or 'lie detector' can measure electrical resistance, which would alter when the plant was watered, he attached a polygraph to one of the plant's leaves. Backster stated that, to his immense surprise, "the tracing began to show a pattern typical of the response you get when you subject a human to emotional stimulation of short duration".