Fourteen
Breathing with the
Earth
Major changes in one's life often proceed improbably from the most
minor events. So it was that I became involved in one of the most inter-
esting parts of my work in 1961 because a dog bit someone I didn't even
know at the time.
My first electrical measurements on salamanders had just revealed part
of the DC control system to me. Elementary physics told me that the
currents and their associated electromagnetic fields would have to be
affected in some way by external fields. In engineering terms, the bio-
magnetic field would be coupled to the DC currents. Hence changes
impressed upon it by external fields would be "read out" through pertur-
bations in the current. Outside fields would also couple directly to the
currents themselves, without acting through the biofield as intermedi-
ary, especially if the currents were semiconducting. In short, all living
things having such a system would share the common experience of
being plugged in to the electromagnetic fields of earth, which in turn
vary in response to the moon and sun. In the late eighteenth century,
the Viennese hypnotist and healer Franz Anton Mesmer proposed direct
magnetic influences on earthly bodies from the heavenly ones, but his
idea came from the scientifically unacceptable domain of astrology. With
the notable exception of Nikola Tesla, most prominent researchers have
derided it until recently. I figured the DC system must be the missing
link
in a very different, but very real, connection between geophysics
and the responses of living things. I was eager to investigate it, but at
firsr I didn't know how.