Doheny Memorial Library, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0189 Public Domain. Release under the CC BY Attribution license--http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/--Credit both “University of Southern California. Libraries” and “California Historical Society” as the source. Digitally reproduced by the USC Digital Library; From the California Historical Society Collection at the University of Southern California Send requests to address or e-mail given USC Libraries Special Collections specol@usc.edu
Description
Photograph of a close-up of a specimen of Luther Burbank's famous thornless cactus, ca.1920. The plant is shown on dark background. "Luther Burbank's Methods: How is the human brain going to acquire in a lifetime all knowledge and wisdom? That is my question. When I met Luther Burbank, he showed me a walnut tree, and he said, 'I took off more than one hundred years from its usual period of growth. I grew that in twelve years.' And you could see the tree bearing walnuts! He made almonds have soft shells, made over the tomato, and created the Shasta daisy from bulbs, and the cactus without thorns. In primitive times the different animals used to eat the cactus, so the cactus developed thorns. When one life begins to hurt another life, that life develops weapons of defense. Burbank went into the garden, looked at the cactus, and every day began to talk to the cactus. 'Please, beloved Cactus, I am Luther Burbank, your friend I don't mean to hurt you. I am not going to hurt you at all, so why develop thorns?' And so the thornless cactus was developed by talking, by attention, by his knowledge of Nature's laws." -- by Swami Yogananda, Inner Culture, October, 1935. "I have no frozen samples yet, but you can count on me doing this and finding the results. I was taught how to do these years ago with water. Plants were fed this water and grew bigger and healthier than their identical neighboring plants. We were in Santa Rosa, California at the Luther Burbank greenhouse and gardens. We saw not only where he did his work, but stood in front of a thornless cactus, which he had talked to, and nurtured so that the cactus became thornless because of the trust it no longer needed to protect itself. If this worked to such a degree in this instance, then I am sure you will find positive effects in similar food/plant related soothing/positive/prayerful intervention from human to plant species." -- unknown author.
Type
image
Format
2 photographs : glass photonegative, photoprint, b&w 26 x 21 cm. glass plate negatives photographic prints photographs
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