Conscious Water

On Monday Sept 29, here in London at St. James’s Church near Piccadilly Square, we heard a talk on conscious water. No doubt such a topic would raise the eyebrows of many ‘mainstream’ people, whether in the sciences or not. Dare I say they would take a dry look at such a topic?

But hey, if we have consciousness in our human mind, is it separate from our physical body? Are we not affected, both mentally and physically, by what our body receives, perhaps in the form of heat or cold, sun or clouds, aridity or humidity? Are we not affected, both physically and mentally, by compliments or insults, growling dogs or purring cats, Bach or Black Sabbath?

A major part of the thesis at this talk, presenting the works of Dr.MasaruEmoto, seemed to be that the human body is made up largely of water and that this has implications for both our personal life and for society. I don’t recall the exact percentages that the speaker mentioned, but young babies are more than 90% water, which goes down with age, so that elderly people may be just 60% water.  And if water can absorb states of consciousness, of being, of moods, then that will naturally affect us in some ways.

Dr.Nemoto, a staff member of Dr.Emoto’s team (they are not related, and Dr.Nemoto joked that the ‘N’ at the start of his name meant that he was ‘Not Emoto’) was speaking for Dr.Emoto, who was too ill to travel to Europe now.

He emphasised several times in his presentation that he is the only scientist on Dr.Emoto’s team. (Dr.Emoto has a degree in Alternative Medicine, from an institute in Sri Lanka.)

Thus I think that Dr N, coming from a background of the physical sciences, did not emphasise enough what I think was Dr.Emoto’s main thesis, that, if I may paraphrase an old saying, ‘we are what we absorb’. And if our drinking water is filled with emotional negativity (again, my term) then that can naturally affect our mood, our perception of the world, and, as may be obvious, our actions in the world.

Dr.Nemoto did emphasise that these theories are not yet proved or even accepted by much of the scientific community.

He did give a thoughtful example of how we are affected by our attitude towards our selves (which is something I regularly bring up in my talks on meditation). He suggested that if we get up in the morning and look at ourselves in the mirror and feel joy or good cheer towards ourselves, this will give us a great psychological boost for the day.

And then there were the photographs. Dr.Emoto’s work comes to the public largely through his photos and his interpretation of them. Water crystals are photographed from different perspectives. Dr.Nemoto showed photos of water crystals from the public waterworks of various cities, such as Tokyo, London, Paris, Berlin, etc. These crystals generally did not look healthy or happy. How, can a water crystal look healthy or happy [or sad or ugly, or any other mood)? It is of course subjective, but as we saw quite  anumber of photos, we could see that some water crystals were not shaped very well, out of balance, with scattered geometrical shapes, at least according to common views of beauty. Others were like pieces of symmetrical art, such as we might see in the mosaic of a church window. These were, by general consent of the audience, as far as I could tell, more pleasing to the eye, to the mood, than were the ‘out of shape’ water crystals.

My friend and I discussed this afterwards. We wondered if a photo of a water crystal exposed to pleasant music represented the shape of all the water crystals (or atoms of water) in that particular container. After all, not all people will be affected the same by a piece of music, so will all atoms of water in a container be affected in the same way? I may feel deep joy from listening to Beethoven, where someone else may feel bored or anxious, for example. Thus, does a photo of one water crystal, from a bottle of water, represent how each crystal looks?

Also, Dr.Nemoto gave examples where a positive or negative word (happy, idiot, free, hate, etc) were written on a piece of paper and that paper taped to the side of a glass container of water, with the words facing inwards. The results were that the water containers that were exposed to positive words elicited beautiful, symmetrical, flowing forms of water crystals and the containers with negative words had distorted, inharmonious shapes.

The conclusion that the words affected the shape of the crystals was not easy to accept, though I’ve run across somewhat similar occurrences. Years ago two of my friends, L and F, were living together in south London. They had some left over rice after dinner one night. They decided to put some of it in one container, with a drawing of a frowning person taped to the container, and some in another container with a smiling person drawnon that container. They put them some distance apart on their long kitchen counter. Every time they walked past the first container they shouted something like “I hate you”. And when they walked past the second container they said something like “I love you.” They found that the rice in the first container went bad well before the rice in the second container.

Their experiment is of course, not considered as solid science.

I also understand that more and more chefs are realising that the mood they are in when they cook affects the quality of the food.

So there seems to be a more subtle relationship between mind and matter than many of us realise.

Neither Dr.Nemoto, nor, as far as I can tell, any of the writings of Dr.Emoto, refer to the work discussed in the 1970s best seller, “The Secret Life of Plants”, which seems to have a similar argument. The book claims that plants are sentient, conscious beings that respond to stimuli that may cause pleasure or pain. The research in the book is not accepted by many scientists as of yet.

Perhaps, as with Dr.Emoto’s work, more experiments will confirm that there is a consciousness in not only people and animals, but also in plants, and yes, water.

The last part of the presentation by Dr.Nemoto was of a more scientific nature, largely dealing with research by Dr. Gerald Pollack, a professor of bioengineering in the USA. Dr Pollack proposes a ‘fourth state of water.”

His thesis can be found on the internet. Though it seems an intriguing idea, it was rather hard to follow for much of the audience.

In the last part of the evening we learned of Dr.Emoto’s intense desire for world peace. It was not made explicitly clear what is the relation between world peace and his research with water and consciousness.

World peace is certainly a noble goal.

I’ll drink (a glass of water) to that!

by Dada Jyotirupananda