From its arrival on earth to the vast areas it traverses before emptying into the sea, water holds all the knowledge and experience it has acquired. As phenomenal as it may seem, water carries its whole history, just as we carry ours. It carries secrets, too.
In The Secret Life of Water, bestselling author Masaru Emoto guides us along water’s remarkable journey through our planet and continues his work to reveal water’s secret life to humankind. He shows how we can apply its wisdom to our own lives, and how, by learning to respect and appreciate water, we can better confront the challenges that face the twenty-first century—and rejuvenate the planet.
Review
A blend of science and spirituality marks Masaru Emoto's lovely "The Secret Life Of Water", which links the search for happiness and serenity with the life of water on this planet. From interviews with healers and shamans whose powers have changed the shape of water itself to photos of water crystals and cycles of water and life, it's hard to easily peg "The Secret Life Of Water" -- but it will often find its way onto the science shelf and from there into the welcoming hands of spiritual readers as well.
-- "Midwest Book Review", May 2006
About the Author
Masaru Emoto is an internationally renowned Japanese researcher who has gained worldwide acclaim. Emoto is a graduate of the Yokohama Municipal University's department of humanities and sciences with a focus on International Relations, and he receive certification as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine from the Open International University.
Emoto's research has visually captured the structure of water at the moment of freezing, and through high-speed photography he has shown the direct consequences of destructive thoughts and the thoughts of love and appreciation of the formation of water crystals. The revelation that our thoughts can influence water has profound implications for our health and the well-being of the planet.
Masaru Emoto has written many books, including the New York Times bestselling The Hidden Messages in Water, and his books have been published in twenty-four languages.
What comes to mind when you think about happiness?
Do you think about love coming true for you? Perhaps the moment of birth of a son or a daughter? A job well done? Or a time you remember lying in the green grass and gazing up at the blue sky? The answer is different for everyone. We all have our own image of what happiness is. But all of us want to live a life filled with happiness.
I know of only one way to do this, and that is to align yourself with the hado of happiness. As I described in my book The True Power of Water , hado is the subtle energy that exists in all things.
All that exists in the universe vibrates at a unique frequency. So if you emit a hado of happiness, then you can be sure that the universe will respond with happiness. What do you need to do to align yourself with the hado of happiness?
Part of the problem is that it’s hard to know what happiness really is. Perhaps there was a time when you thought you were happy, but then you realized that it was only an illusion. Or maybe you believed that a blissful relationship was finally within your reach only to compare what you had with someone else and see your dream castle crumble in the sand and be washed away.
On a trip to Germany, my daughter, who now lives in the Netherlands, told me about one of her friends who had lived in East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down. The construction of the Berlin Wall was a time of great sadness for the people of Germany, but my daughter’s friend said that despite the city being divided, life on the east side of the wall went on basically as normal. In fact, a sense of contentment came from knowing that no one had to worry about what others were thinking because everyone was poor.
But when the wall finally came down and the people in the eastern part of the city were now suddenly able to obtain everything that the western part of the city had to offer, problems began. The more new, shiny things they saw, the more they wanted. But the easterners were basically still poor, so the result was a lot of unsatisfied needs. Some even longed for the days before the wall came down when people were poor and prices low.
It seemed as if the country had first been torn apart and then put back together all without regard for the will of the people. Of course the fall of the Berlin Wall is one of the most jubilant moments of modern history, but we have to admit that even this wonderful turning point had its repercussions.
When we start to compare our happiness with that of others, we soon start resonating with the hado of unhappiness. As long as we search for happiness from the outside, then it’s unlikely that true happiness can ever be found.
Return to Bliss
The search for happiness is ultimately and simply a search for self. You can go searching for it in distant lands, but you’ll only find it in the palm of your hand.
Think back far enough in your life and you’ll probably remember a time when you felt innocent bliss. Your life had meaning and you were so busy living that time was forgotten. Then adulthood set in and you put those things away and locked the door. Perhaps you have even forgotten where you put the key.
But those happy feelings are not gone for good. With a little effort, you can open the door and take out those things that you thought were forever a part of your past. When you are true to your self and search for what you really want to be and do, your life will once again begin to flow.
In your job, in your play, and in your love, you need to return to the starting point to find the bliss. When you do this, you will soon realize that your life has changed. You’ll first feel a renewed sense of health and well-being. This is because the bliss within you will purify the water that flows through your body. If we were to take a picture of such water, the resulting crystal would most certainly astound us.
One treatment suggested for people with cancer is “life-purpose treatment.” By finding a purpose in life—giving speeches, climbing a mountain, laughing—the immune system is revitalized and the cancer often goes into remission. It’s now common knowledge in the medical community that your mind has an enormous impact on your body. Filling your body with the hado of bliss is the very best secret for living a healthy life.
This state of bliss is also the key to expanding what we can do. We all know that if you enjoy something, then you usually excel at it. Yukio Funai, a famous business consultant in Japan who has provided advice to some three thousand companies, advocates an effective method for strengthening the abilities of companies and individuals. He calls this method the “strength-development method,” and it simply involves focusing on the strengths of the company or the individual and working to expand those strengths. Weaknesses are not even considered. The result is that the strengths become stronger and the weaknesses take care of themselves.
For example, if you run a store, it’s easy to focus all your attention on how to move the products that aren’t selling well. But most stores will have a product that’s a strong seller. For a boutique, it may be a particular style of dress; if they can focus their attention on that dress, then sales of that product and other products as well will increase. For a business to succeed, it needs to focus on what is selling well, what’s most effective, and what they do best.
We see this concept reflected in the hydroponics method of growing vegetables, which makes it possible to harvest ten thousand tomatoes from a single tomato plant. How, might you ask, is such a thing possible? The answer is surprisingly simple: create a good environment for growing tomatoes.
Plants, of course, grow in soil, but with hydroponics farming, the roots grow in water infused with the nutrition that a plant requires. And because the plant doesn’t need to use up energy to push its way through the soil, the roots can grow at will and easily find all the necessary nutrition. In this way, the tomato plant is able to take advantage of all its hidden potential. I remember visiting an experimental farm operated by agronomist Shigeo Nozawa, the inventor of the hydroponics method, a few years before he died and seeing the tomato plant he had grown. To put it lightly, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The same thing applies to us as humans. When you find what you do best and realize that this is where you need to focus your attention, then you will be well on your way to returning to bliss. It won’t be long before you sense that your life is undergoing a change. If you know someone, perhaps a child, who is focused on a sport or a certain aspect of study, then you need to provide nourishment in the form of encouragement and compliments. This will help the person become even more focused and more determined.
A good illustration of what can result from the right words can be seen in the formation of water crystals. When water is exposed to the words “You have to do it,” the result is never a well-formed crystal. This also goes for words like “You fool,” and the worst, “It’s no good.” Perhaps it’s time to take these words out of your vocabulary. Fill it instead with words like “Thank you,” “Let’s do it,” “I love you,” “Beautiful,” and “Well done.” Make these warm and beautiful words the ones you use the most.
The words that make beautiful crystals from the water that flows through your body are the words that fill you with a gentle feeling of peace. And that is when you will be able to expand on your abilities and go about each day with passion and bliss.
In my previous book, I explained how we put cooked rice in three glass jars, and to one of the jars we said “Fool!” To another we said “Thank you.” And we simply ignored the rice in the third bottle. The rice that was told “Thank you” fermented and had quite a nice fragrance. The rice that was told “Fool!” darkened and rotted. The rice that was ignored turned black and emitted a highly repugnant smell.
However, that’s not the end of the story. I took these same jars of rice to an elementary school, and the students said “Thank you” to the rice in all three containers. It wasn’t long before the rice in all three containers fermented and started to emit a pleasant smell—even the rice that had spoiled.
This indicates that even that which is dying and decaying can be brought back to life by caring attention, kind words, and positive thoughts.
Shinichiro Terayama, a former director of the Japan Holistic Medical Society, is a testament to this. Terayama spent his career as an impassioned businessman, and before that he had kidney cancer. He started making it a habit to wake up early and go to the rooftop of his condominium to greet the rising sun. As he watched the morning sun each day, he began to realize that life is a gift, and the words “Thank you” started coming out of his mouth. Without turning his eyes from his cancer, he instead spoke words of appreciation to the cells, and the result was that they began to recover. The cancer receded until he was declared cured.
The ability of the spoken word to give life is much more powerful than we can imagine. A ten-year-old girl conducted an experiment similar to the rice experiment but instead used sunflower seeds. On the seed envelope, the flowerpots, and the watering can, she wrote the words “Thank you” for one and “Fool” for the other, and then she spoke these words to the respective seeds as she took care of them each day.
The plant exposed to “Thank you” grew tall with full, lush leaves. In sharp contrast, the plant exposed to “Fool” had a deformed stem and wrinkled leaves. When we looked at the plants through a microscope, we saw that the leaves of the plant exposed to “Thank you” were dense, while the other plant had leaves that appeared weak and frail.
This may well indicate the presence of consciousness in plants, accounting for this striking difference in the two plants raised by the young girl. I learned about this experiment when the mother of the young girl wrote me a letter, which she ended with a question: What would happen if this same thing applied to raising children?
One way to look at words is to consider them the switch for turning on or off the vibration of everything in the universe. Or perhaps words can be thought of as a remote control that has the power to reach anywhere.
Humans are the only animals capable of using words, and this allows us to align our wavelength with anything and everything that exists in the universe. And it’s instantaneous. Our words and our thoughts can go anywhere and to everyone in the instant they come forth.
Experiences of unexplainable coincidences are too common to be ignored. Perhaps you have dreamed about someone and later found out that they had died. Perhaps you’ve thought about someone from your past and then you get a call from that person. It’s happened to all of us. And the cause of this phenomenon can be found in the vibration of thoughts.
I once conducted the following experiment. I filled a jar with plain water from the tap at my office in Tokyo, and then I put it on my desk. Since the water came from the city water-works system and contained chlorine, attempts to make crystals from the water failed.
I then asked for the help of five hundred people located throughout Japan. At the same time on the appointed day, they all sent positive thoughts to purify the water on my desk and then sent the message “Thank you” to the water.
As expected, the water changed and was able to form beautiful crystals. The chlorinated water from the tap had changed to pure water.
How could this have happened? I think you know the answer. The thoughts and words of five hundred people reached the water without regard for the borders of time and space.
And in the same way, the vibration of your thoughts at this very moment is having a certain effect on the world. If you understand this, then you can also understand that you already hold in your hands all the keys you need to change your life.
There Is Value in Unhappiness
We can learn another thing about happiness from the perspective of hado: Life is not all happiness. As long as there is life, there will be sadness. All our high hopes can be easily deflated, but another way to look at this is to realize that unhappiness is the path on the way to happiness.
We exposed water to the words “happiness” and “unhappiness.” As expected, the water exposed to “happiness” formed beautiful round crystals that would make a precious ring. But what about crystals formed from water exposed to “unhappiness”? We expected to find deformed and broken crystals, but the crystals were rather beautiful hexagonal crystals that looked like they had been cut in half. It looked as if the water was trying its best to form crystals. It would seem, then, that unhappiness is not really the opposite of happiness. Unhappiness, in fact, is the process required for the creation of happiness.
Happiness and unhappiness are like two ends of the same rope, and sometimes you hold one end of the rope and everything goes your way, and other times you have the other end of the rope and nothing goes your way.
Such is life. We all want to be happy every day and never have to experience sadness. How unnatural that would be! Like the waves that rise and fall, if water never falls, then it could never rise or flow ahead.
For every happiness in life, there is another side. When you’re in love, every day is filled with anticipation and joy, but accommodating another person in your life may require that you sacrifice your free time, your money, and your space. And you can almost be sure that after a fight, you’ll find yourself thinking that you’d be better off alone. The elation felt when you buy the car of your dreams seldom lasts as long as the car. Each new scratch in the paint and each time you fork out money to maintain the car will chip away at your initial happiness.
You can never own only one side of a coin. If you want to find happiness, then you have to be ready to accept what comes with it. Such is the fate of all those who live in this world.
But we can still have hope and look forward to the future. In fact, do you think you would be able to have hope if everything went exactly as you wanted it to? Your ability to be happy no matter what and no matter when depends entirely on what’s going on in your heart.
A Thankful Heart Is the Way to Happiness
Why do people go through life looking for happiness? Dogs and cats look for food and comfort, but they certainly don’t go to all the trouble that people do in their continual search for happiness. I suppose the reason is that we are the only ones who can align ourselves with the hado of happiness.
Many years ago, I had a discussion with Dr. Ravi Batra, a well-known international economist, and he said something that has stuck with me:
Why do you think people continually search for happiness? The reason is because we people have a link to unlimited existence. But many of us make a serious mistake. We set up conditions for happiness based on riches and fame, momentary pleasures, and things that are limited and always changing.
There are those who are rich beyond most of our imaginations, and yet they continue to want more as they strive in vain to find happiness. The reason it’s in vain is because they are looking to find unlimited happiness in limited money and riches.
Unless we can become one with the unlimited existence, we will never find true happiness. This requires that we raise our consciousness.
All that can be seen with the human eye is of this limited world. Sooner or later, the material trappings will end, and as long as that is how we define happiness, our hearts will always feel hollow.
Of course I understand that casting aside all desire is not possible or even advisable. In fact, desire is not what’s preventing us from finding happiness. An appropriate amount of desire is needed to make people strive for something better, and it’s what made it possible for human society to rise to its current level. The problem arises when we become slaves to our desires. Our modern society operates on the ability to stir up desire in the masses.
It’s no easy task to find happiness in a society established on insatiable desire. So what is it that we need to do to escape never-ending desire and find happiness? The answer is to have a thankful heart.
More than ever, we live in a time when love and appreciation is truly needed. And I think the right ratio for appreciation and love is 2:1—the exact ratio of hydrogen to oxygen in the H20 molecule!
We have seen where words of appreciation and love result in crystals of indescribable beauty. There are no conditions needed for appreciation. We can be thankful for life and for our freedom to move about.
When you align your soul with the hado of appreciation and love, a small drop of happiness will seep into your heart and spread throughout your body. This will link you to the vibration of happiness, and happiness will become a part of your daily life. And this is the secret for finding happiness right now wherever you are.
The Invisible World of Hado
Water crystals are just one aspect or face of the universe. Water changes its appearance at will as it attempts to speak to us concerning the formation of the cosmos. It is in itself a temporary world formed within a severe environment.
We can peer into this temporary world when we photograph crystals. To take the photographs, we collect water and place drops in fifty petri dishes. We then freeze them at minus 25 degrees centigrade and let them cool for two and a half hours, during which time they form tiny round clumps of ice. We then peer at the ice at five degrees below zero at a magnification of 200 times. The crystals appear for only two minutes under the microscope. During that time, the tiny water crystals form hexagonal patterns and then melt just as quickly as they appear.
In just a few precious moments, the door to a new dimension is opened, giving us a glimpse into a fantasy world. People who see photographs of these crystals are fascinated by their wondrous beauty. Like the kaleidoscope that we remember looking into as a child, we are suddenly carried away into another world, if only for a brief moment.
This world we enter is the invisible world of vibration, or hado. Three key words are helpful to understand hado. The first is frequency. The entire universe is vibrating at a particular and unique frequency. Frequency can be modeled as waves, a fact easily supported by quantum mechanics. All matter is frequency as well as particles. What this means is that rather than considering something a living organism or a mineral, something we can touch or something we can see, everything is vibrating, and vibrating at a unique and individual frequency. But that is still not all, for the words we speak, the words we write, paintings, and photographs all emit their own frequencies as well.
You may have heard of blind people who are able to “see” colors. When they hold something in their hands, they are able to feel the color. They know if something is a warm color or a cool color, a strong color or a pale color. Similar to how we feel the temperature and texture of an object, these people are able to feel the color through their skin. They are receptive to the unique frequency emitted by different colors.
The same applies to written words. People with psychic powers reportedly can read a word by touching it while their eyes are closed, and some say they can read letters still sealed in an envelope. If you consider the concept of hado, you might consider that there is the possibility of this being more than a parlor trick.
But why would the formation of crystals be affected by a word written on a piece of paper and placed around a beaker of water for a few hours, or a photograph placed under a beaker for twenty-four hours? The answer, I believe, is that water is capable of feeling hado from the source and memorizing it.
The second word helpful in understanding hado is resonance. Resonance is made possible when there is a sender of hado information and a receiver of the information. Say you make a call to someone you want to talk to. Unless that person picks up the receiver, there will be no conversation. Without a receiver, information cannot be sent. A Japanese expression aun no kokyu , or “in-breath and out-breath,” means a state where subtle synchronization occurs when we do things together. This also refers to a relationship between a sender and a receiver.
When there is a match in vibrations, resonance occurs. We can observe the phenomenon of resonance in various aspects of daily life. For example, if you have feelings of hatred toward someone, there is a good chance that this person feels the same way about you. Likewise, if you have positive feelings toward someone, that person will sense those feelings even if you don’t express them in words. What we feel in our hearts has a strange way of being relayed to other people.
The third word helpful for understanding hado is similarity. The macro world we know is a symbol, an expansion of the micro world. The nine rotating planets in our solar system are the macro version of the electrons circulating around the atomic nucleus, and what is going on within the human body is a miniaturization of what is going on in the grandeur of nature.
We can also say that this is an aspect of the fractal theory. When you look at a tree, you can see that the tips of the branches divide and spread out much in the same way that the first branches of the tree divide and spread out. In other words, because the tree is formed in the same way as the branches, the tree forms a single silhouette, which is sometimes called a fractal structure. The fractal structure can be seen in various aspects of nature: in the ocean coast, in the churning of a river, and in the formation of clouds.
This is also the case with water crystals. Why do water crystals form hexagonal shapes? When the molecules of water join together, the hexagonal shape is the most stable. Of course, such hexagonal structures are too small to see, but when these small structures join together, they form a larger hexagonal shape. In other words, the placement of molecules too small to see and the formation of crystals that we can see through our microscopes are in compliance with the fractal structure.
So by observing the micro world, we can increase our understanding of the macro world; likewise, by observing macro phenomenon, we can learn more about the micro world.
These three key words— frequency, resonance , and similarity —will give you a better understanding of hado. Another important aspect of hado is flow. The Buddha, knowing that flow is a fundamental principle of the universe, said that all things are in flux and nothing is permanent. Water is a good example of this. Water is always flowing with life, purifying what it encounters as it travels. It carries with it the nourishment necessary for sustaining life while also carrying away impurities, giving life to all.
All life flows with the flow of water. Even your life is in constant flow with water. In fact, even the cycle of birth and death complies with this single principle. Circulation is indeed the law of nature.
But there is one form of life that insists on breaking this law of nature: humankind. The desire for more, pride, and the insistence of one ideology over another all serve to block the flow. This is the cause of many of the problems that we find ourselves facing in these troubled times. War that begets greed, tragedy that begets loathing, pollution that begets apathy. These are distortions or blockages of the natural ways of nature.
Many of the problems that we have not even started to solve require careful resolve and bold action. And what will be necessary for us to arrive at solutions? The answer is circulation. This is the key that we need to open the floodgates to a new day for the human race—finding happiness, spreading love, restoring peace, and protecting this jewel called Earth. It all begins with circulation, and it is water that will show us the way. I invite you to begin the journey:
Let’s listen carefully. Let’s listen to the voice of water.
And steep ourselves in the fantasy world created by water crystals.
Someday we will return to water and become a part of the natural flow.
Filled with amazement, your heart and your step will be lightened.
Such a feeling will show you the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen.
From its arrival on earth to the vast areas it traverses before emptying into the sea, water holds all the knowledge and experience it has acquired. As phenomenal as it may seem, water carries its whole history, just as we carry ours. It carries secrets, too.
In The Secret Life of Water, bestselling author Masaru Emoto guides us along water’s remarkable journey through our planet and continues his work to reveal water’s secret life to humankind. He shows how we can apply its wisdom to our own lives, and how, by learning to respect and appreciate water, we can better confront the challenges that face the twenty-first century—and rejuvenate the planet.
Review
A blend of science and spirituality marks Masaru Emoto's lovely "The Secret Life Of Water", which links the search for happiness and serenity with the life of water on this planet. From interviews with healers and shamans whose powers have changed the shape of water itself to photos of water crystals and cycles of water and life, it's hard to easily peg "The Secret Life Of Water" -- but it will often find its way onto the science shelf and from there into the welcoming hands of spiritual readers as well.
-- "Midwest Book Review", May 2006
About the Author
Masaru Emoto is an internationally renowned Japanese researcher who has gained worldwide acclaim. Emoto is a graduate of the Yokohama Municipal University's department of humanities and sciences with a focus on International Relations, and he receive certification as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine from the Open International University.
Emoto's research has visually captured the structure of water at the moment of freezing, and through high-speed photography he has shown the direct consequences of destructive thoughts and the thoughts of love and appreciation of the formation of water crystals. The revelation that our thoughts can influence water has profound implications for our health and the well-being of the planet.
Masaru Emoto has written many books, including the New York Times bestselling The Hidden Messages in Water, and his books have been published in twenty-four languages.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE **
**Tune in to the Hado of Happiness
What comes to mind when you think about happiness?
Do you think about love coming true for you? Perhaps the moment of birth of a son or a daughter? A job well done? Or a time you remember lying in the green grass and gazing up at the blue sky? The answer is different for everyone. We all have our own image of what happiness is. But all of us want to live a life filled with happiness.
I know of only one way to do this, and that is to align yourself with the hado of happiness. As I described in my book The True Power of Water , hado is the subtle energy that exists in all things.
All that exists in the universe vibrates at a unique frequency. So if you emit a hado of happiness, then you can be sure that the universe will respond with happiness. What do you need to do to align yourself with the hado of happiness?
Part of the problem is that it’s hard to know what happiness really is. Perhaps there was a time when you thought you were happy, but then you realized that it was only an illusion. Or maybe you believed that a blissful relationship was finally within your reach only to compare what you had with someone else and see your dream castle crumble in the sand and be washed away.
On a trip to Germany, my daughter, who now lives in the Netherlands, told me about one of her friends who had lived in East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down. The construction of the Berlin Wall was a time of great sadness for the people of Germany, but my daughter’s friend said that despite the city being divided, life on the east side of the wall went on basically as normal. In fact, a sense of contentment came from knowing that no one had to worry about what others were thinking because everyone was poor.
But when the wall finally came down and the people in the eastern part of the city were now suddenly able to obtain everything that the western part of the city had to offer, problems began. The more new, shiny things they saw, the more they wanted. But the easterners were basically still poor, so the result was a lot of unsatisfied needs. Some even longed for the days before the wall came down when people were poor and prices low.
It seemed as if the country had first been torn apart and then put back together all without regard for the will of the people. Of course the fall of the Berlin Wall is one of the most jubilant moments of modern history, but we have to admit that even this wonderful turning point had its repercussions.
When we start to compare our happiness with that of others, we soon start resonating with the hado of unhappiness. As long as we search for happiness from the outside, then it’s unlikely that true happiness can ever be found.
Return to Bliss
The search for happiness is ultimately and simply a search for self. You can go searching for it in distant lands, but you’ll only find it in the palm of your hand.
Think back far enough in your life and you’ll probably remember a time when you felt innocent bliss. Your life had meaning and you were so busy living that time was forgotten. Then adulthood set in and you put those things away and locked the door. Perhaps you have even forgotten where you put the key.
But those happy feelings are not gone for good. With a little effort, you can open the door and take out those things that you thought were forever a part of your past. When you are true to your self and search for what you really want to be and do, your life will once again begin to flow.
In your job, in your play, and in your love, you need to return to the starting point to find the bliss. When you do this, you will soon realize that your life has changed. You’ll first feel a renewed sense of health and well-being. This is because the bliss within you will purify the water that flows through your body. If we were to take a picture of such water, the resulting crystal would most certainly astound us.
One treatment suggested for people with cancer is “life-purpose treatment.” By finding a purpose in life—giving speeches, climbing a mountain, laughing—the immune system is revitalized and the cancer often goes into remission. It’s now common knowledge in the medical community that your mind has an enormous impact on your body. Filling your body with the hado of bliss is the very best secret for living a healthy life.
This state of bliss is also the key to expanding what we can do. We all know that if you enjoy something, then you usually excel at it. Yukio Funai, a famous business consultant in Japan who has provided advice to some three thousand companies, advocates an effective method for strengthening the abilities of companies and individuals. He calls this method the “strength-development method,” and it simply involves focusing on the strengths of the company or the individual and working to expand those strengths. Weaknesses are not even considered. The result is that the strengths become stronger and the weaknesses take care of themselves.
For example, if you run a store, it’s easy to focus all your attention on how to move the products that aren’t selling well. But most stores will have a product that’s a strong seller. For a boutique, it may be a particular style of dress; if they can focus their attention on that dress, then sales of that product and other products as well will increase. For a business to succeed, it needs to focus on what is selling well, what’s most effective, and what they do best.
We see this concept reflected in the hydroponics method of growing vegetables, which makes it possible to harvest ten thousand tomatoes from a single tomato plant. How, might you ask, is such a thing possible? The answer is surprisingly simple: create a good environment for growing tomatoes.
Plants, of course, grow in soil, but with hydroponics farming, the roots grow in water infused with the nutrition that a plant requires. And because the plant doesn’t need to use up energy to push its way through the soil, the roots can grow at will and easily find all the necessary nutrition. In this way, the tomato plant is able to take advantage of all its hidden potential. I remember visiting an experimental farm operated by agronomist Shigeo Nozawa, the inventor of the hydroponics method, a few years before he died and seeing the tomato plant he had grown. To put it lightly, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The same thing applies to us as humans. When you find what you do best and realize that this is where you need to focus your attention, then you will be well on your way to returning to bliss. It won’t be long before you sense that your life is undergoing a change. If you know someone, perhaps a child, who is focused on a sport or a certain aspect of study, then you need to provide nourishment in the form of encouragement and compliments. This will help the person become even more focused and more determined.
A good illustration of what can result from the right words can be seen in the formation of water crystals. When water is exposed to the words “You have to do it,” the result is never a well-formed crystal. This also goes for words like “You fool,” and the worst, “It’s no good.” Perhaps it’s time to take these words out of your vocabulary. Fill it instead with words like “Thank you,” “Let’s do it,” “I love you,” “Beautiful,” and “Well done.” Make these warm and beautiful words the ones you use the most.
The words that make beautiful crystals from the water that flows through your body are the words that fill you with a gentle feeling of peace. And that is when you will be able to expand on your abilities and go about each day with passion and bliss.
In my previous book, I explained how we put cooked rice in three glass jars, and to one of the jars we said “Fool!” To another we said “Thank you.” And we simply ignored the rice in the third bottle. The rice that was told “Thank you” fermented and had quite a nice fragrance. The rice that was told “Fool!” darkened and rotted. The rice that was ignored turned black and emitted a highly repugnant smell.
However, that’s not the end of the story. I took these same jars of rice to an elementary school, and the students said “Thank you” to the rice in all three containers. It wasn’t long before the rice in all three containers fermented and started to emit a pleasant smell—even the rice that had spoiled.
This indicates that even that which is dying and decaying can be brought back to life by caring attention, kind words, and positive thoughts.
Shinichiro Terayama, a former director of the Japan Holistic Medical Society, is a testament to this. Terayama spent his career as an impassioned businessman, and before that he had kidney cancer. He started making it a habit to wake up early and go to the rooftop of his condominium to greet the rising sun. As he watched the morning sun each day, he began to realize that life is a gift, and the words “Thank you” started coming out of his mouth. Without turning his eyes from his cancer, he instead spoke words of appreciation to the cells, and the result was that they began to recover. The cancer receded until he was declared cured.
The ability of the spoken word to give life is much more powerful than we can imagine. A ten-year-old girl conducted an experiment similar to the rice experiment but instead used sunflower seeds. On the seed envelope, the flowerpots, and the watering can, she wrote the words “Thank you” for one and “Fool” for the other, and then she spoke these words to the respective seeds as she took care of them each day.
The plant exposed to “Thank you” grew tall with full, lush leaves. In sharp contrast, the plant exposed to “Fool” had a deformed stem and wrinkled leaves. When we looked at the plants through a microscope, we saw that the leaves of the plant exposed to “Thank you” were dense, while the other plant had leaves that appeared weak and frail.
This may well indicate the presence of consciousness in plants, accounting for this striking difference in the two plants raised by the young girl. I learned about this experiment when the mother of the young girl wrote me a letter, which she ended with a question: What would happen if this same thing applied to raising children?
One way to look at words is to consider them the switch for turning on or off the vibration of everything in the universe. Or perhaps words can be thought of as a remote control that has the power to reach anywhere.
Humans are the only animals capable of using words, and this allows us to align our wavelength with anything and everything that exists in the universe. And it’s instantaneous. Our words and our thoughts can go anywhere and to everyone in the instant they come forth.
Experiences of unexplainable coincidences are too common to be ignored. Perhaps you have dreamed about someone and later found out that they had died. Perhaps you’ve thought about someone from your past and then you get a call from that person. It’s happened to all of us. And the cause of this phenomenon can be found in the vibration of thoughts.
I once conducted the following experiment. I filled a jar with plain water from the tap at my office in Tokyo, and then I put it on my desk. Since the water came from the city water-works system and contained chlorine, attempts to make crystals from the water failed.
I then asked for the help of five hundred people located throughout Japan. At the same time on the appointed day, they all sent positive thoughts to purify the water on my desk and then sent the message “Thank you” to the water.
As expected, the water changed and was able to form beautiful crystals. The chlorinated water from the tap had changed to pure water.
How could this have happened? I think you know the answer. The thoughts and words of five hundred people reached the water without regard for the borders of time and space.
And in the same way, the vibration of your thoughts at this very moment is having a certain effect on the world. If you understand this, then you can also understand that you already hold in your hands all the keys you need to change your life.
There Is Value in Unhappiness
We can learn another thing about happiness from the perspective of hado: Life is not all happiness. As long as there is life, there will be sadness. All our high hopes can be easily deflated, but another way to look at this is to realize that unhappiness is the path on the way to happiness.
We exposed water to the words “happiness” and “unhappiness.” As expected, the water exposed to “happiness” formed beautiful round crystals that would make a precious ring. But what about crystals formed from water exposed to “unhappiness”? We expected to find deformed and broken crystals, but the crystals were rather beautiful hexagonal crystals that looked like they had been cut in half. It looked as if the water was trying its best to form crystals. It would seem, then, that unhappiness is not really the opposite of happiness. Unhappiness, in fact, is the process required for the creation of happiness.
Happiness and unhappiness are like two ends of the same rope, and sometimes you hold one end of the rope and everything goes your way, and other times you have the other end of the rope and nothing goes your way.
Such is life. We all want to be happy every day and never have to experience sadness. How unnatural that would be! Like the waves that rise and fall, if water never falls, then it could never rise or flow ahead.
For every happiness in life, there is another side. When you’re in love, every day is filled with anticipation and joy, but accommodating another person in your life may require that you sacrifice your free time, your money, and your space. And you can almost be sure that after a fight, you’ll find yourself thinking that you’d be better off alone. The elation felt when you buy the car of your dreams seldom lasts as long as the car. Each new scratch in the paint and each time you fork out money to maintain the car will chip away at your initial happiness.
You can never own only one side of a coin. If you want to find happiness, then you have to be ready to accept what comes with it. Such is the fate of all those who live in this world.
But we can still have hope and look forward to the future. In fact, do you think you would be able to have hope if everything went exactly as you wanted it to? Your ability to be happy no matter what and no matter when depends entirely on what’s going on in your heart.
A Thankful Heart Is the Way to Happiness
Why do people go through life looking for happiness? Dogs and cats look for food and comfort, but they certainly don’t go to all the trouble that people do in their continual search for happiness. I suppose the reason is that we are the only ones who can align ourselves with the hado of happiness.
Many years ago, I had a discussion with Dr. Ravi Batra, a well-known international economist, and he said something that has stuck with me:
Why do you think people continually search for happiness? The reason is because we people have a link to unlimited existence. But many of us make a serious mistake. We set up conditions for happiness based on riches and fame, momentary pleasures, and things that are limited and always changing.
There are those who are rich beyond most of our imaginations, and yet they continue to want more as they strive in vain to find happiness. The reason it’s in vain is because they are looking to find unlimited happiness in limited money and riches.
Unless we can become one with the unlimited existence, we will never find true happiness. This requires that we raise our consciousness.
All that can be seen with the human eye is of this limited world. Sooner or later, the material trappings will end, and as long as that is how we define happiness, our hearts will always feel hollow.
Of course I understand that casting aside all desire is not possible or even advisable. In fact, desire is not what’s preventing us from finding happiness. An appropriate amount of desire is needed to make people strive for something better, and it’s what made it possible for human society to rise to its current level. The problem arises when we become slaves to our desires. Our modern society operates on the ability to stir up desire in the masses.
It’s no easy task to find happiness in a society established on insatiable desire. So what is it that we need to do to escape never-ending desire and find happiness? The answer is to have a thankful heart.
More than ever, we live in a time when love and appreciation is truly needed. And I think the right ratio for appreciation and love is 2:1—the exact ratio of hydrogen to oxygen in the H20 molecule!
We have seen where words of appreciation and love result in crystals of indescribable beauty. There are no conditions needed for appreciation. We can be thankful for life and for our freedom to move about.
When you align your soul with the hado of appreciation and love, a small drop of happiness will seep into your heart and spread throughout your body. This will link you to the vibration of happiness, and happiness will become a part of your daily life. And this is the secret for finding happiness right now wherever you are.
The Invisible World of Hado
Water crystals are just one aspect or face of the universe. Water changes its appearance at will as it attempts to speak to us concerning the formation of the cosmos. It is in itself a temporary world formed within a severe environment.
We can peer into this temporary world when we photograph crystals. To take the photographs, we collect water and place drops in fifty petri dishes. We then freeze them at minus 25 degrees centigrade and let them cool for two and a half hours, during which time they form tiny round clumps of ice. We then peer at the ice at five degrees below zero at a magnification of 200 times. The crystals appear for only two minutes under the microscope. During that time, the tiny water crystals form hexagonal patterns and then melt just as quickly as they appear.
In just a few precious moments, the door to a new dimension is opened, giving us a glimpse into a fantasy world. People who see photographs of these crystals are fascinated by their wondrous beauty. Like the kaleidoscope that we remember looking into as a child, we are suddenly carried away into another world, if only for a brief moment.
This world we enter is the invisible world of vibration, or hado. Three key words are helpful to understand hado. The first is frequency. The entire universe is vibrating at a particular and unique frequency. Frequency can be modeled as waves, a fact easily supported by quantum mechanics. All matter is frequency as well as particles. What this means is that rather than considering something a living organism or a mineral, something we can touch or something we can see, everything is vibrating, and vibrating at a unique and individual frequency. But that is still not all, for the words we speak, the words we write, paintings, and photographs all emit their own frequencies as well.
You may have heard of blind people who are able to “see” colors. When they hold something in their hands, they are able to feel the color. They know if something is a warm color or a cool color, a strong color or a pale color. Similar to how we feel the temperature and texture of an object, these people are able to feel the color through their skin. They are receptive to the unique frequency emitted by different colors.
The same applies to written words. People with psychic powers reportedly can read a word by touching it while their eyes are closed, and some say they can read letters still sealed in an envelope. If you consider the concept of hado, you might consider that there is the possibility of this being more than a parlor trick.
But why would the formation of crystals be affected by a word written on a piece of paper and placed around a beaker of water for a few hours, or a photograph placed under a beaker for twenty-four hours? The answer, I believe, is that water is capable of feeling hado from the source and memorizing it.
The second word helpful in understanding hado is resonance. Resonance is made possible when there is a sender of hado information and a receiver of the information. Say you make a call to someone you want to talk to. Unless that person picks up the receiver, there will be no conversation. Without a receiver, information cannot be sent. A Japanese expression aun no kokyu , or “in-breath and out-breath,” means a state where subtle synchronization occurs when we do things together. This also refers to a relationship between a sender and a receiver.
When there is a match in vibrations, resonance occurs. We can observe the phenomenon of resonance in various aspects of daily life. For example, if you have feelings of hatred toward someone, there is a good chance that this person feels the same way about you. Likewise, if you have positive feelings toward someone, that person will sense those feelings even if you don’t express them in words. What we feel in our hearts has a strange way of being relayed to other people.
The third word helpful for understanding hado is similarity. The macro world we know is a symbol, an expansion of the micro world. The nine rotating planets in our solar system are the macro version of the electrons circulating around the atomic nucleus, and what is going on within the human body is a miniaturization of what is going on in the grandeur of nature.
We can also say that this is an aspect of the fractal theory. When you look at a tree, you can see that the tips of the branches divide and spread out much in the same way that the first branches of the tree divide and spread out. In other words, because the tree is formed in the same way as the branches, the tree forms a single silhouette, which is sometimes called a fractal structure. The fractal structure can be seen in various aspects of nature: in the ocean coast, in the churning of a river, and in the formation of clouds.
This is also the case with water crystals. Why do water crystals form hexagonal shapes? When the molecules of water join together, the hexagonal shape is the most stable. Of course, such hexagonal structures are too small to see, but when these small structures join together, they form a larger hexagonal shape. In other words, the placement of molecules too small to see and the formation of crystals that we can see through our microscopes are in compliance with the fractal structure.
So by observing the micro world, we can increase our understanding of the macro world; likewise, by observing macro phenomenon, we can learn more about the micro world.
These three key words— frequency, resonance , and similarity —will give you a better understanding of hado. Another important aspect of hado is flow. The Buddha, knowing that flow is a fundamental principle of the universe, said that all things are in flux and nothing is permanent. Water is a good example of this. Water is always flowing with life, purifying what it encounters as it travels. It carries with it the nourishment necessary for sustaining life while also carrying away impurities, giving life to all.
All life flows with the flow of water. Even your life is in constant flow with water. In fact, even the cycle of birth and death complies with this single principle. Circulation is indeed the law of nature.
But there is one form of life that insists on breaking this law of nature: humankind. The desire for more, pride, and the insistence of one ideology over another all serve to block the flow. This is the cause of many of the problems that we find ourselves facing in these troubled times. War that begets greed, tragedy that begets loathing, pollution that begets apathy. These are distortions or blockages of the natural ways of nature.
Many of the problems that we have not even started to solve require careful resolve and bold action. And what will be necessary for us to arrive at solutions? The answer is circulation. This is the key that we need to open the floodgates to a new day for the human race—finding happiness, spreading love, restoring peace, and protecting this jewel called Earth. It all begins with circulation, and it is water that will show us the way. I invite you to begin the journey:
Let’s listen carefully. Let’s listen to the voice of water.
And steep ourselves in the fantasy world created by water crystals.
Someday we will return to water and become a part of the natural flow.
Filled with amazement, your heart and your step will be lightened.
Such a feeling will show you the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen.
There’s no need to resist the flow.
No need to be afraid of moving forward.
And the reason is that you are water.
© 2003 Masaru Emoto