Dear Subscribers,

Dr. Masaru Emoto passed away yesterday. His legacy will probably remain controversial for decades to come, but as he journeys through the bardo, I would like to send my personal thoughts of gratitude to him for teaching the world that thoughts have immense power. While many may have been encouraged to love more deeply and intensely by what Emoto-sensei revealed, others are still looking for the scientific proof. Personally, I do not think the proof will reveal itself to skeptics for the very reason that what we think becomes our reality and so the observer will see what is in his or her own mind, including perhaps only a blank sheet of neutrality.

Without consciously intending so, I might be on a kick. For example, in my post-operatic e-mail about Macbeth, I proposed that the entire story or drama could have occurred inside the turmoil of a mind rocked by guilt. Let me — briefly — reiterate just this one point and then return to Emoto-sensei.

If a person of sufficient power to influence the lives of others takes away those lives, his conscience may be riddled with guilt. Therefore, the witches may be nothing more than figments of the imagination of a person struggling for sanity after committing horrific deeds. The counsel of others, whether wife or warriors, can also be noises in the head. The reason for this is that we do have conscience and we are therefore responsible for the choices we make.

What Emoto-sensei demonstrated is that we can choose to love — and appreciate and show gratitude for — simple things like food and water, or we can pollute with our hostility and irreverence whatever is unfortunate enough to get tangled in the web of our negativity.

There are people who question his scientific method and conclusions so I would like to explain the bits and pieces that I believe I understand and then perhaps set the stage for a more impartial review of his work.

First of all, Dr. Emoto was using a darkfield microscope. As you know, this is in and of itself controversial, but to demystify the microscope, let me make a few comments. Microscopes can be very simple or incredibly complex. Basically, they all rely on objectives that magnify. Usually, there are eyepieces that allow the user to view the magnified object, usually at 10-15 times higher magnification than the objective itself. Then, there is a stage or platform for the specimen and usually light under the specimen. If the light goes straight through the specimen, it will wash out everything that is not dense.

In darkfield, the light is split and bounced off the sides of the specimen so as to create a silhouette. This reveals details that would otherwise be obliterated by the light.

There is nothing mysterious about the darkfield microscope except that it offers the capacity to view what is normally not seen. What Emoto-sensei did with this microscope was to put the scope in a freezing cold room so that the samples would be frozen, i.e., he was photographing crystallized water rather than liquid water.

A colleague in Austria attended a lecture by Dr. Emoto and then invented a variation of the observation method that was very clever. He took a small freezer, basically just big enough to house the microscope. He cut holes on both sides of the freezer so that he could attach extenders to the control knobs of the scope and manipulate the stage without opening the freezer door. This way, his own work space was more comfortable and he had a longer time period for observation since 30 minutes is about the maximum time someone in a parka can tolerate being in a freezer.

Josef invited me to his home to see his equipment and inventions as well as photographs. There can be no question at all about the fact that water samples collected in different places exhibit different characteristics. What fascinated me the most was that the water itself seemed to be photographing its environment so we could actually see pine trees and flowers and recognize the source of the water by reference to the vegetation depicted in the crystallized water.

Sometimes to understand what someone is doing and why the experiments might be significant, we have to get out of our boxes and look for corroborating material in other disciplines. In this case, I believe we need to become familiar with the work of Dr. Hans Jenny, the father of cymatics. Jenny was a Swiss physician who, for a while, taught science in a Steiner School in Zurich. His work was taken up by Peter Guy Manners and then by many others who are interested in how sound produces oscillations and waves and changes the behavior and structure of objects. There is some rare and highly valuable archival film on experiments with lycopodium (a gelatinous type of clubmoss), iron filings, and other substances when exposed to music. If one takes just a few examples, then we can perhaps start with sound that shatters crystals and glass or that entrains an instrument, such as when a violin that is played causes resonance with another violin that is simply on a table. The moment we consider these examples, we realize that there is movement associated with sound and that movement can affect other objects.

Next, we have people who studied entrainment, like Itzhac Bentov (Stalking the Wild Pendulum), as well as those who are using physics to explain how the observer and observed cannot be isolated one from another, Gary Zukav (Dancing Wu Li Masters) being an example of this position. In short, there is the science and then the ethic. By putting his emphasis on the consequences of thought, Emoto-sensei asked each of us to take responsibility for our own thoughts and he provided practical motivations for his message by showing that food that is loved will not go bad on us whereas sending negative thoughts will promote growth of fungi and sour the foods we might have wanted to eat at a later date.

Thanks to his pioneering efforts, every school child in Japan knows that thoughts are very powerful, but Emoto-sensei took his message a step higher by showing that a word on a jar can have a similar effect. Only when we think deeply about such matters can we understand how very powerful our actions would be if every person on the Planet chose to express love or pray for peace. The present toxic system would simply collapse.

This also tells you how very damaging to our Planet violence is. By airing violence, incorporating it into games, and promoting belligerence and power instead of reverence and respect, we are creating a reality that none of us truly want. I believe that Emoto-sensei was a very powerful force for transformation. Moreover, by combining music with some of his experiments, we could actually see the effects of culture on people in a way that is tangible, not mystical any more because the forms unraveled the mysteries for us.

Quite some years ago, I had a brief correspondence with Dr. Emoto. My issue was the federal requirement to label herbs in a such way as to imply that they are not useful. This goes against my own understanding, my ethics, and my intent. I asked him for some advice because I was considering refusing to comply on religious grounds. Dr. Len Horowitz is more defiant than I am. At one time, he put labels on his products saying that if you believe in the FDA, don't buy his products. Well, obviously, we do believe in the products and the required messages are offensive to my soul. I was hoping Dr. Emoto and I could come up with something that was vibrationally potent.

I have also wanted to study the herbs in darkfield. It is not as difficult as one might think. For example, I crushed the flowers of some Scotch broom to see what the flower juice looks like. It is very, very beautiful so it is not surprising that this plant has significant medicinal value. What is important is that we keep doing these experiments because in an epoch in which the masses are indoctrinated by an increasingly narrow band of influences that share a common agenda, we need for people to develop enough confidence in themselves to trust their own observations.

For example, if you watched the film I recommended, you saw a young boy, a truly beautiful young apprentice, discussing the need for personal purity, for understanding his own mind, and for being in tune with the plants so he can help his friends to be well. If children are brought up with television and cartoons and endless distractions, they will have a much harder time being authentic. I was so deeply moved by the spirit of this boy, but the real issue here is to observe. If we can observe without bias, we will see what is real and what is clutter. Once we know what is real, it is more than likely that we will crave it over other experiences.

Dr. Emoto, I want to thank you for the effort you made to make us aware of the importance of our own thoughts. I am grateful for the work you did and the messages you spread. May your journey be peaceful and your legacy eternal.

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2014

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