The Story of Water

Alick Bartholomew has been closely involved with the work of the Austrian forester and 'water wizard' Viktor Schauberger for over 20 years, and has been instrumental in the production and writing of a number of books about his work. Here he extends his treatment to tell the overall story of water and its significance from a scientific, ecological and esoteric perspective. The overall structure of the book consists of a section on our usual view of water, water as the source of life, and facing the water crisis. The last section warns of the danger of taking water granted and neglecting its importance for every level of life. If water carries life, it can also carry death in the form of waterborne diseases, which still kill millions of people a year. Underlying our current attitude to water is the predominance of the mechanistic worldview and a corresponding economics of exploitation. However, as the reader discovers in the course of this study, there are new forms of science emerging based on a holistic understanding of nature and a more subtle and intuitive way of knowing as experienced by Schauberger and others following in a Goethean tradition. These new ways of knowing serve to correct the imbalance in our culture identified by so many contemporary writers.

In the first part of the book, Alick covers a vast range of material, including the role of water in the Earth Moon system, the emergence of life from water, the basic characteristics of water and why it is such an extraordinary substance, the importance of water for the health of the Earth and the great water cycles. Here he makes a very important point that deforestation has interrupted the full water cycle and has led to serious floods and run-offs because the higher temperature of the ground no longer enables the water to be absorbed and therefore leads to a lowering of water tables. He goes on to discuss the role of springs and rivers, remarking on the importance of maintaining the natural spiral and vortex movement of water as it purifies itself and maintains its vitality. Here the large-scale creation of canals and the straightening of rivers has had a destructive effect. Water also plays a vital role in the human body and of course in the photosynthesis of plants. He discusses the role of water in evolution and summarises the work of Schauberger, which leads into a discussion of the memory of water.

The second part introduces some new thinking on water and the work of the biologist Mae-Wan Ho, who will be familiar to some readers. She has developed the idea of quantum coherence, a state that maximises both local freedom and global cohesion. This underpins the central message of the book that water is not only a common denominator of all life, but also an exemplar of holism in the sense that everything is energetically connected to everything else. Matter is not dead, but rather a living fabric of life, while water provides an essential component of cohesion. Given that water makes up 70% of the weight of the local organism, one can begin to understand its high degree of coherence allows molecules to communicate and synchronise with each other, a resonant state that Ho calls quantum jazz. Alick goes on to discuss the cosmic role of water in the work of Rudolf Steiner and Theodor Schwenk where water is seen as an image of the stream of time, a living medium in a living Earth that is part of a living cosmos. Dowsing shows that water can be a communication channel and may well underlie the bio-communication experiments of Cleve Backster which also demonstrate a level of quantum entanglement. There is then an extensive chapter on the memory of water explaining the research of Jacques Benveniste and Masaru Emoto, which cannot be understood within the framework of conventional science. We need a more subtle and less mechanistic approach, which Alick seeks to provide. There is of course a great deal more research to do in this field.

The third part brings the reader back to more immediate realities by explaining the water crisis. Traditional societies treat both the earth and water is sacred, but for us it is just a resource which, like many others, we have overused. Many great rivers no longer reach the sea, groundwater is being used unsustainably, irrigation has led to the salination and consequent infertility of soils, while nations with rapidly increasing populations compete for limited available supplies - the Nile and the Jordan, for instance. The water crisis also has implications for the future of food production, and Alick analyses various regional challenges. There are solutions, but they involve a radically different approach to agriculture. Some people claim that industrial and biotechnological methods are the only way of feeding the planet, but we do in fact produce enough food to feed everybody. A key problem is that 40% of cereal output is eaten by animals and that developing economies are moving up the food chain and therefore demand for meat is increasing. This has a direct effect on water, as 1000 L of water are required to produce 1 kg of grain, and 24 kg of grain are required to produce 1 kg of meat.

In the final chapter, Alick returns to the big picture, reiterating the need for a holistic view and his conviction that water is not only the common denominator of life but also the 'medium of communication within and between organisms.' A comprehensive understanding of water has many lessons to teach us and can help us make the necessary paradigm shift towards a more integrated understanding of life, consciousness and evolution. We can no longer afford to regard ourselves as separate from the cosmos, from Nature or from each other. Through a more profound understanding of the nature of water, Alick has made a very significant contribution to the emergence of a holistic worldview, while not neglecting the ecological and political dimensions of water with which we will have to deal collectively in the next 20 years. This book is essential reading for those who wish to understand the real story of water.