ELEVEN

THE ORGANISM AND QUANTUM WATER

I think we are beginning to perceive nature in Earth in exactly the opposite way we viewed it in classical physics. We no longer conceive of nature as a passive object. . . . I see us as nearer to a Taoist view, in which we are embedded in a universe that is not foreign to us.

SCIENTIST ILYA PRIGOGINE

THE QUANTUM FIELD AND THE ETHER

Quantum physics gives us a scientific framework for understanding the interconnectedness of all life, including our physical, emotional, and mental experience. The idea that we are part of a dynamic energy field is not exactly new, but a rediscovery. Vedic philosophy postulated three thousand years ago that matter is created from the ether that surrounds us in space, and similar theories are found in the traditions of many early civilizations. However, the idea of the ether lost its credibility to the materialist worldview in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Our technological revolution owes its success to the supremacy of the concept of the world as a mechanism and Man as a competitive survival machine. According to Newtonian and Cartesian understanding, which still informs contemporary biology, biochemistry, physics, and medicine—indeed our whole worldview—everything works predictably.

A few early pioneers of quantum physics in the early twentieth century sensed that their discoveries would revolutionize our understanding of biology and cosmology, but it has taken a new generation since World War II to discover that quanta fill the macro environment as well as the microscopic, creating an enormous web of interconnected dynamic energy that seems to continue infinitely through space—a kind of communication system.

Einstein’s Nobel prize–winning protégé, David Bohm (1917–1994), proposed that creation is aware of itself and its oneness in “continuous creation,” meaning that all of space is filled with a dynamic energy he called the “etheric flux” (presumably an older term for the quantum field). The domain of the ether, or quantum field, is more refined than the physical.

METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE

The ancient sciences had a more holistic understanding of the world than we have today. However, we do use language that differentiates among different qualities of energy. We speak of a person having “coarse” or “refined energy.” A product is considered tasteful or beautiful when it has an integral harmony and balance, but we don’t use a scale of refinement.

Theosophy has a helpful schema for understanding energy.*34 It postulates a hierarchy of being or consciousness, from lower to higher frequencies, in terms of domains or dimensions, each separated by a “veil” that renders the higher level inaccessible. The higher frequency is aware of the lower, but the lower frequency cannot apprehend the higher.

Our normal awareness is the domain of the third dimension, the physical, which has its own laws. We can have glimpses of the fourth (time) and fifth (thought) dimensions, through intuition or inspiration. All subtle dimensions are present on Earth, interpenetrating the third dimension, though we are not normally conscious of them. Many other animals or humans with raised consciousness have a wider range of perception. A close relationship with a dog, cat, or horse often reveals instances where the animal is aware of a nonphysical presence that is beyond our own awareness, or which may even be a spirit presence.1

If our consciousness is lowered, we feel less ability to control our own lives. If our three components of consciousness (physical, emotional, and mental) are being fully used, then we can experience the full potential of being human and having free will.

QUANTUM ENERGY

David Bohm, who was part of the renaissance of quantum physics in the post-war years, suggested a holographic model of the universe in his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. 2 In holography, a special plate exposed to a laser beam (coherent light) produces a three-dimensional image of the subject. If the holographic plate is smashed into a thousand pieces, each fragment will reproduce the whole picture.

According to Bohm, the vast reality that lies beyond our senses is an undivided and coherent whole, which he calls “implicate” or “implied.” He insists that every element in everyday material reality—explicit, manifest—contains all the information of the implicit order. He saw the boundary between the two orders like the veil (maya) of the ancient Vedic tradition that needs to be pulled aside to reveal the full nature of reality. This was practiced by the ancient spiritual traditions through meditation and mystical trances. Their science studied the unseen as well as the manifest—it was a holistic system.

The study of fractals is based on a similar holographic principle. They are a mathematical description of biological self-repeating cycles, a vital part of the evolutionary process. These beautiful organic-looking structures are found in fern development, in the branching patterns of trees, in blood vessels, and in the larger environment—in weather systems and coastline features.

Traditional conventional Western science and quantum physics are worlds apart in their understanding of how the organism functions. The Newtonian model visualizes central control by the brain and nervous system, with energy dissipation according to the second law of thermodynamics;*35 and the neo-Darwinian model holds to the competitive, random nature of life systems.

Quantum physics, on the other hand, describes the organism’s main feature as that of wholeness based on intense intercommunication of all its parts, resulting in cooperation and reciprocity; local freedom and cohesion of the whole. Mae-Wan Ho (see below) likens the mechanistic view of matter to dead matter, while the holistic view studies the living fabric of life.3

THE WEIRDNESS OF WATER

Strangely, you will find almost nothing about the role of water as an organism in biology and biochemistry textbooks. That it behaves like an organism is one of the weirder ideas about water. Schauberger, whose theories about water have proved to be remarkably prescient, called water an organism. But as an intuitive, he did not expand on this very clearly.

Conventionally, an organism has the ability to reproduce. However, Mae-Wan Ho (see box), who specializes in the study of the organism, is more interested in other important indications of an organism’s aliveness—its sensitivity to cues from the environment, the efficiency with which it transmits dynamic energy within its bounds—both of which water demonstrates. An organism operates with long-range order and coordination, as does water in certain (quantum) conditions. Water departs from Ho’s qualifications for being alive in that it does not have individuality or independence; however, it shows a certain wholeness and coherence in the manner in which it imparts these to what we normally consider to be organisms.

Holistic Challenge to Reductionist Thinking

Mae-Wan Ho, who has a world reputation in the new science of the organism, resigned from the Open University in protest at its increasing dependence on corporate funding for biological research (especially in genetics). Recognizing the need for transparency and open debate on public issues, in 1999 she and her husband founded the Institute of Science in Society, which publishes a bimonthly magazine. Ho is a genuine polymath and an outspoken and tireless campaigner who challenges the mainstream mechanistic and reductionist scientific worldview (see Links and Resources).

The key to the quantum qualities of water, Ho suggests, is the proposition that water comes in two states: bulky, low density (super-cooled water); and high density, when the molecules are packed more closely together.4 In its dense state, it seems to have more long-range coherence and exhibit quantum qualities (memory, high dynamic energy, communication, self-refining, and so on). The form we are most familiar with is low-density water. Ho’s research demonstrates that an organism functions by all its parts working together coherently, which is governed by the essential cohesion of the water medium.

BIOLOGICAL WATER

Most of our biological water is part of the intercellular matrix that governs metabolic functioning and chemical reactions. It is often called intercellular water, but what does it actually do? This water is in a crystalline state called the “liquid crystalline continuum,” in which all the molecules are macroscopically aligned to form a network linking the whole body. This continuum is diffused through the connective tissues, the extracellular matrix, and into every single cell. All the molecules, including the water, are moving coherently together as a whole, even when the body is at rest.

This pattern is in the realm of quantum physics, which operates under different principles from those of Newtonian physics, the main feature of the quanta being how they interconnect all life-forms into a coherent whole. This operates from the micro to the macro level and is very much what makes an organism tick. Conventional physics, on the other hand, focuses more on individual molecules and is less able to see the larger picture.

Ho pioneered this exciting research using a polarizing microscope with special settings that enable it to film the behavior of the molecular structure of organisms. Her Institute of Science in Society has produced a video, Quantum Jazz, featuring the daphnia, a fruitfly larva (it could just as well be us) in glorious technicolor, with molecules dancing around as if part of a ballet (see plate 13).*36 Usually we’re restricted to studying the interior of organisms when they are dead. This technology displays the changing subtle energy effects in the watery domains of a living organism. This effect has been filmed and everyone can see it on a simple DVD. It is electrifying and demonstrates quite vividly how living organisms operate with remarkable coherence.

WHAT IS LIFE?

As Ho recounts:

To see it for the first time was a stunning, breathtaking experience, even though I have yet to lose my fascination for it, having seen it many, many times subsequently. The larva, all of one millimeter in length and perfectly formed in every minute detail, comes into focus on the color TV monitor as though straight out of a dream.

As it crawls along, it weaves its head from side to side, flashing jaw muscles in blue and orange stripes on a magenta background. The segmental muscle bands switch from brilliant turquoise to bright vermilion, tracking waves of contraction along its body. The contracting body wall turns from magenta to purple, through iridescent shades of green, orange, and yellow. The egg yolk, trapped in the alimentary canal, shimmers a dull chartreuse as it gurgles back and forth in the commotion.

A pair of pale orange tracheal tracts run from just behind the head down the sides, terminating in yellow spiracles at the posterior extremity. Within the posterior abdomen, fluorescent yellow malpighian tubules come in and out of focus like decorative ostrich feathers. And when highlighted, white nerve fibers can be seen radiating from the ventral nerve cords.

Rotating the microscope stage 90° caused nearly all the colors of the worm instantly to take on their complementary hues. It is difficult to remember that these colors have physical meaning concerning the shape and arrangements of all the molecules making up the different tissues.

It was some time before we realized that we had made a new discovery. The technique depends on using the polarizing microscope unconventionally, so as to optimize the detection of small birefringences or coherently aligned anisotropies in the molecular structures of the tissue.

There is no conductor or choreographer. The organism is creating and re-creating herself afresh with each passing moment, recoding and rewriting the genes in her cells in an intricate dance of life that enables the organism to survive and thrive. The dance is written as it is performed; every movement is new, as it is shaped by what has gone before. The organism never ceases to experience its environment, registering its experience for future reference.5

The coordination required for [humans to achieve] simultaneous multiple tasks and perform the most extraordinary feats depends on a special state of being whole, the ideal description for which is “quantum coherence.” Quantum coherence is a paradoxical state that maximizes both local freedom and global cohesion.6

QUANTUM COHERENCE

Quantum entanglement is the term used for a high order of coherence or integrity. It is easiest to recognize in a school of fish or a flight of birds that suddenly changes direction at breakneck speed without colliding, behaving as a single organism, one part in complete harmony with every other part.

The Institute of Science in Society has pioneered research into how organisms actually work. Ho explains why Nature does not recognize the second law of thermodynamics. Natural systems work like wheels within wheels.

The perfect coordination required for simultaneous multiple tasks in everyday life and in performing the most extraordinary feats both depend on a special state of being whole, best described as “quantum coherence.” Quantum coherence is a paradoxical state of wholeness that is anything but uniform. It is infinitely diverse and multiplex, it maximizes both local freedom and global cohesion.

The quantum coherent organism . . . is a domain of coherent energy storage that accumulates no waste or entropy within, because it mobilizes energy most efficiently and rapidly to grow and develop and reproduce. Not only does it not accumulate entropy, but the waste or entropy exported is also minimized.

Part of the secret for quantum coherence is that the life cycle itself contains many cycles of activities within. These cycles of different sizes are all coupled together so that activities yielding energy transfer the energy directly to activities requiring energy, losing little or nothing in the process (see box). If you look inside each small cycle that makes up the whole life cycle, you will see the same picture as the whole; and you can do this many times over until you come to the smallest cycle.7

Conservation of Energy in Organisms and Organizations

Ho’s simple diagram of the conservation of energy in organisms is also a model for the successful working of any organization. If this were applied to the nation’s financial policy we would not have seen the appalling hemorrhaging of money and resources, which have resulted in entropy and waste. It could also transform the way our communities are run and our energy and food is produced. It is the key to a sustainable human society and to living lightly on the earth. Ho has published a very telling example of new concepts of food production, which depend on the recycling of energy from one part of a model farm to another (diverse crops and animals, composting, aquaculture, worms, mushrooms, biogas and hydrogen production, and so on). See “Dream Farm,” SiS, no. 38.

The organism’s molecules are embedded in a water medium, which maintains them in a dynamic crystalline state, their electrical polarities forming a continuum that links the whole body. All the molecules are dancing together, and the more coherent their movement, the brighter their colors.

Figure 11.1. Cycles within cycles. Mae-Wan Ho’s representation of the way in which an organism’s energy continually recycles.

The high degree of coherence is dependent on the liquid crystalline nature of the water medium, which makes up about 70 percent of the total weight of a living organism. This allows all the molecules to intercommunicate and synchronize with each other. In Ho’s words:

I call the totality of these activities “quantum jazz” to emphasize the immense diversity and multiplicity of players on all scales, the complexity and coherence of the performance, and most importantly, the freedom and spontaneity of it all.

Quantum jazz is played out by the whole organism, in every nerve and sinew, every muscle, every single cell, molecule, atom, and elementary particle, emitting light and sound with wavelengths from nanometers to meters and kilometers; spanning a musical range of seventy octaves or more, each improvising spontaneously and freely, yet keeping in tune and in step with the whole.

Quantum jazz is written as it is performed; every movement is new, shaped by what has gone before—though not quite. The organism never ceases to experience her environment and take it in for future reference, modifying her liquid crystalline matrix and neural circuits, recoding and rewriting her genes.

Quantum jazz is why ordinary folks can talk and think at the same time, while our breakfast is being processed to give us energy. It is why top athletes can run a mile in less than four minutes, and kung fu masters can move with lightning speed and fly effortlessly through the air.

It is possible that this quality of quantum coherence could be the explanation for the way the human mind can influence events (outcomes). It might also account for the accomplishments of Hindu fakirs or even for the miracles of Jesus. It would depend upon which level you are able to access. Healers work on the quantum level, which has different laws that govern outcomes. It is generally understood in their profession that they might lose their gift if they give in to the temptations of the ego. By doing so they would lose coherence with their client. This could also be stated as: In order to work successfully with fifth dimensional energies, it is necessary to have integrity and a willingness to work within spiritual laws.

It has been suggested that humanity may have this gift of coherently visualizing outcomes as part of the free will package. If coherence can be equated with consciousness, then the future of humanity on Earth must be connected with the raising of consciousness of a significant number of people (a spiritual revival).

INTERFACIAL WATER AND WATER'S SKIN

All organisms have a skin that performs a number of important functions. As the outside layer, it defines the integrity and coherence of the organism and limits its vulnerability to physical assault and infection. It is the vital heat-balancing organ for most animals and is full of tiny sensors; in some animals these represent their main antennae for picking up information from the surrounding environment.

Earth, because of its individuality or independence, probably fulfils more completely than water Mae-Wan Ho’s criteria for an organism. Its skin is the biosphere.

Water also has a skin. The surface in contact with the atmosphere is called the meniscus (from the Greek for “crescent”); it relates to the interaction of the water molecules, and it is this that allows water bugs to sit on its surface. The meniscus is pulled up at the edge of a glass of water by cohesion; water and glass have similar molecules, so the glass attracts the water molecules, forming a concave surface. But if you spread a hydrophobic (water repelling) oily layer on the glass, the water particles stick together and a convex boundary forms instead. Dr. Gerald Pollack, at the University of Washington, Seattle, calls this skin or part of a water body in contact with another medium surface the “interfacial water,” or an “exclusion zone” (EZ), because it seems to be able to exclude solutes that are found in the main water body.8

A stream also has a skin where it contacts the streambed, and it contains the integrity of the whole. The water molecules next to the skin usually have a concentration of active oxygen, which acts as a neutralizer of elements that are out of balance in the water body. The water body can retain its freshness by circulating its flow, concentrating the higher quality in the center.

Water’s skin, just like the skin of any other organism, is sensitive to both terrestrial and cosmic energies. The meniscus has a high surface tension (ST), which is the ability of water to stick to itself. It is ST that makes water want to form a sphere—the form with the least surface area for its volume, requiring the least amount of energy to maintain itself.

Just like cell water, exclusion zone water—water in contact with another surface—has complex ordered layers that sometimes are called liquid crystals. Mae-Wan Ho discovered that cells and organisms are liquid crystalline in structure.9

What Ho found is that this EZ water forms at every face of the water body, so that it is indeed like a skin preserving the water body’s integrity. So perhaps the river’s skin can not only absorb but also project subtle energy from the water body into the banks and bed of the river. Could it be that water’s skin acts as an antenna to receive and transmit subtle energy, as the skin does with a more usual organism?

A link can be made to the restructuring of the water filaments in a stream by the action of the longitudinal vortex as described by Schauberger, who said that this complex water structure enabled the water body to absorb higher energies and healing qualities, for the different layers of the water structure act like skins.

An electrical field will improve water’s stiffness and crystalline nature by perfecting the alignment of its molecules. Ho demonstrated this strikingly on her kitchen table by putting two nearly full beakers of water almost touching, then inserting a positive electrode from a power pack into one beaker and a negative into the other. In this experiment, a bridge of stiff water will form, connecting the two beakers and conducting electricity. Moving the beakers several centimeters apart will still maintain this bridge.10

BRAIN CONSCIOUSNESS VERSUS BODY CONSCIOUSNESS

The brain controls the central nervous system through the cranial nerves and spinal cord, as well as the peripheral nervous system. Biology traditionally identifies the brain as regulating virtually all human activity, including involuntary actions, such as heart rate, respiration, and digestion. This is a mechanistic view of the human body systems, which also assumes that the brain is the seat of consciousness, but brain science does not have an easy answer for how the brain is able to operate as an integrated whole. Is this not really the same question as how the organism operates as a coherent whole?

Biologists have long wondered how an organism like a bear or a human is able to respond so quickly to outside stimuli. For years it was assumed that the body’s nervous system was responsible for passing messages from eyes to brain to hands or other parts. But careful measurements show that nervous energy paths can take large fractions of a second, too long for the instantaneous response that is usually the case.

It is a well-attested fact in the practice of aromatherapy that nutrients applied to the skin are very quickly conveyed throughout the body. An herbalist friend rubbed a clove of garlic on the sole of his baby’s foot and was amazed to detect the smell of garlic on the baby’s breath half a minute later! This is possible only through the link chains of water’s magical crystalline structure.

Ho gives the example of the accomplished pianist’s hand-eye coordination: “There simply isn’t time enough, from one musical phrase to the next, for inputs to be sent to the brain, there to be integrated, and coordinated outputs to be sent back to the hands.”11

COLLAGEN AND COLLOID CRYSTALS

One exciting discovery in recent years has been the strange role that water plays in biological communication. It has come to light that collagen, the connective tissue that makes up the bulk of all multicellular animals, is crucial to the integrity of the organism. It is composed of a crystalline matrix of collagen proteins embedded in water that is 60 to 70 percent by weight. This, suggests Ho, makes the connective tissues the ideal medium for communication. This water is specially structured in chains along the collagen fibers and has the ability to self-organize.12

Tests by Gary Fullerton at Texas University, San Antonio, suggest that water associated with collagen exhibits a high degree of quantum order, being structured in regular chains along the collagen fibers.13 This would facilitate a process called “jump-conduction of protons” that would enable instant communication to take place between different parts of the body—essential for perfect coordination.

Ho believes this would enable water associated with collagen to become superconductive, an ideal medium for instantaneous intercommunication for coordination of all cellular activities. She believes that this liquid crystal continuum constitutes a “body consciousness” that may well have evolved before the nervous system but which today works both in partnership with, and also independently of, the nervous system. “This body consciousness is the basis of sentience, the prerequisite for conscious experience that involves the participation of the intercommunicating whole of the energy storage domain.”14 The body’s energy, she points out, does not follow the conventional laws of thermodynamics but is able through quantum coherence to be stored dynamically in a closed system, to be available at a moment’s notice.

Ho suggests that the acupuncture meridians of Chinese medicine may be structured water lines aligned with collagen, and that chi energy may be the positive bioelectric currents carried by the jump-conduction of protons through the hydrogen bonds of water molecules.

Another area where water can produce a high degree of order is in colloid crystallization. Colloids (suspensions made up of minute nanoparticles) were always thought to be homogeneous. Japanese researcher Norio Ise was able to create significant crystal forms in polymer solutions. The outcome of this research has been the development of a wide range of industrial applications in electronic and photon chips.

TRANSPLANTS

We tend to think of the organs of the body in the same way as engine parts that can be replaced when they wear out. Indeed, many lives have been saved by organ transplants from one body to another. Besides vital organs, bone marrow and blood are also transplanted or transfused.

But there is a downside to this practice. The human body is not just the sum of its parts. It is an organism that acts as a complete unity. The heart and blood are as individual as a person’s brain, and unforeseen consequences may result from a blood transfusion.

Viktor Schauberger regarded blood (which is largely water) as an organ. There is anecdotal evidence of personality change in someone who has had his blood supply replaced by another’s. Blood is similar to water in its ability to carry information, and perhaps also has memory. Perceived in this light, it is not surprising that some religions regard blood transfusions as unethical.