The Spiritual Life of Water: Its Power and Purpose

It was not a total wast of time but there are other books that present the information more concisely and with less speculation. Having read some of those books I was drawn in by the title of this one. After all, there are few people who would not like to be considered more spiritual, if only for themselves. I have not read it for awhile but I do remember finding the author's redundant style irritating and much of his speculation hollow.Fortunately there are Many used copies available cheaply online ... but then that is a statement in itself.

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A tremendous read for those who want to begin to understand what water is

This is an amazing book! Water is something that we just take for granted; but it seems to be so much more than we realize. I truly wish everyone would read this very profound book, it gives you a new appreciation for this amazing substance.

This book was a great read. It is packed with valuable information for anyone desiring to more about the mystical, physical and spiritual properties of water.

The Spiritual Life of Water: Its Power and PurposeBy Alick BartholomewISBN: 978-1-59477-360-0 (Park Street Press, 2010)After reading a few books on water, I thought I was up to speed and knew all the important information there was to know about water. But this book is like Dr. Emoto's Hidden Messages in Water on steroids. This information took me to a place that will forever change the way I see and relate to water. Everyone should realize that water has a sacred place on this planet. After reading this book I couldn't help but think that water may hold not only the memory of our planet, but that it may contain information that will help us survive in the years to come. Now I'm going to go have a glass of water.Rahasya Poe, Lotus Guide

The Spiritual Life of Water: Its Power and PurposeBy Alick BartholomewOne cannot help but wonder what lies before us in our continuing conscious evolution. The Spiritual Life of Water lays out in exacting detail what we know about water, taking into consideration all the latest scientific research. I didn't realize how little I knew about water until I read this book, which is filled with many color photos that help explain the magic and mystery of water.Rahasya Poe, Lotus Guide

I borrowed this from a friend's bookshelf because it looked interesting. Then I pushed stubbornly through it, despite mounting irritation, just so I could say I read it.This book may only be worth commenting on because it represents so well the laxness and suggestibility of our intellectual culture. And because from this one may infer the existence of agencies that encourage a debilitating malaise, so as more readily to exploit the afflicted. It serves us to identify and understand such conditions.Definitely, the book plays on a theme at the philosophical cutting edge of our times – the way "Reality's" sanctioned concept, during the last century or so, has shifted from a focused, material objectivity to some weird, quantum-like function of observation, colored by the now-famous "Uncertainty principle" and something called "Chaos Theory."These are jaw-dropping ideas. It's natural that curious laymen would want to explore this ground. But I perceive the book in large measure exploits its compelling theme through mere association, while it contributes little that's fresh or truly insightful on its own account. Although it may appeal to the casual reader as a survey of our radically changing "scientific" worldview, with "water" as the vehicle, I find too many deficiencies in its makeup to be able to recommend it positively as nutritious fare.The book's very title illustrates this problem. Throughout its 300 or so pages, many gestures of homage are made to the "scientific" way of knowing. Yet discussion flows conspicuously into a non-material realm, where words like "spirit," "life," "power" and "purpose" have the bulk of their semantic load, and where "science," as it's generally understood, finds little purchase. Furthermore, the fifth big word in the title – the subject of the book, "water" – has since ancient times been a fundamental religious metaphor.The title says a lot about the content – in more ways than one. It both suggests and reveals. Too much of the meaning generated in this book derives from nebulous connotative association, and too little from the interplay of facts and reasoning.In addition, however the five big words in the title reverberate off one another, and whatever this says about the physical universe to which water belongs, similar observations would be just as accessible to thoughtful members of primitive or backward societies as they are to us here and now.We do not need "scientific" expertise to lead us through that domain. Appeals to authority are inherently fallacious, almost certainly wrong – to some degree – while those identified here give us nothing concrete to either build on or probe and criticize – e.g., "Psychologists tell us . . . " (279).Like so much else in this book, the reference suffers from being not only fallacious but vague as well. Which psychologists?In various expressions, repeatedly, the book pays allegiance to a sort of "scientific" ideal that's little more than hocus pocus, adorned with some trappings of knowledge and respectability – like "psychologists."As it happens, the platitude "psychologists" are credited with endorsing is pure drivel, in my view. Interested readers may look it up and decide for themselves. But however coherent Bartholomew's "psychologists" truly are, whoever they are, a lot of what's going on in these pages has the quality of smoke and mirrors.The word "energy" is another good case in point. It resonates with mystical, New Age overtones, yet it's also a central factor of Received scientific thought. Its broad and frequent application creates an effect largely by playing on these nuances – both mystical and scientific. Its use as a placeholder in numerous formulations gives the appearance that something definite is being discussed and explained – when in fact, under scrutiny, the analysis dissolves into an exercise in question begging.The word appears over and over again – in a dazzling range of contexts. But what does it actually mean? If you're hard-nosed about it, I don't think that's clear at all.Indeed, the author acknowledges as much in his Introduction: "What is the essential nature of energy? There is much confusion around the term, and if we are honest, we don't really know, except that it always seems to be connected with motion" (9).How, in science, can you name "something" – in this case, "energy" – and speak of "it," if you can't even identify "it"? No such entity may actually exist – only the word, like "unicorn." This is reification, not true science.Ironically, Bartholomew says more than he's aware of when he acknowledges, "There is much confusion around the term."The discussion continues, but it doesn't really take us anywhere. As a matter of fact, it goes around in circles: "energy means the power to do work and refers to the gross physical energies, such as those produced by a hydroelectric power generator . . . " (9).Note how the word "energy" appears twice here – being used in the second instance to define its meaning in the first. This is classic circular reasoning, tautology. I.e., you're basically just hearing the same thing twice. There is no actual development or process of argument, though an illusion to this effect will arise before the unwary.Open the book to almost any page, and you are likely to find similar dissolutions of what should be a meaningful consistency in language and thought.The example of hydroelectric power generation demonstrates again this laxness in the author's thinking."Dams destroy ecosystems and sever the balancing of dynamic ENERGY [my emphasis] from one part of the landscape to another" (235-6)."Our mechanical, technological systems . . . . [are] how we generate our power . . . . The dynamic ENERGY produced by our technology is harmful because in strengthening those subtle ENERGIES that break down structures and degrade quality, it causes deterioration in the environment" (148).Thus, dams produce "dynamic energy" – electric power – but in the process they also destroy the "subtle energies" present in "living," healthful water. It's understood here that the "energy" in water itself – a function of the water's "memory" – varies between positive or healthy and damaged or even dead.I don't see a meaningful distinction between "dynamic" and "subtle" energies, since anything that's dynamic may also be subtle, and vice versa. Bartholomew's apparent distinction here between two kinds of "energy" is no distinction at all; it's just noise and flashing lights.It is not that there are two different kinds of the same thing, "energy." Rather, this one label is applied sloppily to disparate phenomena, or in certain cases perhaps to "phenomena" that don't even exist, as with the word "unicorn," since "energy" makes many appearances and takes on many forms in this book.If a word as fundamental "energy" can have a lot of different meanings, some of which are not particularly clear, then you could also say it really doesn't mean much of anything either. This makes the whole discussion nonsensical.Returning to the Introduction, three brief sentences on page 2 could be interpreted as nonsense, could be unverifiable, could mean a lot, or could mean nothing at all:"We ARE water.""Humans resonate with water"; and"Our ancestors were fascinated by its magic."Incidentally, invoking magic is an age-old trick of charlatans. Even if you believe that magic is real, and even though some people who aren't charlatans do the same thing.Embellishing upon the obvious is a relatively harmless form of sophistry, creating an illusion that the embellisher possesses deeper understanding, and/or is offering more of substance than is really the case. In a world where academics, self-made men and others must publish to make their mark, this technique is popular among those endowed with nothing better. It's too bad the publishing industry puts up with it. But I suppose they have to make a living too.I once had a college professor who bragged that he never read anything less than about 300 years old. Given the material realities in, say, Elizabethan times, at least a whole lot more discrimination had to be exercised then regarding what went into print. Technically well-executed distractions are among the characteristic pitfalls of our own times, albeit they infest much more than the book industry.Perfectly banal facts come up here and there: "Organic farming is more labor intensive than conventional" (272); "Many of the body's primary organs depend on plentiful, good quality water for their efficient functioning, especially the brain, lungs, kidneys and liver" (106); "The American Southwest has experienced substantial immigration from Mexico into both Southern California and Texas, putting a strain on the infrastructure and on the demand for fresh water" (249).What high school graduate who still reads books requires one to be edified at this level?Elsewhere, space is occupied with facile moralizing: "We have created God in our own image, a childlike conception that dilutes our own responsibility, and leads to division and wars" (282).There is quite a liberal sprinkling of quotes and attributions – from Lao-Tzu, David Bohm and D. H. Lawrence to Fritjof Capra, Goethe, Prince Charles, and of course much from a number of the "new science" advocates whose ideas Bartholomew is synthesizing. Most of what's printed on pages 162-4 was written by one of the sources Bartholomew draws most heavily from. The last three pages of text look like a valedictory address by some African poet.Bartholomew creates a pleasant, intriguing effect with his selection of fragments, cherry picked from almost everywhere. But again, I have the sense it's just a bit too much like the next big cloud of flakes in a tastefully executed snow job. Here is yet another identifiable element that's adding its share of bulk to the whole, and operating once more through an association of meanings that's a little too diffuse for comfort.There are resounding predictions. But who really knows the future? This whole genre should be treated skeptically – granted that I wouldn't bet against another sunrise in the morning.Surely though, there's at least a trace of puffery in Bartholomew's pronouncement that, "The next generation will see the biggest revolution in agriculture and food production that the world has experienced for a century" (266).Back in the Introduction, on page 3, Bartholomew declares, "What this book proposes is the novel idea that water and the quantum field are two complementary aspects of the balanced mediation and sustenance of life."Note that seven of eight nouns are abstract – "water" being the exception. Much the same can be said of all four adjectives.Now, abstract verbiage must be employed judiciously. When it proliferates, writing degenerates into froth. Look at the quoted sentence carefully and see how much real meaning you can pin down. Strip it to its bare bones: "water and [something unknowable] are aspects of . . . mediation and sustenance."Could this be poppycock? Or if not, then isn't it remarkably self-evident? This is far from the "novel idea" Bartholomew congratulates himself for hatching. Remove the abundant verbal rubbish, and all he's really saying is that, "water sustains life."As near synonyms for "harmony," the words "complementary" and "balanced" have New Age overtones, and they appear to be fine-tuning the sense of the abstract nouns they modify. "[L]ife" is an exalted subject to invoke. So all of this resonates like a symphony – high minded, trendy, scientific – but it's really nothing more than twaddle.Nor does it matter if you take "quantum field" as referring to something abstract or concrete, for Bartholomew concedes two pages later that, once again, he doesn't know what he's talking about, when he alludes to, "that MYSTERIOUS [my emphasis] FIELD of creative QUANTUM ENERGY that surrounds us."The following is just a minor detail, but it further illustrates the author's lack of rigor.I consulted the index because I wanted to find a particular reference to "living water," so I could include it here. But the passage I was looking for appeared on neither of the pages listed. I had to go rooting around to find it . . . on page 291.Here's the passage: "living water is the key to evolution, healing and consciousness. Jesus was baptized with living water."Now, others may disagree – and I could be wrong – but it's my impression that two different meanings are conflated behind a single label in this passage. "Living water" is either literal or figurative; its referent could be something either material or spiritual – but probably not both at the same time, or one and then the other randomly.I was mildly turned off by capitalization of the word "Nature" (e.g., p. 151). It feels like an assumption is being put over on the reader – something is being implicitly deified. But I'm not sure how that happened, or if there's some ulterior purpose. It has just a whiff of the con job about it, or of feel-good fuzzy headedness (see below).I was going to include the following sentence with the above-mentioned banalities: "politicians seem to get caught easily in this web of self-serving corruption" (p. 8).By the way, note the small redundancy – what "corruption" is not "self-serving"?However, I think this sentence fits in just as well as an introduction to the stunning list of clichés that follow it on the same page: "unsustainable technologies . . . profligate lifestyle . . . Earth's bounty . . . explosion of fossil fuels [this expression is more unfortunate than clichéd] . . . prodigious technological achievements . . . pioneers of new technologies . . . dominance over Nature . . . growth of materialism . . . commercialization of values . . . orthodox Newtonian theories . . . "Further down this page I see a statement of questionable validity: "Today nearly all scientific research is funded by business."But doesn't government – above all for military purposes – fund an awful lot of research too? E.g., weren't computers and the Internet originally developed by and for the military? Why wouldn't this qualify as "scientific research"?Come to think of it, I would suppose that all "research" is "scientific." Can you imagine business, government or foundations funding any research that could be challenged as unscientific? So yet another small detail – the term "scientific research" – displays imprecision and lack of clarity in the author's thinking.It's true the fruits of "scientific" research that government has paid for may be a windfall to certain businesses. But this is not what Bartholomew is saying.And while it might be argued that foundations are a dimension of business, I'd hesitate to extrapolate that research funding from foundations is distributed with "business" purposes in mind. Which isn't what Bartholomew is saying either.At several points – offhandedly, in passing – Bartholomew affirms a certain viewpoint regarding what's real and what's lunatic. People's opinions about "conspiracy" topics differ sharply. But in my own case, by the middle of my seventh decade of living, I've discarded too many of my old verities to feel as sure as I once did about what our conditioning would have us take for granted.Though initially I saw things otherwise, at this point – I confess – I could respect a cautiously agnostic view on topics such as global warming, the moon landings, or the prejudice against McCarthyism. Bartholomew's occasional display of a safe, "establishment," or politically correct outlook was yet another factor contributing to my judgment that his exploration lacks depth and vitality.Bartholomew's entire posture is iconoclastic. He makes a show of boldly confronting dull, conventional, restrictive, outmoded scientific thought – characterized, for example, as "[t]he Newtonian/Cartesian mechanistic worldview," or simply "mainstream science" (174). But I have a suspicion that whatever substance exists in Bartholomew's oeuvre, and whatever effect he achieves on his audience, these are well within the bounds of politically permissible, Received normality.Finally, it seems fitting that the book is attractively finished and well formatted. It's been faultlessly proofread, correctly punctuated, firmly bound. The photos and illustrations are appealing. The paper is not cheap.There is nothing wrong with this, of course. But what I see in it is just one more superficial attribute falsely projecting a sense of quality that doesn't really get delivered on.Most of the environmental horror stories that Bartholomew relates were familiar to me twenty years ago. But here and there I came across something that I hadn't been aware of – for instance, the devastation in southeast Australia. (I live in New Jersey, USA.)Here and there I turned up other information that was new and interesting. I had never considered the anomalies of water, nor was I aware of its remarkable properties in movement.Its strongest positive may be that the book seems to provide a reasonably broad layman's survey of water as the object of modern scientific understanding. I was stimulated enough to request that my library obtain titles by the two sources Bartholomew most often cites.I sympathized with the author when he mentioned his "personal search for meaning," in connection with the subject he has studied and expounded on.There's a "holistic" and "fractal" aspect to this kind of living that I like.There are other features of the "new," "scientifically" New Age thinking that feel right to me. A further example comes up on page 4: "the scientific quest must embrace intuitive insight as well as proof."I detect that use of the word "proof" here, as an alternative or complement for intuition, is clumsy. This would however be delicate to unravel, and too small a point to digress upon.But I also strongly affirm "intuitive insight" as a way of knowing.Beginning at the bottom of page 205, I am very interested in how "the consciousness of the experimenter can influence the outcome of the experiment." But I want to see ideas like this fit into a construct that isn't as fluffy, slipshod and glib as Bartholomew's presentation appears to me in too many of its aspects.I can deal with mysticism. What I won't go along with is fuzzy headedness, and I feel especially offended when it puts on features that would otherwise appeal to me. I back off further when associations turn up which I've identified as pernicious.Much in our intellectual culture exhibits this quality of unwholesome affectation, subtle though it be at times.I'm reminded of the virtue of simplicity. Less is more. Silence is golden. Surely a few GOOD books, well studied, would outperform a boatload of what's spilling off the presses even as you read these words.

A truly remarkable book. And just to think that I thought water was just stuff to drink and make coffee and tea with. Some of the topics dealt with by the author I had known before, such as how Homeopathic medicines work. Both my wife and I have had remarkable cures with Homeopathic medicines so we have experienced the author's ideas on this matter. Also the use of the outstretched arm to discover what we are allergic to was another thing we discovered to be true; but I didn't know before reading this book that it was related to dowsing. Magnestised water we are now experimenting with. We like to have proof of something before it becomes part of our lives.There will, doubtless, be some people who will poo-poo the ideas in this book as being "unrealistic" etc. but without offering any shred of evidence or any experimentation. Such people wil get nothinbg from this book, but anyone who does not have a negative and closed mind, will.

Most of us don't tend to think overmuch of what is essentially crucial to the life of all living beings. I found this book quite technical at times but at others immensely interesting and I think we should all read up on water as we would all benefit greatly from learning more about this quite mysterious substance.