The Secret Life of Water

Book by Emoto Masaru and Translated by David A Thayne

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 r...