The Secret Life of Water

The Secret Life of Water
Masaru Emoto
Atria Books
ISBN: 0-7432-8982-5
Art, Spirituality
Reviewed by Pamela Crossland

It's difficult to argue with a true believer, and Emoto is definitely passionate about his belief in water as a sentient material which holds the hope of the future. While it is tempting to take what he says at face value, there doesn't seem to be any scientific support or replication of his experiments to support his rather grandiose statements.
Water is essential to the survival of the planet, that much cannot be argued; and it is true that the citizenry of the world particularly in the "advanced" countries have done a horrendous amount of damage to the oceans and rivers that we depend on for life. It does not necessarily follow that "Water teaches us how to live, how to forgive, how to believe."
Emoto takes purified water, exposes it to images or words or sounds, then freezes the water and photographs the crystals produced. The photographs are quite lovely for the most part and intriguing. He does not take photographs of water which have not been exposed to these stimuli, or if he does he doesn't document doing so in this book, which would have provided a control group in which to contrast this theory. The reader must believe and that is the weakness of this book - the reader either believes or not, there is no room for critical evaluation.
The book is easy to read; Emoto's writing style while a bit scattered, is glib and smooth flowing. He doesn't necessarily stick to the subject of the chapter heading, for example, in the chapter entitled "Our World and Water Changed by Prayer" he wanders off to extol the virtues of hemp and hemp products. He made some good points, simply off subject. While I'd like to believe in his theories, they read more like religious dogma than scientific inquiry.