The extraordinary ice crystals of Dr Masuru Emoto and the philosophy behind them hold the potential to remake our world. Louisa Harding explores the Hado effect.

For anyone who saw the surprise hit documentary, What the Bleep Do We Know? (and who didn't?) one of the defining moments in that film was when the lead character chanced upon some large and beautiful photographs of ice crystals that were mysteriously on display in the underground railway station as she wandered by. These photos purported to illustrate the impact our thoughts and feelings have on the formation of ice crystals - loving, positive thoughts or words led to gorgeous looking crystals; hateful or harmful thoughts or words did something not quite so nice, creating amorphous blobs instead of wondrous beauty. It was a captivating moment in the film, and one that made a deep impact on many who saw it. Here, it seemed, was evidence that backed up an ancient intuitive insight - with our thoughts we make the world.

Those ice crystal photos were the work of a Japanese scientist and self styled water expert, Dr Masuru Emoto, and his books on this esoteric subject have been bestsellers worldwide in the last few years.

The images he says he captures - via a powerful microscope - of ice crystals that have been "infused" with a particular thought or image or even word simply by being exposed directly to it, show what might be fascinating mandala-like glimpses of a world behind the veil of illusion and appearance.
    
Dr Emoto claims that when his research team members write words such as "love" and "gratitude" on a glass Petri dish containing water and then freeze the water, the vibration - or what he calls in Japanese the hado - of those written words affects the water.So much so, he says, that when this frozen water sample is retrieved from the deep freeze and brought into a chilly five degrees Celsius lab to be scrutinised under a microscope, it forms very different ice crystals to those the same water would form had these words not been written on the side of the container holding it. If Dr Emoto's pictures and the interpretations he gives them can be believed, the mere presence of the written words "love" and "gratitude" transforms the physical structure of the water they are placed near.
    
Excited by this concept, Dr Emoto began a series of experiments with water and ice crystals - playing widely varying music to the water and seeing how it affected the ice crystal formation (thumbs up to Mozart, but thumbs down to that naughty heavy metal!). He had people send prayer remotely or in groups to a dish full of water and then assessed the impact their intentions had on the crystal formation. He tested tap water's limited ability to form coherent and attractive crystals compared to natural spring water's effortless beauty.

Time after time, says Dr Emoto, he found the hado  - vibration - of some things led to magnificent beauty and brilliance to take shape in the ice crystals under his microscope, while the hado of other things generated either no ice crystals at all, or else distorted crystals lacking lustre and coherence. Dr Emoto tells of discovering that the lifeless-looking water crystals common to modern polluted cities could be resuscitated when exposed to the hado of love and gratitude, or to prayer, or to the benediction of a Buddhist blessing, for example.

Does this sound too incredible to be true? Or just a bit too far outside our current understanding of what the world is, who we are within it, and what the true reach and power of this wild mystery called consciousness might be?

Seeing is believing
Most of us reading this are children of the 20th Century, products of a secular, rational culture that regards ideas such as Dr Emoto's with at least a small dose of scepticism. The mantra of our age, the slightly world weary zeitgeist of our time, has been "I'll believe it when I see it". And, according to two Australian men bringing Dr Emoto's ice crystal photography and the philosophy of hado which underpins it to this country, this is precisely the strength these photos have - to scientifically validate and quantify what healers and energy-sensitive people have long known, to offer the sceptical modern mind that much wanted "proof".

Over the summer break NOVA Magazine spoke to these two men, Lawrence Ellyard and Vibodha Clark, as they prepared to embark on an adventure in consciousness research by forming the Hado Institute of Australia (HIA). Based in WA's holistic hub of Fremantle, both Lawrence and Vibodha have an abiding professional and personal interest in energy and healing, and a shared passion for the photography and philosophy of Dr Emoto.

As Vibodha explains: "People in the alternative field have learnt about subtle energies and energy systems. Many of us have been using these energies in practice, but before water crystal photography, there was never really any way to quantify it, it was always just subjective. Whereas now, if we write happiness on a bottle of water, we can see that the vibration - just the hado of the word happiness - has a change on the molecular structure of the water inside the bottle.

Someone said to me recently, 'I just can't get my head around that - I can understand if you talk to the water that might change it. I can understand if you bless it, or play music to it. But writing a word and sticking it on the bottle - that just doesn't make any sense.'"

Vibodha and Lawrence cite the Japanese tradition of kotodama, meaning the spirit of words, as evidence that long before the advent of ice crystal photography, people sensed that even words and the symbols that form them had an essential energy, a vibration, a particular hado.

"Somehow I can say the word "happiness" and you can feel it, so in the vibration there exists an energy, an essence of the word happiness. That's what kotodama means - the spirit of words. The Japanese believe that every word has its own spirit," says Vibodha.

I ask Vibodha to clarify what this nebulous thing hado is. How can someone who's never heard of hado begin to understand what it is?

He explains it as "the underlying principle of the universe. At the smallest level - the atomic level and the sub-atomic level - everything is in a constant state of vibration. Even the nucleus of the atom itself which we think is static is constantly vibrating."

A vibrating universe - sounds like lots of fun! But how do we know hado when we encounter it? "A good way to explain hado is we've all walked into a room full of people and instantly we can sense the mood, we can pick up on the vibe. The term "vibe" is not really a new term, people have been using it for a long while, but hado brings that into a new reality," explains Vibodha.

"We can feel the vibe, we can sense the vibe, and now with water crystal photography we can see the vibe. In Japan, the term has entered the everyday lexicon such that when people walk into say a coffee shop they say 'Wow, this place has really nice hado.' Or when they meet a person they might say, 'That person has a lot of hado', meaning they're really radiating energy."

If book sales are any measure, plenty of people around the world are doing plenty of resonating and vibrating with the photographs and writings on hado generated by Dr Emoto. From an initial trickle of word of mouth sales, his books rapidly turned into New York Times list bestsellers, prompting me to ask Lawrence and Vibodha just what this success is telling us.

"Why it's spread so quickly - and why I'm so excited about it - is because people are so hungry for it," Vibodha offers.  "It transcends that belief barrier. In spiritual matters, there's always been a certain amount of belief, because it couldn't be quantified. Whereas with this, we're showing someone a photo of truth, of how water best expresses truth. When you look at the photo, it's beautiful. And it's almost so beautiful that the ego can't hold onto it, can't do anything with it, so people just accept it because they can see it for themselves. There are always questions: how does this happen, why does it happen and so on. But that it happens is no longer in question."

Lawrence adds: "Even your most staunch scientific, linear-thinking person can see these photos and still be moved. It's taking science into the heart. It's universal, it communicates across cultures. I think the reason this has been embraced so dramatically is because it reveals a universal principle. Saying something beautiful to water, as you would say something beautiful to something or someone you love, has a direct effect. We can see the effect in the form of a beautiful ice crystal, which is like a mandala. We see that there's a possibility for change, a possibility for a path other than the one we're on."

Water, water, everywhere
Dr Emoto has described water - that ultimate liquid mystery - as "the master listener", "the mirror of our souls", and a "multi-dimensional transporter of information". He says that water's ability to copy information (for example, the centuries-old science of homeopathy holds that water carries memories of substances no longer molecularly present) is not recognised by our current dominant scientific paradigm.  The way Lawrence, Vibodha and Dr Emoto describe it, water is a miraculous medium which is both a pre-condition for life and an immaculate receiver of our intentions and awareness.

"The opportunity for us is to see that from the depths of the ocean to the uppermost limits of the atmosphere, pretty much everything is made up of water," says Vibodha. "In that way, we're inseparable - we can't pop ourselves out of this environment.

"So if we can start to generate love and compassion, even the air that we're breathing is full of moisture and the water vapour within that will change. So if water carries information as we know now it does, the air that I'm breathing, the water that goes into my body, has the opportunity to be purified. Why not generate enough compassion so that the vibration of compassion and love and gratitude covers the world via the water?"

Both Lawrence and Vibodha see global and personal implications of hado and water crystal photography, to the extent that their Hado Institute of Australia is dedicated to teaching the Australian community about them, and furthering ice crystal photography and research in their own chilled-out lab. They plan to further explore the power of thoughts, words, music and images to transform water, and therefore our world and ourselves. Their hope is to establish a National Water Day and organise blessing ceremonies for bodies of water that need a bit of "TLC", a source of much-needed hope for much of our landscape threatened by climate change and our uncaring ways.

Vibodha sums it up: "As was shown in the film What the Bleep if our thoughts and words can do that to water, imagine what our thoughts can do to us. And that's the real implication of hado and water crystal photography."

If we humans are composed of around 70 to 80 per cent water, then the possibility for micro and macro transformation might be vast. "People tell themselves, I can't change the world, I'm just one person. And how wrong is that?" Lawrence says. "If I don't change myself, no one else will. If I don't see the world as a beautiful place and start to contribute love into the world, not much is going to change. And at the very least, you're going to feel a whole lot better yourself!"