Is Water Exercise Good For Weight Loss
A MIDDLE WAY: INTEGRATING SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY
It’s unknown how many people have been healed by bathing in the Ganges. Clearly, it’s hazardous, and drinking the water is even riskier, although most bottled Ganga jal is either strictly processed and filtered or issued with a warning not to drink it. My Indian guru used to mock the “credulous fools” who drank the water direct from the river, but many pilgrims including some Westerners who might be expected to be smarter gulp it down enthusiastically. As a result, they often contract hepatitis, typhoid, or cholera. There’s a belief that Indians are less likely to get sick than Westerners on account of their faith, but the virological explanation is that they do become ill but manifest fewer symptoms because their bodies have suppressed the reaction.
On the other hand, there are stories of “miraculous” cures. It’s hard for the rational, skeptical Western mind to believe that the power of the mind can overcome the effects of such an enormous range and volume of pollutants, although we know that the placebo effect has great potency. However, there have been some very persuasive experiments demonstrating the power of prayer and intention in healing, and it seems likely that the collective faith of so many millions of pilgrims could have a transformative therapeutic effect both on the water and on the human body.
It would be interesting to conduct experiments on Ganges water in the footsteps of Dr. Emoto to determine how far blessing and thanking the water could alter its condition, both at sacred sites along the river and on bottled Ganga jal sold for ritual purposes. One exciting, radical implication of Dr. Emoto’s findings is a democratization of the process of working with energy and bestowing blessings. His results indicate that any person with a pure heart and clear intention can trigger a transformative effect on water crystals, thus undermining the need for priestly ritual and intervention. If human consciousness can truly affect the structure of water as the evidence clearly demonstrates then we all have the power to heal, whether we’re ordained or not.
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I think it’s important to find a middle way between the extremes of hard-nosed scientific materialism and ungrounded, gullible spirituality. Having lived in India for years, I’ve witnessed and experienced the literal ill effects of unclean water, which is a major risk to personal and public health. In my opinion, environmental campaigners like Veer Bhadra Mishra and Vandana Shiva and charities such as WaterAid, which save the lives and improve the health of millions of poor people, do more good physically, environmentally, and spiritually than businesses (including temples) peddling “holy water” at the “very small price” of $35 a bottle to wealthy pilgrims and tourists. I can’t accept that a drop of Ganga jal cancels all your karmic debts. Attaining merit surely requires a more muscular effort a more engaged spirituality.
I’d like to give the last word to Dr. Veer Bhadra Mishra, who has done so much to publicize the crisis, provide practical solutions, and integrate the opposing philosophies and has been recognized on the United Nations Environmental Program’s Global 500 Roll of Honor, as well as honored as a Time magazine “Hero of the Planet.” For Mishra, the Ganga represents the meeting point where two worlds combine. He describes the world of scientific thought as being one bank of the river, and the deeply spiritual world, one alive with a limitless pantheon (“I would say there are as many gods and goddesses as people who live in India”) as the other bank. And, he says, they’re both equally important:
We have to clean all the rivers, and only then our hearts will be happy. It cannot be clean just by technology, just by setting up the right kind of infrastructure, there has to be an intermixing of culture, faith, science and technology. We have that kind of living relationship with the river. You [Western societies] have the best technology. So both the societies need to interact with each other to take care of these rivers.
There’s a strong interaction between water and the moon, which is very apparent in the phenomenon of tides. The gravitational pull of the moon exercises a similar effect on the human body, since as much as 70 percent of it is water.
This knowledge was gathered by ancient cultures and kept by some indigenous tribes, and has recently been rediscovered and scientifically supported by our modern high-tech civilization. We live in very interesting times, where the gap between intuitive perception on the one hand and rational realization on the other is starting to close.
In nearly all cultures, the moon embodies the feminine principle and is related to the emotional world and the human spirit. Because of this, it can be seen as a symbol of intuition and emotional perception. The sun, on the other hand, embodies its opposite, the masculine principle, and is the symbol of reason, intellect, and rational scientific realization. From these two complementary opposites, holistic perception comes into being. It takes place in the human heart, and it’s nurtured and carried by love.
