Water: the Living and Conscious Being
Vladimir Voeikov
M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Biology, Moscow, Russia
Water is the third most abundant substance in the Universe and the dominating molecular component in any living system (~99% on molecular basis). Water has unique properties both on molecular and supramolecular levels. Due to dipole nature of water molecules they are able for self-organization into highly dynamic ensembles with each other and with all other substances. These ensembles exist in the widest scale range – from nanoscopic (coherent domains – Preparata and Del Giudice), which unify millions of water molecules, through microscopic and mesoscopic (Exclusion Zone water and multilayer polarized water – Pollack and Ling), to macroscopic (clouds, vortexes – Schauberger).
Self-organized water represents complex systems in which dynamically structured water ensembles coexist with much less organized (“bulk”) water. Various potential differences are maintained between different aqueous phases. For example electrical potential difference between dynamically structured water wetting hydrophilic surfaces and adjacent bulk water may reach 150 v. In most cases dynamically structured water is negatively charged. Therefore it may serve an electron donor, and under appropriate conditions it may reduce oxygen present in bulk water. Such oxidation of water with oxygen may be looked upon from another point of view as water “burning”. This reaction is accompanied with the generation of packages of high-density energy equivalent to photons in visible and UV-ranges. The unique property of water missing in any other molecular species is that the final products of its oxidation with oxygen (“burning”) are again water and oxygen molecules.
Free energy is produced in this paradoxical process due to increase in system entropy – disintegration of dynamically structured water to chaotic water. As soon as the molecular products of this reaction are the same as the original reagents the process is in principle reversible. G. Pollack discovered that environmental radiation, in particular ubiquitous IR radiation drives the process of self-organization in water resulting in restoration of dynamically structured water from chaotic water. After the recovery of optimal ratio of two phases in water it again may be “burnt” with oxygen.
Water-burning process is catalyzed in natural waters including biological liquids by bicarbonates that are always present in them. Therefore aqueous systems containing bicarbonates possess the properties of far from equilibrium, electronically excited active systems. We observed that such aqueous systems might emit photons for many months even if they are kept in hermetically closed vessels and in complete darkness. Subtle intensity environmental factors of presumably electromagnetic nature such as Moon and Sun eclipses, Moon phase changes, geomagnetic storms may significantly influence intensity of photon emission from them indicating that aqueous systems containing bicarbonates are responsive to informational factors.
All these properties of aqueous systems are characteristic for the living state of matter (“Living matter”). The founder of Theoretical biology E. Bauer defined living state as “Stable Non-Equilibrium State” formulated by him as: “All and only living systems are never at equilibrium. At the expense of their free energy they ceaselessly perform work against equilibrium, demanded by the physical and chemical laws appropriate to the actual external conditions”. Stable non- equilibrium (excited) state of matter is displayed at all the levels of a living system organization, including the supra-molecular one. Useful work is performed due to transition of matter from an excited state to its equilibrium (ground) state.
The principle of «Stable Non-Equilibrium» implies that a living system has a higher energetic potential than its (immediate) environment and that it incessantly transforms this potential into free energy used for the performance of all kinds of vital activities. This principle also means that a living system extracts energy (and matter) from its environment, concentrates and organizes it in the form of low entropy coherent dynamic structures. Continuous performance of such a work provides for the increasing energy potential of a living system, for improving efficiency of its use, for the perfection of regulation of internal functions and communication with the environment including other living systems. Comparison of bioenergetics properties of living systems and electronically excited state of bicarbonate aqueous systems allows to suggest that water wetting hydrophilic biopolymers constituting the “hard” fraction of living matter and specifically structured by them and capable of reversible oxidation may serve as the primary source of free energy for the powering of all vital processes.
However, it may be stated, “energy without information is purposeless, information without energy is powerless, and only together, they provide the existence of informed living matter” (rephrased after Gary Scwartz). In order for a living system to sustain and to develop in constantly changing environment it should be able to acquire, store and process large amounts of information. Besides, this information must be integrated in a UNIFIED WHOLE so that it is impossible to divide into independent parts. These features endow the living system with the property which may be defined as CONSCIOUSNESS (Giulio Tononi, 2008).
According to the practically unanimous opinion, human consciousness is the property of brain – the most morphologically complex and most intensively energy processing living organ. Brain is one of the most “wet” living tissues in the organism, and predominantly fiber and branching structure of nervous and auxiliary cells ensures specific structural organization of significant fractions of water. Changes in the state of brain functioning, including transition of brain into “altered states of consciousness” are currently monitored using such physical methods as functional MRI and diffusion MRI. It is notable that these methods allow registering primarily the state and dynamic activity of water. As soon as water constitutes the overwhelming majority of brain matter it may be suggested that different states of consciousness are equivalent to different states of water in brain. Besides, oxygen-dependent metabolic processes proceed in CNS much more intensely than in other tissues. These processes provide for the permanently highly excited states of brain living matter. Indeed it was demonstrated that brain is a continuous source of biophoton emission both in UV (A.G. Gurwitsch) and visible range (M. Kobayashi) indicating that the process of “burning” characteristic of dynamically structured water proceeds much more intense in brain tissue than in any other tissues. It is interesting to speculate that continuous and highly organized (coherent) changes of structural-energetic states of aqueous component of brain matter may provide brain with the property of being both the receptor and emitter of informational signal (in particular but not exclusively of electromagnetic nature). We suppose that complex properties of aqueous systems allow them to serve both the channel for information transmission, the receiver, processor and the major component of information storage. From this it may follow that that human consciousness may directly affect material world. The basis of this concept is the fact that the main carrier of human consciousness is water in human brain exhibiting dynamic and complex behavior.
Thus water appearing as the most abundant substance in the Universe, capable for never-ending transformations from ground to excited state and back may be the key entity integrating the World both on inorganic, organic and conscious states of matter.