storage and transport through pipes (see Chapter 12). It is because
modern hydrologists do not recognize the temperature gradient that
they are unable to prevent rivers flooding or to deliver better quality
water to our homes.
In Nature, the positive gradient is used for creating and building
life forms, the negative for breaking down as part of recycling. Bio-
diversity and evolution, in order continually to develop more com-
plex life systems, require the finer energies that a predominating
positive temperature gradient will provide. These two temperature
gradients co-exist in the same environment because they have com-
plementary roles. The problem with our civilization is that we have
allowed the negative to become dominant, so we have disappear-
ance of species, and the prevalence of coarser energies that result
from a degenerating environment.
The quality of any process in Nature depends on the relative
influence of the positive and negative temperature gradients. The
way the two forms of temperature interact is of crucial importance,
for this affects not only the movement of water, but sap in plants and
the flow of blood in our veins. It also determines the configuration,
structure and quality of the channels, ducts and vessels surround-
ing and guiding them, as we shall see later.
Schauberger called the stronger temperature behaviours
essences,' for they have a critical effect in creating life forms. For
example, if the positive temperature gradient is very powerful, then
the reciprocally weaker negative temperature gradient will help the
manifesting of a high quality substance in material form. On the
other hand, if the negative temperature gradient is dominant, what
manifests is a material substance of poor quality. For evolution and
growth to proceed with increasing quality, vitality and health, which
form is uppermost and at what level is significant.
Flowing water behaves according to whichever temperature gra-
dient is active. The positive temperature gradient builds up living
systems by cooling, concentrating, and energizing as it approaches
+4°C (39°F). The key to this process of healthy growth and devel-
opment is that the ionized substances are drawn together into inti-
mate and productive contact, and the contained oxygen becomes
passive and is easily bound by the cool carbones,^7 the building
blocks of life. The increasing warming of the negative temperature
gradient however, reduces the cohering energy and loosens the
structure of an organism and the forms start disintegrating. The
- THE NATURE OF WATER