elements. Rainfall generated from the forest will carry this beneficial
influence. The ocean, although it is recharged by undersea volcanic
eruptions and exposure to the atmosphere, mainly consumes all it
produces and therefore lacks these dynamic qualities.
This is best explained in terms of homeopathic theory, in which
the greater the dilution of a substance, the more powerful its ener-
getic effect. One of the most important discoveries by Professor
Jacques Benveniste is that water (even in the form of vapour) car-
ries information.^1 The implication of this is that our tap water may
contain the energies that are recycled from human sources, but also
that water can be imbued with a healing energy that can be used to
treat other water. Some of the domestic water treatment systems
now available use this principle.
In the full cycle, water evaporates from the forest and the oceans.
The rising water vapour cools with altitude, condenses, forms clouds,
with the help of dimethyl sulphide emitted from the leaf protoplasms
and from marine algae, combines into larger drops and falls as rain.
With full forest cover the temperature of the land surface is cooler
than the falling rain, which readily soaks into the ground because of
the positive temperature gradient. In other words, the temperature
decreases from the atmosphere, through the earth towards the central
layer of the water-saturated ground where the temperature is +4°C
(39°F). As it falls on the cooler ground, the warmer rain is easily
absorbed; it replenishes the groundwater, developing subterranean
aquifers. Vegetation depends on groundwater being recharged by
rainwater entering under a positive temperature gradient (Fig. 9.1).
The temperature range that life on Earth has adapted to lies
roughly between -10°C (14°F) and +40°C (104°F). It is the balanced
greenhouse effect that maintains this range. As global temperatures
rise with global warming, the stress on all life forms is immense,
because they do not have time to adapt to the new conditions.
Water vapour is the principal greenhouse gas. The reduction in
evapo-transpiration from the dynamic forests substantially affects
the quality of the water vapour and its distribution in the atmos-
phere. The water vapour created by the natural forest has been bal-
anced by fertile energies from the Earth that bring with it the power
to stimulate and heal. Water vapour from the oceans has more of the
raw untamed energy of the Sun, and global warming increases the
evaporation from the oceans. Without the forest's water, there is a
greater contrast between areas with abundant water vapour and
- THE HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE