Introduction

Renoir on a good day

                                                      
Justice                                     Montana                                 Jordan

   A person is driving and a song comes on the radio. She is suddenly transposed to the time and place in
   which she first heard the song. Although all elements of her brain and body are driving the car, she is
   one with the time and place in which that song was first heard. She even recaptures feelings she had at
   the time.  In fact, music is a phenomenon that can be experienced in all four dimensions.
 

These experiences have many names. Timelessness, daydreaming, Zen, psychic experience, coincidence, clairvoyance, déjà vu, these are all descriptive of a reality we cannot easily define. By looking at time as four dimensional and demonstrating how it both compliments and differs from our three dimensional view of reality, we can begin to put certain aspects of our lives in perspective and perhaps find a common language to discuss these ideas.

The experience of 4D is within us, it is personal. Yet it is the same experience for all of us. Our feelings, emotions, and creative abilities are not different within us. Anger is anger and joy is joy. We express feelings differently but the feelings themselves are identical. We are constantly struggling to "find ourselves" when, in actuality, we are looking for a bridge between our outside world and our inside world, 3D and 4D.  As a group, we seem to be missing a common language that adequately communicates the elements of our inner world to each other. The good news is that the language does exist and it is right in front of us. Every human has access to it and it’s as available as our own hand. It is the basis of every religious faith and the root of the ongoing human quest for meaning. Meru Foundation research has rediscovered that bridge through the language of the alphabet.

There is a Talmudic passage that is considered one of the more mystical teachings in the Talmud. Rabbi Akiva goes on a spiritual journey, with three others, to Pardes (an acronym for the four levels of Torah PRDS, see Torah section. Also the root for Paradise). The first traveler loses his mental faculties and remains completely disoriented. The second doesn’t come back at all, he dies. The third comes back, but becomes a heretic, disavowing all faith. Only Rabbi Akiba comes back whole. This story is often used as a warning against going on mystical journeys without proper training. However, using the relationship between 3D and 4D as a model, this story can be illustrated in the following way.

Rabbi Akiba was known as the ‘Master of the Letters." We believe that the letters of the alphabets of sacred traditions hold the key to understanding the bridge between dimensions. In finding this bridge we bring together our inside and outside worlds. The Talmud says that a person of integrity is one who is morally transparent, when inside and outside are one.  When refined, Meru Foundation findings can be used as a valuable learning tool toward realizing unity and wholeness.
 

In devoting a section of this introduction to the Torah I realize I face an inherent danger of diverting attention from the purpose of introducing Meru research. For those who believe in the sacredness of Torah, it might seem that I am disrespectfully trespassing in an area of propriety based on certain religious dogma. For the non-believer, I am delving into a world of formalized religion and factionalism, straying from an objective scientific viewpoint. The reality is that it is impossible to adequately introduce the basic components of Meru research without providing some background ideas on the text that provides the source of this research. For those who feel twinges of nervousness when faced with the prospects of reinvestigating an ancient religious document with claims that it might actually have relevance in the modern world, I ask that curiosity be a motivating factor.

For those who have sensed the importance of Torah, I think this discussion will only enhance those beliefs.  It should be noted that Judaism is not a religion that encourages proselytization and, in fact, encourages members of all faiths to seek unity within their own teachings. Meru research has found that the geometric models that generate the Hebrew alphabet have similar applications in Arabic, Greek, Sanskrit, and others.  This discussion deals only with the written Torah. The Oral Torah (Talmud/Mishna) serves a separate purpose and is not relevant to this particular discussion.

         In the secular world, the Torah is known as the first five books of the bible, often called
         the Pentateuch or, in the Christian bible, the Law. Here are some ideas concerning the Torah
         based on over two thousand years of rabbinic, Talmudic, and Jewish mystical teachings:

    According to the story, the Torah was given to Moses and the Israelites at Mt. Sinai. A
        covenant was made and accepted by the Jews to carry the Torah through the generations
        as a gift to the  world.

      The Torah is said to be a "blueprint of creation."  It contains elements capable of bringing
        peace to the world.

       The Torah should be seen and treated on a higher plane than the rest of the Hebrew
        bible. It is a document within itself. Rabbinical teaching states that the secret of the
       Torah is in the first letter. If it can’t be found there, God, in His infinite mercy, provides
        it in the first word, the first verse, the first paragraph, etc. In this light, the Torah can
        be seen as a hierarchical array, almost holographic. (Meru research confirms that the
        last verse of the Torah can be autocorrelated in the same way as the first).

        The original Torah was not written as a narrative. It was a string of letters with no
        word divisions. It is said to have been woven. (Weaving was a primary form of
        technology in the ancient world. This fits into the realm of knot theory in
        modern  mathematics.) The translation of the Torah, during the period of Ezra the
        scribe after the Babylonean exile, was made a thousand years after its acceptance by
        Moses. Its use in the formative years and, later, by temple priests is a
        complete mystery today. The importance of the Torah as a string of letters is
        supported by traditional rabbinical teaching, which states that the loss of even one
        letter would mark the destruction of the universe. This is reinforced in the Christian
        bible in Matthew in which Jesus states "…not a jot or tittle of the Law shall be
        changed."

    The Jewish mystical traditions teach that there are four levels of Torah – the story
        (Pshat), allegory (Remez), hints(Dvar), and the foundation (Sod). (These letters
        together form an acronym PRDS or Pardes, the root word for Paradise). In 285 BCE
        Emperor Ptolemy Philadelphus ordered 70 rabbis to translate the Torah into Greek for
        the Alexandrian library. This was called one of the greatest tragedies to befall the
       Jewish people since future generations would concentrate only on the stories and
       disregard the other levels. This fear has been born out by the situation today.  Modern
       biblical discussion and criticism is based solely on the stories found
       in the bible and is therefore relegated to a wide range of interpretation. Based on this
       level of investigation, there can never be consensus on biblical meaning. No
       wonder there is so much dissension in religion today. For example, many biblical
       scholars renounce traditional rabbinic teaching that Moses received the entire Torah
       since the stories in the text go forty years beyond the Mt. Sinai event. It is
       beyond their comprehension to believe that the narrative could have been added later
       as a way of "humanizing" a pre-existing text. Concentrating only on the stories in Torah
       is a one-dimensional view, which not only desecrates its value and purpose but
       endangers its existence. In the Kabbalistic book, the Zohar, a passage states:

"Wo (sic) unto the man who asserts that this Torah intends to relate only commonplace
things and secular narratives; for if this were so, then in the present times likewise a torah
might be written with more attractive narratives…Now the narratives of the Torah are its
garments. He who thinks that these garments are the Torah itself deserves to perish and
have no share in the world to come. Wo unto the fools who look no further when they see
an elegant robe! More valuable than the garment is the body which carries it, and more valuable even than that is the soul which animates the body. Fools see only the garment of the Torah,
the more intelligent see the body, the wise see the soul, its proper being, and in the Messianic
time the ‘upper soul’ of the Torah will stand revealed."

There are many beliefs intrinsic to modern Jewish practice but its general emphasis has been on action over belief,  deed over thought. Most of the laws and commandments deal with how to behave rather than what to believe.  Of course, one normally behaves based on belief but, as religious leaders of all faiths have found, belief is a difficult thing to regulate. There are two beliefs that are absolutely required in Judaism. First is the belief in One God.  The essence of this belief is the search for One-ness in our lives – in our personal life, in our community, and in the world. The second belief is the sanctity and holiness of Torah. Without the Torah, there is no Judaism. A thorough understanding of these two tenets show that they are interchangeable and that the Torah is indeed a blueprint of how One-ness can and does work.

God = One is an equation central to all monotheistic faiths. The problem arises when attempting to find a universal concept of God and a common meaning for everyone.   God in our society is subjective and the word God has different meanings for different people. Faith alone does not seem to work for everyone. Various cultures and religious traditions define God in dissimilar ways which too often becomes  the seed of many conflicts.   There is another side of the God = One equation, the concept of One. One-ness is an extremely difficult concept for us to accept. We cannot understand the philosophical notion of Unity based on our observations of the world around us (the three dimensional world). But One is a number. And numbers are the language of mathematics.  In mathematics, we find a language that actually does transcend cultural limitations. Two plus two equals four no matter what we believe in. All architects equally accept pi as the relationship of the radius to the circumference of a circle. A key element in Meru research is the investigation of this concept, Oneness. From the perspective of One, as presented in the Torah, perhaps we can begin to understand and rationally discuss the concept of God.

The Jews do not own the Torah but they are surely its caretakers. They have preserved it, sanctified it, and suffered because of it. Whatever one’s opinion might be towards Jews and Judaism, the propensity towards intellectual curiosity is undeniable. This begs the question of why a seemingly intelligent people would sustain such a high level of adherence to a document that, on face value, seems to be an ancient relic of little relevance to modern thinking. Why, for over thousands of years of public humiliation, torture, and discrimination would a community, even when fragmented and scattered all over the world, cling to a scroll of parchment filled with remarkable but seemingly irrelevant stories and parables? Meru research seeks to address this issue.

The heart of Meru research is that, within the Torah, there is a geometry that generates three and four dimensional models. These models are applicable to every natural living system and are snapshots of Unity and how it works. The geometry within the Torah that generates these models is available in all sacred alphabets including Greek, and Arabic. This geometry can be applied to the flame of Islam, Rumi’s Medlevi Sufi Round Dance, Christian iconography, eastern symbolism, and much more. This demonstrates that, while we are seeking unity as humans, our differences are also necessary elements. The brain, heart, and liver are all separate organs yet all three are necessary for the survival of the body. We need to stress commonality over conflict for the survival of our children.

The essence of Torah is peace. Rabbi Hillel, a great Jewish sage during Roman times, when asked to define the essence of Torah, made a statement now called "Torah on one foot." This definition is the seed of the Golden Rule :
                       "What is hateful unto you do not do unto your neighbor..."

Meru research does not denigrate traditional teachings of Torah or the bible.  It, in fact, enhances and explains several misunderstood passages, prayers, customs, and symbols. By applying the geometry of Genesis, we can get a clearer understanding of concepts like "a coat of many colors," "the tent of meeting," "Urim and Thurim," "the burning bush," and the crownlets on the letters in Torah.  The covenant and redemption begin to make sense as we explore Torah in this light of reality.

In 1968 Stan Tenen was an electronic engineer living in Newton, Mass. One summer day he was watching a TV program called "The Prisoner," a fictional British import that delved into esoteric subject matter, quite ahead of its time. In this particular episode there was a reference made to coding and it struck a cord in Stan.  Curious, he went digging for a bible and dusted off a copy of the Hebrew-English Pentateuch that most Jewish boys in the 1950’s received at the time of their bar mitzvah and, like most young people of that generation, disregarded it once the bar mitzvah was over. He opened it to the first page and instead of looking at the English, his eyes fell upon the Hebrew text. Like most kids forced to attend Hebrew school in those days, he had learned to recognize the letters of the Hebrew alphabet but had not gained the ability to translate Hebrew to English. Now, as he looked at the letters something caught his eye. Suddenly, Stan realized that he was looking at a pattern in the first verse. Stan has been a visual pattern recognizer all of his life. His ability to visually see the technical makeup of an object, for example, provided him with a creative talent for inventions and as part of the math team in high school it was necessary to view mathematical problems as patterns to quickly solve the equations. Stan was astonished, his intuition told him that there was a pattern to the letters and it struck his curiosity.

Believing that this pattern should be common knowledge in religious and academic circles, Stan was surprised to find that the local rabbi, priest, and Harvard scholars knew nothing of what he was referring to. After a number of inquiries, someone suggested that it might be related to Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism.  Stan's natural curiosity compelled him to begin his own research. For the next ten years, he read everything he could find regarding mystical ideas. He was completely open-minded in what he read, and the subject matter ran the full gamut of available literature. It encompassed ideas in every religious, scientific, and esoteric tradition even including "little green books channeled from outer space and underlined in red."

After ten years, Stan sensed an underlying theme in all of his reading and knew that there was a relationship to the pattern in Genesis. He concluded that it represented something important and committed his time and energy to discover its meaning. From the start, Stan realized that, if there was true meaning to the pattern, he would need to be able to present his findings to people like himself – skeptical, non-religious, scientific, rational, logical thinkers who, on face value, normally rejected anything religious, mystical, or spiritual. So he decided that to unlock the puzzle he must use the scientific method of discovery. He set up a series of criteria that he would follow to unravel the pattern and began a painstakingly long road of trial and error. Logically, Stan began his research by applying every sophisticated method and idea he could muster, with minimal success. All indications led to the necessity of finding a mathematical way of looking at the first verse but none seemed to fit. Binary (Base-2 used in computer language) didn’t work. Another possible approach should have been Gematria, a numerical system that is applied to the Hebrew letters and which is used quite frequently in Kabbalistic literature. While Gematria was useful for reference information, it did not unlock the code.

In the summer of 1978, exactly ten years after discovering the pattern, Stan was living with his wife Cynthia in San Francisco. A set of unusual circumstances found him on the local public television station, KQED, hosting a replay of "The Prisoner," which the station was showing without commercials leaving time to spare for discussion. When the same episode that had spurred his original curiosity ten years ago was played, Stan discussed the pattern on the air and brought up his dilemma in not being able to break the code.  Following the program, a group of high school "Prisoner" fans suggested that he try base-3, trinary (counting by threes) and when he did, the door to discovery swung open. Once the light of base-3 was shined on the first verse, a geometry emerged that would provide an abundance of new ideas and set the stage for a discovery of major proportions.

It would be another ten years before Stan would publicly present his research for the first time at the 3220 Gallery in San Francisco (on the videotape "Geometric Metaphors of Life") By that time there was no question of the importance and significance of his discovery. In the intervening years, he had attracted the interest of a number of curious physicists, mathematicians and religious scholars who, while reserved about the significance of his data, knew he was on to something important. Of course, many questions remained (then as they do now), but the enormity of his discovery could not be discounted.

In 1983, the Meru Foundation was established as a non-profit corporation to support Stan’s research. Stan is currently the director of research for the foundation. His work still remains a curious puzzle among academics many who are challenged by its unusual conclusions. Religious and academic scholars, who are not trained in formal mathematical concepts and base their research entirely on the two dimensional narrative in sacred writings, have a difficult time perceiving biblical metaphor as geometric. Scientists and mathematicians, trained in a world in which religion and spirituality are perceived as myth and superstition are similarly challenged. The work of the Meru Foundation is a bridge between those two areas of thought. It recaptures a time in which science and religion were deeply intertwined.

The story of Stan Tenen's path of discovery and the results of his research, as presented in the following pages, is shown in detail on the videotape, "Geometric Metaphors of  Life," available on this website.
 

 

HOME

CONTINUE TO THE FIRST VERSE

TOP OF THIS PAGE