The House of Life

• With the full co-operation and assistance of Stan Tenen

The article, Hebrew and Phoenician Letters which appeared in the latest edition of Quest struck an immediate chord and sent me on a quest of my own. Its author Gareth Knight, reports an inner plane communication suggesting significance within the shape of the Hebrew letters. It is clear that the article was written some time ago as the book The Phoenician Letters cited within it was published in 1979. Neither the author of the article, nor the authors of the book could have foreseen the extraordinary contribution waiting to be unfolded by Stan Tenen (and the US nonprofit Meru Foundation which was founded in 1983.)

Tenen’s 30 year involvement with the universal nature of particular Western sacred alphabets began when at aged 26 he noted apparent patterning in the Hebrew letter-text of Genesis. Unable to read the Hebrew language (but knowing the Hebrew letters), he did not see the text as meaningful words but as a mathematician skilled in pattern recognition, he recognized a pattern in the sequence of letters. Just as the Inner Plane introspection had suggested – and Rabbinic tradition claimed - Tenen eventually found the very shape of the letters woven in the letter-text of Genesis.

This brief article is merely intended to draw the attention of the reader to Tenen’s work which can be more fully explored via the internet; see: The Meru Foundation at www.meru.org. But to whet your appetite and provide a flavour of his work, this article presents the briefest of outlines.

The Meru Foundation was founded on the observation that there is a woven pattern to the letters in the Hebrew text of Genesis. Some twenty years later Tenen has shared the fruits of his labours. In the intervening two decades, he has explored and elaborated on his initial insight. The Meru Foundation now proposes that, ‘the letters of the first verse of B’Reshit  can be paired off so at to fold a ribbon with the text written on it into a recognizable geometric form. The most compact and elegant representation of this form is a particular and unique form of 'vortex’. In other words Tenen mathematically derived a special (and meaningfully-shaped) 3-D vortex by pairing the Hebrew letters in the first verse of Genesis. After finding this flame-shaped vortex by pairing the letters of the Hebrew text of Genesis, Tenen found that the asymmetrical 3-D form fit comfortably in his hand.  When held in 27 different positions or gestures, the hand-shaped flame-like vortex presents 2-dimensional shadows that look like the letters of a particular Hebrew alphabet and with slight modifications of a particular Greek, a particular Arabic, and possibly a particular Sanskrit alphabet also.

This hand-shaped flame-like vortex lies at the heart of Tenen’s investigation; it has led him into multiple avenues of research and questioning: might the original sequence of letters be a particular visualized meditation designed to build a model letter by letter, what is the relationship between the language centres of the brain, the human hand and human consciousness, does the vortex represent ‘the elements of a natural universal hand-gesture language, the pre-Babel language.’

Tenen refers to his First Hand™ vortex as The Flame of Consciousness, in keeping with the idea that the Hebrew letters are traditionally said to be made of flame of fire, itself a symbol representing spiritual potency and creative possibilities. The element of fire is represented by the Mother letter, Shin which can be understood to consist of three Yod’s  (Yod is the least letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and is related to the Hebrew word “yad”, which means “hand”). Therefore, the letter Yod is symbolzsed by the hand as a creative instrument and an expression of conscious volition and choice. As a Mother Letter, Shin represents the primal creative force of “expression” (the suffix, -tion,  -sion in English being cognate to the meaning and similar in pronunciation to the letter Shin in Hebrew). Tenen believes that the asymmetrical vortex encoded in Genesis, the flame of Connsciousness, creates a model which serves as a General Projective Principle, ‘providing a geometric basis for describing the dimensions of the physics of unfolding spacetime, and the stages of embryological and conscious development.

Contemporary physics uses a language of symbols and formulae to describe and explain the deepest fundamental laws of creation. To an observer, such formulae are meaningless shapes but to an expert schooled in the meaning of each symbol, these patterns render invisible forces visible within the mind’s eye. Is it possible that in a similar way sacred language serves the same purpose to its initiates?

The idea of a primal unified state has long been part of Hermetic philosophy and perennial tradition (going back at least to the time of Abraham).  This primal unified state is represented by the single 3-D model the “First Hand” that generates 2-D shadows that form the letters of the alphabet. This original undivided state gives rise to all subsequent forms (and all the letters) by first giving rise to the primal opposites within itself – exactly as Tenen describes the source definitions for his First Hand™ model. This perennial view shares much in common with the current thinking offered by mathematicians and physicists, namely that a state of maximal contrast is defined by the mark of distinction, which is the archetypal difference between, ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Physicist Roger Penrose points out that the inside/outside gradient is the source of order, negentropy, and information. In other words without distinction between opposing qualities, stasis will remain.

The letter Beth which forms the first letter of Genesis actually shows this mark of distinction in its actual shape, as produced in 2-D outline by the “birthing” gesture. By clearly stating the difference between inside and outside the letter shapes establish the first logical distinction possible.

It is perhaps only in the light of this cosmological insight that the full significance of the letter Beth meaning a house – or more accurately, the process of house-ing, that is, making a distinction between inside and outside - can be demonstrated. Tenen‘s insights unite areas of physics, mathematics, cosmology, neuroscience and perennial philosophy. It is no wonder he states with confidence that, ‘We believe that the General Projective Principle (First Hand) is one of the fundamentals of creation; it must be a part of any grand unification in physics, and between physics and consciousness.’

The First Hand™ vortex, the Flame of Consciousness, the Quantum of Action (as identified by the late mathematician Arthur M. Young, a Meru Foundation Advisor) is a figure of archetypal asymmetry which generates the symmetrical figure of the tetrahedron as the first of the Platonic solids. This marriage of opposites, the meeting of symmetry v. asymmetry is another example of maximal contrast implicit in the process of all creation. This deeply paradoxical state where two disparate outcomes are nonetheless unified, is both a quantum construct and a philosophical realization common to many traditions.

I hope that this brief overview of Tenen’s work has whetted your appetite for more. In conclusion the unknown Inner Plane contact which dropped  only the merest hint at the cosmological mysteries encoded in universal gestures might be contented with the ground breaking and continuing work of the Meru Foundation.