Rhythmic Traverse (1985)

©1985, 1996 Stan Tenen

Special Note about RHYTHMIC TRAVERSE:
This article, published in 1985 in TORUS, the Meru Foundation Journal, is the first introduction of the terminology "rhythmic traverse" to describe the regular reading or chanting of a text, and it is the first introduction of the concept of using a "rhythmic traverse" to read, or internalize, a hologram. To our knowledge, there is no previous use of this terminology or presentation of these ideas.

Rhythmic Traverse is reproduced here as it appeared in TORUS, Vol. 1 #5, unchanged except for formatting.

RHYTHMIC TRAVERSE

Our working hypothesis that the ancients were, at least periodically, as knowledgeable and genuinely wise as ourselves leads us to consider it plausible that our traditions are still meaningful and effective. If we examine traditional religious practice in the light of our speculations about the structure and meaning of the Genesis text, it may be possible to identify the functional elements and rediscover the original and intended meaning.

It is our conjecture that the Masoretic Genesis text at the letter level is a linear unfoldment of a four-dimensional window in our three-dimensional space. It consists of a volumetric (hyper) hologram carried by two reference beams with a phase offset; one carrying the spatial (space-like) 3-D image and the other carrying the temporal (time-like) evolution of the image. The Genesis text letter string is in the same form as DNA -- two helices (Fuller's tetrahelix) intertwined, carrying, strung between them in triplets, structural and evolutional information. In this hyper-hologram, a flower, for example, could be viewed IN SPATIAL PERSPECTIVE as a three-dimensional object AND also IN TIME through its evolvement from seed to new seed.

How are three-dimensional creatures such as ourselves to read a volumetric hologram?

Consider an analogy with flatland. If there are self-conscious creatures that live confined in a two-dimensional reality¹, we might seem as transcendant to them as the God of our traditions seems to us, since there is "room" in our 3-spacial dimensions for an infinite number of flatlands, and we could view them simultaneously. If we could, what would we say to these flatlanders, and how would we say it?

The most unique and fundamental message we could send them would be to somehow show them there is a reality transcendent to their own -- ours. The only way to draw a three-dimensional window in a two-dimensional flatland is to enfold on it, as an interference pattern, a hologram of a three-dimensional scene.

To "see" this holographic image would seem to require a reference beam and a point of view outside of the plane of the image. Clearly, if the flatlander could step out of flatland all this would be unnecessary. The only way that our flatlander can "see" the three-dimensional view in the two-dimensional window in his plane is to make himself the reference beam. He can do this by "rhythmically traversing" the hologram area: that is, by "walking" in a regular cadence, by a regular coordinate system, through the crests and valleys of the waves of the maze-like interference pattern. (This may be the origin of the maze legends of antiquity.)

If our flatlander repeatedly reads/maps into his cortex, in a regular, clocked, and counted way, the on/off (binary) wave texture of the interference pattern, he will eventually model the holographic window in his holographic mind (see the works of Karl Pribram).² When he "lets go", from an appropriate mental perspective, he might then see-experience as a flash of enlightenment the higher dimensional reality. When this happens to us, we call this experience initiation, baptism, a kundalini "flash", an out of body experience, a near-death experience, or seeing the face of God. If Genesis is in fact a hyper-hologram of the next dimension, we might achieve this transcendental contact by rhythmically traversing the text: that is, by regularly and rhythmically chanting or singing the text. Chanted recitation of the Genesis text could be a traditional and still effective door to a repeatable personal experience of the reality of a transcendent universe of eternal unity.³

I am not suggesting that every prayer is effective in this technical sense, only that it is plausible that the reason for the tenacity of traditional religious practice in the face of scientific "rationalism" is genuine personal experience by sensitive persistent individuals today. In some instances it may be that unconscious fear of death drives the uneducated into superficial religiosity, as the psychologists scornfully claim; it may be that religion often is the "opiate of the masses"; but that may not be the whole truth. Is it not more likely that the tenacious roots of our heritage and tradition are still EXPERIENCED by the genuinely wise amongst us? If this is true, then reality is far richer and broader than many of us, in our shallow-mindedness, have dared to guess.

² It is possible to see "the whole" and its parts in this way. Arturo Toscanini was able to instantly recall a particular note of a major symphony on an individual musician's score, and he was able to achieve his rapid and exquisitely precise tempo by holding in his mind the whole interwoven harmonic image of the symphony as one totality. This achievement of memory is comparable to that of the scholars of the oral Masoretic and Talmudic traditions.

³ There is a traditional belief that a Jew should, or inevitably does, die with the "Sh'ma" (Hear, O Israel, the Lord-our-God is One) on his lips. If this credo is (as we have conjectured may be the case for Genesis) a low resolution, but accurate, mini hyper-hologram opening onto a transcendent reality, then it may function as a sort of transitional "time-tunnel" from the death experience in three-dimensional material reality, to the egoless and eternal reality described in our religious and mystical traditions.

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