Being Truly Human May 1994 Newsletter

From the Editor

Regrettably, the Summer School at Cuddesdon House has had to be cancelled, due to lack of support by members.

From the Editor

The five articles by Alan Thurley which have appeared in the Newsletter are now available bound together in A4 size in a limited edition. Copies are available from the Trust.

From the Editor

As the Newsletter was about to be printed, news was received of the death of our beloved Phiroz. He died peacefully on 2nd May at Brookthorpe Hall Nursing Home near Gloucester, where he had been living for the last six months near his son Robert. All members’ sympathy will go to John and Robert and their families in their loss.

A talk given by Phiroz Mehta on an unknown date

Continued from part 1, part 2 and part 3

The most important channel is the suṣumnā nadī, which runs like a hollow channel through the centre of the spinal column, meeting idā and piñgalā in the perineum at the base of the spine. The suṣumnā is not only able to cause a synthesis between the solar and lunar currents, which are forms of praṇā, but also of the seven centres vertically, upwards from the base of the spine to the brain. This integration is experienced successively through the cakras. The suṣumnā is a symbol of all potentialities lying dormant in every human being, and which are realized by the yogi. One such potentiality is the faculty of becoming directly conscious of the inner relationship between ideas, things, facts, sense data and forces.

Now, you see, your Chairman sits in one of the postures which we learn and practise in yoga. The postures are called āsanas, and the point I want to emphasis is this, that in this posture Mūlādhāra is in touch with Earth. The old yogis, of course, used to sit out in the open on the earth. So, we have the contact of earth to earth, because Mūlādhāra represents earth. It is the root — earth to earth — the microcosm touches the macrocosm. Similarly, earth in relation to space is the microcosm related to the macrocosm. So all the psychic energies which emanate out we call matter in the ordinary way, and the psychic energies which are concerned with man, the living person, are in right relationship — earth to earth. Now the spinal column is called the merudaṇḍa — daṇḍa means a stick, and in this case it happens to be a living stick, the vertebral column — and it’s called the merudaṇḍa. Mount Meru is the mystical, sacred mount where the ultimate realization takes place and it is this daṇḍa which leads right up to the top which is Mount Meru, the Mount Meru of the individual, which is the point at which Transcendence itself makes contact with you, the living person. So now, the merudaṇḍa is upright, as if it were a lightning conductor, and Sahasrāra, the topmost cakra, points to the celestial zenith. So, earth to earth, and, just as the earth is related to the celestial zenith, so is the individual yogi related through Sahasrāra to the celestial zenith. The energy praṇā of matter radiates out macroscopically from the earth to cosmos, and in the person up microscopically from Mūlādhāra to Sahasrāra. The energy of Transcendence responds through Sahasrāra down to Mūlādhāra, sensitizing, refining and transforming you. That is why if you sit properly at ease, elastic, still and silent, you experience all the extraordinary benefit that comes out of such practice. But never forget the indispensable preliminary of the purity of the mind and the heart, and of daily life. When this is accomplished, the finite you is fully subsumed in the infinite. The divorce between Man and God is out. Once again there is the primordial Unity. Benediction floods your being and spreads through you all over the earth. Merudaṇḍa, whilst you are still caught fast in worldliness, was as the Tree of Good and Evil, Merudaṇḍa, after the complete reversal of worldliness, and consequently living in the state of holiness, is the Tree of Life.

We must consider just a few points more. We must deal very briefly with the transformation of consciousness, which is the fundamental objective of the yogi. When Kuṇḍalinī Śaktī, the latent energy lying dormant at the root centre, is awakened by the purified one, by means of meditation and physical techniques which are kept secret, Śaktī — that is Power — is led upwards from Mūlādhāra to Sahasrāra, the crown centre, step by step through all the cakras. Each of these stages marks a transformation of consciousness. As you go upwards and emerge into a profounder state of consciousness, the old is not destroyed or annihilated, but all its essence is taken up into the new state. There is no annihilation whatsoever. The ascent spans the entire range from worldly consciousness to Transcendence itself.

Now, Mūlādhāra to Maṇipūra, the navel centre, deals with the worldly life. As we have already seen, our daily life is concerned fundamentally, primarily because of our animal descent, as far as the body is concerned, with the preservation of oneself and the species. That means, all that is bound up with food and drink and sex. So, these three centres belong to this world, so to say, and to all that is involved with this world of everyday physical living.

Continued in part 5

By Alan Thurley

(of God): You created us, and out of that creation you were created.

As man’s ideas and understanding of the world developed he became aware that the world on which he lives is but one of many orbiting the sun, as is the sun but one star amongst many millions of stars in his galaxy. More recently he has discovered that his galaxy is only one such in a cluster of galaxies; one of a super-cluster of galaxies, and so on, apparently without end.

At the same time he became aware of the vast reaches between the stars and between the galaxies. Vast volumes, empty as far as, could .be discovered. Distances so great. they are meaningless in their immensity. Even the shortest distance, to his own moon a mere 240,000 miles away, equivalent to travelling ten times without stop round the world, is beyond comprehension.

In this century the exploration of the atom has shown that it too is mostly empty space. So that even the most dense and massive material in common experience, lead, is comprised almost entirely of nothing.

Probably the heaviest and densest piece of nothingness you will ever come across!

But the empty space inside the atom is of a totally different character to the empty space between the stars.

Interstellar space is in fact not at all empty. It is filled with gasses and dusts. It is crossed by electro-magnetic radiation of all wavelengths, from cosmic rays and x-rays through visible light to the longest radio wave­lengths. This radiation from stars and galaxies without number, interacts wit the gasses and dusts, transferring energy, being deflected and scattered.

Not at all the sort of thing you would expect to happen to nothing, to empty space.

But all these tiny amounts of gas and dust are still made up of atoms, and atoms, as we saw earlier, are themselves mostly nothingness.

So what is this nothingness of the atom? It is clearly different from the nothingness of empty space. Space can be filled with matter, by ourselves for example.

That sounds much more comfortable, doesn’t it?

But we are composed of atoms, and therefore most of each one of us is also nothing.

It is time we stopped referring to the emptiness within the atom as ‘space’. That term is appropriate to the very large, but inside the atom the emptiness is of an entirely different character.

It is a necessity. Without it there would be no atoms.

So what have we found in previous articles of this series when something has been found to be essential, or has existed of necessity from the beginning of creation?

Have we not found that this invariably points to a ‘new’ dimension of the Universe? Have we not found that we already have a word in the language suitable to describe this ‘new’ dimension?

So also in this case.

The word Void adequately describes the emptiness of a nothingness beyond all nothingness, an emptiness of an entirely new character.

How can such emptiness exist in an atom that is manifestly real? How can it be said to be ‘empty’ at all?

Let us look at something from everyday life. Something very down to earth and commonplace. Let us consider a net. What sort of net is unimportant. It can be anything, a sieve, a grating, a fishing net.

What is the definition of a net? All nets, gratings, sieves, are intended to sort out the large from the small. Does this lead to a general definition?

Not really. It misses the point entirely. In fact the best definition of a net is “a lot of holes tied together with string”.

That apparently facetious remark, first heard over forty years ago can give us a totally new way of looking at the void inside atoms; as “a lot of Voids tied together with gravity”.

Now we have something really exciting to look at!

The idea of voidness being restrained in any way is apparently ridiculous. And yet what better way to view an atom than to see it as Void enmeshed in energy?

How can it be that the fundamental dimension of the Universe can be entrapped in this way?

Why view it as entrapment?

Surely Void is not until it is defined; just as a hole is not until it has a boundary.

So the primeval Void that pre-existed the Universe of matter-energy was, in this sense, NOT.

This, of course, corresponds to ‘current wisdom’, but only as regards matter. Current thinking does not embrace the concept of a pre-existent energy. Indeed the entire concept of anything before the Big Bang creation of the Universe seems logically impossible.

However, in a ‘Universe’ consisting entirely of energy there are no reference points, (because there is nothing material,) and hence all positions are congruent. That is, a Universe without matter cannot have a ‘size’ and must therefore be viewed as a point.

It follows that the Void that pre-existed the Universe was size-less and the energy density of that Void was therefore either infinite or zero.

A zero-energy Void has no potential and as such must be ruled out. So the energy of the Void was infinite.

Now science does accept that beyond a certain energy density matter cannot exist. What it does not currently have is a universally accepted view of how a Void of infinite energy can become a Universe of matter-energy.

The problem for science, largely of its own making, is in seeing the Void as infinitely small, point-like, an thus infinitely energetic.

It only needs one tiniest bit of matter in the Void to precipitate the entire physical Universe, instantly, by providing a point of reference, and thus reducing the apparent energy density below that at which matter can exist.

Thus a ‘ripple’ in the energy of the Void could be the source of the ‘Big Bang’ of Creation; the origin of matter.

So Void is the precursor and origin, as well as the supporter, of the web of energy defining matter in the manifest universe.

In truth there is only Void, and its energy. All else is illusion.

This ‘Void-energy’ manifests in our four dimensional space-time reality as Gravity.

Science recognises four forces in the Universe; Gravity, Electromagnetism, and the Strong and Weak Nuclear forces.

It has been shown mathematically that what manifests to us as the Electro-Magnetic force can be seen as the gravity appertaining to a fourth physical dimension.

Following this to its logical conclusion, for the other forces to be ‘unified’ in t is way would require a Universe of eleven dimensions. We have found eight in this series, perhaps there are three still to find?

It has also been shown mathematically that if gravity is seen as a ‘negative’ energy, then in a Universe of ten dimensions the net energy (gravity plus matter-energy) is zero. This would seem to correspond with the ‘ripple in the Void’ hypothesis of creation perfectly.

The truly amazing thing is that from the defining of Void by the intermeshing web of energy, consciousness has evolved.

Thus: “The created, viewing the creation, manifests the creator”; a new statement of the Anthropic Principal.

This is the final article on the Dimensions of the Universe.

The series started with a “New Creation Myth”, and has developed into a “New View of the Universe”.

We have discovered, or re-viewed, eight dimensions. Science has shown that a Universe of ten or eleven dimensions has special attributes, so that there may be another two or three dimensions as yet unrecognised. Perhaps not.

I do find it interesting that we have found eight dimensions, when in normal life there are ‘eight limbs’ of Yoga, a ‘noble eightfold path’ in Buddhism, and a musical ‘octave’; (which only has seven notes).

Also that seven, the number of spaces between eight points, is seen as a special number in Judaism, as well as being the number of days in the week.

I have learned a lot writing this series, and would like to thank the Trust for publishing the work.

Bless you all for your patience.

© 1993 Alan Thurley