NEWS
Our California trip, during February and March of 2001, was short but productive.  We met with scholars affiliated the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences in Berkeley, with the Noetic Institute, and with the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and are exploring the possibility of teaching a class at CIIS during October 2001.  If we can work out the arrangements for this class, we hope to make it open to members of the Meru mailing list as well.  I'll post further developments in future newsletters.

We also had the opportunity to meet with various members of our Advisory Board.  Stan has started an email discussion with UC Berkeley linguist Dr. Richard Rhodes, sparked by the analysis of the letter "Bet" that appeared in our last newsletter.  As a professor of linguistics, Dr. Rhodes of course rightly points out that current linguistic theory explains some of the relationships we posit between word-derivations and operational letter meanings very differently (even to the extent of saying that there is no relationship).  Doing science means that we need to respond to these objections with an explanation that either encompasses them, or demonstrates that they're incomplete -- which our correspondence with Dr. Rhodes is giving Stan the opportunity to do.  We plan to publish excerpts of this correspondence in future eTorus newsletters.

Stan and I are currently in Massachusetts, but we expect to return to California sometime during June or July 2001.

PUBLICATIONS
As most of our readers know, Stan Tenen's article, "The God of Abraham: A Mathematician's View" was published in the peer-reviewed Noetic Journal in 1999.  Now, that same article (and an appendix titled "Man Bites Dog") have been published in a compendium titled "Science and the Primacy of Consciousness," edited by Dr. Richard Amoroso for the Noetic Press. This book is Volume 1 of a series titled "Readings in the Cosmology of Consciousness", edited by Dr. Amoroso; Stan has also been named to the Editorial Advisory Board for this series. Other contributors to "Science and the Primacy of Consciousness" include many whose contributions to the field of science and consciousness are well-known, and we're pleased to be able to present aspects of the Meru thesis in this company.

For those interested in studying this journal of peer-reviewed works, "Science and the Primacy of Consciousness" is available through our secure-server website, <www.meetingtent.com>, for a limited-time price of $29.95.  Further information on this book, including a table of contents, is available at <http://www.meetingtent.com/Amoroso.html>.

THE "FIRST SOUND - MUSIC OF GENESIS" PROJECT
Thirty years ago, when we first began investigating the Hebrew letter-sequence in Genesis, one of the first "tools" we used to try to detect the possibility of patterning was musical.  (It's sometimes easier to hear anomalies and patterns in long strings of data, than it is to see them.)  In 1983, with our brand-new Commodore 64, we first "played out" a sequence of approximately 2200 letters by assigning each letter its own musical tone, in various microtonal scales.  We have returned to this idea periodically since that time, most notably in the mid-1990's, when composer Stephen James Taylor composed the "Music of Genesis" that is played under the opening and closing credits of all of Meru Foundation's videotapes.  Taylor's method of assigning notes and instrumentation for each letter was of course more sophisticated than the simple renditions we could program on our Commodore ten years earlier -- and as a professional composer, his intuitions as to which methods to try were more obviously musical than ours.  This is why, over the years, we have approached other composers with our idea of the "Music of Genesis."

Early this year, we began working with two new composers on this project, each of whom has his own ideas and knowledge base to work with.  Both Peter Bryce and Daniel Gil are professionally trained; additionally Daniel is a student of the late R. Shlomo Carlebach and brings to this project a deep familiarity with the text.  Each composer is exploring the text, and its musical nature, in his own way, and we hope, at the end of the day, to have two new, and very different, musical perspectives on the Hebrew letter-text and its structure, which we will issue on CD and offer on <www.meetingtent.com>.  (If we don't have a CD ready by the end of the year, we will probably issue a "sampler" cassette at that time.)

In the meantime, as a part of this process, we made the acquaintance of Kevin Acres of Research Systems, Ltd., in Australia, a programmer who has written software called "Code Finder", used for exploring the equal-interval letter-skip patterns in the Torah.  (For our analysis and commentary on the "Torah Codes," see <http://www.meru.org/Codes/biblcode.html>.)  Kevin had recently added an experimental feature to his program, allowing the text to be played out as tones, and I thought this might make a useful tool for our composers.  In part due to our discussions, this tone-generating software is now available as a stand-alone program called "Music from the Torah."  Unlike the versions of the Hebrew text used for "Bible Codes" work, the version packaged with "Music from the Torah" distinguishes between medial and final forms of the Hebrew letters (a distinction that is very important in Meru research).  While you wait for our "First Sound - Music of Genesis" CD, if you would like to experiment yourself with "listening to the Torah," we will shortly be offering the "Music from the Torah" software CD on <www.meetingtent.com>.

ESSAY BY STAN TENEN
Over the years we have spoken with many people who believe that peace will come if we respond only with love when others act in ways that hurt us, both personally, and in the wider world.  This month's essay by Stan Tenen, titled "The Three Pillars of Love," asks the question:  Is there such a thing as "unconditional love"?  And how can we truly begin to create peace both in our lives and in the world?

"The Three Pillars of Love" suggests that just as each of the three Abrahamic covenants embodies its own vital aspect of the whole Abrahamic system (see "The Three Abrahamic Covenants and the Car-Passing Trick"), healing a difficult situation requires more than unconditional love -- it requires integrity, and compassion, and self-sacrifice.  This is an important concept, and it is often overlooked.  You can find Stan's essay, "The Three Pillars of Love".

I hope you enjoy this Meru Foundation eTORUS(tm) Newsletter.  We welcome your feedback; if you have questions, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to write me at:
Cynthia Tenen <meru@meru.org>

Thank you for your interest in the work of the Meru Foundation.

You may duplicate and pass along this newsletter, in its entirety, as long as you include this copyright notice and the contact information below. Please send comments and questions to <meru@meru.org>.

Meru Foundation research offices:
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How to order Meru Foundation Videos and Products:
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EUROPEAN AND PAL VIDEO ORDERS:
  To order PAL versions of Meru Videotapes:
  Email: Ron Engert in Germany at <info@syntropia.de>
  German readers may now also visit Ron Engert's Meru website:
         <www.meru-info.de>