The One in the Many

“And he took the cup, and he gave thanks and he blessed it; and he gave it to them and they all drank from it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed in behalf for the many.””

(Mark 14, from the Syriac Translation of the New Testament [Murdock 1915])

In mathematics the numeral acts as a symbol for a number. The number however requires a complex network of understandings and concepts to fully grasp its meaning. The numeral provides an abstract symbol that unifies the vast array of mathematical concepts that embody the number. The mathematicians Maarten Dolk and Catherine Fosnot, refer to ‘big ideas’; those principles and structures that underpin mathematics and our understanding of it. Building on the work of the educationalist and psychologist Jean Piaget, they note that when young children are taught a ‘big idea’ and subsequently comprehend its meaning, they undergo a massive shift in their reasoning (Fosnot and Dolk 2001). An example of this is the process of learning to count. When counting, young children learn to employ several key principles. They learn to identify objects with a previously unknown and abstract number word; that these number words follow a stable order; that anything can be counted; that the final number word said represents the total of the items in the set; and that the items may be counted in any order so long as the numbers words said remain ordered (Gelman and Gallistel 1978). Eventually they learn how to represent the numbers used for counting with a numeral, a symbolic device used to express a wider numerical idea or concept. Through this process they learn that the universe and one of its most mysterious qualities can be reduced to a series of symbols indicating the relationship between the one and the many; of the unity that can be found to exist between a set of items. In this principle we can see that, for example, the ‘three-ness’ of a set of loaves is the same as the ‘three-ness’ of a set of fish. The ‘three-ness’ of the attributes of love, wisdom and justice also share the ‘three-ness’ of greed, avarice and fear, for the abstraction principle of counting reminds us that anything can be counted. In mathematics the point in which we move from a one-to-one to a one-to-many relationship is called unitising: a higher order skill that builds on a strong understanding of number. Following another shift in understanding, the young pupil’s mind can now comprehend the way many things may be unitised and embodied in one object, or by a single symbol.

Wellesley Tudor Pole felt that one of the driving reasons behind his incarnation on Earth was to turn attention from the Cross of duality to the Cup of unity, and so play his part in initialising a massive shift in the reasoning of humanity. This should not be considered a critique of the importance of the Cross as a symbol of the crucifixion and of faith, nor was he in anyway diminishing the significance of, what was to him, a great cosmic act. Rather he saw himself as supporting the journey from the Cross to the unity embodied by the Cup. In A Man Seen Afar, WTP writes:

“No doubt about it, the Crucifixion of Jesus was the most inspiring culmination of his life that could have been. By his submission, by his willingness to be lifted up, nailed upon the

Cross, that basic symbol of duality, of conflict…Jesus was ‘lifting up’ not only humanity but Life in all of the Seven Kingdoms of Nature for the whole of this round of evolution.”

(Tudor Pole 1965: 83)

In his eyes, what WTP termed the ‘Christos’ acting through Jesus’ submission to the crucifixion, was enacting a process of unitising, of merging duality into the oneness of light, with love at its very heart. For Tudor Pole, the presence of the three Marys at the time of Jesus’ death also played a key role, forming a Triad of love, courage and faith, a three-to-oneness of great spiritual import. Again, he writes of this in A Man Seen Afar:

“On another level, the presence of the Triad should be seen as an event of truly cosmic significance. Together these women symbolically foreshadowed the ultimate three-in-one triumphant fusion of the powers inherent in womanly love.”

(Tudor Pole 1965: 82)

At the Chalice Well, we offer the symbol of the cup when we link our hands to catch the water from the Lion’s Head. In this simple act we unify the many molecules of the lifegiving water into one handful. Each time we do so, in many ways we symbolically form the Chalice of the coming times, our two hands uniting the right and the left opposing forces into a unified whole, a cup capturing the waters of the new age from which we may drink. We may take this analogy further, when we consider how we share this act with the many that have gone before us, the people of diverse faiths or of none, with whom we are unified by the simple act of drinking from the same source. In doing so we symbolise this ‘new covenant’ by coming together in companionship to drink the waters of the Spirit.

As the story of Joseph of Arimathea’s planting of the Holy Thorn is for many symbolic of the unification of a wider spiritual act upon Wearyall Hill, so too is the story of his bringing of the two cruets of Christ’s blood and sweat to the British Isles. The legend of these being buried in the earth of Glastonbury is again symbolic of the idea of the many becoming one, the duality of suffering being transmuted into the oneness of Light with love at its core. Tudor Pole felt that Joseph of Arimathea had obtained the three crosses of Calvary following the Crucifixion, and that after this he had a:

“Stupendous vision. Not only was his own future made manifest, including the great destiny he was to fulfil in the sacred Isle of Britain: but the future of the human race was symbolically revealed to him.”

(Tudor Pole 1965: 89)

The many was seen in the one, merging into the cup of the coming age, “tho divided by the Cross & Nails & Thorns & Spear” spoken of in Blake’s Jerusalem (Chapter 4, Plate 89 [1977]).

Archaeological excavations conducted in the early days of the Trust, show us that yew trees have existed at Chalice Well for at least two thousand years. A stump dated to the first century AD, serves as evidence for this. The presence of yews in church yards also suggests a pre-Christian origin, the trees marking these sites as pre-existing sacred sanctuaries. Through these ancient sentinels watching over their sacred sites, spiritual centres visited and sanctified for millennia by a multitude of diverse faiths, we again see a symbol of unification. Yews are native across Europe, the Caucasus, and beyond, from Turkey eastwards to northern Iran. Their range extends south to Morocco and Algeria in

North Africa. Therefore, as we pass through the guardian yews at Chalice Well, we once more embody the many-in-the-one principle as well as the unification of life and death that these great trees symbolise.

Tudor Pole felt that the parable of the mustard seed was told for reasons other than just the small size of the seed. He believed that Jesus spoke of the mustard seed in relation to the Kingdom of God, because of it being the only seed which is pure and unable to be hybridised or grafted onto any seed or plant of a species other than its own. It was therefore ‘as inviolable as true faith itself” (Tudor Pole 1965: 45). To Tudor Pole, this ‘true faith’ could not be divided or reduced. It is from this mysterious origin that the many spiritual paths spring, and to it they all return. As WTP recalled in Writing on the Ground, the famous declaration that “we are all leaves of the same Tree” provided a constant theme in his conversations with the Persian holy man, Abdul Baha (Tudor Pole 1967: 147).

In the same manner as the numeral ‘1’ represents the unity of a vast connection of understandings of the concept of one as a number, so too does the symbol of the Cup represent the unification of the vastness of humanity and the universe in shared companionship. Tudor Pole knew that when he secured the Chalice Well in a charitable trust, he was sowing a seed in fertile soil, a site in which spiritual energies were united in a blended ray which was to be available to all people of goodwill. As a young pupil’s mind experiences an enormous shift in reasoning when they grasp a big idea for the first time, Tudor Pole felt that the Chalice to be found within this vale in Avalon could offer to humanity a way forward from the duality of the past to the unity of the coming age. To him, here the many would be found in the one, and the one would flow forth in the many.

Bibliography

Blake, W. 1977. The Complete Poems. London: Penguin.

Fosnot, C. T., and Dolk, M. 2001. Young Mathematician’s at Work: Constructing Number Sense, Addition and Subtraction. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Gelman, R., and Gallistel, C. R. (1978). The Child’s Understanding of Number. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Murdock, J. 1915. The Syriac New Testament

Translated into English from the Peshitto version (9th Edition). Boston, MA: H.L. Hastings & Sons.

Tudor Pole, W. 1965. A Man Seen Afar. London: Neville Spearman.

Tudor Pole, W. 1968. Writing on the Ground. London: Neville Spearman.

“Then God said, ‘Let there be Light’ and there was Light. And God saw the Light, that it was good, and God separated the Light from the darkness.”

Genesis 1.3, The Geneva Bible 1560.

Light was created on the first day, before the Sun or the Moon and even before the waters were separated to make the Earth and the Heavens. It was the prerequisite for everything. Creation is the transformation of light into matter.

According to David Bohm, Quantum Physicist, “Light is energy and it’s also information, content, form and structure. It’s the potential of everything.” He describes the relationship between light and matter as, “matter is frozen light”. As matter evolves Consciousness expands. As we balance the light in our bodies, we are illuminating not only our light bodies but also our physical bodies.

Light has been used for healing since the beginning of time. From the Temples of Ancient Egypt and Greece through to a contemporary modality called Autonomic Response Testing which works to detect areas of disease using a photographic Pol filter to measure the amount of polarised light coming from each organ. This is fascinating because it demonstrates that our bodies are resonant with full spectrum light and that they emit this when healthy. We know that each atom contains light in the form of biophotons; tiny particles of light.

Fritz-Albert Popp, a German Physicist, discovered biophotons and their role as the interface between the etheric and the physical as the carriers of light and information, as well as intention. It seems that full spectrum sun beams carry the frequency of Love. This is where Love and Light become one and provide the vehicle for healing. Popp wrote a famous paper describing how a coherent state is fundamental for biological systems; it enables them to optimise themselves through organisation, information quality and pattern recognition. “When a cell is in optimal health, it responds to all colours of the visible spectrum equally.”

In 1917 Albert Einstein wrote to a friend, “For the rest of my life I will reflect on what light is!” By 1951 he had developed the theory of relativity, establishing that at the speed of light, time ceases to exist. In addition, a photon, which has no mass, can cross the cosmos without using any energy. So for light beams time and space do not exist. Light becomes Life; it is potential energy; E=MC².

Light is more than waves and particles; it is a purveyor of consciousness. Light holds the secret to human awakening, healing and transformation. Quantum mechanics has established the inseparability of the whole; the new biophysics is the insight into the fundamental interconnectedness within the organism as well as between organisms and within the environment.

Each cell in our body emits light. When the cell is healthy, this light is highly structured (coherent) and communicates with the neighbouring cells inside the body and organisms outside the body. It carries unlimited amounts of information bi-directionally; informing other cells and organisms and carrying their information back to its own origin in the DNA. Every cell in our body is at any time informed about the state of every other cell. The process of integrating the energy from our experience of each act, emotion and thought is illuminating.

Light enters the eyes and goes to the hypothalamus gland in the brain which communicates with the body’s true “master gland”, the pineal, which regulates the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system. This determines our reaction and adaptation to stress, as to whether fight or flight is appropriate (the sympathetic nervous system is stimulated by the red end of the spectrum and is more visible in the daytime; or rest and digest, the parasympathetic nervous system responds to the blue, violet end of the spectrum which is more visible at night). This in turn triggers appropriate enzymes and hormones to respond within the body.

The pineal is known as the third eye in many mystical traditions. It entrains the pituitary, thyroid, thymus, pancreas, gonads and adrenals. It is the body’s light meter and assists us in becoming synchronised with nature and at one with the universe. In this way we are harmonising and calibrating with the cosmic clock and in aligning with that we are increasing our own longevity. The effect of seasonal changes of light become highly significant as reflected in the importance of Wheel of the Year festivals for our ancestors.

Sunlight is our major source of light, warmth and energy and sustains all life on earth, as well as the Earth itself through key processes such as photosynthesis and photobiomodulation; the process through which the mitochondria absorb light, which impacts the production of adenosine triphosphate, ATP or the energy used by the cells to power the metabolic processes that create DNA, RNA, proteins and enzymes.

We know that sunlight reduces resting heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure and blood sugar while increasing energy, strength, endurance, stress tolerance and capacity of the blood to absorb and carry oxygen. Light not only enters us through our eyes and skin but also emanates from us; our eyes sparkle and our skin glows! 98% of the sun’s light goes into the body through the eyes and 2% through the skin.

Paramahansa Yogananda, a twentieth century spiritual leader who introduced many Westerners to meditation, referred to light as “the cosmic intelligent vibration that structures finite creation.”

This is where the areas of quantum physics and healing combine, where light becomes matter and through the process of enlightenment where matter becomes light. The Light Body contains seven layers of subtle energy and represents our energetic anatomy, which corresponds to the Chakras and the path of White light coming down through the Crown to the physical at the base. We are literally Spirit descending into Matter and Matter returning to Spirit through the process of embodiment and enlightenment.

Dr Gerald H Pollack, Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, author of the Fourth Phase of Water describes how, “Experimental evidence shows that Light imparts energy to water, including body water, that energy may, in some instances, provide enough energy for sustaining life.” This represents a fourth phase of water beyond solid, liquid and gas. The body’s cells are composed of this “living water” which differs from normal water as it’s imbued with light. Fourth phase water, H3O2 is more viscous, dense, organized and alkaline than H2O and has more available oxygen due to its chemical structure. It has a negative charge and like a battery can store the energy contained in sunlight and deliver it as needed. We know that water, including that within our own bodies, can be structured by light and that this provides our system with a level of coherence which leads to homeostasis and health.

As humans we can also send our Light in the form of Love, using our intention, into water in a process known as Harmonising. This water can then either be drunk to raise our vibration or gifted back to the earth through our local water source (such as Chalice Well) to increase the amount of Love in the world. We are beings that emit, communicate with and are formed from light.

Inside us Light can become Love and this is what heals us.

Bibliography

Genesis, The Geneva Bible, 1560 Edition

Light, Medicine of the Future by Jacob Liberman

About the Coherence of Biophotons by Fritz Albert Popp

Introduction to Integrative Biophysics by Marco Bischof

Biophoton Physics © Klinghardt Education Ltd 2021 - www.klinghardtinstitute.com

Luminous Life by Jacob Liberman

Light Upon The Path, The Unpublished Writings of Wellesley Tudor Pole, by Paul Fletcher

Dr Gerald H Pollack, Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, author of the Fourth Phase of Water, www.harmonisingwater.weebly.com