JMVRI Issue No. 26 features two research studies: “The Braided Weave of Sound and Silence, Emergence and Dissolution”, by Frederick R. Worth (pp. 11–58); and “Consciousness-Based Education in the University”, by Geoffrey A. Wells (pp. 59–127).
JMVRI Issue Number 26
JMVRI Paper 26.1
The Braided Weave of Sound and Silence, Emergence and Dissolution
Author: Frederick R. Worth
This paper can be downloaded via the following link:
Citation: Worth, F. R. (2025). Poetry: The braided weave of sound and silence, emergence and dissolution. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 26, 11–58.
Summary (excerpt):
Following an explanatory introduction on remote poetic origins in the Vedas where themes of sound and silence, emergence and dissolution appear in full force, this essay addresses poems by poets Jorie Graham and W. S. Merwin that deal with sound, silence, beginnings, and endings from a contemporary perspective. A poem by Frank O’Hara, meanwhile, presents examples of continuity and a poem’s ‘breathing’ that seem oddly relevant to Vedic principles of creativity discussed in the introduction.
The ways in which the selected poets handle their respective material are variously oblique and direct. In recent years, the poems of Jorie Graham have hinged on beginnings and endings with mounting intensity, even urgency; hence, her work receives more attention than the other two. All three modern poems, however, are discussed in light of operations of consciousness (sound and silence, emergence and diss-olution) identified and clearly explicated in Ṛk Veda, which is surely among the world’s oldest living poetry.
Not surprisingly, readers of this paper will encounter considerable discussion around the remarkable capacity of poetry to push the boundaries of ordinary attention and even transform a reader’s awareness, just as it challenges a reader’s understanding of sound and silence as s/he encounters multiple ways in which these two often cross and intermingle in a poem. My desire to explore this topic initially stemmed from a remark made by Dan Beachy-Quick in his book on Keats to the effect that “a poem opens being to Being.” Beachy-Quick expresses a sentiment that I share wholeheartedly and will proceed to explore and explicate in these pages.