JMVRI Issue No. 28 features three studies: “Quantification of the Global Maharishi Effect: A Quasi-Experimental Study of the Three Most Violent Countries in the World”, by Kenneth L. Cavanaugh and Lee Fergusson (pp. 11–53); “Harmony, Vāstu Architecture and Contemporary Living”, by Aparna Datey and Anna Bonshek (pp. 55–75); and “Jyoti: A Large-Scale, Architectural, Sculpture Installation” by Anna Bonshek (pp. 77–92).
JMVRI Issue Number 28
JMVRI Paper 28.3
Jyoti: A Large-Scale, Architectural, Sculpture Installation
Author: Anna Bonshek
This paper can be downloaded via the following link:
https://www.academia.edu/144717577/Jyoti_A_Large_Scale_Architectural_Sculpture_Installation
Citation: Bonshek, A. (2025). Jyoti: A large-scale, architectural, sculpture installation. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 28, 77–92.
Summary (excerpt):
This study presents a new sculptural installation titled Jyoti, inspired by the silence of a Jyotir Linga site in Aotearoa (New Zealand) while exploring resonance in place. The initial concept—under the working title Light Stone, accepted for inclusion at the ‘Swell Sculpture Festival: People Art Place’ in 2023 on the Gold Coast in Australia—drew inspiration from the Jyotir Linga structure that references 12 traditional sites in India where it is held that Shiva is represented in ‘light-manifested’ form.
The notion of Svayambhu or self-born, standing for complete knowledge and the basis of everything without form or attributes, suggests Shiva can appear in the bivalent aniconic pillar shape or lingam (without symbol or icon). This abstract lingam is held to mark “the presence of the invisible, transcendental reality of Shiva” or pure silence. Elsewhere, understood to represent the wholeness of natural law “available in complete full silence”, Shiva in the lingam form corresponds to the entire human brain, where the brain as a whole is the instrument of the experience of pure silence or pure consciousness, the Transcendence. As such, the quality of pure silence (signified by the name ‘Shiva’) is open to individual experience and relates to the balanced functioning of the brain.