Maharishi vedic architecture: Background and summary of scientific research
by Alarik Arenander, Ph.D and Jonathan Lipman, AIA
The ancient predictions for the effects upon us of living in buildings designed according to the guidelines of Vedic architecture or Sthapatya Veda are quite remarkable. The ancient texts propose in detail how influences may be designed into a building to promote such qualities as prosperity, happiness, health and enlightenment. Just as importantly, the text delineate negative influences of improper building design and construction that promote anger, fear and chronic disease, influences that may be diminished through correct design.
Manasara and Maya Mata are ancient Sanskrit texts that describe the knowledge (Veda) of establishing form (Sthapatya). These texts apply to all created objects and are especially valuable in the area of architectural design and construction, and community design. Vedic architecture is considered the oldest and perhaps the most systematic of the various architectural traditions and is has been recognized as the original source of the East Asian geomancy system of Feng Shui. Vedic architecture is also known more commonly by the Sanskrit word Vastu. The surviving strands of the ancient Vedic system have recently been unified and restored to their wholeness by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the world-wide Transcendental Meditation program. The system as he has restored it is referred to as Maharishi Vastu, Maharishi Vedic architecture, or Maharishi Sthāpatya Veda architecture. The last two names are used interchangeably in this report.
The predictions in the ancient Vedic texts have been verified time and again by the overwhelmingly positive subjective experiences of the thousands of people world-wide who are living, studying or working in buildings designed within the past decade with the principles of Maharishi Vedic architecture. In North America alone about $250 million worth of these buildings have been built in the past decade, and there have been many dramatically positive subjective reports by their users of improvements in well-being, physical health, family harmony, and financial success.
To what degree have medical and scientific research verified and explained these remarkable predictions and personal experiences? Here, we summarize research conducted on Maharishi Vedic architecture. Some of the research has been published, some of it has been accepted for publication in a peer-review medical journal, and some of it is preliminary and not yet submitted for publication.
The Maharishi Vedic architecture is defined by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as "the most ancient and complete system of architecture and planning according to the solar, lunar and planetary influences on the earth with reference to north and south poles and the equator — connecting individual life with Cosmic Life, individual intelligence with Cosmic Intelligence."
Maharishi Sthapatya Veda theory predicts that a number of influences impact the users of buildings. These influences include: The orientation of the building; the placement of rooms; the proportion and Vedic measurements of the building; the building elements; the site elements; the slope and shape of land; the degree of exposure to the rising sun; and the various elements in the immediate environment including water bodies. Of this list of influences Maharishi considers orientation to be the most significant.
In order for us to gain a scientific understanding of the nature and significance of orientation in Maharishi Sthapatya Veda design we would benefit from a modern scientific model offering a plausible biophysical mechanism by which orientation could affect human mind/body functioning and behavior.
The useful first step in constructing such a model would be to determine whether any critical centers in the body are sensitive to orientation. Research with animals indicates that several assemblies of brain cells are sensitive to environment cues―spatially-tuned― including head direction, place, etc. These cells have been located most often in the hippocampal and thalamic regions.
Indirect evidence for orientation comes from human neuroimaging work which demonstrates that the right hippocampus and inferior parietal cortex cooperate to enable navigation to an unseen goal. Animals devote considerable attention to their location and movement in environment. Place cells are key to this spatial mapping ability of mammals that permits them to effectively deal with their working space. The rat hippocampus is considered to contain a stable, yet flexible ‘cognitive map’ or ‘navigational system’, to assist the animal to effectively deal with each and every environment.
Research has identified a population of cells in the rat hippocampal formation which discharge as a function of the animal's head direction in the horizontal plane, independent of its behavior and location in the environment. For example, a particular neuron would discharge only when the animal's head pointed northeast, while another neuron might discharge whenever the animal pointed its head west. Published work has been shown that some of the neurons in the thalamus of laboratory animals fire, or communicate, at different rates depending on what direction their heads are facing.
These findings in laboratory animals indicate that the mammalian brain computes a metric or map of the body/environment relationship presumably to serve some evolutionary useful end. Based on considerable evidence of perseverance of evolutionary trends across species, we can safely assume human brains most likely possess similar characteristics.
|
Although many cells in the physiology contain magnetic particles that could be employed to transduce the environmental fields (not unlike migrating birds, etc.), there is little research of an effect in higher mammals, and specifically humans. Nevertheless, we could speculate here that cells or a distributed cell circuit of the human brain are sensitive to solar rhythms and/or magnetic fields in terms of orientation. The elements in the sky, most notably the sun, pass overhead from east to west. The sun, and perhaps other celestial bodies, may well have some mind-body effects upon life in response to which creatures have evolved to function differently.
Maharishi Sthapatya Veda asserts because of this putative environmental sensitivity of the brain, the body and mind also would function differently depending upon orientation. Maharishi Sthapatya Veda design predicts that our health is affected by the orientation we take when we are sleeping. Specifically, it predicts that it is healthiest for us to sleep with our heads pointed to the east and most unhealthy to sleep with our heads to the north.
This hypothesis has been examined by Veronica Butler, M.D., a rural Iowa physician, who discovered via a survey of her patients that those who sleep in north-facing beds suffer from significantly more depression and anxiety than do those who sleep in beds without this orientation. In her study, she found the head direction correlated with mental health. She reported that planned comparisons [based on the ANOVA, a standard statistical analysis procedure] with direction of sleep as the grouping variable revealed that those individuals sleeping with their head pointing north had significantly lower scores on the Mental Health Inventory compared to patients who slept in other directions. Thus, there is initial concrete evidence in support of Maharishi Sthapatya Veda design’s predicted effect of our sleeping orientation on mind-body health.
This human work is consistent with some unpublished pilot animal data from Ohio State University looking at sleep orientation and behavior (Sharma, et. al., Dept of Pathology, unpublished results). Laboratory rats were placed in narrow cages, so that the direction in which they slept could be controlled. Half of the animals were made to sleep with their heads to the east, and half of them with heads to the north. In the morning it was found that the animals that had been made to sleep with their heads to the north had elevated levels of stress hormones (including cortisone) in their bloodstream. Animals made to sleep with head to the east had reduced levels of stress hormones in their bloodstream.
In addition, the animals that were made to sleep with their head to the north then displayed aggressive and anti-social behavior as noted by their increased tendency to fight with each other. Such behavior is as might be expected if their stress hormones were elevated. Conversely, the animals that were made to sleep with their head to the east displayed more peaceful behavior.
Sthapatya Veda also predicts that not only our own personal orientation, but also the orientation of the buildings we occupy, will affect us in detectable, well-delineated ways. Specifically, Maharishi Sthapatya Veda theory predicts that the widest range of auspicious influences benefit those who live in east-facing houses, and the broadest, most life-damaging influences come to bear on those in south-facing houses.
The first such test was carried out as a component of Dr. Butler’s research cited above. As a part of her survey of patients Butler discovered that there was a strong correlation between house orientation and scores in the areas of mental health and prosperity among her patients. Significantly lower scores were found in these areas among patients whose homes faced south. Specifically, she found that patients whose homes had south entrances had significantly poorer overall scores on the Mental Health Inventory than patients with north or east entrances. Patients whose homes had south entrances also reported more financial problems relative to those with north or east entrances. This result remained significant even when controlling for level of income.
A second finding comes from pilot preliminary review of data from a practicing cardiologist in southern California. He found that 50% of his patients lived in south-facing houses — this disproportionately high percentage correlates with the Maharishi Sthapatya Veda prediction that residents in south-facing buildings come under an influence of problems and suffering.
[Another] study examining the correlation of negative behavior and house orientation … reported that there were 75% more burglaries in south-facing houses than in houses facing east, west or north.
A holistic science
Maharishi Vedic architecture is considered by its practitioners to be a holistic science. When multiple predictors are present the effects are anticipated to be stronger. A study is underway to examine this prediction. In this study 100 publicly-owned businesses have been selected randomly in the Faroe Islands, a territory of Denmark. Five years of financial records for each company has been compiled from public records, as have aerial photos, topographic maps, and site plans of their headquarters. Companies have been excluded from the study if their income is not generated within their headquarters — fishing and shipping companies, for example, have therefore been excluded.
A Maharishi Sthapatya Veda consultant has begun to evaluate the collected drawings and photos and has concluded that there are five Maharishi Vedic architecture factors that can be observed in the documentation on each company: Building orientation; building shape; direction of nearest mountain; direction of nearest water body; orientation of fenced enclosure around the building, where present.
The consultant has begun to grade each company according to the predicted influence of each of the five factors and is compiling a single numerical predictor for their overall influence, and is then ranking the companies on the basis of this predictor. Independently, the study’s lead researcher, a professor of business and statistics, is ranking the financial success of the companies on the basis of the amount of profit generated per employee over the five year period and other standard financial statistics.
In a preliminary review of the data, results for thirty of the companies have been compared, and in the cases of 27 out of the 30 companies the researchers report that the Vedic architecture indices correlated with the amount of profit generated per employee by the companies.
What people experience when they enter, live, live, or work in vastu is a far greater sense of self. Individuals attempt to define or give expression to this experience. This experience has been expressed in as many ways and words as there are people. It appears to center around a shift from being dominated by the objects and boundaries of the space to being more aware and established in one’s self.
Despite the great diversity of personal expressions of this profound experience, the development and experience of self is at the core of human wellbeing. Our sense of self underlies the proper functioning of our emotions, intellect, senses and behavior. This self-referral functioning― brain activity supporting a greatly enhanced sense or reference to the innermost self of an individual―is thus enlivened or enhanced by an environment created by the principles of vastu.
For more information vedicarchitecture.org [1]; for more information about the Marharishi Vastu programs maharishi-india.org/programmes/p4sthap.html [2]For info on the Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa, incorporated on July 21, 2001, as a model of ideal city life see maharishivediccity.net [3]