Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unveil the 112-foot face of Lord Shiva or 'Adiyogi' in Coimbatore on Friday. The statue has been funded by the Isha Foundation, founded by the popular yoga guru Jaggi Vasudev.
According to SadhguruJaggi Vasudev, there are 112 chakras in the human body, with we can work on to explore 112 dimensions of life. Thus, there are 112 possibilities to experience the divine within you!
Five facts of the 112 foot Adiyogi statue
The Face of Lord Shiva statue is made of steel:
Guru Jaggi Vasudev said. The face is not just for aesthetics, it has geometric significance. A unique way of crafting a metal statue,” he said. “Essentially, we have taken small pieces of metal and put it together. This is a very hard way to do it, but it is the most inexpensive. This is unique – it hasn’t been used elsewhere,” he added.
It took 8 months to build the statue:
“We took about 2.5 years to design the face but our in-house team built it in eight months. It is an incredible feat of engineering and has been done in a very unique way,” Vasudev said.
It weighs 500 tonnes:
“We have done it on a small budget, but in quite an ingenious manner. Also, we have made Adiyogi in such way that it needs least amount of maintenance, which is important long-term,” Vasudev said.
The reason behind the statue being 112-foot tall:
Sadguru said about the significance of 112 feet: “Symbolically, 112 is a significant number because Adiyogi opened up 112 possibilities for human beings to reach their ultimate potential. According to him, there is also a scientific significance — there are 112 chakras in the human system, with which you can work, to explore 112 dimensions of life. “In pursuit of the divine, you don’t have to look up because it not somewhere else. Each of the 112 possibilities is a method to experience the divine within you. You just have to pick one,” Vasudev added.
The face of Adiyogi will be the largest face of its kind on the planet:
“This face is not a deity or temple, this is an iconic inspiration. The idea is not to build one more monument but to use it as a galvanizing force towards self-transformation,” Vasudev said. According to him, in the yogic culture, Shiva is not known as God, but as Adiyogi or the first yogi – the originator of yoga. “He was the one who first put this seed into the human mind that one can evolve if one is willing to strive. Yoga went everywhere not as a religion, belief system or philosophy but as methods,” he elaborated.
Isha Foundation will be installing 112-foot tall faces of Lord Shiva or `Adiyogi’ in the other three regions of the country – east, north and west. “We want to place these tall faces of Adiyogi in four corners of the country. The first one is in the south, at the Isha Yoga Centre, Coimbatore. The eastern one will most likely be in Varanasi. For the north, it will be somewhere north of Delhi and the western one will be in Mumbai,” Vasudev said.
By Premji
