Tibetan Gilded Silver Stupa Reliquary

Thinking Through Henri Bergson (1859-1941)’s “Creative Evolution”

The stupa is not merely a container but a microcosmic engine of becoming. For Bergson, spiritual life is duration spiritualized: the reliquary stores not inert bone or dust, but dynamic memory. Silver and gold interlace as dual symbols of change and eternity. Inside, the relic does not “rest”—it continues unfolding psychically in the devotee’s intuition. As one walks clockwise around the mandala-form stupa, they do not circle a static object, but enact duration as spiritual movement. The architecture is consciousness crystallized in sacred geometry: a temporal-spatial choreography of memory becoming presence.