Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and governmenttial attribute of cosmic life. It forms the unified “basis” of life, andoperates from there. It is, in other words, one with the universal fieldof pure intelligence.In addition, dharma is the “invincible power” of nature: It is anactive principle, or what Maharishi (1972) has elsewhere termed “creativeintelligence.” Its role is to “uphold” existence by maintaining “evolution.”The term evolution is here used by Maharishi in a technicalsense that is different from modern usage: It refers to the dynamics,implicit in the design of life, through which life rises to its highestvalue. Dharma upholds evolution in a direction that we would uniformlyrecognize as good: It “promotes worldly prosperity and spiritualfreedom” (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1967, pp. 26-27).Maharishi (1967) explains that dharma conducts the process of evolutionin two ways, by lending “support” to elements that are “helpful”to evolution, and by “discouraging” things that are “opposed to it.”In this it is invincible because, being the essential nature of life itself,nothing could lie outside its sway.Maharishi (1967) goes on to describe in detail the mechanics of evolutionfor which dharma is responsible. He notes first that the movementof the evolutionary process is composed of two elements that areopposite in character:When life evolves from one state to another, the first state is dissolvedand the second brought into existence. In other words, the process ofevolution is carried out under the influence of two opposing forces—oneto destroy the first state and the other to give rise to a second state. (p. 27)The role of dharma, he goes on, is to coordinate the functioning ofthese two elements so that they work together in a perfectly integratedfashion:These creative and destructive forces working in harmony with oneanother maintain life and spin the wheel of evolution. Dharma maintainsequilibrium between them. By maintaining equilibrium betweenopposing cosmic forces, dharma safeguards existence and upholds thepath of evolution, the path of righteousness. (p. 27)In the more recent formal presentation of his Vedic Science,Maharishi (1986a) describes this process in terms of the laws of naturethat have their basis in the unified field of all the laws of nature, the106