Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

absolute principles of societynormal state. The life of an individual under the influence of increasingpositive forces enters into a field of increasing happiness and is eventuallytransformed into bliss-consciousness, in which state it gains thestatus of cosmic existence, eternal life. (p. 27)This last statement contains a principle of the greatest significancefor the structuring of human society. It establishes an absolute standardfor the conduct of human life. It locates an ultimate goal for the life ofall human beings: “bliss-consciousness, in which state it gains the statusof cosmic existence, eternal life.” As explained later in the Bhagavad-Gītā, this is the full development of human life, achieved through theregular practice of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation technique,in which the individual conscious mind finds itself to be in reality universal.The term “bliss-consciousness” refers to the nature of the directexperience of the field of pure consciousness through TranscendentalMeditation. A life established in bliss-consciousness, Maharishi (1967)teaches, is spontaneously lived without mistakes: It is a life of completefulfillment, and infinitely nourishing to all aspects of creation (p. 449).Speaking more recently in terms of his Vedic Science, Maharishi(1986a) explains the essential principle governing the possibility ofgaining such a state of life. He describes the field of self-referral consciousness:“The self-referral state of consciousness is that one elementin nature on the ground of which the infinite variety of creation is continuouslyemerging, growing, and dissolving. The whole field of changeemerges from this field of non-change, from this self-referral, immortalstate of consciousness. The interaction of the different intellectuallyconceived components of this unified, self-referral state of consciousnessis that all-powerful activity at the most elementary level of nature.”Continuing, he notes that:If this state of consciousness, or this state of nature’s activity, could bebrought on the level of daily life, then life would naturally be as orderlyand as full of all possibilities as is the nature of this self-referral state ofconsciousness. (p. 26)This is individual life in enlightenment, where one is able to reflectand embody the universal value of life, able to spontaneously think andact in accord with natural law, that is spontaneously live life free frommistakes (Dillbeck & Dillbeck, 1987, p. 398).109