Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

absolute principles of societyMaharishi (1967) illustrates and extends the notions of dharmas andtheir role in society in his commentary on 1.43, through the analogyof the laws that govern the functioning of different levels of the body:The laws maintaining the well-being of the whole body consist of a collectionof the laws maintaining its different parts, together with othersadded to coordinate different limbs. The laws of the evolution of thebody likewise are the sum total of those governing the evolution of differentlimbs, along with those coordinating them. (p. 68)Here the analogous term to dharma is “law,” in the sense of “lawsof nature” or “scientific laws”; “law” is in fact commonly held to be aprimary meaning of dharma (Monier-Williams et al., 1979, p. 510).Maharishi notes that there are different laws governing the functioningand coordination of the different levels of the body; here he mentions“parts” and “limbs,” which we may infer stand for all the different levelsof physiological functioning known to science, such as cells, tissues,organs, and systems (Wallace, Fagan, & Pasco, 1988). These laws areanalogous to the different dharmas, expressed in the traditions preservedin families, that structure the society. Further, Maharishi notes,one speaks of the law of the whole body, expressed in the laws thatgovern its different parts; in the same way dharma, considered in itsabsolute status, upholds life at all levels in the evolutionary directionthrough the different dharmas appropriate to each level.Maharishi (1967) extends this analysis to the understanding of societyin terms of the different levels of social life—the individual, as theunit of the society, the family, and the community—and in terms of thesociety as a whole:In a similar way, there are dharmas governing individual evolution andthere are dharmas which connect and coordinate different individuals.These latter are said primarily to govern the evolution of the society orcaste. In verse 40 Arjuna was thinking in terms of the dharma of thefamily. In this verse he is considering the dharma of the caste, that is, acollection of families upholding similar dharmas. (p. 68)Here, then, the notion of different dharmas is extended from individuallife and family traditions, to the traditions that govern largerunits of the society, in this case the caste. It is important to note thatMaharishi defines caste not in the conventional terms of an heredi-115