Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and governmentinto Reality was lost, the right sense of values forgotten and the stabilityof life destroyed. (1967, p. 10)Here Maharishi makes it clear that underlying the “obvious levelsof existence” is an absolute field, which, as we have seen, is the field ofpure consciousness. This absolute field is “Reality”: It is the essentialcontent of life. The more superficial, relative levels are the differentexpressions, or modes, of that Reality.Complete knowledge thus includes Absolute, or unmanifest and relative,or manifest levels of life. (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1967, e.g., pp.105–106, 442). Knowledge of the surface values alone, without knowledgeof their source, is partial knowledge, unreliable and misleadingat best. Action based on such inadequate knowledge must give rise tomistakes and its attendant suffering. The condition of a society basedon such action is clearly depicted by Maharishi: “Tension, confusion,superstition, unhappiness and fear prevailed” (p. 10).The inner mechanics of this phenomenon are explained by Maharishi(1967) in terms of the loss of dharma, loss of the path of evolution. Themistakes made by people in their daily life through lack of completeknowledge produce a cumulative effect in the society:Calamities, crises and catastrophes in a community or country arecaused by the increase of negative forces resulting from the evil deedsof a majority of their people. A high degree of concentration of negativeforces, without positive forces to balance them, ends in suffering anddestruction of life. (p. 27)The chain of cause and effect is here traced from “evil deeds of amajority of the people,” to the “increase of negative forces,” to “a highdegree of concentration of negative forces,” and finally to “suffering anddestruction in life.” An evil deed is defined as an action that violatesthe progressive value of natural law: It deviates from the path of evolution,which is, as we have seen, identified by Maharishi as the path ofrighteousness. Such an action, it is explained here, creates a negativeinfluence: It enlivens the destructive values of natural law. Many suchactions accumulate and concentrate that destructive quality in the societyat large. Eventually it breaks out in some form of suffering, whichis described as being opposed to life.122