Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and governmentDillbeck, 1987; Cavanaugh, King, & Titus, 1990). Maharishi (1978)explains:Whenever one per cent of the people in any community practise TranscendentalMeditation, balance in nature increases, accidents becomeless, and all the collective values, which we call social values of society,become more positive.Individuals become incapable of thinking wrong things. Their thinkingchanges in favour of society. (p. 163)Most significantly, research has demonstrated the ability of theMaharishi Effect to reduce violence even in war, and to eliminate, forexample, the tensions that formerly existed between the superpowers(Orme-Johnson & Dillbeck, 1987).Maharishi has described the mechanisms underlying the MaharishiEffect in some detail, and in terms that are entirely recognizable fromthe earlier perspective of his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gītā. Thefunction of his Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program,Maharishi (1986a) explains, is to radiate the evolutionary power ofnatural law throughout the environment. He explains:How do these radiations go far and wide in the universe? How do theytravel? They travel through the same channels used by the evolutionarypower of nature. From the most quiet, transcendental level, natureperforms, and it performs within itself.He concludes:This transcendental level of nature’s functioning is the level of infinitecorrelation. When the group awareness is brought in attunement withthat level, then a very intensified influence of coherence radiates and agreat richness is created. (p. 75)The ultimate state of the society in which the individuals haveattained higher states of consciousness, Maharishi explains (e.g. 1976,1978), is a completely different order of life than that to which we areaccustomed. The term “ideal” indicates perfection of life on both theindividual and the collective level. In his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gītā, Maharishi (1967) refers to this state of life as “the Kingdom ofGod on earth” (p. 70). The field of pure consciousness is the level fromwhich creation arises, is maintained and governed; when, through the134