Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

volume introductionthe Bhagavad-Gita and the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇ. The third and largestsection explores benefits of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program for resolving deeply rooted social problems, such asthose associated with governmental effectiveness, criminal rehabilitation,education, health care, economy, national security, and qualityof life.Section One: Overview Papers on GovernmentIan Douglas, former chairman of the New Zealand Planning Council,connects Maharishi’s Absolute Theory of Government with issues confrontingcontemporary government. He contrasts the divisive natureof contemporary governments with the functioning of a governmentthat has implemented groups promoting development of individual andcollective consciousness, which have been shown to produce greaterefficiency in governments and greater self-sufficiency for their constituencies.In the second paper, Drs. Rachel Goodman, Richard Wolfson, andDavid Goodman frame a solution to the multi-layered threats pervasivein modern societies by describing the foundations of Maharishi’sapproach to national security. The authors further summarize largescaleresearch studies that utilized the group practice of the TranscendentalMeditation and TM-Sidhi program as an intervention. Thesestudies demonstrated improvement in quality of life as well as decreasedincidents of violence on the local, national, and international levels.In the third paper, Victoria Alexander Herriott, J.D., L.L.M.,locates the foundation of the U.S. Constitution in Natural Law Theory,described in the work of Coke and Blackstone, and then compares thatunderstanding of natural law with descriptions of natural law providedin Maharishi’s Vedic Science and in quantum physics. She notes thatthe colonists chose to break away from English rule primarily becausethey understood that natural law supersedes any man-made law. In thesame way, Maharishi has described the constitution of the universe,or natural law, as more holistic and the foundation for the man-madelaws of a society. Dr. Alexander Herriott notes that Maharishi VedicScience provides a technique, the Transcendental Meditation program,whereby individuals and societies can attune themselves to the laws of15