Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

the maharishi effect and governmentConsidering this phenomenon [infinite correlation] in the light of theUnified Field Theories of modern Physics and Quantum Cosmology,we understand that the scale of Super Unification at the level of theUnified Field is associated with a fundamental phase transition in thestructure of Natural Law from a diversified state to a completely unifiedstate. The defining characteristic of such a phase transition is that the‘correlation length’, which is a measure of the connectedness or correlationof different components of a system, expands to finally becomeinfinite. (Maharishi, 1995, p. 515)This means that everyone is influencing everyone else on the level of theunified field, a concept that is expressed in the ancient Vedic texts as“the world is my family” (Maha Upanishad, 6.71).Maharishi’s theory of government further posits that there are levelsof collective consciousness corresponding to every level of social organization,family, community, city, state, nation, and world. There is afamily consciousness that we feel when we enter a home, whether it isstressed or happy. Similarly, we feel a city’s consciousness when weenter the city, and we feel the differences in two national consciousnesseswhen we cross the border from one country to the next. Thisidea is not new, although it has not been an ordinary part of everydayparlance or mainstream social science. The concepts of zeitgeist (‘spiritof the time’) and ‘spirit of the nation’ are familiar. In his third inauguraladdress, Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “It is not enough to clotheand feed the body of the Nation, and instruct and inform its mind. Forthere is also the spirit. And of the three, the greatest is spirit” (Zevin,1946, p. 269).According to Maharishi, there is a reciprocal relationship betweenindividual and collective consciousness. Individuals are the units ofcollective consciousness, collective consciousness is the sum of theinfluences of the individual members of a population. Reciprocally,collective consciousness influences every individual. The behavioraland mental processes of anyone coming into the purview of a collectiveconsciousness will be wittingly or unwittingly affected by it, as is ourexperience when we enter a home or city or nation.In Maharishi’s Absolute Theory of Government, the overall outcomesof societies, defined, for example, by their rates of crime, hospitaladmission, and auto accidents, are not merely the products of the indi-231