Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

improving national economy—alliance with nature’s governmentthe scientific methods of the modern objective approach to knowledgeremains in its infancy. In fact, consciousness has been widely regardedas unsuitable for scientific investigation because of the generally vagueand indefinite meaning of the term “consciousness,” and because, byits very nature, consciousness is not directly observable by the senses(Hagelin, 1987, p. 56).Consciousness and Maharishi Vedic ScienceThe most ambitious and successful approach to formulating a satisfactoryscientific analysis of consciousness and human behavior stems fromthe work of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who over the past fift years progressivelyrevived and reinterpreted the ancient science of consciousnessexpounded for millennia by the sages and seers of the Vedic traditionof India (Chandler, 1987). Maharishi provided a highly precise andcoherent description of the nature and development of consciousness,its connection to the physical universe, and its relation to the behaviorof the individual and society. Maharishi has also provided the TranscendentalMeditation technique, “a reliable, systematic method bywhich consciousness can be directly experienced in its most fundamentalstate,” (Hagelin, 1987, pp. 56–57).In reviving and reinterpreting the knowledge of the Vedic tradition,Maharishi systematically expressed the theoretical basis of Vedicknowledge in terms that are accessible and empirically testable. He alsoactively encouraged empirical research on the testable implications ofthis Vedic paradigm and extensively explored the relationship betweenthe findings of this ancient subjective approach to knowledge and thoseof the most recent discoveries of the modern objective approach togaining knowledge (Chandler, 1987).At the basis of Maharishi Vedic Science is the proposition thathuman behavior has its basis in thought, and that the source of thoughtis the state of pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is an unbounded,nonlocalized, unified field which lies at the basis of all individual andsocial thought and behavior, and all behavior of the universe at large.According to Maharishi Vedic Science, consciousness is not an emergentproperty of matter that comes into existence through the functioningof the human nervous system, but is fundamental in nature. Pureconsciousness is seen as the essential basis of life, an unbounded, unified393