Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and governmentfield which gives rise to and pervades the physical universe (MaharishiMahesh Yogi, 1969; Bhagavad-Gita, 1977; The Principal Upanishads,1974; Sankaracharya, 1977). Maharishi Vedic Science also holds that itis possible for the individual to experience the field of pure consciousnessby allowing human awareness to experience its “self-referral” statein which consciousness is awake only to itself rather than identified withobjects of perception, thought, or feeling. A simple, systematic procedurefor experiencing this unified field of consciousness, Maharishi’sTranscendental Meditation technique, has been taught to over threemillion people around the world during the past thirty years (Dillbeck,Cavanaugh, Glenn, Orme-Johnson, & Mittlefehldt, 1987, p. 70).Consciousness and Unified Field Theory in PhysicsThe Vedic description of the unified field of consciousness, as broughtforth by Maharishi, bears a striking resemblance to fundamental featuresof the unified field described in contemporary supersymmetricquantum unified field theories in physics, such as the superstringtheory (Hagelin, 1987; 1989). Like these recent unified field theories,Maharishi Vedic Science describes a single, unbounded, unified field ofnature which transcends space and time and gives rise to the observedphysical universe through a lively internal dynamics of self-interactionor self-referral. Maharishi Vedic Science also describes the unified fieldas a field of pure intelligence, in which resides the totality of all the lawsof nature which govern the evolution of the universe. Likewise, physicsdescribes the unified field as an unmanifest field in which all naturallaws, all principles of orderly change, are inherent (Schwarzschild,1985; Waldrop, 1985).Maharishi Vedic Science goes beyond contemporary unified fieldtheories in physics in equating the unified field, described by physicsas underlying the objective physical universe, with the simplest level ofhuman consciousness, pure consciousness (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,1986, pp. 95–97; 1985, pp. 135–136). Maharishi (1986) explains therelationship between pure consciousness and the unified field as follows:The knowledge of the unified field has been discovered by modern scienceduring just the last few months and years, but the complete knowledgeof the unified field has always been available in the Vedic literature.Today quantum physics is peeping into the details of the unified field394