Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and governmentlems of society on any level, be it social, economic, political, religious,or any other” (1978, p. 164).Individual Consciousness and Collective ConsciousnessAccording to Maharishi Vedic Science, the quality of life in any nationis ultimately determined by the quality of what Maharishi calls the collectiveconsciousness of the nation. Each level of society—family, community,city, state, nation, or the entire world—is described as havingits own characteristic collective consciousness, which is the wholenessof consciousness of the entire group (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1977,pp. 123–124). The most fundamental level of collective consciousnessis the same as that of individual consciousness, the unified field of pureconsciousness (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1985, pp. 56–76). Just as thequality of the behavior of the individual is an expression of the qualityof individual consciousness, the quality of behavior in society is seen asan integrated expression of the quality of collective consciousness of theindividuals of the nation.The view that society may possess some form of collective consciousnesshas also been expressed by the leading social thinker Emile Durkheim(1951). As described by Dillbeck et al. (1987), the empirical support forDurkheim’s views was not persuasive, and his concept of collective consciencehas therefore had little impact on the mainstream of sociologicalthought. By contrast, Maharishi provides a precise and complete descriptionof collective consciousness and its relationship to individual consciousnesswhich is readily amenable to empirical testing. Empirical testsof Maharishi’s description of collective consciousness are facilitated bythe fact that he has provided a practical and effective technology for systematicallyinfluencing the quality of collective consciousness in society.Violation of natural law: The basis of all problems in society. Akey feature of Maharishi’s description of collective consciousness isthat individual and collective consciousness reciprocally influence eachother. Due to this reciprocal relationship between individual and collectiveconsciousness, an increase in stress and tension in individualconsciousness will be mirrored in the quality of collective consciousness,and vice versa (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1978, pp. 258–262;Maharishi European Research University, 1982a, p. 6). Just as prob-398