Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

preventing disasters and distress& Rouzeré, 1984; Farrow & Hebert, 1982; Hebert, Lehmann, Tan,Travis, & Arenander, 2005; Travis, 2001a, 2001b; Travis, 2004; Travis& Arenander, 2006; Travis, Haaga, Hagelin, Tanner, Nidich, et al.,2009; Travis, Haaga, Hagelin, Tanner, Arenander, et al., 2009; Travis& Pearson, 1999; Travis & Shear, 2010; Travis & Wallace, 1997, 1999;Wallace, 1970).In some cultures, the transcendental ground of the universe is conceivedof in terms of a God concept, while in others, like Taoism andVedanta, it is simply regarded as an abstract field of pure consciousness.In our modern scientific culture, it could be regarded as the unified fieldof natural law (Hagelin, 1987). Many of the founders of modern physicshave expressed their insights that, like the perennial philosophy,the ultimate reality is a field of consciousness. Although the remarks ofgreat scientists are not formally a part of science, it is significant thatthose who understand the scientific paradigm most clearly have madesuch statements. For example, Sir James Jeans (1932), the eminent Britishphysicist and mathematician who was the first to propose that matteris continuously created throughout the universe, said:Thirty years ago, we thought, or assumed that we were heading towardsan ultimate reality of a mechanical kind . . . . Into this wholly mechanicalworld . . . life had stumbled by accident . . . . Today there is a widemeasure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approachesalmost unanimously, that the stream of knowledge is heading towardsa non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a greatthought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidentalintruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that weought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm ofmatter—not of course our individual minds, but the mind in whichthe atoms of which our individual minds have grown exist . . . .(1932, pp. 185–186)Jeans further said,When we view ourselves in space and time, our consciousnesses areobviously the separate individuals of a particle-picture, but when wepass beyond space and time, they may perhaps form ingredients of asingle continuous stream of life. As it is with light and electricity, somay it be with life; the phenomena may be individuals carrying on separateexistences in space and time, while in the deeper reality beyond515