Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and governmentThe only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I—I inthe widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind thathas ever said or felt ‘I,’—am the person, if any, who controls the ‘motionof the atoms’ according to the Laws of Nature. (1944, 1985, pp. 92–93,quoted in Farwell, 1996)The conclusion from quantum mechanics is that our perceptual realityof the material world as well as our voluntary action upon thatworld is not structured “out there” but is structured “in here” in themind. The apparent stability of the observed world and the high degreeof agreement that is achieved between observers is because the mostfundamental level of consciousness where perception is constructed,transcendental consciousness, is universal and eternally non-changing,infinitely stable.With recent developments of unified field theory, several physicistshave noted that at fundamental scales, much of the objectivecharacter of macroscopic, classical physics begins to disappear and characteristicallysubjective qualities begin to emerge (P. Davies, 1992, pp.104–112; Llewellyn-Smith, 1981). Physicist John Hagelin, an expert insuperstring theory, has advanced this discussion by pointing out structuraland functional parallels between the unified field theory and pureconsciousness, as described in the Vedic tradition of India (Hagelin,1987). Hagelin’s and colleagues’ core papers on superstring theory areamong the most cited references in the physical sciences (Antoniadis,Ellis, Hagelin, & Nanopoulos, 1987; Antoniadis, Ellis, Hagelin, &Nanopoulos, 1988; Ellis, Hagelin, Nanopoulos, Olive, & Srednicki,1984; Ellis, Hagelin, Nanopoulos, & Tamvakis, 1993) and he is directlyfamiliar with transcendental consciousness from over 30 years of practiceof the Transcendental Meditation program. In addition, he hasspent hundreds of hours discussing modern physics and consciousnesswith Maharishi, the world’s foremost expert in consciousness and inthe Vedic tradition of knowledge (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1963, 1967,1977, 1986, 1994, 1996). Hagelin points out that while the details ofthe superstring and its precise mathematical formulation remain livelyareas of research and debate, there is little dissension among theoristsas to the veracity of the overall picture that natural law is unified at thePlanck scale (Hagelin, 1987; Hagelin, 1989).518