Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

preventing disasters and distressHagelin writes,In the last few decades scientists realized that with the progressiontowards finer distance scales an increasing unification of the laws ofnature takes place so that previously separate quantum fields turn out tobe merely different components of underlying unified quantum fields.This process of unification culminates in the complete unification at thelevel of the Planck scale (10 –33 cm). Various force and matter fields areunified into one single unified field—the holistic transcendental fieldunderlying all manifest creation. (in Maharishi, 1996, pp. 159, 160)Hagelin points out that if, as is proposed in current quantum fieldtheory, the unified field is the source of all phenomena, it should bethe source of subjective as well as objective existence. Indeed, since theunified field is the only dynamical degree of freedom present at thesuperunified scale, at that level the observer and observed both wouldbe found within the same self-interacting dynamics of the unified field,hence it would be formally as much a field of subjectivity as of objectivity(Hagelin, 1987). Hagelin cites research on the effects of TranscendentalMeditation program on social indicators as the chief empiricalevidence available for a field theoretic view of consciousness and forthe connection between consciousness and the unified field (Dillbeck,1990; Dillbeck, Banus, Polanzi, & Landrith III, 1988; Dillbeck,Cavanaugh, Glenn, Orme-Johnson, & Mittlefehldt, 1987; Goodman,Orme-Johnson, Rainforth, & Goodman, 1997; J.S. Hagelin, Rainforth,Orme-Johnson, Cavanaugh, Alexander, et al., 1999; Hatchard,Deans, Cavanaugh, & Orme-Johnson, 1996; Orme-Johnson, Alexander,& Davies, 1990; Orme-Johnson, Alexander, Davies, Chandler, &Larimore, 1988; Orme-Johnson, Dillbeck, & Alexander, 2003; Orme-Johnson & Oates, 2009).This research has: (1) statistically controlled for a wide range ofdemographic variables; (2) used causal cross-lagged analysis methods,which have indicated that increasing numbers practicing the TranscendentalMeditation program are followed by improvements in society;(3) employed time series analyses to control for seasonality, trends,drifts, and rival hypotheses, and to demonstrate temporal relationshipsamong variables that support a causal model; and (4) experimentallycreated large groups of Transcendental Meditation and TranscendentalMeditation-Sidhi program participants in various populations to519