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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Founder of Maharishi University of Management
by Dr. Bevan Morris, President, Maharishi University of Management
 In 1955 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi began to offer to the world the quintessence of the ancient Vedic wisdom of the Himalayas. He introduced the simple, natural, and universal technique of Transcendental Meditation. This extraordinary technique has been used by sages both ancient and modern to experience and utilize the field of pure consciousness—the transcendental field at the basis of the universe.
In the succeeding decade, during ten world tours, Maharishi explained to the people of over 100 nations that pure consciousness is a limitless ocean of life, outside of the realm of time and space, while the different aspects of creation are the ripples and waves of this vast ocean. The Transcendental Meditation technique enables any individual to experience this field of pure consciousness and begin to utilize the unlimited treasures of this field—infinite happiness, creativity, intelligence, and organizing power—for maximum success and fulfillment in daily life.
Maharishi acquired this great wisdom at the feet of his beloved Master, Guru Dev, Brahmananda Saraswati, the most illustrious embodiment of Vedic Wisdom in the long tradition of Vedic masters.
Maharishi founds the Spiritual Regeneration Movement
When Maharishi began to teach this ancient wisdom in India, he was deeply inspired by the beautiful, enriching experiences of bliss, peace, and unboundedness gained through the Transcendental Meditation program by tens of thousands of people of every age, profession, and religion.
Thrilling with this inspiration, Maharishi inaugurated the Spiritual Regeneration Movement on January 1, 1958, to bring this supreme knowledge to everyone and spiritually regenerate life on earth. This initiative was desperately needed at that moment in history, when the rise of fear and devastating weaponry endangered humanity’s very survival.
Modern science glimpses pure consciousness
When Maharishi began his teaching, modern science had not yet glimpsed the reality of a single universal field at the basis of all natural phenomena, though this was Einstein’s long scientific quest. But by the 1990s, theoretical physicists were describing the unified field mathematically—and the mathematical description corresponds precisely with the description of pure consciousness by Maharishi and the ancient Vedic Rishis. Maharishi had predicted that science, through ever deeper investigation into natural law, would arrive at the field of pure consciousness. This is now happening.
But Maharishi’s teaching remains far ahead of modern science in a crucial respect. In modern science, the unified field remains a mathematical abstraction—profound yet irrelevant to practical life. From Maharishi’s perspective, the discovery of the unified field is the most practical discovery ever—for now, through the effortless, twice-daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique, anyone can easily experience the unified field deep within, awakening and harnessing its infinite potential for effortless fulfillment of desires.
Maharishi transforms the world’s understanding of meditation
Before Maharishi, meditation was thought to be extremely difficult, slow to produce results, and impractical, intended only for the recluse, not for ordinary people with responsibilities.
Maharishi reversed this understanding. From his own experience he knew that life is bliss. Pure consciousness is pure bliss. It is everyone’s birthright to discover this inner field of bliss.
Experiencing bliss-consciousness within, Maharishi discovered, is easy to accomplish, because the mind’s natural tendency is to move toward fields of greater happiness. The Transcendental Meditation technique sets the mind on the way to experiencing pure consciousness, whose nature is bliss.
Moving in the direction of bliss, the mind naturally finds increasing charm at every step. Effortlessly and spontaneously, the mind moves inward to ever more refined and charming levels of the thinking process. Transcending even the finest aspect of thought, the mind experiences pure self-referral consciousness—and comes out enlivened with its qualities of bliss and peace and energy. The mind’s inner treasure becomes available for greater success and fulfillment in life.
Maharishi trains teachers of the Transcendental Meditation program
Maharishi soon realized that to bring this wisdom to everyone on earth, he would have to “multiply himself.” In 1961 he began holding courses to train teachers of the Transcendental Meditation program. Some 40,000 teachers have now been trained throughout the world, and they have taught the Transcendental Meditation technique to six million people in 100 countries.
Now any individual can rise to higher states of consciousness and enjoy eternal, pure consciousness in everyday life—life filled with peace and joy, supported by the infinite creative intelligence of natural law. This, Maharishi explains, is normal life, free of stress, strain, mistakes, and suffering.
Scientific research on the Transcendental Meditation technique
Virtually from the start, Maharishi invited scientists to study the Transcendental Meditation technique. The first studies revealed that the technique spontaneously produces a unique, restfully alert style of physiological functioning—a fourth major state of consciousness, distinct from waking, sleeping and dreaming. Since then more than 600 scientific studies have been completed, conducted at more than 200 universities and institutions in 30 countries and published in 160 peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly journals.
The Maharishi Effect: Creating coherence in world consciousness
1974 brought the scientific discovery of the Maharishi Effect, in which just 1% of the population in a city practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique improves the whole city’s quality of life, evidenced by reduced crime and accident rates and improvements in other social indicators. This discovery, which scientists named the Maharishi Effect, established a new formula for creating an ideal society, free from problems. Through the window of science, Maharishi saw the dawn of a new age of perfection for human life. On January 12, 1975, he inaugurated the Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment for the whole world.
The advanced Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi program and Yogic Flying
In 1976 Maharishi made a discovery crucial to creating world peace. From Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, he brought to light the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi program, including Yogic Flying. This advanced technology enlivens total brain functioning and enables one not only to experience pure consciousness but spontaneously to project thought and action from this field, the total potential of nature’s intelligence. Thought and action become most natural, powerful, and life-supporting. One gains the support of all the laws of nature for fulfilling every desire.
The complete theoretical and practical knowledge of Yoga had now come to light after thousands of years. Yoga means union, the union of individual awareness with the field of pure consciousness. It needed a scientific age for the world to appreciate the significance of Yoga for creating enlightenment in the individual and invincibility for the nation.
More than 100,000 people worldwide have learned this advanced program, including Yogic Flying, and 50 scientific studies have demonstrated that just the square root of 1% of a population practicing Yogic Flying together creates the Maharishi Effect for the whole society.
The Maharishi Effect was created for the whole world at the end of 1983 when more than 7,000 Yogic Flyers—the square root of 1% of the world’s population—gathered here at Maharishi University of Management. Worldwide trends became more positive and peaceful while crime and violence decreased. Now, for the first time, the world had an actual peace technology. Successive Yogic Flying assemblies brought an end to the Cold War and the dangerous rivalry of the superpowers.
Group practice of Yogic Flying, Maharishi repeatedly emphasized, is the key to the future peace of the world. This creates such intense harmony and coherence in national consciousness that the nation will rise to invincibility, with no negativity able to arise from within or penetrate from without. Maharishi envisioned the world’s children becoming its peace creators: As students in schools around the world learn the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs and practice these programs in groups, they will create invincibility and peace as a spontaneous by-product. Maharishi also invited governments to establish coherence-creating groups of Yogic Flyers. Then the world will be rid of war forever, and permanent peace through the Maharishi Effect will become one of Maharishi’s enduring legacies.
Consciousness-Based education and Maharishi University of Management
Maharishi in 1971 founded a university, Maharishi International University (later renamed Maharishi University of Management) that utilizes these most advanced technologies of consciousness, and in so doing he founded Consciousness-Based education. He also founded Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment, the most highly-awarded school in Iowa. Consciousness-Based education has produced extraordinary results in terms of integrated brain functioning, high levels of creativity, and academic success. This approach to education is now spreading all over the world. More than 375 schools in 60 countries around the globe have adopted this approach. More than 200,000 students are now practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique, with tens of thousands also practicing the advanced Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi program.
Maharishi Vedic Science and Technology
Another legacy is his Vedic Science and Technology. This he formulated on the basis of the complete theoretical and practical knowledge of Veda available in the traditional Vedic literature and the widespread personal experiences of higher states of consciousness. Veda means knowledge — the complete knowledge of natural law. Maharishi Vedic Science and Technology is the science of the complete knowledge of natural law. Its technologies include the Transcendental Meditation technique and Yogic Flying, which harness nature’s infinite organizing power to transform human life into Heaven on Earth.
The Veda and Vedic literature
Throughout time the sounds of the Vedic literature have been preserved in India, passed on perfectly from generation to generation, so that the Vedic expressions and the wisdom they contain would never be lost to human life. But over the centuries the many texts of the Vedic literature became scattered and separated into different traditions and competing understandings. The sequential structure of the Vedic literature was forgotten; its significance for human life became obscured. Life on earth fell into suffering.
Maharishi’s genius has been, in a single generation, to restore the reality of Vedic literature as complete knowledge of natural law — the knowledge whose practical benefit is Heaven on Earth.
The Vedic literature has been misunderstood as a set of books written by the ancient seers. Maharishi discovered that, in fact, the impulses of the Vedic literature exist eternally in the field of pure consciousness. They are the unmanifest vibrations of the self-referral dynamism of pure consciousness being awake to its own unbounded nature.
These “primordial sounds,” as Maharishi termed them, are the laws of nature in their fundamental state. They embody the structuring dynamics of creation, the totality of nature’s intelligence and organizing power, ceaselessly sustaining the universe in absolute order and harmony. For this reason Maharishi refers to the Veda and Vedic literature as the Constitution of the Universe and the government of nature.
The discovery of Veda and Vedic literature in human physiology
Under Maharishi’s inspiration, Maharaja Adhiraj Rajaraam, a medical doctor with a PhD in brain and cognitive science, discovered that, in both structure and function, human physiology is a replica of the Vedic literature. The laws structuring each are identical. Our own physiology is the Constitution of the Universe made manifest. The administrator of the universe—Veda, the total potential of natural law — is the inner administrator of our own life. On the level of physiology as well as consciousness, the individual is truly cosmic.
Maharishi’s insights into the Vedic literature are of the highest practical significance for humanity. Through his technologies of consciousness, the total potential of natural law can be awakened and utilized by everyone for success and fulfillment in life. This opens a new era for life on earth, the practical possibility of creating Heaven on Earth, the supreme goal of the human race.
The Vedic Tradition—a complete science of life
Maharishi has brought to light the ancient Vedic knowledge as a complete and practical science of life. The disciplines of Maharishi Vedic Science and Technology include:
- Maharishi Ayurveda, the most ancient and complete system of health care, balancing consciousness, physiology, behavior, and environment—natural, prevention-oriented, and side-effect free.
- Maharishi Jyotish, which gives insight into the cycles of nature so that future trends may be predicted and problems prevented before they arise.
- Maharishi Gandharva Veda, Vedic music, the eternal music of nature, which creates a balancing and harmonizing influence in the individual and environment.
- Maharishi Sthapatya Veda design, architecture in accord with natural law, to create ideal villages, towns, and cities — a beautiful environment for everyone to feel “I am living in Heaven.”
- Maharishi’s Supreme Political Science, the principles by which any government can rise to be on a par with the perfect administration of the universe by natural law.
- Maharishi’s Vedic Management, which enables managers to develop supreme alertness, creative intelligence, and support of natural law for maximum success.
- Maharishi Vedic Organic Agriculture, which enlivens the plants’ inner intelligence for maximally nourishing food.
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Maharishi Ayurveda, the most ancient and complete system of health care, balancing consciousness, physiology, behavior, and environment — natural, prevention-oriented, and side-effect free.
•
Maharishi Jyotish, which gives insight into the cycles of nature so that future trends may be predicted and problems prevented before they arise.
•
Maharishi Gandharva Veda, Vedic music, the eternal music of nature, which creates a balancing and harmonizing influence in the individual and environment.
•
Maharishi Sthapatya Veda design, architecture in accord with natural law, to create ideal villages, towns, and cities — a beautiful environment for everyone to feel “I am living in Heaven.”
•
Maharishi’s Supreme Political Science, the principles by which any government can rise to be on a par with the perfect administration of the universe by natural law.
•
Maharishi’s Vedic Management, which enables managers to develop supreme alertness, creative intelligence, and support of natural law for maximum success.
•
Maharishi Vedic Organic Agriculture, which enlivens the plants’ inner intelligence for maximally nourishing food.
Maharishi’s new definition of government
Maharishi observed that a government is worthy of the name only if it can prevent problems. A government that cannot prevent problems remains a “football” of circumstances and is itself a problem.
Today’s governments are powerless to prevent problems because they innocently mirror the nation’s collective consciousness. When the people are stressed, the collective consciousness is stressed and the whole society is beset with problems. Unless collective stress is systematically reduced, no government will ever be able to eliminate problems and suffering.
This is why Maharishi called for a “Group for a Government,” a group of Yogic Flyers in every capital city to awaken the infinite organizing power of natural law in the whole society, dissolving collective stress and creating peace, progress, and happiness. The same nourishing power of nature that administers the universe without mistakes and problems can administer life in every nation. With rising support of nature, the nation’s problems will disappear like darkness at the onset of light.
Maharishi’s Master Plan to Create Heaven on Earth
Maharishi has provided a blueprint for creating a heavenly world. This plan calls for reconstructing the whole world to fully glorify the inner and outer levels of life. The inner level of life will be glorified through developing higher states of consciousness in the individual, the outer level by applying the Vedic approaches to health, education, agriculture, architecture, and city planning.
The Global Country of World Peace
In 2000, Maharishi established the Global Country of World Peace, a nation without borders, a home for all peace-loving people of the world, embracing all cultures and traditions and all of the world’s 192 nations, for the purpose of making the collective consciousness of every nation so highly coherent and filled with harmony that every nation will be invincible—free from all suffering from inside and outside the nation — and the world family will enjoy perpetual peace. As its first ruler, Maharishi crowned the great scientist who had discovered that physiology is consciousness and every human being has unlimited potentiality—Maharaja Adhiraj Rajaraam.
With rising support of nature, every nation will eradicate poverty and achieve economic self-sufficiency. Every human being will enjoy all the treasures of human life, material and divine. The destructive power that has dominated the world for centuries will be replaced by the nourishing, harmonizing, integrating power of natural law. Every nation will nourish every other nation, and everyone will enjoy Heaven on Earth.
Maharishi’s unprecedented achievements
Maharishi began his worldwide Movement endowed only with the knowledge of life bestowed on him by his master, Guru Dev. With this knowledge alone, he knew, he could spiritually regenerate the world. He embarked on this task with simplicity of purpose and unboundedness of vision. Because of his tireless devotion to the welfare of humanity, the world draws ever closer to total spiritual regeneration of life—to Heaven on Earth.
All that remains is to fully implement this knowledge—primarily by establishing large groups of Yogic Flying Vedic Pandits and Consciousness-Based educational institutions worldwide.
Maharishi—a quiet guardian of all nations
From the pinnacle of Unity Consciousness, Maharishi experienced the whole world as his own family. Moved by unbounded compassion, he spent every moment of his life creating Heaven on Earth for everyone, now and for all generations.
Thanks to the magnificent legacy of knowledge he left us, the work he began more than 50 years ago will soon reach its fulfillment. A golden era will dawn, an enlightened age. As Maharishi wrote, “A new humanity will be born, fuller in conception and richer in experience and accomplishment in all fields. Joy of life will belong to everyone, love will dominate human society, truth and virtue will reign in the world, peace on earth will be permanent, and all will live in fulfillment in fullness of life in Unity Consciousness.”
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