An Introduction
Kenneth Chandler
Maharishi International University
Fairfield, Iowa
When Maharishi heard from major scientists of the recent advances of unified field theory in physics, he asserted that modern science had glimpsed the unified field described in ancient Vedic science. "The knowledge of the unified field," he said (1986, p.29), "has been discovered by modern science during just the last few years, but the complete knowledge of the unified field has always been available in the Vedic literature. " Modern science, he proposed, had now arrived at the edge of comprehending, through unified quantum field theories, what Vedic science had described on the basis of exploration of the least excited state of consciousness since ancient times: that all diversity in nature sequentially emerges from a unified source through a precise self-interacting dynamics. Modern experimental science and Maharishi's Medic Science could now be seen as two diverse yet mutually complementary approaches to knowing the same underlying reality - one through the empirical method, the other through the exploration of the least excited state of consciousness. Through Maharishi's inspiration, this has become a major research program that has engaged the attention of many scientists and that has yielded very rich results.
Over the past decade, Maharishi has participated in numerous symposia with major scientists on the theme of exploring modern science and Vedic Science to discover detailed structural similarities in their descriptions of the unified field. These symposia have attracted eminent unified field theorists, mathematicians, and physiologists, including a number of Nobel laureates, as well as many of the most highly recognized pundits of the Vedic tradition. Out of these interactions has come a meeting of two traditions, East and West, on the ground of their common theme: the investigation of the unified field. Those who have followed these symposia have recognized a deep and impressive structure of knowledge common to both traditions. Both identify a boundless, all-pervading field underlying all states of matter and energy in the universe; both locate it on the most fundamental time-distance scale of nature; both assign to it the same properties of self-sufficiency, self-interaction, infinite dynamism, unboundedness, and unity, among many other common attributes; both identify a threefold structure at the basis of all nature; and both describe a dynamics by which the diversity of nature sequentially emerges from this unified field according to precise laws. The result of these symposia has been that many scientists, following Maharishi's lead, now feel confident to assert that the unified field described by physics and the unified field of consciousness described by Vedic Science are one and the same.
In the first issue of Modern Science and Medic Science, the lead article by John Hagelin explored many of the deep connections between contemporary unified field theory in physics and Maharishi's Vedic Science from the standpoint of an active field theorist. His work brought these two diverse methods of inquiry into close relation, drawing upon both the latest developments of unified field theories and the direct experience of the unified field.
Dr. Hagelin presented evidence for Maharishi's assertion that the unified field of consciousness and the unified field of physics are the same. His main empirical evidence for this new paradigm was drawn from experimental research in the social sciences on the "Maharishi Effect"„the measurable effects on society resulting from the practice of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field. As further evidence for the identity of consciousness and the unified field, he cited deep parallels between the descriptions of the unified field found in physics and Vedic Science. These strikingly similar descriptions support the conclusion that modern science and Vedic Science are two complementary methods of approach to the same underlying unity of nature.
It is a common belief that the unified field of physics is an objective reality of nature and that consciousness is a subjective experience, and that the two belong therefore to different categories of existence. According to this understanding, one is purely material, the other is purely mental, and the two cannot, therefore, be equated.
Through the experience of pure consciousness described in Vedic Science, that unified level of intelligence is experienced, not as a mere subjective and localized phenomenon of thought or sensation, but as a non-changing, unbounded field of being, pervading all forms and phenomena in the universe on a non-active, or silent, and unmanifest level. Objective and subjective aspects of nature are seen as but two manifest modes of this unified field at the unmanifest basis of existence. A thorough examination of the nature of the unified field in physics and the descriptions of unbounded consciousness brought to light by Maharishi supports the thesis that they are but two complementary modes of apprehending a single underlying reality.
The view of nature as consisting of billiard-ball-type objects, each separate, discrete, and isolated from the other, belongs to the old classical Newtonian view of the world. Quantum field theory in modern physics no longer views nature in this way, but provides a new understanding in which the primary reality is that of quantum fields. All forms of matter and energy are understood to be excitations of these underlying fields. In the last year and a half, the apparently different fields of gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong interactions have been theoretically unified as different levels of expression of one single underlying field. All forms and phenomena in the universe are just modes of vibratory excitation of this one, all-pervading unified field.
Today, the success of modern physics in unifying our understanding of physical nature is mirrored in the success of Maharishi's Vedic Science in unifying our understanding of consciousness. When the unbounded level of pure consciousness is gained as a direct experience, all activity in nature is experienced as an excited state of that one, all-pervading field. Since quantum field theory also describes all activity in the universe as excitations of one underlying field, the simplest interpretation is that there is a single unified field which can be known both through direct experience and through the objective sciences. In this new understanding of the unity of nature, mind and matter cease to be viewed as ultimately different and come to be seen as expressions of a deeper unity of unbounded consciousness.
The unity of nature is not a mere hypothetical unity, nor a unity of intellectual understanding or interpretation. It is a unity of direct experience that has been described in almost every tradition and every historical epoch. Maharishi's Vedic Science only brings to light what has been the experience of many of the greatest minds throughout history. What is radically new is that Maharishi has provided a systematic and reliable method by which anyone can gain access to this level of experience. This method of access is the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field.
The Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field has been introduced by Maharishi as an effective means for opening the unified field to all as a direct experience. In this way, the unified field becomes universally accessible to systematic exploration.
The Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field includes the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program and the TM-Sidhi program (discussed separately below) as its key components. The TM program provides a systematic procedure by which the mind is allowed to settle naturally into a state of restful alertness, the self- referral state of pure consciousness in which the mind is completely silent and yet awake. In this way, the state of pure consciousness, which has been the subject of philosophical speculation throughout the centuries, can now be investigated on the basis of direct experience. Maharishi's immensely important contribution to the clarification and elucidation of this experience of pure consciousness will be a theme for analysis in future issues of this journal.
This quiet, still level of consciousness has rarely been experienced in the past because no systematic and effective technique has been available for providing that experience. The TM technique is a simple, natural, and effortless procedure for allowing the awareness to settle into a state of deep silence while remaining awake. It has proved to be uniquely effective in making this level of experience widely accessible. Through the deep rest gained during the practice of the technique, balance is systematically created on all levels of physiological functioning, and the nervous system is habituated to a more settled, coherent, and alert style of functioning. In time, a state of completely integrated functioning is gained, in which pure consciousness is spontaneously and permanently maintained. Once this state is established, the silent, self-referral field of awareness is always present as a stable, non-changing ground underlying all changing states of awareness. This integrated state of consciousness, Maharishi holds, is the basis of all excellence in life and provides the foundation for the further development of higher states of consciousness through the practice of the TM and TM-Sidhi program.
States of Consciousness
The ultimate purpose of the TM and TM-Sidhi program?nd all aspects of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field and Vedic Science?s the development of consciousness, the unfoldment of the full human potential to live life in enlightenment. Enlightenment is that fully developed state of life in which one enjoys complete knowledge and lives in total fulfillment. In this state, one lives in harmony with all laws of nature, enjoying the full support of natural law to achieve any desire without making mistakes.
Maharishi has identified a specific sequence of higher states of consciousness, each distinct from waking, dreaming, and sleeping, which, he asserts, arise in the normal full course of human development. Each state of consciousness unfolds on the basis of a concrete shift in the mode of the individual's neurophysiological functioning. These states can be distinguished from waking, dreaming, and sleeping on the basis of their distinct physiological correlates. The higher states of consciousness that arise in this developmental sequence are, Maharishi asserts, a source of greater joy, knowledge, and fulfillment than ordinary waking state life.
The attainment of these higher states of consciousness is the basis for fully understanding and applying the theoretical assertions of Maharishi's Vedic Science. Vedic Science is just the exposition of the full range of direct experience that unfolds during the course of the natural development of human consciousness. These states of consciousness are universal stages of human development accessible to everyone through the practice of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field. What before was shrouded in the veil of mysticism is now scientifically understood as a normal, natural stage of human life available to anyone.
Another article in the first issue, by Dr. Charles Alexander et al., examined the empirical evidence, drawn from behavioral and neurophysiological research, for the existence of these higher stages of human development. This article unfolded the scientific basis for understanding and verifying higher states of consciousness from the standpoint of a developmental psychologist, and laid the basis for a new paradigm of human development.
Science and Vedic Science
Each individual nervous system, when refined through the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field, is an instrument through which the silent field of pure unbounded consciousness becomes accessible as a field of inquiry. Since the unified field is all-pervading and everywhere the same, a nervous system finely enough attuned in its functioning can gain the ability, according to Maharishi, to experience and identify itself with that unbounded, undifferentiated and unified field underlying all activity in nature. By taking one's awareness from the gross level of sensory objects to perception of finer levels of activity, one gains the ability to experience that level of nature's functioning at which the unity of pure consciousness gives rise to diversity. Gaining this unified state of consciousness is the means by which anyone can experience and confirm the structure of knowledge and reality described in Vedic Science. This is partly what makes Vedic Science a precise, verifiable science: all theoretical structures of the science can be verified through a reliable, systematic, effective technology. Other foundational aspects of this science will be considered below.
The Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field becomes, in the modern world, a method for the investigation of the unified field and the most refined level of nature's activity through direct experience. Modern physics, through its objective method of inquiry, has glimpsed a unified field underlying all of nature; but physics has reached a fundamental impasse in its ability to experimentally investigate the unified field, because the energies required to probe these finer scales exceed those attainable by any conceivable particle accelerator technology. Where physics can go no further, the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field facilitates inquiry beyond the limitations of the objective approach by providing an effective means of exploring the unified field on the level of direct experience.
This exploration of the unified field through the subjective experience of consciousness is a well structured program of research. It is guided by the knowledge of Vedic Science set forth by Maharishi in conjunction with the modern sciences. When descriptions of the unified field from the standpoint of modern science, Vedic Science, and direct experience coalesce, the three together provide a basis of complete knowledge. This program of research is based on Maharishi's exposition of the Vedic literature as a complete and detailed expression of the unified field.
According to Maharishi's exposition of the Veda, the sequential emergence of the diverse laws of nature from the unified field can be directly experienced in the field of consciousness as a sequence of sounds; these are presented in the sequential emergence of phonological structures of the Vedic texts. Veda is just the structure of the self-interacting dynamics through which the unified field gives rise to the diverse expressions of natural law. Fundamental theoretical concepts in physics and other disciplines, insofar as they are valid descriptions of nature, should therefore correspond to different aspects of Vedic literature that describe these realities from the standpoint of direct experience.
The basic program of research of modern science and Vedic Science, as conceived by Maharishi, thus has three major goals: (I) to develop an integrated structure of knowledge by fathoming the depth of correspondence between the principles of modern science and Vedic Science; (2) to provide, from Vedic Science, a foundation in direct experience for the most profound theoretical concepts of modern science; and (3) to resolve the impasse faced by the objective approach of modern science through the addition of the subjective approach of Vedic Science, which provides complete knowledge of nature on the basis of the complete development of the knower.
In this issue, Dr. M.H. Weinless explored set theory and other foundational areas of modern mathematics in relation to Vedic Science. In a future issue, Drs. R.K. Wallace, D.S. Pasco, and J.B. Fagan will explore the fundamental relationship between Vedic Science and the foundational areas of modern physiology such as molecular biology. Their paper will also discuss the extent to which fundamental principles of Vedic Science can be used to further investigation of DNA structure and function.
The discovery of deep structures of knowledge common to Vedic Science and modern science represents such a profound contribution to our understanding of nature that this journal was founded to foster continued scholarly investigation of the interrelations between these complementary methods of gaining knowledge. Knowledge gained by direct experience of the fine fabrics of nature's activity, and knowledge gained by the experimental methods of modern science coalesce in a new integrated method of inquiry that offers both the fundamental principles of modern science and the expressions of direct experience in Vedic Science as two facets of one reality of nature's functioning.
Maharishi (1986) sums up the relation between Vedic Science, modern science, and the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field:
Vedic Science is applied through the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field. We speak of the unified field in connection with Vedic Science because of the similarity of what has been discovered by physics and what exists in the self-referral state of human consciousness. The Technology of the Unified Field is a purely scientific procedure for the total development of the human psyche, the total development of the race. This is a time when objective, science-based progress in the world is being enriched by the possibility of total development of human life on earth, and this is the reason why we anticipate the creation of a unified field based civilization. (p.35)On the basis of the universal availability of this domain of experience, an empirical science of consciousness becomes possible for the first time.
