- the central importance of consciousness
for developing the full potential of the individual and society;
- the integration of intellectual understanding
with direct experience;
- the progression of study from unity to diversity
to unity;
- maintaining the wholeness of knowledge in
every part
1. Central Importance of Consciousness
for Developing the Full Potential of the Individual and Society
Success in any undertaking depends fundamentally on the quality of one's
consciousness -- one's awareness, or degree of wakefulness. If individuals
are fully awake and alert, their thoughts and actions will be powerful,
right for the circumstances, and lead to increasing success. If students
are dull and stressed, the most profound ideas and dedicated teachers will
be lost on them.
Maharishi's Vedic Science brings to light that the familiar waking state
is not the highest state of alertness. Greatest clarity of mind can only
be experienced when the basis of the intellect, the unbounded, fully awake
state of transcendental consciousness, is maintained together with focused
thought. This is the quality of thinking in higher states of consciousness.
To develop consciousness is to develop the qualities of thinking necessary
for effective action and behavior: creativity, clarity, flexibility, synthetic
and analytic abilities (maintaining comprehensive understanding of the
whole while focusing finely on the part), foresight, intuition, and the
ability to make decisions that spontaneously uphold the progress and evolution
of the individual, the group, and society.
Maharishi Vedic University is unique in being able to foster these qualities
systematically so that day by day, week by week, students and graduates
become more effective and confident in whatever they undertake without
accumulating stress.
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2. Integration of Intellectual
Understanding with Direct Experience
For knowledge to be complete, intellectual understanding must be supported
by direct experience.
The curriculum of Maharishi Vedic University integrates intellectual
study of consciousness with direct research into consciousness for the
progressive unfoldment of the student's creative potential. For their research
in consciousness, students practice the technologies of Maharishi's Vedic
Science, the Transcendental Meditation® and TM-Sidhi® programs,
at the beginning and end of the academic day.
The students experience this integration also through their study of
Sanskrit, the language of the Vedic Literature. In addition to its meaning,
the sounds of Sanskrit enliven in the student's awareness the evolutionary
qualities of consciousness that each area of the Vedic Literature embodies.
The sounds of the Vedic Literature are unique in their purifying effect
on the physiology and ordering effect on the brain.
Students also integrate their knowledge of the disciplines of Maharishi's
Vedic Science through fieldwork, organizing, implementing, or helping to
teach programs in education, health, business, rehabilitation, agriculture.
In the professional training programs, each area has a four-month fieldwork
component, which is guided and overseen by the faculty and professionals
in the field.
Through this integration of theory and application the students at Maharishi
Vedic University experience the practical value of all that they learn
both for developing the full potential of their own consciousness and improving
the quality of life in society.
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3. Progression of Study from
Unity to Diversity to Unity
The sequential progression of study in Maharishi's Vedic Science Based
Education is from unity to diversity, and then to the full unification
of the vast diversity of knowledge in the awareness of the student. The
student starts with study and research into unity, pure consciousness,
discovered as the student's own Self in the simplest form of their own
awareness. In this way students are given knowledge of themselves
first, through study and experience of consciousness in its pure unmanifest
state, where knower, process of knowing, and known are unified. With this
unshakable, holistic basis established in their awareness, the students
then learn how all the diverse values of Natural Law embodied in the different
disciplines and fields of life, sequentially unfold from the unified structure
of knowledge.
Then, after students have been exposed to the great diversity of Natural
Law by the end of secondary school, the Bachelor of Vedic Science student
begins the process of synthesizing, focusing on the holistic value of Natural
Law, called Samhita in the Vedic Literature, which interrelates and interconnects
all the diversity. By connecting every aspect of Vedic Literature with
every other aspect and with its source, the students begin to comprehend
the wholeness of Natural Law in their own awareness. This unification of
all branches and levels of knowledge, made lively in the awareness of the
student, is the fulfillment of the name "university"--the unity
of all diversity.
Thus the students of Maharishi Vedic University come to know the unity
of Natural Law in the field of Transcendental Consciousness--the diversity
of Natural Law, as expressed in the infinite range of all disciplines and
fields of life; and the ultimate integration of unity and diversity in
the student's own awareness. Maharishi's Vedic Science explains how this
process of education, which follows the natural evolutionary process, is
the key to gaining increasing command over the totality of Natural Law.
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4. Maintaining the Wholeness
of Knowledge in Every Part
The deepest reality of this fourth fundamental principle of curriculum--maintaining
the wholeness of knowledge in every part--is that when the wholeness of
knowledge--pure consciousness--is fully enlivened in the student's awareness,
then everything the student attends to, thinks about, feels, or does is
imbued with maximum alertness. When the holistic value of life is lively
in awareness, then one naturally applies one's full creative potential
in every isolated situation and circumstance. Since pure consciousness
is the home of all creativity, intelligence, and organizing power, the
more this fundamental field is kept lively in the students' awareness,
the more creative intelligence the students will bring to every point of
their attention.
At Maharishi Vedic University the wholeness of consciousness is maintained
naturally in the students' awareness in two ways: through direct experience
of pure consciousness twice daily using the technologies of Maharishi's
Vedic Science; and through the curriculum and teaching techniques, several
of which are described below.
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