The Significance of Pure Consciousness for Education

This article presents the seminal contributions that intellectual understanding and experience of pure consciousness make to education. This knowledge of consciousness, which has been brought to light by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and systematically presented in his Vedic Science, supplies a missing fundamental to education that deeply transforms the way we understand all aspects of the field, including foundational concepts, educational practices, and educational outcomes. This paper is divided into four parts. The first lays the foundation for the paper by examining the concept of pure consciousness, as presented by Maharishi, and providing experiential and scientific evidence for its existence. The second demonstrates that the knowledge and experience of pure consciousness transform our understanding of basic educational concepts, including knowledge, development, learning, and human potential. The most important implication of this more complete understanding is that enlightenment—higher states of consciousness—should be the goal of education. The third section examines the implications of pure consciousness for educational practice. These implications include: new courses for giving experiential and intellectual understanding of consciousness; new approaches to the teaching of traditional subject matter that emphasize wholeness of awareness and refinement of the emotions; and care for the physiology because of its role in supporting deeper experiences of consciousness. The final section of the paper examines implications of pure consciousness for individual and social life—the key outcomes of education. Drawing on experience in ConsciousnessBased educational institutions and empirical research, this section demonstrates that incorporation of knowledge of pure consciousness into education can significantly enhance academic outcomes, structure enlightenment in students, and contribute directly to the realization of the highest ideals of society—peace, economic growth, and social progress. If the age is to change to one of invincibility1 a fundamental value has to be supplied to the field of education. This missing fundamental is knowledge of pure consciousness and how to experience it. (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1978, pp. 148–149) The field of education has immense importance for individual and social life. This point is eloquently stated by John Dewey, America’s most influential philosopher of education: I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which rest simply upon the enactment of law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile. . . . By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. (Dewey, 1966, p. 57) The ability of education to promote social progress, however, is dependent on the quality of the educational system. In America today, as in most countries around the world, there is widespread dissatisfaction with education due to perceived educational failures. In the best American schools, for example, attended by students with relative affluence, the overwhelming impression of the classroom is one of “affective neutrality,” as one leading researcher expressed it. The student-teacher relationship in the typical classroom is “neither abrasive nor joyous” (Goodlad, 1984, p. 111). Combine this emotional disengagement with the increasing pressures to perform at high levels, and the resulting atmosphere in schools is a mixture of boredom, cynicism, and anxiety (LoVette & Jacob, 1995; Gardner, 1996). In one recent large-scale study of California and Wisconsin schools, researchers found that roughly 40% of the students said they were “just going through the motions” in school. The average student, they found, spent only four hours a week on homework outside of school (Steinberg, Brown, & Dornbusch, 1996). In the more troubled schools in many countries, on the other hand, the learning environment is even more discouraging. Children’s concern is less whether they will make good grades than whether they can stay awake and whether they will make it home safely after school (Kozol, 1996). From a societal perspective the greatest concern for today’s schools is not the apathy or lack of satisfaction, but the waste of human capital—the development of which is the chief function of the school. Jean Piaget, for example, identified the highest level of cognitive development to be “formal operations,” the foundation of scientific reasoning; however, research-based estimates of the percentage of adults who actually attain formal operations vary between 15 and 50% (Greidanus, 1984; Sachs-Brannock, 1980; Darion, 1981). Similarly, Lawrence Kohlberg developed a theory of moral development with six stages leading to principled moral reasoning, yet the average middle-aged adult in society functions at level four on this scale, a level of conventional moral thought (Bakken, 1983). Jane Loevinger developed a scale for ego development which includes six levels; yet typically only 1% of the adult population reach either of the two highest levels (Holt, 1980). These comparatively low levels of human development indicate that the schools are not developing the primary resource of all nations—human potential. What can society accomplish, if its human resources remain languishing in the schools? This article presents a new educational paradigm, introduced by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, that provides a solution to these deficiencies, among others. Maharishi, also, is a strong proponent of the power of education to improve human life. “Through proper education,” he declares, “we can create anything” (Maharishi, 1991, p. 13). “Proper” education, however, must be based on sound educational foundations. The problem with current education, from Maharishi’s perspective, is that it lacks a missing fundamental—intellectual understanding and experience of pure consciousness (Maharishi, 1978). Intellectual understanding and experience of pure consciousness are so fundamen-tal that they transform all aspects of the field of education, including foundational concepts, educational practices, and outcomes of education. This knowledge of pure consciousness, which has been utilized in educational curricula around the world for the past 25 years, constitutes a huge contribution to education and must be incorporated into this field if the social ideals of humankind are to be realized. This paper will be divided into four parts: 1 An invincible society for Maharishi is an ideal society because true invincibility only comes as a result of having no enemies. A society will have no enemies when it is integrated and strong within itself and radiates values of love, truth, virtue, and peace (Maharishi, 1978). • the understanding of pure consciousness as presented by Maharishi; • the implications of understanding and experience of pure consciousness for fundamental concepts in education; • educational practices that follow from these fundamental concepts; and • outcomes of Consciousness-Based education. The Nature and Verification of Pure Consciousness Pure consciousness—or simply “consciousness,” as Maharishi often refers to it—is the most basic concept in Maharishi Vedic Science,2 and knowledge of pure consciousness, including experience and intellectual understanding, is the most important contribution of Maharishi Vedic Science to contemporary education. It is necessary at the outset to understand the nature of pure consciousness—the roles that it plays and qualities associated with it—because these provide the basis for an understanding of the implications of pure consciousness for education. These characterizations of consciousness will inevitably be abstract; therefore, it is important to remember that experience of pure consciousness can be gained easily through Maharishi’s systematic and effortless technologies for developing consciousness, the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs, and that even beginning experience with these programs verifies many of these characterizations.