Aliyah Warwick reflects on her experiences of Maharishi's Consciousness-Based Education

Stimulating silence
by Global Good News staff writer
November, 2006

Aliyah Warwick has been one of the fortunate people who has enjoyed a Vedic Education. Her introduction to Maharishi’s Consciousness-Based Education (CBE) was at Heavenly Mountain Ideal Girls School in North Carolina, USA, where she received her high school diploma in 2003. Currently she is enrolled at Maharishi University of Enlightenment in Vedic City, Iowa, studying Vedic Science.

She reflects, ‘What I love about CBE schools is that the emphasis really is on the student and not just on the information being taught. The goal is for the student to

grow and evolve as a person through the educational experience, and I feel that this truly is accomplished.’

Maharishi’s Consciousness-Based Education presents every discipline from the perspective of the Unified Field, which has been identified by quantum physics to be the ultimate reality of life, the source from which all force and matter fields that make up the manifest universe emerge. Maharishi teaches in his Vedic Science that the Unified Field of physics and the field of Transcendental Consciousness experienced in the Transcendental Meditation Technique are one and the same.

This orientation, in conjunction with the students’ daily practice of the Maharishi Transcendental Meditation Technique, provides a common basis applicable within all facets of life. This trait appealed to Aliyah’s learning style and influenced her decision to continue her education at a CBE university.

She said ‘What amazed me about CBE was that by studying Maharishi Vedic Science in each class, and by practising Transcendental Meditation and the TM-Sidhi Programme, I was able to recognize the underlying similarities of all of the classes I attended. Suddenly, math and art didn’t seem that different. I was able to see how chemistry and English literature all contained the same fundamental principles.’

For Aliyah attending Maharishi University of Enlightenment has afforded many incredible, fulfilling, and rewarding experiences. She expressed that every day she is learning and growing in many new ways and is continually astounded by the revelations her education presents. Every class provides deeper insights into each subject than she had previously thought were possible.

‘For example,’ she explains, ‘right now I am writing a paper on the author Annie Dillard and how her essays exemplify the same co-existence of silence and dynamism found in the synaptic gap between neurons. Years ago, before I’d experienced CBE, I would never have dreamed of attempting to correlate two such different subject matters.

‘Also, I had always enjoyed literature and writing, but I’d never had much interest in human physiology and sciences. After taking a physiology course at Maharishi University of Enlightenment, I became fascinated with the mechanics of how the body functions because I could see that so much of it mirrored what I love about great writing. I learned that a great masterpiece, a truly beautiful piece of writing, allows the reader to transcend, to slip into a gap of silence, and from there, the profound and personal message of the piece is realized. The words in writing serve to shape silence.

‘In the same way, the complex masterpiece of the human physiology is maintained by the firing of nerve cells. Nerve cells communicate and send messages to sustain the functioning of the body through a synaptic gap, a region of silence. In both writing and the human body, it is the silence that gives rise to the creation.

‘To take this example one step further, I would say that Consciousness-Based Education follows the same principle as writing and nerve cells. CBE is built around silence. All of the information learned in the classes serves to supplement and solidify the deep transcendental silence that we experience in TM. It allows the student to swing between silence and dynamism, points of knowledge and infinity of knowledge. This is why CBE is beautiful, a masterpiece of educational systems.'

Aliyah concluded by saying, ‘The most remarkable thing about Maharishi’s Consciousness-Based Education has been finding that whatever field I studied, I was actually learning about my Self.’

© Copyright 2006, Global Good News(sm) Service