Global Good News: Excellence in Action

This talk, given in June 1972, is both part of Maharishi's Science of Creative Intelligence course and presented in the special selection for students entitled Maharishi Speaks to Students: Mastery over Natural Law. Maharishi gives a vision of the possibilities available to students through the practice of Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation and the Science of Creative Intelligence.

Psychological and physiological research on Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation Programme has verified that the fourth state of consciousness, Transcendental Consciousness, automatically enriches the other three states of consciousness—waking, dreaming, and sleeping.

The experience of Transcendental Consciousness produces a very deep state of rest in the nervous system and through repeated experience of this state of deep rest, it is possible to maintain Transcendental Consciousness along with the other three states of consciousness.

The fourth state of consciousness, Transcendental Consciousness, transcends the waking, dreaming, and sleeping states of consciousness, and is unmanifest, unbounded, and experienced as pure awareness.

'Pure awareness is the nature of the fourth state of consciousness,' Maharishi explains, 'while the awareness of the objective world characterizes the waking state of consciousness. The co-existence of the transcendental and waking states of consciousness is characterized by the awareness of unboundedness along with the awareness of boundaries, giving rise to the fifth state of consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness.

'When unbounded awareness is established on the level of the conscious mind, the comprehension of boundaries becomes more complete. In this state perception begins to appreciate deeper, more refined values of the object until the finest relative value is perceived spontaneously on the gross, surface level of the object. This is the sixth state of consciousness: unbounded awareness along with the finest relative perception.'

The development of the sixth state of consciousness takes place through the experience of Transcendental Consciousness along with the most refined activity guided by the level of feeling.

'When unbounded awareness of the conscious mind falls on the boundaries of the finest relative value of the object, then the unmanifest, transcendental value permeating the finest relative value of the object is enlivened,' Maharishi continued. 'This perception of the infinite within the finite is possible only when the conscious mind is vibrant in that infinite value.

'In this state the subject and object are found to be the same. This is the seventh state of consciousness, Unity Consciousness, in which perception has risen to its infinite value and the object of perception is cognized in terms of the pure subjective value of unbounded, unmanifest awareness.

'In Unity Consciousness, the knower knows the object of knowledge in its completeness, from its finite, surface values to its ultimate, infinite value. In this unified state of awareness one gains the full value of knowledge, which bridges the gulf between the knower and the object of knowing, [the known].

'Unity Consciousness is the supreme state of consciousness, which can be lived by everyone through the knowledge and practice of the Science of Creative Intelligence,' Maharishi said.

"The potential of every student is infinite. The time of student life should serve to unfold that infinite potential so that every individual becomes a vibrant centre of Total Knowledge."—Maharishi