Global Good News: Excellence in Action

by Global Good News staff writer
17 April 2009

The Science of Creative Intelligence fulfils the four basic requirements of a science, and unfolds the knower to the supreme level of knowledge and living—life in enlightenment.

All around us in Nature and in human life we see patterns of orderliness or intelligence. Every field of knowledge studies some aspect of orderliness in Nature. Maharishi’s Science of Creative Intelligence is unique because it studies intelligence itself.

Through the technique of transcending, the Science of Creative Intelligence locates the pure field of intelligence, pure consciousness. This is the basis for a successful study of the nature of orderliness in the universe.

In two talks that are published In Maharishi’s collection of pocket-sized books Maharishi Speaks to Educators—one given on 14 July 1974, in Arosa, Switzerland, and the second on 18 May 1976, on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland—Maharishi spoke about the basic criteria of knowledge or science.

He said that the basic or first method of a science is experimentation. The Science of Creative Intelligence investigates the nature of intelligence by providing a technique of experimental investigation, the Transcendental Meditation Technique.

‘The second requirement of a science is that it is systematic, precise, and verifiable,’ Maharishi said. ‘The Science of Creative Intelligence gives a systematic and precise theoretical understanding of the nature of intelligence, which can be verified by personal experience.’

The third criterion for knowledge to be scientific is that it be practical, he said. ‘The Science of Creative Intelligence applies the knowledge of intelligence by providing the principles and practice that promote the development of Creative Intelligence in human life.’

The fourth aspect of a science is that it is not isolated, but fits in with other scientific knowledge. Maharishi explained that the Science of Creative Intelligence is integrated with other sciences in two ways: first it locates the Laws of Nature governing the behaviour of intelligence itself and finds these laws to be the same as the Laws of Nature located by all other branches of science.

Secondly, it supplies the technique of Transcendental Meditation, which opens to the rest of science the study of the full potential of the human nervous system, the study of the origin of consciousness, and the study of the evolution of man through higher states of consciousness.

In the tradition of philosophy there has been a long history of a search for a first science. Maharishi’s Science of Creative Intelligence fulfils the classic philosophical ideas of what a first science should be.

Maharishi said the most modern demand of a first science is that it fulfils the need for a theory of wholeness—a theory of knowledge that incorporates everything. This demand has taken the form of a search for a basis for interdisciplinary studies.

‘The Science of Creative Intelligence fulfils this need by providing knowledge and experience of pure intelligence, which is basic to all disciplines,’ Maharishi said.

‘By locating wholeness in the field of pure consciousness, the Science of Creative Intelligence reveals our own consciousness as the source, the goal, and the means of expression of wholeness of life.

‘Through expansion of consciousness man can find that wholeness not only in all the academic disciplines but in the entire objective creation, thereby integrating himself with the universe.’

The demand of universities today is that knowledge should be not only intellectual but also experiential. Knowledge should lead to personal development and to the growth of creativity.

‘For knowledge to qualify as a ‘first science’ it must go beyond the intellect,’ Maharishi said. ‘Transcendental Meditation, the practical aspect of the Science of Creative Intelligence, takes the mind beyond the boundaries of thought, beyond the intellect, to the level of pure consciousness.

‘Gaining the status of unbounded awareness, the mind goes back to illuminate and expand the intellect.’

Another requirement of a first science is that it should make objective science relevant to subjective life. In the West we have developed the science of matter and technology to the highest degree, while the East has developed the science of the Self.

‘The Science of Creative Intelligence is the fulfilment of the demand to unite that which is most modern with that which is most ancient, the nature of our own consciousness,’ Maharishi said. ‘This is the integration of the objective and subjective approaches to knowledge.

‘The knowledge of the Science of Creative Intelligence is universal, because the knowledge of the nature of consciousness applies to the whole world.’

By providing the long-missing knowledge of consciousness, the Science of Creative Intelligence provides a complete and satisfying knowledge of reality as a whole. ‘This is the one true basis for education,’ Maharishi said.

‘The Science of Creative Intelligence is the first science because it has discovered the basis of all sciences, the field of intelligence.

‘The Science of Creative Intelligence can also be called the last science because it is so comprehensive in its structure and so far reaching in its consequences, and because it has emerged as the fulfilment of all the physical sciences.

‘The Science of Creative Intelligence has its basis in the ultimate reality of life, the unchanging, unmanifest, absolute level of consciousness. The Science of Creative Intelligence studies the field of the Absolute and the whole field of relativity,’ Maharishi continued, ‘—all the innumerable levels of relative existence arising from this non-changing field of pure Creative Intelligence.’

In the Science of Creative Intelligence we find the basis, the whole range, and the ultimate goal of all sciences. ‘The ultimate goal is to raise the level of the knower to the supreme value, the level of all possibilities, in which the Absolute is a living reality of daily life, and the individual lives unity of life.’

‘The Science of Creative Intelligence offers the ocean of all knowledge in the field of pure consciousness, where all streams of knowledge find their goal in their source. The realization of this ocean of knowledge is the fruit of all knowledge: life in enlightenment, life free from mistakes.

‘The tradition of knowledge from which the Science of Creative Intelligence has emerged springs from the Veda, the complete wisdom of life,’ Maharishi concluded.