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The world is a family This year the senior students of the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment in Fairfield, Iowa chose to have their traditional senior-class trip to the country of Brazil to visit schools where the students were practising the Transcendental Meditation Programme. ‘The Senior-year trip has always been a capstone-experience for the Grade 12 students,’ Dr Richard Beall, principal of the Maharishi School said, ‘But this year the trip was also a doorway to sharing experience with and understanding students of another culture. The students had the opportunity to meet and connect with their peers in the global Transcendental Meditation family and learn of a culture different from their own—a culture that they quickly came to admire. Both the students from the United States and from Brazil felt that meeting each other was a really wonderful and enriching experience. The Brazilian students were totally captivated by the presence of the young Americans and were very happy to be hosting them. Raja Jose Luis Alvarez, the Raja of Latin America, who spoke recently about this visit, praised the American students, saying he felt their visit had two main values. He said the students from Fairfield made a great impression on the people in Brazil and had an enlivening impact on furthering Consciousness-Based Education there. ‘The other great value,’ he said, ‘was that the students from America have become friends and family of our people in Brazil!’ The organizers of the trip in Brazil were delighted with the results of the American students’ tour. It was remarked that the students were an example of what Consciousness-Based Education can bring to the world. One lady said that the students in Brazil identified with the young people coming from the Maharishi School in America—they saw the same qualities and values in these students as they saw in themselves. ‘Now the students who are not yet meditating really want to start as soon as possible!’ ‘It was a very precious and rich experience for everyone,’ added another lady who helped organize the tour. ‘It created a bubble of bliss in the Brazilian students to see other students who had come from so far away to share their experiences of meditation with them and let them know they were all doing the same thing. It enhanced and enlivened the Transcendental Meditation Programme for the meditating students in these schools.’ Because of the media coverage of the tour, communities in Brazil where the American students visited developed an interest in introducing Consciousness-Based Education in their schools. ‘It made the normal person on the street interested in the Transcendental Meditation Programme, as well as more interested in what is happening in their schools,' another tour organizer said. Dr Peter Swan, Minister of Communication for the Global Country of World Peace, commented that this trip was an example of the reality of Vasudhaiva kutumbakam*—the world is my family. He remarked that students from America and Brazil, even though they spoke a different language, were able get to know and appreciate one another and realize they had the same inner experience of transcending and enlivening bliss during their Transcendental Meditation Programme. * Vasudaiva Kutumbhakan is a Sanskrit expression from the Vedic Tradition of knowledge, meaning 'the whole world is my family' . © Copyright 2009 Global Good News®
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