Global Good News: Excellence in Action

In his Global Press Conference on 29 December 2004, Maharishi was asked how the frequent alternation between study and meditation—40 minutes of study followed by 20 minutes of meditation—enhances the learning process. What will be the effect of meditating so much in school?

‘The effect will be Total Knowledge to every student,’ he responded. ‘Total Knowledge to every student means there is a field of behaviour, which is one field, a field of thinking—the mind—a field of intellect another level, and the field of Being is another level.’

Maharishi explained that if we only teach behavioural values, then we are not teaching the three values that are more basic—‘the thinking level, intellectual level, and Being level.’

He explained that book knowledge is a part of education. More basic to that is refining the intellect, which decides what should be done—this is the intellectual level. The intellectual level needs postulation of what the mind has thought about. Whatever knowledge the lecturer has given to the students, he then helps them to understand. This is done by questions and answers. The students have to be intellectually awake and their intellects sharpened.

‘But there is still a more basic level of thought,’ Maharishi continued, ‘which is a quiet level, silent level, peaceful level—the source of thought, which is the field of Being. This is the Unified Field.

‘This is experience on its own level,’ he said. ‘It is not on the level of surface level that one can have the benefit of it. One has to be it.’

Maharishi gave the example that just as you get the information that you have a treasury in your room, you have to be convinced that there is a treasury. The treasury becomes real only when you go there—when you are in the treasury. There are so many boxes full of this currency, that currency—that is the treasure. You have to open each of the boxes and see that there is that currency.

‘So that experience of the Unified Field is different from the information about the Unified Field,’ he continued. ‘The Unified Field is intellectually grasped through the mathematical equations, and that satisfies the intelligence, satisfies the intellect. But you have to put it into practice that it is like that. If you do like that, then this will happen. This is the technology of it.’

Maharishi explained that experience is the use of technology, and knowledge is the informatory confirmation. In the mind, there is information; in the intellect, there is confirmation. In the transcendental field, there is experience of Being.

‘Without the experience of Being, knowledge is a laughing-stock,’ he said. ‘There is a great deal of glory to the knowledge of a glass of water, but if you have not taken the water, only talked about the water—you understand it can be vapour and it can be ice, and it can be like this, and it can be like that, it can be all possibilities—it will not bring satisfaction to your thirst. It will have to be through drinking only.

‘So the drinking part is practising the Unified Field—Transcendental Meditation. Without that, it is talk about Transcendental Consciousness, the field of Total Natural Law. Talk is all right, but it is a talk, it is intellectual information. It must be put to practise in order to justify that what we have heard is real.

‘This has not been in education. This we introduce in our education, and then we have Total Knowledge.’

‘"Total Knowledge" means knowledge that is practised through the senses, thought about by the mind, decided about by the intellect, and which will be completely soaked in from the transcendental field of Being. Then intellectual thinking, mental thinking, and experiencing through the senses—‘the whole thing will be so fresh and tidy and alert,’ Maharishi said.

‘It will be surcharged with total possible intelligence and energy. That will mean living Total Knowledge, living totality of life—living totality of the Will of God from the religious expression, Total Knowledge in the scientific expression, and the Self, living the Self, from the Vedic terminology.

‘This is going to be the daily routine in the Vedic University classes, whether they are the classes for the high school, college, master’s degree, or PhD degree—any degree. Experience, which is lacking in the present university education, will be supplied. Then the education will be of Total Knowledge, and the result will be a totally educated man.

‘A totally educated man will not create mistakes on any level of thinking or behaviour, or on the level of Being. He will be a living cosmic structure, a living cosmic intelligence, a living cosmic energy.

‘This should be the education and this is going to be the education in our forthcoming universities, in the Vedic Universities, Ayurvedic Universities, Agriculture Universities—all these Vedic themes of gaining knowledge through different perspectives,’ Maharishi concluded. ‘But each perspective will lead on to all these levels of behaviour, thinking, understanding, and Being—Being through experience, experience, experience.’

"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