Consciousness-Based Education naturally develops higher ideals and the ability to spontaneously demonstrate these ideals in thinking and action.

A school to emulate
by Global Good News staff writer
30 December 2010

Some years ago, I heard a story about a special experience of an educator visiting a small school in a small town amidst the cornfields of Iowa, USA. The story went something like this:

The educator, we’ll call her Ms Jones, was observing a class of second-graders who were learning about ‘opposites.’ Ms Jones participated in the exercise asking the young children, ‘What is the opposite of friend?’ No hands went up. The children thought and thought but none of them responded. Finally, after some time, a hand was raised. Ms Jones took the response—‘The opposite of friend,’ the second-grader said, ‘is stranger.’

Deeply touched by the unexpected answer, Ms Jones went one step further in her next question, ‘What is the opposite of love?’ The students pondered and pondered but were really stumped this time. They simply could not come up with an answer. The long-term educator was witnessing a quality of student she had never experienced before.

From this anecdote, which moved me to tears, and from my first-hand experience with students from the school referred to above, Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment in Fairfield, Iowa, I should not have been surprised by the comments of Maharishi School students that I recently read in a book entitled, Growing Up Enlightened—How Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment is Awakening the Creative Genius of Students and Creating Heaven on Earth. But what these students said is so outstanding, and demonstrates such high values in their thinking and behaviour, that I found their words to be quite remarkable.

Offering a special education

Before sharing some of the thoughts of the students, as reported in the book, a brief explanation of the education they have received will provide an elucidating foundation.

The education offered at Maharishi School is known as Consciousness-Based Education or Unified Field Based Education. Its cornerstone is Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation Programme, a simple, natural mental technique which allows the mind to settle down and go beyond or transcend thought and experience Transcendental Consciousness, the Unified Field. This field, as understood by physicists, is the fountainhead of all creation. Authors of Growing Up Enlightened, Nidich and Nidich, explain that the Unified Field ‘contains the total potential of natural law…[and] is the basis of all the diverse values of natural law guiding the progress and evolution of everything in nature, including one’s own individual life.’

Nidich and Nidich elucidate further the value of experiencing this field, Transcendental Consciousness. ‘Repeated experience of the  Unified Field,’ they write, ‘promotes action in spontaneous accord with all the Laws of Nature that benefits both the individual and the whole of society. One’s own interests and the progressive interests of society no longer conflict–what is good for oneself is also found to be good for society.’

At Maharishi School, the students also are given intellectual knowledge of the Unified Field. Maharishi has emphasized that this is important because this knowledge, as offered by Consciousness-Based Education, 'enlivens that most fundamental value of consciousness from where all thoughts and actions come out.'

Nidich and Nidich further explain that together the knowledge and experience (through Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation) of the  Unified Field ‘refine the intellect so that it identifies more and more with the Unified Field of natural law…A sense of wholeness and the 'totality of life' develops in the student’s personality rather than a sense of division and conflict. Through Unified Field Based Education [Consciousness-Based Education], students spontaneously begin to make more life-supporting decisions that promote their own growth and the well-being of those around them.’

How Maharishi School students deal with ‘dilemmas’

A few examples of how Maharishi School students respond to ‘difficult’ situations speak for themselves.

The first dilemma presented to the students by Nidich and Nidich poses the question of whether or not to help a student who is unpopular. Teri, a 10th grader, responds by explaining her feelings about helping others. She says:

‘It’s the natural thing to do to help others. By helping others, you help them evolve faster and easier. Students at Maharishi School realize the value of helping others….Like in team volleyball, you always win when you play together. In school, we help each other and everyone improves.’

Karla, a 12th grader, responded to the same dilemma in an equally sensitive way:

‘By helping him [the unpopular student] out, you may improve the quality of life of all those around. A leader should bring out the positive qualities of a person. By being positive yourself, you automatically get positivity in return. [The students at Maharishi School] like to help others. They see that everyone is worth being helped. By helping others, they see that they can also improve the quality of the environment.’

In a second dilemma presented to Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment students, they were asked whether or not they would uphold an agreement made with a teacher prior to a class trip to not drink alcohol on the trip. Twelfth grader, Mary, responds:

‘It’s important to keep a promise. A relationship is based on trust. If you can’t trust a person, it lessens the ability to communicate. It’s important to be responsible. People can always trust you, you can be counted on. I think that people expect other people to trust each other, because it would ruin the coherence of the group if one person didn’t trust another, or if everybody didn’t trust one person. They wouldn’t be united as a whole; they wouldn’t act as one.

‘That’s what this school is all about, just being as one, being as a whole, acting together and being invincible. That’s what makes this school different. Because acting together, you are invincible; you are more boundless. There’s more you can do together. A whole group can do more than one person can do if you are focused.’

And Robert, also a senior, replied to the question, asked in the context of the class trip/alcohol dilemma, ‘Would most students at Maharishi School not drink?’ in the following way:

‘Most students at the school, from what I can see, have the same feelings towards this as I do….It [drinking alcohol] is not something that is evolutionary and worthwhile. In the long run it is just not worth it….It is not like it is a big decision you have to make. The students just don’t do it….’

Consciousness-Based Education for all children

From the words of the students it is easy to see why visitors to Maharishi School often wish that they were young again so that they could attend such a school. By ‘enlivening the total potential of natural law in the consciousness of the individual students,’ Consciousness-Based Education naturally develops higher ideals and the ability to spontaneously think and act as the students quoted above did, in a way that, in one student’s words, 'brings the most good to the doer and the environment—everyone and everything.'

Through the David Lynch Foundation, many schools worldwide are making the Transcendental Meditation Programme available to their students.

Implementation of all four components of Consciousness-Based Education, giving both experience and knowledge of the Unified Field and utilizing special teaching methods and tools which Maharishi developed, provides the fullest benefit as displayed by Maharishi School students and other Consciousness-Based schools around the globe. Dr Susie Dillbeck, President of the International Foundation of Consciousness-Based Education, says that ‘each of the four components of Consciousness-Based Education contributes profoundly to enlivening the students’ full creative potential, total brain development in the state of enlightenment.’ (See Excellence in Action article, Education Solutions: The four components of Consciousness-Based Education.)

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