What is Missing in Education Today
Dr. Bevan Morris, President of Maharishi University of Management and Chairman of the Board of Trustees (1980-present)
The world has been floundering for thousands of years, because of the weakness of education. Education till now has been fragmented in its approach. It offered only knowledge of isolated Laws of Nature, and never the totality of all knowledge. The result of such an approach has been, that only isolated parts of the human brain have been stimulated by education according to whichever subject is studied. Some particular part of the brain gets stimulated, but never the total brain.
The result has been, that as students grow up through their education, they are left with great areas of their brain, which are non-functional—functional holes in the brain. The result of having functional holes in the brain is that wrong behaviors emerge, which, in turn create more troubles and problems for the brain, for the whole physiology, and for the whole of life. So the result of modern education has been students growing up with partial use of their total brain. And with all kinds of problems that have their root in this partial functioning of their precious human brain.
The only thing that gives the experience of total brain functioning is the experience of the field of Total Knowledge. And where is Total Knowledge available? It’s not in huge libraries—millions of books that nobody can ever read. Total Knowledge is only available in one place, and that is in the silent Self-referral unified state of consciousness, which can be experienced by any student in the world through the practice of Maharishis Transcendental Meditation Technique.
Transcendental Meditation, a simple technique, a natural technique, originated from the Vedic tradition of Total Knowledge, of India, the land of the Veda. This simple technique allows the mind of any student to settle down to more and more silent levels of operation, until the very finest level of the thinking process is experienced, and then the student transcends, or goes beyond that finest impulse of thought, and comes to the completely settled, completely pure, completely transcendental state of their own consciousness.
This is the experience of your own Self. So by adding this practice to the routine of academic study in all the educational institutions of the world, students fulfill the ancient dictum of the Oracle of Delphi ‘Know thyself’. This is Consciousness-Based education.
Consciousness-Based education adds into the routine of daily study of the students the experience of the students’ own Self, of their own self-referral, silent, pure consciousness. They experience this state as a state of inner bliss. They experience there the treasure house of all the intelligence and energy which is responsible for everything that there is in the human physiology, in the earth, in the solar system, and in the galactic universe.
Because when they experience that silent state of their own consciousness, they are actually directly experiencing the Unified Field of Natural Law; that self-same Unified Field that has been discovered by quantum physicists in our generation.
Dr John Hagelin, the greatest scientist has fulfilled the dream of Einstein for a completely Unified Field Theory that is also practical, and applied in human life through education. So in Consciousness-Based education, before the classes start in the different subjects, the students close their eyes, they begin to practice Transcendental Meditation. Their mind settles down to softer and softer levels of the thinking process, gentler levels to the most silent level of thought, and then transcending that, coming to a pure state of consciousness, unbounded state of their own consciousness, their own individuality is completely unified with the Unified Field of all the Laws of Nature, the field of Total Knowledge.
When students experience the unified state of their own consciousness, the Unified Field, which is the field of Total Knowledge of all the Laws of Nature; in that unifying experience actual scientific research shows that this awakens the total brain functioning. The brain functioning becomes highly coherent: synchronous brain waves over the whole expanse of the brain, as if the whole brain is being integrated into one holistic functioning.
This phenomenon of total brain functioning is a result of the subjective experience of that silent level of one’s own consciousness, that completely peaceful level of one’s own consciousness, during Transcendental Meditation. So this is a phenomenon that has to be in every school in the world. This is the phenomenon that we are fortunate to enjoy today. We are at the moment, we are at the cusp, of a complete transition in education in the world today, from partial brain functioning to total brain functioning, from limited consciousness and limited creativity through education to the awakening to the unlimited reality of consciousness and unlimited creative potential that is inherent in every student..
This new system of developing total brain functioning is going to be the standard system of education; not any more what we have now in the world, that is, the British system and the German system of education have become the standard model in the world. And if you want to know what kind of effect that education produces, read the newspaper, watch the TV news. The whole structure of what the world is, is based upon what the people in it are, and what the people in it are, and is based upon what they were educated to be; how much of their potentiality was unfolded by their education, how much of their total brain they are using.
So now, every action is in accord with all the Laws of Nature, so every action that the student performs is completely evolutionary, positive, to themselves and to the environment. They do not make mistakes. They do not create the kind of suffering and problems that have been the standard result of education up till now, because of this inadequate, incomplete system of education that has failed to give Total Knowledge to the students, failed to give them the experience of the Unified Field, failed to give them the experience of their own Self.
So living in accord with the Laws of Nature, first of all, one doesn’t create misery for oneself, one doesn’t create trouble for the government, so the government doesn’t have to worry any more that people of the nation are growing up, making horrible errors and committing crimes and making themselves sick. This will not happen any more when students grow up in Consciousness-Based Education using the total potentiality of their own creativity, and living in accord with Natural Law, spontaneously functioning from the level of the Unified Field.
So this is the great joy of this time. Every educator in the world can truly rejoice at this moment, that such an educational system is available for the whole human race.
Here, high school students will be practicing Transcendental Meditation and its advanced technique called the TM-Sidhi Programme, including Yogic Flying, which is a very powerful technique that produces the most intense brain wave coherence of any practice that has every been studied.
The students there will be practicing these techniques before class in the morning and after class in the afternoon, and they will be sufficient in number to create an effect that is visible in the whole national consciousness. The principle is the square root of one per cent of the nation’s population practicing these powerful techniques together in one place is enough to spontaneously transform the whole national consciousness.
When such groups practice together, the whole quality of national consciousness becomes coherent, harmonious, and it is integrated, and being all these things, it becomes impenetrable to any negative influence from outside the nation, or to any negativity that may arise inside the nation. So the whole country is completely dominated by positivity and harmony. That is a definition of the word ‘invincibility’: one cannot be defeated by negativity any more.
There will be exhibitions showing how this experience of the Unified Field brings fulfillment, not only to education, but to defense, to health, to agriculture, to law, to music, to religion and culture, to every imaginable field of existence. This knowledge produces that fulfillment, because in every field it is a human field, so whatever human beings are, and what they do, is what every one of those fields is. So what we are going to have now is a completely new level of human life; not being lived by rare individuals in the long history of the world, but now it’s going to be commonplace that every student grows up enlightened, invincible in their own life, able to spontaneously fulfill all their own desires, through the support of all these Laws of Nature, which they are the friends of, by functioning from the Unified Field.
When you use Consciousness-Based Education in schools, the students are so respectful and loving of their teachers, so passionate in the field of knowledge, so brilliant in their academic accomplishments. For example in the school, just imagine this: this one school, in Iowa, in the world championships of creativity competition, called Destination Imagination, our students won more prizes, than even the entire state of California. Phenomenal expressions of creativity, year after year. The speech competitions in the state—they feel they should just retire the competition, because year after year our students always win, every year. I would invite any educator to go and be in the midst of that atmosphere. You will be amazed from the very first moment, at what education can achieve.
In every field of academic success, they are at the top in Iowa, which is in itself first or second in the nation in education. So when we see these phenomenal results, it’s not just a matter of thinking theoretically. Of course, the Unified Field, of course the Self should be incorporated into education. Of course students should use their total brain. It makes every good sense. It is absolutely so obvious, plain to everyone, but the scientific research is there for any educator to study. And the experiences there of, not only Maharishi University of Management and the Maharishi School in Iowa USA, and in the Invincible America group, but everywhere in the world where such education is introduced—exactly the same results are enjoyed.
So having seen this education, we know there is something better to be done now. There is something better available to any educators. And we all know that anybody who is intelligent picks up anything that is good, and takes it up and does it, particularly when they are responsible for the children of the world and their education.
So it is inevitable that this is going to spread to every single student on the planet earth, and very soon people will look back and wonder, ‘Why in the world was this not used before? Why did they leave consciousness out of education? Like an ocean with no water in it, it is education with no consciousness in it.’ The future generations will laugh at this present generation having left consciousness out of education, just as we may laugh at some Medieval times, at some tortuous behavior of hundreds of years ago.
Very soon, every school will do justice to the incredible potentiality that is there in the physiology of every child to experience the Unified Field, to live from this level of nature’s own infinite creativity and organizing power, and fulfill all the greatest aspirations that everyone has, for themselves, for their family and for their nation.
- Dr. Bevan Morris, President of Maharishi University of Management