[FairfieldLife] Rationale for the Maharishi Effect
From: David Orme-Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 12:08 PM To: David Orme-Johnson Subject: Rationale for the Maharishi Effect Dear Colleagues, The rationale for the Maharishi Effect, which holds that we exist in a field of consciousness through which everyone is connected, is a very old idea with a high pedigree. Even more exciting is that the modern seers who know natural law the best, the greatest physicists of our time, have been lead by their discoveries to the realization that consciousness is the most fundamental level of natural law. I just added a rationale section to TruthAboutTM.com, snappily entitled “HYPERLINK http://www.truthabouttm.org/truth/SocietalEffects/Rationale-Research/index. cfm#rationaleSome Conceptual Precedents for a Field Theoretic View of Consciousness from the Perennial Philosophy, Social Sciences, and Quantum Physics.” You can go to the link above to view the whole thing, and/or here are some excerpts. Perennial Philosophy. The suggestion that individuals interact directly at a distance through an underlying common field of consciousness has a long history. Indeed, it is embedded in the “perennial philosophy,” the term Aldous Huxley (1945) first applied to the universal system of thought that has persisted throughout history in all parts of the world and which continues to be seriously discussed by major thinkers, as documented by Sheer (1994). The key tenets of the perennial philosophy can be stated as: (1) the phenomenal world is a manifestation of an unmanifest transcendental ground, a field of consciousness or Being, which is the infinite organizing power structuring all forms and phenomena in the universe; (2) the human mind also has a transcendental ground, which is the silent level of transcendental consciousness at the basis of all thought and perception; (3) transcendental consciousness is the direct experience by the individual of the transcendental ground of the universe; and (4), this experience organizes individual and collective life to be fully evolutionary, creative, harmonious, and problem-free. From this perspective, the key to creating an ideal society is a technology that promotes transcending from the waking state mind to experience transcendental consciousness (Maharishi, 1977). The physiological correlates of transcendental consciousness through Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation technique have been extensively studied (e.g., Wallace, 1970; Travis Pearson, 1999; Travis, Tecce, Arenander, Wallace, 2002). The transcendental ground of the universe is conceived of in terms of a God concept in many cultures. In others, like Taoism and Vedanta, it is simply regarded as an abstract field of pure consciousness. Social Sciences. Concepts of collective consciousness have been proposed by some of the founders of the social sciences, such as Fechner’s transcendental basis of perception, Durkheim's conscience collective, and Jung’s collective unconscious. Gustav Fechner is best known for developing methods of measuring sensory thresholds, which are the least amounts of energy that the senses can detect. What motivated his studies of thresholds was his experience of a single transcendental continuum of “general consciousness” underlying the discontinuities of numerous localized individual minds associated with different people. He illustrated the idea with a model in which individual minds were likened to separate islands in the water. But if the level of the water were lowered sufficiently, the “islands” would be seen to actually be mountains that are connected at their base by the ground. Like that, if the perceptual threshold were insensitive, as is usually the case, then each individual mind would experience itself as isolated from other minds. But if the sensory threshold were sufficiently refined, Fechner believed, the individual would experience the continuity of consciousness at the basis of all minds. Fechner felt that such a lowering of the sensory threshold was what happened to him when he himself had a direct experience of what he called the general consciousness. Physics. Many of the founders of modern physics have expressed their insights that, like the perennial philosophy, the ultimate reality is a field of consciousness. Although the remarks of great scientists are not formally a part of science, it is significant that those who understand the scientific paradigm most clearly have made such statements. For example, Sir James Jeans (1932), the eminent British physicist and mathematician who was the first to propose that matter is continuously created throughout the universe, said: “Thirty years ago, we thought, or assumed that we were heading towards an ultimate reality of a mechanical kind Into this wholly mechanical world life had stumbled by accident Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost
Re: [FairfieldLife] Rationale for the Maharishi Effect
When John Findlay visited M.I.U. in 1980, he endorsed the ME (there is a vidoetape of this in the MUM library). As a fellow of both the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and as Clark Professor of Metaphysics at Yale, Findlay arguably was the leading philosopher of mysticism in the 20th Century: in his Gifford Lectures of 1965-67 he offers a brilliant defense of reincarnation as well as higher states of consciousness. John Niemeyer Findlay (1903-1987) was one of the twentieth centurys most unique philosophers. At a time when positivism, scientific materialism, linguistic analysis, and ordinary language philosophy were the academic staple in Britain and America, Findlay championed phenomenology, revived Hegelianism, and wrote works that were inspired by Plotinus, Buddhism, and Absolute Idealism. In the course of a long career that brought him to universities in South Africa and New Zealand, to Kings College in London, Yale, the University of Texas at Austin, and Boston University, Findlay made major contributions to the study of Meinong, Husserl (he translated both volumes of the Logical Investigations into English), Hegel, Plato, Wittgenstein and Kant. His 1958 work, Hegel: A Reexamination, was instrumental in reviving the interest in Hegel in the English-speaking world. His highly original rational-mystical philosophy is detailed in four of his books, The Discipline of the Cave, The Transcendence of the Cave, Values and Intentions and Ascent to the Absolute. Findlays command of the history of both western and eastern thought was legendary. John Silber once commented that if all the philosophical libraries in the world were suddenly lost, Findlay could come closer to recapturing the history of philosophical and religious thought, both West and East, than any other person. Sanford Drob, M.D., Ph.D. Rick Archer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: David Orme-Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 12:08 PM To: David Orme-Johnson Subject: Rationale for the Maharishi Effect Dear Colleagues, The rationale for the Maharishi Effect, which holds that we exist in a field of consciousness through which everyone is connected, is a very old idea with a high pedigree. Even more exciting is that the modern seers who know natural law the best, the greatest physicists of our time, have been lead by their discoveries to the realization that consciousness is the most fundamental level of natural law. I just added a rationale section to TruthAboutTM.com, snappily entitled Some Conceptual Precedents for a Field Theoretic View of Consciousness from the Perennial Philosophy, Social Sciences, and Quantum Physics. You can go to the link above to view the whole thing, and/or here are some excerpts. Perennial Philosophy. The suggestion that individuals interact directly at a distance through an underlying common field of consciousness has a long history. Indeed, it is embedded in the perennial philosophy, the term Aldous Huxley (1945) first applied to the universal system of thought that has persisted throughout history in all parts of the world and which continues to be seriously discussed by major thinkers, as documented by Sheer (1994). The key tenets of the perennial philosophy can be stated as: (1) the phenomenal world is a manifestation of an unmanifest transcendental ground, a field of consciousness or Being, which is the infinite organizing power structuring all forms and phenomena in the universe; (2) the human mind also has a transcendental ground, which is the silent level of transcendental consciousness at the basis of all thought and perception; (3) transcendental consciousness is the direct experience by the individual of the transcendental ground of the universe; and (4), this experience organizes individual and collective life to be fully evolutionary, creative, harmonious, and problem-free. From this perspective, the key to creating an ideal society is a technology that promotes transcending from the waking state mind to experience transcendental consciousness (Maharishi, 1977). The physiological correlates of transcendental consciousness through Maharishis Transcendental Meditation technique have been extensively studied (e.g., Wallace, 1970; Travis Pearson, 1999; Travis, Tecce, Arenander, Wallace, 2002). The transcendental ground of the universe is conceived of in terms of a God concept in many cultures. In others, like Taoism and Vedanta, it is simply regarded as an abstract field of pure consciousness. Social Sciences. Concepts of collective consciousness have been proposed by some of the founders of the social sciences, such as Fechners transcendental basis of perception, Durkheim's conscience collective, and Jungs collective unconscious. Gustav Fechner is best known for developing methods of measuring sensory
