Total Brain Development
The highest goal of every nation is to create ideal citizens, individuals capable of fulfilling their own goals while upholding the interests of others and the progress of the whole society. For this goal to become a living reality, education must actualize the full potential of the most precious resource of the country, the human brain of every citizen.
Research clearly indicates that education today is not realizing this immense potential, with the exception of universities and schools that are directly developing the consciousness of the students through the approach of Consciousness-Based education.
CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED EDUCATION FOR BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
The brain’s development and functioning are influenced by experience. Neuroscience research findings also suggests that the type of experience most valuable for brain development after childhood is experience which fosters greater integration of brain functioning.
Research also indicates that the experiences gained through the prevailing educational approach activate specific areas of the brain without fostering more integrated functioning of the brain as a whole. Such education, due to its exclusively segmented approach to knowledge, actually prevents the total development of brain functioning.
The Global Country of World Peace offers CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED education that has been shown through decades of research to promote holistic brain functioning and the expansion of mental capabilities.
On this basis educational outcomes are enhanced, stress and antisocial behavior reduced, creativity and intelligence increased, and the inner happiness of students and teachers of all cultural and educational background is spontaneously unfolded.
CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED education adds study and research in consciousness to the traditional study of the academic disciplines, and includes the twice-daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs, including Yogic Flying, to directly develop full use of the brain’s potential in higher states of consciousness.
Considering institutions as a whole, students at universities and schools using CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED education are found to be distinctly more committed academically, more alert, more healthy and balanced, more self-actualized, more satisfied with their education, more harmonious in their relationships, and more mature in moral judgment, compared to students at other educational institutions.
Amidst worldwide dissatisfaction with education today, CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED education has been shown by research and educational outcomes to be singularly effective in producing students who are steadily growing in the most cherished qualities of human life and the full expression of their creativity, intelligent, and organizing power. This knowledge of human consciousness and how to awaken its unlimited potential has changed the concept of a school or university from “all knowledge on one campus” to “all knowledge in every brain.”
KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS FOR BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
The Global Country of World Peace offers detailed knowledge of the highest states of human development, and the technologies of consciousness, including the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs, for systematically attaining these states.
A complete science of consciousness is now available providing the theoretical and practical knowledge for unfolding the full value of human consciousness including descriptions of the quality of physiology, perception, and behavior of individuals living higher states of consciousness.
For example, such individuals display the highest levels of creativity, intelligence, and organizing power. Their speech and actions are spontaneously most nourishing and evolutionary for others and for the environment. On the platform of inner fulfillment and enlightenment, their desires are always for the good of all humanity, and are achieved most effortlessly. They radiate an influence of vitality and harmony to the whole society, and are a source of joy and wisdom to all who know them.
Maharishi’s Vedic Science of Consciousness describes in detail the quality of human awareness that spontaneously gives rise to such behavior. In higher states of consciousness, when the full potential of the brain is being utilized, the fundamental field of Nature’s intelligence — Transcendental Consciousness, the Unified Field of Natural Law — is fully enlivened in the individual’s consciousness. Maharishi Vedic Science describes this field as containing all the Laws of Nature in their most concentrated, abstract form, just as a seed contains the whole tree. The fundamental dynamics of this field are the Veda and Vedic Literature, whose reverberations give rise to all the Laws of Nature governing the orderly evolution of the universe.
When this total creative process of Nature is enlivened in awareness, the individual spontaneously makes use of it, commanding the whole field of action, able to know anything, do anything right, and achieve any great goal — and always supported by the total intelligence of Natural Law. Recent research has discovered that the physiology of everyone is the expression of the total intelligence of Natural Law — that the individual is cosmic. Functioning with cosmic intelligence becomes a living reality when the total potential of the brain is actualized.
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH VERIFIES BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED education makes use of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs to develop higher integration of brain functioning and associated higher cognitive capabilities, as the basis for increasingly effective and rewarding thought and action.
The Transcendental Meditation technique provides the experience of wholeness of awareness, unbounded awareness, in Transcendental Consciousness. Physiological research has established Transcendental Consciousness as a fourth major state of consciousness, a unique state of restful alertness distinct from waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, and characterized by enhanced integration of brain functioning.
This and other research summarized below indicate that the experience of Transcendental Consciousness is essential for the total development of brain functioning. Maharishi Vedic Science of Consciousness brings to light that development of total brain potential is experienced as the development of higher states of consciousness.
This enlivening of total brain functioning, and the corresponding actualization of mental potential, are the crucial missing elements in education today, and are provided by CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED education.
The research findings that directly pertain to increased integration and effectiveness of brain functioning can be summarized in four categories:
Measured during the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique:
1. Greater integration of all cortical areas during the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique — measured by greater use of the latent reserves of the brain; increased synchrony and coherence of electroencephalographic activity at diverse frequencies and cortical areas; and increased cerebral blood flow widely throughout the cortex.
Measured outside the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique:
2. Greater integration of diverse styles of brain functioning — as measured by greater activation of each brain hemisphere; and by the unique integration of EEG associated with the experience of higher states of consciousness.
3. Greater integration and efficiency of brain functioning underlying cognitive processes — as measured by faster brain processing of cognitive and sensory stimuli; and by development of cognitive abilities that are associated with more integrated brain functioning, including increased intelligence, field independence, and ego development, all of which were previously thought to stop developing after the initial maturation of the brain in late childhood.
4. Greater integration and effectiveness in the total functioning of the brain, peripheral nervous system, and neuroendocrine processes — measured by more adaptive responses to stress by the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system; and by reversal of the detrimental effects of the aging process, shown in a wide variety of physiological, cognitive, and behavioral variables.