India's timeless Vedic heritage: Meeting the challenges of our modern age - Part II
by Dr John Hagelin*

Global Country of World Peace    Translate This Article
29 January 2008

A series of Nobel-Prize-winning discoveries during the past quarter century have revealed a universal field of intelligence at the basis of mind and matter—the Unified Field or 'heterotic superstring.' This discovery is the fulfillment of Einstein's lifelong dream to locate the unified source of the diversified universe—the fountainhead of all the laws of Nature. During the meditative state, which is very easily and systematically achieved during Transcendental Meditation, human awareness opens to the direct experience of the Unified Field. This fundamental experience of unity has since been identified as a fourth major state of consciousness, distinct from waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.

Physiologically, the experience is characterized by a state of profound rest—deeper than sleep—while the mind remains restfully alert. This state of restful alertness effectively dissolves accumulated stress and fatigue and thereby prevents a wide range of stress-related disorders—which account for 80 per cent of all disorders.

Mentally, this experience is characterized by a highly ordered state of brain functioning, which produces greatly increased creativity and intelligence. In normal waking consciousness, the electrical activity of the brain is extremely fragmented. The firing of neurons in different areas of the brain is uncoordinated, with only small pockets of relative coherence engaged in specific cognitive processing. During Transcendental Meditation, as the awareness expands, these pockets of coherence spread and merge until the entire brain functions in a highly integrated and coordinated fashion. With regular practice, this orderly brain functioning becomes an increasingly stable feature of the brain.

This coherent brain functioning is scientifically correlated with increased intelligence (IQ) and creativity, and improved learning ability (short-term and long-term memory), academic performance, moral reasoning, psychological stability, emotional maturity, alertness, and reaction time. This is particularly significant in light of the previous widespread misconception that intelligence freezes at adolescence and that further improvements are not possible.

Of even greater importance, this integrated brain functioning includes the critical prefrontal cortex, located behind the forehead. The prefrontal cortex is called the 'higher brain' because it is responsible for all of our higher 'human' attributes, such as moral reasoning, planning, decision-making, judgment, and sense of self. One of the great shortfalls of conventional education is that it fails to systematically develop the higher brain, leading to a general lack of executive functioning, leadership, and moral reasoning in the broader population. Moreover, under stress the prefrontal cortex shuts down, and under chronic stress it shuts down chronically. It is vitally important for success in life to fully engage and develop the total brain, including the prefrontal cortex.

Transcendental Meditation achieves this by reducing stress and its deleterious effects on brain functioning, and furthermore, by directly engaging the prefrontal cortex and integrating it with the entire brain.

The implications of these findings cannot be overstated. Such total brain development is the key to executive success, academic achievement, and a happy, healthy family life. This important message was delivered to over 2,000 Indian executives who attended the TiEcon national conference held last year in Santa Clara, California.

Global Good News comment:

Global Good News will feature the continuation of this article in the coming days. (Please also see Part I of this article.)

View the entire article (with photographs) by Raja Dr John Hagelin at http://dl.globalgoodnews.com/pdf/Maharishi.pdf—on pages 8-12 of Maharishi in the World Today: Six Articles (This PDF file takes less than one minute to download.)

* Dr John Hagelin is a world-renowned quantum physicist, author, educator, and public policy expert, and the Raja (Administrator) of Invincible America for the Global Country of World Peace.

For information about Maharishi's seven-point programme to create a healthy, happy, prosperous society, and a peaceful world, please visit: Global Financial Capital of New York.



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