University of Virginia Library

Maharishi Monitors Meditation Meeting

By TAYLOR KING

—Ed.)

An August issue of the
newspaper Boston After Dark gives
the following account of
Maharishi's latest public
attraction- an "International
Symposium of the Science of
Creative Intelligence," held at the
University of Massachusetts during
the last two weeks of July: "In
order to explore the connection
between what Maharishi calls the
Science of Creative Intelligence and
other fields of mental endeavor-in
fact, to validate it as a science- an
International Symposium was held
at the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst July 18 through August
8. Participation in this Symposium
entailed no commitment to TM per
se; rather, scientists, philosophers,
physicians and teachers were
invited to discuss their respective
fields, as Maharishi illustrated the
relationships between their areas
and his own." (The audience was
composed largely of young
meditators and representatives of
the academic world, including a
University of Virginia faculty
member.)

"There was an extraordinarily
wide range of speakers. Throughout
the lectures, Maharishi sat
cross-legged on a yellow couch
on stage, the area around him
festooned with flowers. Invariably,
he would offer comments about the
lecture just heard in the form of a
reconciliation between their
thought and his own. The exchange
between Dr. Harvey Brooks,
president of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and himself
was a representative one.

"Dr. Brooks: 'Technology has
allowed us to choose to paint
ourselves into a corner. Like the
sorcerer's apprentice we may
constantly need to develop better
and better systems to feed our
'technological addiction.'
Maharishi: 'Technology today
demands that man be more
practical. The inefficiency to cope
with his own progress threatens to
slow its expansion. SCI meets this
challenge by enabling every man to
use more of his full potential.'

"Dr. E.H. Walker, a theoretical
physicist at the U.S. Army Ballistic
Research Laboratory in Aberdeen,
Maryland, is attempting to define,
through quantum mechanics,
consciousness as a single physical
quantity. This material approach to
consciousness nicely corresponds
with Maharishi's notion of the
thought process as something to be
experienced in itself.

"The most unlikely speaker was
Major General Franklin Davis,
himself a meditator. He
recommended meditation as an
antidote to drug abuse and stress
within the military. The use of
meditation by the military was a
sticky subject. Would it help them
to kill more effectively? Maharishi
offered, 'When the military has full
use of creative intelligence, peace
will be a reality.' Suffering causes
war; suffering is a result of stress;
TM eliminates stress. Again, neatly
taken care of.

"The Colombia astronomer,
Lloyd Motz, postulated 'a pulsating
universe, where everything begins in
the same way again.' The clever
Maharishi compared this to the
cycles of rest and activity which all
animal life participates in. He then
observed that TM provides the rest
which a person needs to become
active again. This tendency to
present everything in terms of SCI
at first seemed manipulative; but it
became apparent that the thought
processes Maharishi is concerned
with are indeed so fundamental and
their application so broad that they
can hardly be extraneous to any
discussion of consciousness. His
points were, at the worst, obvious,
but more often than not,
analytically useful and poetically
apt.

Manifest Love

"The love feast of the
Symposium was Buckminster
Fuller's talk with Maharishi. To
Fuller, 'What makes Maharishi
beloved and understood is that he
has manifest love. You could not
meet with Maharishi without
recognizing his integrity. You look
in his eyes and there it is.' To
Maharishi, 'Here we find in one
person the expression of what
actually the name means, Fuller
integration.' In spite of what
appears to be at least tactical
disagreements between the two on
how to improve the world, they
tripped all over each other trying to
establish their basic unison. Fuller
admired Maharishi because, rather
than selfishly sequestering his
technique for a chosen few, he
decided to give it to the world.
However, Maharishi's approach is to
develop the inner man while
Fuller's is to change the
environment.

Intellect

"A particularly dogged
questioner tried to clarify a
difference between the two in the
matter of sacredness of law. Fuller
again appeared the political activist,
Maharishi either the believer in the
status quo, or the believer in its
irrelevance, and hence the danger or
irrelevance of political change. With
some breathtaking legal thinking of
his own, Maharishi again attained
reconciliation, vindicating his a
priori belief in the wisdom and
goodness of a man like Fuller.

" 'The laws of nature...accomodate
and allow a man to progress
in all directions. Man-made laws
may not have that infinite
flexibility...But we see the lawyers
doing black of white and white of
black all the time: it's the
interpretation that has a very wide
range. Therefore, laws are very rigid
and very flexible depending upon
the intellect of man, which we are
emphasizing to be great. So, (from)
the Science of Creative
Intelligence...intellect will be great,
and then the man-made laws will be
as rigid as natural laws. Then they
will not need change.' "

A course format for the Science
of Creative Intelligence (SCI) is
currently in use in universities such
as Yale and Stanford, and is being
offered as a Liberal Arts Seminar in
the college of Arts and Sciences
here at the University. SCI purports
to offer "a systematic approach to
the unfoldment of an individual's
full potential for enjoyment and
effectiveness in life." The two
major aspects of the course include.

(1) "A-delineation of the inner
source of Creative Intelligence, and
an examination of various
techniques for contacting and
utilizing it, particularly TM." The
organizers of the course, do not,
however, expect anyone to begin
the practice merely for the sake of
the course.

(2) "Discussions of readings of
some exceptional expressions of
more developed states of
consciousness in religion, literature
philosophy, psychology and
education."

The first meeting of the Liberal
Arts Seminar on SCI involved a