JMVRI Issue Number 7
JMVRI Issue Number Seven includes two articles, out of a total of three, on the unique educational tool, the Unified Field Chart developed by Maharishi. The first paper presents the structure and function of Maharishi’s Unified Field Chart revealing the significance of this for the development of consciousness and for education. The second paper is a new insight into urban sustainability from the perspective of Maharishi Vedic Science, followed by a third paper on a new Unified Field Chart for sustainability.
JMVRI Paper 7.1
Putting Brahman to Practice: The Structure and Function of Maharishi’s Unified Field Chart
Authors: Lee Fergusson, Geoffrey Wells, Anna Bonshek and Wendy Cavanaugh
This paper can be downloaded via the following link:
Citation: Fergusson, L., Wells, G., Bonshek, A., & Cavanaugh, W. (2018). Putting Brahman to practice: The structure and function of Maharishi’s unified field chart. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 7, 11-52.
Summary
Since the early 1960s, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi embraced the power of visual communication to more effectively convey the central concepts, principles, and themes of his Vedic Science. His early adoption of visual aids, including the first computer-generated images of interhemispheric brainwave coherence and electroencephalic ordering, and illustrated textual graphics of advanced scientific phenomena, such as the Third Law of Thermodynamics, immunology, gerontology, the Josephson Effect, and the Meissner Effect, has meant that a significant number of innovative images appear throughout the published literature on Maharishi Vedic Science. Types of images employed by Maharishi during the last 50 years range from photographs and photographic elements, schema, scientific charts, artist’s impressions, diagrams, and graphs to a host of conceptual maps and graphic representations of the human physiology, some extending to large-scale foldout charts and 3D models. Maharishi also developed important visual communication tools and conceptual wall charts for use in education which detail and explain advanced topics and show an integration of contemporary scientific and humanist thought with, or parallel to, Veda and the Vedic Literature. These tools include comprehensive charts of the Constitution of the Universe and Maharishi’s Apaurusheya Bhāsya, Veda in the human physiology, a reorganization of the 40 aspects of Veda and the Vedic Literature, the Richo Akshare Chart, and the Unified Field Chart, all of which are unique to Maharishi. This paper is the first in a three-part series to investigate the development and application of Maharishi’s Unified Field Chart by presenting two main topics: the structure of the Unified Field Chart (including its design, use of colours and text, and evolution); and the function of the Unified Field Chart (including its application to every academic discipline and area of human life). According to Maharishi, the ultimate purpose of the Unified Field Chart is to foster the growth of higher states of consciousness.
JMVRI Paper 7.2
Maharishi Vedic Science and Technology: Bringing Fulfilment to Urban Sustainability
Author: David Kettle
This paper can be downloaded via the following link:
Citation: Kettle, D. (2018). Maharishi Vedic Science and Technology: Bringing fulfilment to urban sustainability. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 7, 53-68.
Summary
This research paper, the second in a three-part series of papers, introduces the relationship of Maharishi Vedic Science and Technology to the discipline of urban sustainability in the context of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Unified Field Chart. The Unified Field Chart is an educational tool designed by Maharishi to achieve several outcomes. First, it provides the knowledge of an academic discipline or field of human endeavour ‘at a glance’, in one completely integrated visual statement. Second, a Unified Field Chart presents the diverse elements, themes, sub-disciplines and activities of a discipline or field of endeavour and shows their hierarchical or internal connectedness to each other and to the overall discipline or activity. In this sense, the Unified Field Chart is a systematically organized presentation of the main elements of a discipline or field of endeavour. Third, a Unified Field Chart shows the relationship of the discipline or field of human endeavour to the unified field of Natural Law, the home of all the laws of nature, which is the unmanifest source of both the discipline or endeavour as well as the source of all knowledge and the physical universe. Thus, the Unified Field Chart is an organizational tool which identifies all disciplines and fields of human endeavour with their source in the unified field and is thus a tool at the leading edge of contemporary scientific thought. Finally, study of a Unified Field Chart enlivens the consciousness of the viewer and promotes ‘enlightenment’ by pointing to the means through which all knowledge, including knowledge of the specific academic discipline or field of human endeavour, can be enlivened and established naturally in human awareness for benefit in every phase of thought, speech and action. For these reasons, and because the built environment plays such an important role in leading a healthy and balanced contemporary life, we advance a Unified Field Chart of Urban Sustainability.
JMVRI Paper 7.3
A Unified Field Chart of Urban Sustainability
Authors: David Kettle, Lee Fergusson & Geoffrey Wells
This paper can be downloaded via the following link:
https://www.academia.edu/36817205/A_Unified_Field_Chart_of_Urban_Sustainability
Citation: Kettle, D., Fergusson, L., & Wells, G. (2018). A unified field chart of urban sustainability. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 7, 69- 126.
Summary
This research paper, the third in a three-part series of papers on the Unified Field Chart as conceived by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, presents an integrated approach to organising the discipline of Urban Sustainability. The Unified Field Chart is an educational tool conceived and introduced by Maharishi to systematically connect the parts of knowledge to the wholeness of knowledge and the wholeness of knowledge to the Self, to the consciousness of everyone. The Unified Field Chart of Urban Sustainability displays the systems, principles and processes of conceiving, designing, building and living in a sustainable, healthy urban environment, the goal of which is the fulfillment of human development and the sustainable progress and well- being of society with its source of sustainability in the unified field.
It is organized into eight vertical levels from the most universal or fundamental level at the bottom of the chart to the most applied level at the top, starting with Level 1, referred to as the unified field of all the laws of nature. This is the level of nature’s intelligence, the field of non-change from which the infinite variety of nature is continuously emerging, expanding and returning, a level Maharishi refers to as the ‘first law’ of nature or Natural Law. Level 2: Sustainability Systems is the first emergence of the discipline of urban sustainability from the unified field, where urban sustainability begins to ascribe and define its internal structure and organisation. Level 2 adopts a ‘systems view’ of sustainability, describing the self-generative, autopoietic processes of sustainable systems. The next level, Level 3: Sustainability Principles, is composed of various operational principles, considerations that help set priorities and define society-wide distributions and capabilities. The next three horizontal levels of the Unified Field Chart of Urban Sustainability—Level 4: Planning for Sustainability, Level 5: Designing for Sustainability, and Level 6: Building for Sustainability—are structured to reflect the conventional plan-design-build process. Level 7: Fulfilment of Human Development contains the goal of urban sustainability for the individual, which we discuss in terms of capability theory. Finally, the fulfilment of human development on the collective level forms the basis for sustainable progress and well-being at the level of society, as shown on Level 8: Sustainable Progress and Well-being of Society. This paper aims to systematically describe these eight vertical levels of the Unified Field Chart of Urban Sustainability and explore their relation to the subjective aspect of Maharishi Vedic Science, the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program.