Absolute Principles of Society in Maharishi’s Commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita
Geoffrey A.Wells and Samuel Y. Boothby
Abstract
In his commentary on the conversation between Arjuna and Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi presents principles that govern the most evolutionary, and therefore ideal, individual and collective life in society. Maharishi derives these principles from an analysis of the role that the field of pure consciousness — the unified field of natural law, the total potential of natural law — plays in structuring the evolution of the universe, including human life. Maharishi describes the mechanics of how natural law governs evolution through the instrument of dharma — the cosmic force of evolution that keeps life progressive. In addition, Maharishi describes how natural law structures the diversity of evolutionary paths through family dharmas that uphold the most evolutionary lifestyles for different individuals with different pyschological and physiological characteristics. Based on these principles, Maharishi explains that individual suffering and collective catastrophes, like war, result when individuals use their free will to violate natural law, deviating from the evolutionary process structured by cosmic and family dharmas. Thus, all problems in society ultimately stem from individual thought and action and an ideal society can only be structured by teaching individuals how to spontaneously think and act in accord with natural law. Maharishi’s Vedic Science makes available technologies for promoting individual growth to higher states of consciousness, in which all thought and action is spontaneously in accord with dharma, the total potential of natural law. Maharishi predicts that societies of such enlightened individuals will create a perfect civilization, ‘Heaven on Earth.’