Is Consciousness The Unified Field?

The main modern field theory of global consciousness is John Hagelin’s unified field theory of consciousness (Hagelin 1987). This theory is a direct descendent of the Vedic tradition, arising from its author’s practice of Transcendental Meditation, a method of teaching Advaita Vedantist meditation that was franchised in the West by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Hagelin was originally trained as a quantum mechanic, and the unified field theory of consciousness proposes that consciousness is identical with his own idiosyncratic mathematical version of the putative unified field.

The main supporting evidence put forward for the unified field theory of consciousness is the reported existence of the Maharishi effect. The Maharishi effect is an increase in quality of life and decrease in violent offending that is reported to occur when approximately 1% of the population of any given geographical area repeatedly meditates in such a way that all the practitioners in the group achieve pure consciousness (ie consciousness without any contents) at the same time. The proposed explanation of the Maharishi effect is something like: (a) consciousness is the unified field, (b) attainment of pure consciousness by an individual meditator injects 'a wave of coherence' into the unified field (c) if many individuals put such waves of coherence into the field at the same time, the effect spreads and becomes so strong that other individual consciousnesses in the vicinity are affected (even though they themselves have never experienced pure consciousness) (d) these essentially broadcast effects act to lower individual stress, increase life satisfaction and thus decrease violent crime, over an unspecified but limited geographic area.

Empirical data claimed to demonstrate the existence of the Maharishi effect have been published in a number of independent, peer reviewed journals, (Orme-Johnson et al 1988; Dillbeck 1990; Hatchard et al 1996; Hagelin et al 1999). However, criticisms have also been published of both the statistics purporting to demonstrate the effect itself and of a certain lack of clarity about why or even whether the unified field theory of consciousness might reasonably be considered to predict the Maharishi effect (Schrodt 1990; Fales & Markovsky 1997).

A second bit of experimental evidence that such a global field might exist is the claim that the EEG of several pairs of different subjects became coherent during time periods when 2500 meditators were practicing the technique of ‘yogic flying’ together 100 miles from the EEG laboratory (Orme-Johnson et al 1982). In this paper the claimed statistical effect is marginal (p = 0.02) and too little information is supplied to allow adequate assessment of the method of measuring coherence from non-digitized data, recorded on magnetic tape. If these authors still believe their early conclusions, it would seem a good idea to repeat the experiment using more clearly described and up-to-date methodology.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VlfNTJ8hhRY



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