Modern Science and Vedic Science: An Introduction

T his journal provides a forum for research on the forefront of mankind's expanding knowledge of the universe. It is devoted to exploration of the unified field of all the laws of nature through the combined approaches of modern science and ancient Vedic science, as brought to light by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The identification of the unified field by modern physics is only the first glimpse of a new area of investigation that underlies all disciplines of knowledge, and which can be explored not only through objective science but through a new technology of consciousness developed by Maharishi. The unified field is now beginning to be understood through modern physics as the unified source of the entire universe, as a unified state of all laws of nature from which all force and matter fields sequentially emerge according to exact dynamical principles. As each science and each academic discipline progresses to uncover its own most basic laws and foundational principles, each is beginning to discover that the roots of these laws and principles can be traced to the unified field. This journal recognizes a new method of gaining knowledge of the unified field that combines the approach of the modern sciences with that of the most ancient of sciences, the ancient tradition of Vedic science. Many thousands of years ago, the seers of the Himalayas discovered, through exploration of the silent levels of awareness, a unified field where all the laws of nature are found together in a state of wholeness. This unity of nature was directly experienced to be a self-referral state of consciousness which is unbounded, all-pervading, unchanging, and the self-sufficient source of all existing things. They experienced and gave expression to the self-interacting dynamics through which this unified field sequentially gives rise to the diversity of all laws of nature. That experience is expressed in the ancient Vedic literature. In our own time, Maharishi has brought to light the knowledge of this ancient science and integrated it with the modern sciences in such a way that Vedic science and modern science are now seen as complementary methods of gaining knowledge of the same reality-the unified field of all the laws of nature. The knowledge of this ancient science that Maharishi has brought to light is known as Maharishi's Vedic Science. Maharishi's Vedic Science is to be understood, first of all, as a reliable method of gaining knowledge, as a science in the most complete sense of the term. It relies upon experience as the sole basis of knowledge, not experience gained through the senses only, but experience gained when the mind, becoming completely quiet, is identified with the unified field. This method, examined in relation to the modern sciences, proves to be an effective means of exploring the unified field of all laws of nature. On the basis of this method, complete knowledge of the unified field becomes possible. It is possible to know the unified field both subjectively on the level of direct experience through exploration of consciousness and objectively through the investigative methods of modern science. Vedic Science gives complete knowledge of consciousness, or the knower, complete knowledge of the object