September 2000

Book Review
Celebrating Total Knowledge in Every Girl through
Maharishi's Vedic Education: First Textbook of
Ideal Girls' Schools Around the World

This book is an impressively insightful collection of essays, stories, poems and illustrations written entirely by the students of Heavenly Mountain Ideal Girls’ School. From literary analysis and scientific exploration to radiant visual artworks, each piece shines with the students’ pro-found mastery of the connections between Maharishi Vedic Science, the science of consciousness, and all other disciplines.

With a cosmic rainbow motif decorating the borders of each gilt edged page, this elegant book is as inspiring to look at as it is to read. The cover, designed by Heather Hartnett, depicts the Kalp Vriksha, the "wish-yielding tree" that symbolizes the effortless ability to fulfill desires from the level of Natural Law.

Dr. Meg Custer, the School’s president, outlines in her introduction how traditional fields of study—science, commerce and the arts—have all been found to emerge from the Unified Field of all the Laws of Nature. This field of Total Knowledge—Transcendental Consciousness— is contacted by the students during their daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique. Drawing from their direct experience the students examine each subject in the light of Total Knowledge, exploring and discovering the unity that underlies every discipline, and indeed lies within every student.

Three ninth graders look at the 40 chapters of their physics textbook and discover that each topic, whether electrostatics, thermodynamics or projectiles, expresses one of the 40 qualities of the Vedic Literature. To complete the study they find corresponding areas of their own physiology which also express those qualities.

In a charming essay called "Percent-ages in the Light of Vedic Science," Anna Crowe analyzes her classmates’ food choices at dinner and describes how her favorite math subject demonstrates.

Laura Stevens ponders the exponential problem of how long milk stays fresh and what qualities of the Vedic Literature are expressed while solving the equation.

Of course, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing has been analyzed by high school students for generations, but until now it has never been seen in the light of Maharishi Vedic Science. Correlating the play and its characters to parts of the Vedic Literature and their own physiology, three students discover the classic story in a new way.

The students include a quote by Maharishi from the book, Maharishi Speaks to Educators: Mastery Over Natural Law: "Education will be fulfilled when it has the ability to connect the point value of the individual with the infinite value of his existence—to connect individual intelligence with the ocean of Cosmic Intelligence. Individual and Cosmic Intelligence are already most intimate to one another; education has just to open the awareness to that which already exists."

Expressing the fulfillment of Consciousness- Based education in their own lives, the girls say, "Maharishi’s Vedic Science relates to anything for the one simple reason that it is every-thing. That is why this book is for everyone: because no matter what your profession, interest, or hobbies are, Maharishi’s Vedic Science correlates perfectly with your life. It is the one science that is the basis of everything, not just one thing. It applies to people everywhere and teaches them to become a master of their own lives, and therefore, a master of their work, their school, and their nation."

To order this book call 877-IDEAL-ED or send a check for $25 (payable to HMIGS) to HMIGS, Suite 3, 3555 Heavenly Mountain Drive, Boone, NC, 28607. North Carolina residents please add six percent for sales tax.