Educators everywhere are realizing the need for a more holistic approach to education— one that unifies all the fragmented disciplines of traditional learning. When I attended this year’s National Coalition of Girls’ Schools conference in Wellesley, Massachusetts, I was thrilled to hear speaker after speaker propose that the spiritual development of students would make their education more complete.

In my contact with private school presidents and other academic leaders I find that more and more attention is being paid to the connections underlying individual disciplines of study. Diana Chapman Walsh, President of Wellesley College, recently commented that the real innovations in curriculum development are now found in the "interstices between the disciplines" rather than the specific disciplines themselves.

This theme is nothing new to students of Consciousness-Based education. Since 1972 Maharishi University of Management has offered the Science of Creative Intelligence as a unifying foundation and integrating framework for each student’s education. "Knowledge is structured in consciousness" summarizes Maharishi’s declaration that consciousness— the field of pure spirituality— is the very Self of each student and the source of all knowledge in every discipline.

Today, Heavenly Mountain Ideal Girls’ School and Maharishi Spiritual University of America offer Consciousness-Based education to half the world’s population—the world of ladies.

At Heavenly Mountain Ideal Girls’ School, students probe the deepest levels of traditional subjects like physics, chemistry and mathematics, and discover that the ultimate reality of the physical world is a field of pure intelligence or consciousness.

They are bold and confident in their pursuit of knowledge because they have discovered that every detail of the ever-expanding universe is just an expression of their own Self. This gives them tremendous enthusiasm for knowledge and makes academic study personal and satisfying.

At Maharishi Spiritual University of America, consciousness is the only field of study. Students become intimately familiar with this fundamental field of life through their practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs.

The program of study provides extended opportunities for students to research deeply into their own consciousness, and then correlate their experiences with experiences of higher states of consciousness recorded in the Vedic texts. Students discover that the whole manifest universe is just the self-referral expression of their own Self.

These two institutions provide models for how all schools can develop students’ total brain potential by giving them the direct experience of Transcendental Consciousness, the unbounded field of pure intelligence—pure spirituality—the non-material basis of every-thing in the universe.

I recently received a letter from Richard C. Levin, president of Yale University, who wrote, "I must say that the distinction you make between what can be accomplished through the intellect alone and what can only be accomplished by transcending the intellect makes excellent sense. Holistic knowledge is certainly what is desired, and our Western tradition tends to focus exclusively on the intellectual and to neglect other important means of reaching wisdom and understanding."

Since Consciousness-Based education is readily available, it’s a shame for governments to withhold from students the opportunity to develop their total brain potential. This widespread neglect of the holistic development of students is the source of so many problems we see in the world today.

Education determines the standard of living for both individuals and societies. Consciousness-Based education raises that standard to the possibility of living full human potential, life in enlightenment.

Dr. Meg Custer is President of Heavenly Mountain Ideal Girls’ School, a day and boarding school for K-12, and Maharishi Spiritual University of America, an institution of higher learning for ladies.