Projects for Maharishi
The men and women who joined the Transcendental Meditation Organization’s International Staff spent most of their time bringing Maharishi’s ideas into reality. They understood that Maharishi’s ideas were concepts that came directly from the Unified Field of Creative Intelligence and deserved all the attention and effort they could muster. And Maharishi wanted input on everything from small projects like designing posters and book covers, to huge, grand projects like Vedaland, Maharishi Nagar, and a network of World Peace Palaces. It was challenging, exhausting work that yielded great achievements for the world and personal rewards for the workers themselves.
Maharishi and the Qualities of Creative Intelligence
By Judy Booth, Fairfield, IA
In the early 1970’s I had the great good fortune of being a member of Maharishi’s International Staff. Maharishi gave me many wonderful projects to do—one of which came in December of 1971 when he was conducting the Teacher Training Course in Mallorca, Spain. Maharishi asked me to compile a book of his lectures entitled, “The Science of Creative Intelligence, MIU, and the World Plan.”
After some time, Maharishi called and asked me to read to him the lectures I had chosen for the book. I began with a talk on Creative Intelligence. The first sentence went like this: “The nature of Creative Intelligence is evolutionary, it’s progressive…” Maharishi added: “it’s holistic, it’s unifying, it’s purifying, it’s dynamic, it’s self-sufficient, self-generating, self-perpetuating.” On and on, he dictated one word after another. At one point, bound by editorial considerations, I said: “Maharishi, this is getting to be an awfully long sentence,” to which he responded, “Never mind, just keep writing.”
As he continued giving expression to the nature of Creative Intelligence, I began to realize that a cosmic phenomenon was taking place. It felt as if Maharishi was cognizing and extolling the fundamental impulses of Natural Law that express themselves as the whole of manifest creation. Most thrilling was seeing the ever-increasing love and joy with which Maharishi spoke each quality’s name. No longer did one hear them as mere words—they were lively expressions of Divine Intelligence emerging one after another in a cascading flow of pure love and bliss.
Finally Maharishi concluded. He stood up and proclaimed: “These are the qualities of Creative Intelligence!” He said they would be studied as seen in nature and as experienced in the growth of higher states of consciousness and as expressed in the lives of great people. Then he asked me to count them. They came to 64, and he said, “Bring them down to 25.” That was a surprise—lower the number of qualities from 64 to 25—me? As Maharishi was leaving the room he asked me to keep the list of qualities with me at all times, and to bring it to all his meetings, large and small.
The purpose for this soon became clear. Maharishi often held meetings with people that went late into the night. At that time, the main meetings of this kind were with the MIU faculty who were finalizing the text of the first MIU catalog. During those working sessions, as the hours rolled on, Maharishi would see that people were getting drowsy, and he would say, “The Qualities of Creative Intelligence?” That was my cue to read them out. He would then ask everyone to add more qualities, many of which reflected the freewheeling ambiance that often prevails in the middle of the night. Inscribed in my memory are four of those qualities offered on one such occasion: ‘fat, jolly, rich, and happy’. Much laughter prevailed in those sessions. Maharishi created a magical formula for refreshing and revitalizing everyone—and then back to work we would go.
On our last working session, Maharishi asked me and another person to put all the qualities in pairs of two, either being complementary or opposite to one another. That night we had 72 qualities, making 36 pairs. And what a great exercise it was! On seeing opposite and complementary qualities put together, one felt they were not so different from one another—they were just different flavors of relationships within the wholeness of Being.
Maharishi imparted so many lessons in those magical days of playing with the qualities of Creative Intelligence. It was play with deep purpose, while getting a job done with maximum enjoyment. After all, his essential message in coming out of the Himalayas was that life is bliss.
Maharishi once gave our dear Dr. Vernon Katz a big project to do, saying, “Never think of it as work to be done—do it in bliss.” May this be our experience in playing our own unique roles in chasing Kali Yuga far away and creating a heavenly life for everyone in our dear world.
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