Willie Nelson

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This is unedited material from the Scientists for Peace conference in New Delhi, India 2006.

John Hagelin, scientist, educator, and three-time, third-party candidate for President of the United States, is Professor of Physics, Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management, and Minister of Science and Technology of the Global Country of World Peace, a “virtual community” committed to the goals of worldwide peace and prosperity.Hagelin attributes his unusual career path from physicist to spokesman for global human concerns to his practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique and to his studies with the founder of the technique, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

As a child Hagelin won a scholarship to the elite Taft School, where he earned a reputation as both a genius (receiving a perfect score of 165 on a school-administered IQ test) and a thrill-seeker who constantly tested the school’s rules.

One such “test” resulted in a motorcycle crash that led to hospitalization. His confinement to a body cast produced two significant side benefits: one of his teachers introduced him to quantum mechanics, and a teacher of Transcendental Meditation taught him the technique, both of which have had a major impact on the rest of his life.

Hagelin later graduated from Taft with a scholarship to Dartmouth College, where he participated in athletics, earned an undergraduate degree with highest honors (summa cum laude) in three years, co-authored and published research, and won a fellowship to study physics at Harvard.

While at Harvard, Hagelin worked under the noted physicist Howard Georgi, best known for his work in Grand Unification and gauge coupling unification. Hagelin received first a Master’s degree from Harvard in 1976, and in 1981, graduated with a Ph.D.

In the years 1979-1995, Hagelin published seventy papers in the fields of particle physics and cosmology. This work includes the so-called “heterotic superstring theory”, which he developed in collaboration with CERN researchers John Ellis, D.V. Nanopoulus, and others.

The theory is considered one of the more successful unified field theories or “theories of everything”, evoking mention of a possible Nobel Prize.

Hagelin’s papers include some of the most frequently cited references in the physical sciences.

In 1987 and 1989, Hagelin published two papers on the relationship between physics and consciousness. These papers discuss the Vedic understanding of consciousness as a field and compare it with theories of the unified field derived by modern physics.

Hagelin argues that the most parsimonious explanation for these two fields having almost identical properties is that they are, in fact, one and the same.

Part of the evidence he presents for this explanation is the body of research on the effects that practitioners of certain advanced meditation techniques appear to have on measured parameters in society.
[the above From Wikipedia]

This is the third post we’ve done about John Hagelin. The other two are Peace Science and Quantum Peace. This time around I wanted everyone to know more about who this guy is.

John Hagelin is not someone to write off.

I understand that many people want to write him off as some kind of nut case. People who say that must be challenged. The more you know about John Hagelin the harder it is to discount what he says. John Hagelin is a man of tremendous intellectual capacity and accomplishments.

You do not have to follow the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to appreciate what John Hagelin says.

John Hagelin expresses a theme common to all Dharmic religions.

[From Wikipedia]
“Dharma” derives from the verbal root dhri, which simply means “manner of being.” The term must therefore be understood in its original (i.e. metaphysical) context, that of a conformity to a divine or creative principle at work in an individual and in nature. It represents the individual’s internal law, to which obedience must be given if that individual life is to live in accordance with a divine will.

I recognize that everyone has different ways of learning and communicating. Peace is a destination approachable on many paths. But peace always requires individual work by each individual.

In recent posts we have focused on creating a culture of peace through art making. Peace can also be approached through the intellect.

In this spirit I offer the viewpoint of John Hagelin.

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