Complex social, ethical and environmental issues can be solved only through broad awareness and deep creativity on the part of engaged individuals. Developing awareness, creativity, and engagement are the core features of the MBA program at Maharishi University of Management. These are the foundation of what is coming to be known as “deep sustainability.”


We agree with Stuart Hill [1], who states, “Most [sustainability] initiatives focus on 'efficiency' and 'substitution' strategies. These predictably fail to address the causes of problems. What is needed is a 'whole system design/redesign' approach that aims to make systems problem-proof and that enable health and wellbeing… [T]he redesign, design and innovation that is needed at the industrial and business level needs to be ‘enabled’ by supportive changes in our institutional structures and processes (at the political and socio-cultural level), and that changes at both of these levels can, in turn, only be effectively ‘enabled’ by radical (deep, root level) transformation at the personal level. Such personal change usually involves healing and liberational processes that result in empowerment, expanded awareness and visioning, clarification and transformation of values and worldviews, and an ability to live more fully and more relationally in place and in the present, while also having much greater concern for other humans, other species, ecological processes, and the long-term wellbeing of all life.”


Maharishi University of Management offers the educational technology to achieve the personal sustainability that is at the foundation of such a vision for social and ecological sustainability. We engage our MBA students intellectually with ideas about the human situation in our global ecology through courses such as Socially and Environmentally Responsible Management, Employee Health and Wellness, Sustainable Technologies, Socially Responsible Investing, Measuring and Reporting on Sustainability, and Sustainable Community Development. We engage our students practically through group research projects in these courses, through a capstone MBA project on sustainable business, and through internships with companies engaged in sustainability initiatives.


Most importantly, we give our students the knowledge and experience that develops their awareness and creativity at the most profound level possible. In our course The Science and Technology of Consciousness, MBA students learn that at the basis of the thinking mind, the essential nature of one’s self, is a field of pure consciousness. This basis of the mind is not just the source of personal creativity; it is the unified field of natural law, the source of all the laws of nature that govern our world. Moreover, our MBA students learn to practice the Transcendental Meditation technique by which they can experience this universal consciousness effortlessly in their twice-daily 20-minute meditation practice and thereby promote their own personal sustainability through mental and physical health, improved social relationships, and a deep intuitive connection with their environment.


The predictable result of this educational system is “deep sustainability” -- students who are alert, engaged, creative, and successful in working with others to achieve a more sustainable future for themselves, their nation and their world.


[1] Hill, Stuart B. 2006. Enabling Redesign for Deep Industrial Ecology and Personal Values Transformation: A Social Ecology Perspective, Chapter 12 in Ken Green and Sally Randles, eds., Industrial Ecology and Spaces of Innovation, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing Inc., pp. 255ff.