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At Maharishi University of Management we use Maharishi Vedic Science as the foundational theory to probe the deepest qualities of a literary text. However, because Maharishi Vedic Science takes in a much broader territory than literary theory, some have had difficulty seeing it in this more restricted role. The purpose of this paper, then, is to first demonstrate what literary theory is and how it has developed. Next, it will show that specific literary theories (i.e. critical practices) were derived from a wide variety of historical, psychological, linguistic, sociological, philosophical, economic, and political sources—none originally designed as techniques to analyze works of literature. Such varied approaches can function as literary theories because literature is an expression of culture. In many respects, literature mirrors life itself, which is the target of all the aforementioned disciplines. Hence, Maharishi Vedic Science, like Marxist or Feminist theories, though not created to operate as literary theory per se, succeeds in this capacity beyond any of the theories currently employed by literature departments throughout the world.

Part II of this paper will provide a pragmatic demonstration of Maharishi Vedic Science as applied literary theory in examining a text, namely Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.” I chose this text because several celebrated papers, including those by Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Barbara Johnson, have already critiqued it from different theoretical vantage points. I will first give an overview of their arguments to demonstrate how they have assessed Poe’s story. My aim here is to show how literary theory goes beyond a mere common sense reading of a text to reveal new and surprising meanings. Finally, I’ll conclude with one possible reading (among many) of Poe’s famous story from the viewpoint of Maharishi Vedic Science. This reading, centered on Total Knowledge, should demonstrate just how well Maharishi Vedic Science performs as literary theory, and will reveal textual insights obtained in no other critical practice.

Literary theory has always existed. There have always been those who read and interpreted literary texts. Both Plato and Aristotle were literary critics. Plato read the poets, found them wanting, and banned them from his Utopia. Aristotle critiqued Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and in doing so founded the western tradition of literary theory. Even the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, can be viewed as a literary critic. Interpreting the law of Jehovah, he tossed the Pharisees from the temple. As the custodian of the ten commandments, Moses too must have been a critic. Even the mythical Adam and Eve operate as critics when they interpreted the original covenant between man and God. Every philosopher, every artist, every sage critiques the textual artifacts that precede them. This is the operative explanation of literary criticism today. Everything in existence is a text; every text is inter-related with every other text, past, present, and future, and every person is, thus, involved in textual analysis by continuously “reading” the world we are involved in.

Following this line, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is arguably the greatest literary critic of the age. He has completely reinterpreted the body of Vedic literature and restored its effectiveness to its original enlightened value. Maharishi accomplishes this elevation of Vedic literature by founding it on Consciousness, the source of all creation that gives rise to and governs every aspect of existence. In the introduction to his translation and commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, Maharishi justifies adding one more explanation to a scripture that has been critiqued more that any other literary text:

Wise commentators, in their attempt to fulfill the need of their times, have revealed the truth of the teaching as they found it. By so doing they have secured a place in the history of human thought. They stand out as torchbearers on the long corridor of time. They have fathomed great depths of the ocean of wisdom. Yet with all their glorious achievements they have not brought out the central point of the Bhagavad-Gita. It is unfortunate that the very essence of this ancient wisdom should have been missed.[1]

Maharishi’s rationale for applying another commentary to a text that has been analyzed more than any other reveals the essential need for literary theory. It isn’t enough for a text to just say whatever the author intended it to say. A text “read” well enough, Maharishi has explained, can transform the life of a reader. If the consciousness of the reader is sufficiently developed, the reader can discover in any text the finest level of creation, the most subtle laws of nature, the absolute, transcendental, source of life itself. The act of reading, the experience of critical practice, has the potential to be for the reader the vehicle for Self-regeneration. This is the value of literary texts, and taken in this sense, literary criticism emerges as one of the noblest and most indispensable professions.

Although literary theory can be demonstrated to have always existed, it has existed as a profession for a little more than a century. The rise of literary theory coincided with the change of the university. The old university that predated the twentieth century was a system of privilege dominated by class and gender. Its ostensible purpose was to refine the sons of the socially and economic elite, shaping them to be the rulers of nations. The curriculum was heavily weighted in the arts, sciences, and philosophy, and its aim was broad-based in scope. But by the late nineteenth century, democracy had reared its inexorable head, and institutions throughout the globe were under siege to change. Universities, at the instigation of a much more inclusive society, began to transform themselves from dispensers of a general education into institutions that prepared students for specific occupations. Literature, a product of the old guard, found itself in the position of having to reinvent itself or parish altogether. One of its first endeavors was to increase its importance in the university. Enter F.R. Leavis.

Leavis, his future wife Q.D. Roth, I.A. Richards, and other members of the Cambridge movement in the early twentieth century redefined the role of the literary critic. Their predecessors, symbolized and vilified by Terry Eagleton in the guise of Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, were privileged aristocrats who created the literary canon out of social preference. Their reading of literary works has come to be know as the “common sense” approach, which consisted of little more than agreeing with the author and stating the obvious. Leavis fashioned a professional method of analyzing literature that emphasized closely adhering to the “words on the page.” This form of close reading eliminated much of the opinionated analysis that had passed for literary criticism. This new criticism was guided by rigid standards that held both the critic and the work itself accountable for the meanings they produced. Even more important than its methodology of reading, however, was the enormous value Leavis and his followers attributed to English literature:

In the early 1920’s it was desperately unclear why English was worth studying at all; by the early 1930’s it had become a question of why it was worth wasting your time on anything else. English was not only a subject worth studying, but also the supremely civilizing pursuit, the spiritual essence of the social formation.[2]

Concurrent with the movement spearheaded by the Leavises, in their journal Scrutiny, was a sympathetic form of literary analysis led by T.S. Eliot now known as New Criticism. At the basis of New Criticism was a belief in the hierarchical supremacy of great literature. Certain literature could be proved to be universal, to have a spiritual unity, that existed separately from its author and the circumstances of its creation. New Critics, influenced by Asian theology, shared the method of the Scrutineers in reading the words on the page. They were further motivated, however, to resolve a work’s tensions by closely examining its techniques and ultimately searching for an overall textual unity (logocentric). Because great literature was timeless, the New Critics argued, it must be judged on its own merits, free from the time-bound context of author, history, and environment (ahistorical). This removal from its historical conditions was seen by a new set of literary theorists, a group raised on Marxist socialism and Freudian relativism, as artificial, false, and self-serving.

Marxist sociological critics were in particular put off by New Criticism since its universalism flew in the face of their most cherished beliefs. Karl Marx preached a form of social evolution based on and demonstrated by historical process. Prior to the Renaissance, a small, economically privileged, landed-aristocracy dominated Europe into the twentieth century. However, by the end of the Medieval period, a rising middle-class had already begun to challenge the political and economic power of the aristocrats. This social and economic revolution had excluded any similar alteration among the working classes, but it set a precedence, according to Marx, for a later proletarian revolution. Marx saw as the ideal conditions for such a revolution in the Nineteenth century with the abuses of the Industrial Revolution. Literary criticism in the twentieth century eventually picked up Marx’s ideas, as it does with all significant theories of life, and began to analyze literary texts as the products of their social context and historical change.

Later during the “revolutionary 60’s” another major socio-political movement emerged. A second wave of feminism began examining every kind of gender interaction, including those found in literature. A huge field, feminism and its methods vary even more widely than those of Marxism. An early form of feminist literary criticism protested against male constructed images of women—the femme fatale, the goddess, the shrew, the domestic, etc. Such images, feminists argued, were facile stereotypes that conformed to male perceptions. Moreover, they propagated the dominant position men have exploited in gender relationships throughout history. As feminist literary criticism gained momentum, it began to engage in more sophisticated tactics. It urged women, for example, to “read against the grain,” to “read as a woman,” to find in literature not the obvious, but a portrait of women that adhered to a woman’s own experiences and needs. Eventually, women began to seek a “literature of their own.” They began a moral reshaping of the literary canon, constructed from an academic old boy’s network, into a more balanced reflection of gender perspectives.

The examples of Marxist and Feminist criticism demonstrate that literature in the twentieth century was becoming at least in analogy as complicated as life itself. It therefore demanded multitudinous ways to examine it. Readers in the twentieth century were no longer content to simply find in a work of literature those meanings intended by the author (intentional fallacy). Literature had become more like a prism that reflected different colors depending on the angle from which it was examined. Disciplines that had developed with no thought of literature were now being applied to literary texts copiously. Freudian psychology is an apt example. Critics somewhere along the line began to realize that characters in stories behaved like people in life. Armed with this assumption, critics could now make the simple jump in logic that it would be possible to psychoanalyze characters as a way of coming to grips with a work of literature. As a result, such familiar Freudian ideas as the Oedipus Complex, repression, the unconsciousness, and the Id-Ego-Superego relationship, began showing up regularly in the examination of literary characters. Hamlet, in one famous essay, was Freudianly critiqued for his obsessive relationship with his mother, the operative factor in his inability to act. A further development of Freudian criticism was that not only could characters be subjected to the psychoanalytic method but so could the literary texts that contained them. For example, feminist critics argued that male writers repressed the idea of patriarchy (male dominance). Feminists argued that the idea of chivalry, for instance, emerged as a way of hiding and repressing the male need to maintain control of women.

The Scruitneers, New Criticism, Marxism and Feminism were all movements that developed as attempts to assess literature’s content—plot, character, theme, symbols, sound devices, tropes and so fourth, along with its moral, ethical, spiritual, political, economic, social, and psychological characteristics. A second strand of literary criticism that parallels (and often superimposes) the one we have been considering targets a literary work’s formal properties as a way of knowing it. As scientific analysis gained steam in the previous century, the humanities began to look for ways of incorporating science into what had been previously inhospitable realms. But science’s suitability as a vehicle for criticism can again be taken from the rationale that literature is an expression of life. And if life can stand up to scientific scrutiny so should literature. One form scientific inquiry took was the search for fundamental patterns that transcend racial and cultural boundaries. Myth critics, inspired by Carl Jung’s study of archetypes, looked beyond the more superficial qualities of a work to find those essences that were not only universal but also essential. Examples of universal forms in literature include unconditional love, the passage from youth into adulthood, and the quest for ultimate meaning. The details of such archetypes varied greatly from work to work and culture to culture, but the pattern, the deeper less material form, would be virtually the same. Among the most renown myth critics are Northrup Frye and Joseph Campbell.

Paralleling myth criticism was a form of anthropology that examined the creation and structure of words and other fundamental elements of language. Vladimir Propp, for example, examined a work of literature not for its narrative sequence but rather for functional aspects that existed from work to work. In an analysis of fairy tales he found such typical elements as the following:

Claude Lévi-Strauss does something similar to Propp in his analysis of Oedipus Rex, locating its elementary units in what he calls mythemes. Such turning away from content to an emphasis on form led to the greatest paradigm shift in literary theory to date, and one that continues to foster academic antagonism. The result of this shift was the development of Structuralism. At its foundation is the pioneering work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure[4] whose Course in General Linguistics (1915), published posthumously, was the catalyst of what was tantamount to a theoretical and linguistic mutiny.

Saussure’s most significant component is his division of the word into component parts, signifier (the sound image) and signified (concept), defining language as “a system of differences with no positive terms.”[5] Unlike the Vedic Literature which at the Pashyanti level of language unifies a word form with its meaning, the relevance of this division is that it introduces enormous arbitrariness into life. Following the train of logic of Saussure’s disciples, because language is the basis of human thought and utterance, a divided language intrinsically introduces randomness into all human experience. Human beings are thus trapped in their language systems.[6] They cannot act without thinking, and thinking is determined by language. Every thought, according to Structuraist ideology, is determined by the social biases of a given place and time, leaving us one and all at the mercy of an ever shifting maze of language. This is a sobering notion if we consider the limitations of a language-generated thought as essential for the dual processes of interpretation and communication. Gustave Falubert once pointed out the limitations of language:

It “is like a cracked kettle on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance,

The second pillar of linguistic literary criticism, built upon its predecessor, is Post-Structuralism. The birth child of the most commanding critical figure of the twentieth century—Jacques Derrida—Post-Structuralism is as ingenious as it is disturbing. Derrida was concerned with the continuous attempt of history to establish an authoritative center (being, presence), be it Allah, Jehovah, Indra, Marx, science, etc. The consequences of such logocentrism, is the establishment of tyrannies throughout time and the abuses that have accompanied them. Derrida, through his concept of deconstruction, discovered a way to at least theoretically undermine logocentrism and establish a foundational democracy inherent in nature. Derrida’s position is that all “violent hierarchies” are social constructs with the first term in the hierarchy privileged over the second: Adam/Eve, good/bad, man/woman, white/black, conscious/unconscious, speech/writing, and so forth. Derrida demonstrates that through deconstruction hierarchies can be analyzed and reversed and then done away with by resisting creating a new hierarchy out of the reversal.

Along with deconstruction, Derrida’s most important theoretical brainchild is différancé. Derrida’s coinage is a combination of two different but related terms: to differ, a spatial concept derived from the difference located in the two halves of the sign (signifier and signified), and to defer, a temporal quality suggesting that meaning is always deferred over time. Expanding on Saussure, Derrida holds that not only is a sign (word) divided in form and meaning, but it’s signified (concept) is actually just another signifier (mark) looking for another signified. He argues his position by pointing out that when we look up a word’s definition in the dictionary what we find is not closure, but just more words (signifiers) also in need of definitions (signifieds), ad infinitum. Hence, the profound implications of différancé for Derrida, are that meaning can never be absolutely achieved. In fact, his hypothesis suggests that all understanding and all communication are fragmented, spread out over an infinite chain of elusive signifiers. This means we can never fully know what we think and never completely say what we believe. Even more disturbing is that since the self is discovered through language, according to post-structuralists, the self can never really be known. To put it simply, we are condemned to live a form of controlled anarchy. Derrida is not completely incorrect, but his ideas are only applicable at a grosser experience of the world. It is possible to go beyond such troublesome assumptions and erect a more palatable literary theory founded on an absolute basis that is universally accessible. This theory exists as Maharishi Vedic Science, a comprehensive body of knowledge that acknowledges the ability to transcend differences to a field of absolute consciousness through the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique.

Maharishi didn’t develop Vedic Science to be literary theory, but neither were most of the critical practices we have encountered. Nevertheless, each provides fresh insights into the nature of literature and an access to a literary work’s subtext not previously available. Maharishi Vedic Science similarly expands the meaning of literature but advances it far beyond other literary theories. The goal of Maharishi Vedic Science is to take a human being from ignorance and suffering to a state of eternal bliss in unity consciousness. This aim, so far beyond lesser ideological systems, makes calling it literary theory almost demeaning. However, because Maharishi Vedic Science is so inclusive, it can simultaneously wear the hats of smaller but important disciplines; it can be science, economics, an approach to health, a theory of management, a theory of architecture, and also literary theory.

The mistake of those who have had little familiarity with critical practice is to believe that literary theory’s purpose is simply to make texts clearer and to reveal some of their “artistic” features. If these were ever the legitimate aims of literary theory, such meager aspirations have long been surpassed. To look at literature as something that can be reduced to a few cogent observations, is to see it as simply entertainment, hardly more than fashionable indulgence. If literary works were no more than a fascinating but complex story, a pleasant but ingenious poem, then Plato would have been right to toss the poets from his Utopia, and he may as well add the readers who revere literature as well. But for many, not unlike the rosy-eyed devotees of F.R. Leavis, literature is eminently vital and of essentiaql worth, a worth routinely overlooked by pragmatists. And it is this need to illustrate literature’s value, to bring it to the public as well as the academic eye, that has given rise to the corollary discipline of literary theory.

Literature, like music and painting, like architecture, like gardening, like any aesthetic endeavor that has constantly evolved, says more than I am the product of a culturally advanced time and place. It is an artifact alive with those commonly overlooked expressions of inherent nature, of cosmic beauty, of divine truth and justice, of God in whatever form, by a society engaged in the mundane pursuit of material existence. It is the link to our higher selves, the lost cord to our glorious pre-historical past. Maharishi says that literature contains the consciousness of the artist structured within it. If the consciousness is high enough, the depth of what can be discovered in literature is enormous. And Literary Theory in its various forms is the means we use to mine the treasures of literature. If we are merely satisfied in knowing whether a plot is closed or open-ended, a character is static or dynamic, a poem is an Italian rather than an English sonnet, then any old literary theory will suffice. However, if we expect from literature the promise of a more refined existence, a life that is better because we have read, then the choice of literary theory is significant. Maharishi, as literary theorist, says that literature seen through the lens of Vedic Science can take one to unity consciousness. A total transformation of one’s being is undoubtedly the most audacious promise of literature, of literary theory, and of the reader. It is what makes Maharishi Vedic Science not just a literary theory but a theory that can bring all other theories to fulfillment.

Maharishi Vedic Science is a body of knowledge based upon the Veda—Total Knowledge[9] [See Appendix for a full treatise on Total Knowledge] and Vedic literature. The field of Total Knowledge underlies, gives rise to, and supports all manifest creation. The Vedic literature are those literary texts, not composed by men but divinely cognized by enlightened sages. They embody the Laws of Nature—the first expressions of the Veda—and the techniques for individual beings to rise to complete freedom and bliss in Brahma Chetna—unity consciousness. Maharishi Vedic Science deals with universal qualities found in the Vedic literature belonging to enlightened societies and enlightened beings. These qualities found throughout creation are generally overlooked because time has withered away our capacity to see our natural status (created in the image of God) and our means to rise to a full valuation of our lives.

Maharishi has stated that one way of understanding enlightenment is as a re-identification with pure consciousness—the field of Total Knowledge—that is, a realization that the unbounded, eternal, non-material field of transcendental consciousness lying beyond one’s physical existence is one’s true, fundamental Self. The most direct route to such an identification Maharishi states is through the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program that allow the mind to transcend the world of change and destruction and know the field of non-changing immortality and, then, to function from this level of mistake-free life. A way one might enhance this process of Self development is to gravitate towards and identify with the most refined and most universal elements in life, including works of literature. Hence, when Maharishi Vedic Science is used to critique a literary text it is employed to do more than just comprehend what an author has written, it is used to actually aid a person’s evolution. This is a value that no other literary theory can assert.

In 1968 Roland Barthes stunned the literary world with his now famous essay “The Death of the Author.”[10] Barthes’ position is that that “individual utterances are the product of impersonal language systems.” His outlandish statement is meant to indicate that different modes and different levels of meaning exist unknown to a text’s composer. Maharishi willingly acknowledges a writer’s contribution when he says a literary work contains the consciousness of the writer. He also recognizes a range of linguistic significance beyond the knowledge of most writers, beginning with Baikhari, spoken speech, language experienced by the senses; to Madhyama, mental or intellectual speech; to Pashyanti, the finest impulse of speech; to Para, the vibrant, silent, preverbal source of language. Through the practice of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program this range of language can be experienced and known. Maharishi also, not unlike reader-response critics, acknowledges the reader’s role in creating meaning apart from the author. As readers’ consciousness expand, by means of Maharishi Vedic Science, they discover an ever-increasing profundity in a text. So complete is a literary text, that Maharishi once said a single word known in its entirety is enough to fully transform an individual from ignorance to enlightenment. This is the immense scope and profundity of Maharishi Vedic Science as a literary theory.

PART II: LITERARY THEORY IN PRACTICE

Unveiling “The Purloined Letter”

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” is a charming tale that along with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” has historical significance for helping to establish the mystery story. But beyond that there is little in it that immediately accounts for its being the object of intense criticism by some of the most celebrated critics of out time. Barbara Johnson, one of those critics, gives an explanation for its importance. She says, all works of literature beg the reader to reread them. Poe’s story does so more than most:

A literary text that both analyzes itself and shows that it actually has neither a self nor any neutral metalanguage with which to do the analyzing calls out irresistibly for analysis.[11]

If we ignore, for a moment, the self-reflexive quality of Poe’s story that Johnson alludes to, its repressed plot, and its hydra-headed meaning, what we first experience is a simple exercise in deduction. The Prefect of the Parisian police, a somewhat pompous and facile man, is frustrated by his department’s failure to locate an incriminating letter “purloined from the royal apartments.” As the affair is both simple and baffling, it is beyond the Prefect. In dejection he turns to the famous detective Dupin to bail him out. He lays before Dupin the facts of the case: An incriminating letter has been taken from the Queen placing her honor in peril if revealed. “The individual who purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt; he was seen to take it. It is known, also, that it still remains in his possession” (p. 209). Minister D—, the Prefect explains, undoubtedly has the letter in his apartment. This is a certainty, because in order to perpetuate his blackmail he must be able to produce it at a moment’s notice. Armed with this knowledge, the Parisian police, using the most advanced methods of detection, have more than once sifted every corner of D—‘s apartment and each time failed to procure the letter. From this summary, Dupin makes an immediate deduction. If the police have looked everywhere the letter might be hidden, the Minister must, therefore, have placed it in plain sight. Dupin, being an acquaintance and a member of the thief’s social class, contrives to visit the Minister. To the utter astonishment of the Prefect, Dupin miraculously retrieves the letter and returns it to its proper owner.

What intrigues contemporary critics most about “The Purloined Letter” is not its ingenious plot, but rather the manner in which the letter, at the center of the story, functions as a text within the frame of a larger text, the story itself. The letter as text has meaning beyond any designs Poe may have had for it, meaning that will vary from reader to reader and from context to context.

Jacques Lacan’s essay, “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter,’” illustrates the dominant direction of critical theory since the middle of the past century. His purpose is not simply to offer another analysis of Poe’s mystery story; it is meant to provide a new way of looking at texts in general and even a “new way to read ourselves.”[12] Modern critical theorists, as stated above, have set out to extend the range of both critical analysis and literary relevance. From a wide variety of philosophical perspectives, they have demonstrated that literary texts have far greater significance than is usually understood. Literary texts are, if read correctly, maps of the human condition. Lacan, a post-modern psychoanalytic critic, has married Freudian psychology to Sausssurean linguistics to form his own unique brand of textual criticism. He interprets “The Purloined Letter” in a manner not dissimilar to Freud’s interpretation of Oedipus Rex, but with the added dimension supplied by Ferdinand de Saussure’s boundary-breaking discussion of language as symbol system.[13]

Lacan begins his dissection of “The Purloined Letter” by adopting Saussure’s position on the function of language. Lacan takes his cue from a pun on the word letter, meaning both a literary epistle and the most basic element of language. Let’s review Saussure’s primary thesis: he begins by postulating that a word is not the stable unit we imagine, with an inherent relationship between meaning and form. A word is actually a symbol, the product of socialization. Its shifting meaning depends upon context: time, place, and set of speakers or writers. Saussure also sees the word as divided into two component parts: a signifier, the mark on the page, and a signified, the concept the writer is thinking when making the mark. The relationship between the two elements of the sign is an arbitrary one; therefore, meaning is not imminent. Hence, language is no more than a system of difference.

In “The Purloined Letter,” according to Lacan, the reader assumes the letter is “real.” That is how we, like the Prefect and his gendarmes, are duped. The police are materialists who conceive of the letter as physical, so that is what they look for. But for Lacan it is not the piece of paper that is important, nor even the letter’s contents; rather it is simply the control of the letter that is significant. Whoever controls the letter controls its meaning. With this reduction in the import of the letter’s actual substance, we are left with a form of displacement. This the postmodernists have found in their reading of texts from a reexamination of Saussure. Following Saussure’s lead the post-structuralists too see language as a of system of differences. But even more disconcerting is their view of meaning, which they contend can never be located because by its relative nature it will always be deferred over time. As we have seen, signifiers (symbols) are always searching for signifieds (meanings), but every time a signified is located it turns out to be just another signifier looking for its own signified. Because the post-structuralist sees human life as language based, it is impossible in this system to ever get to the bottom of who we are. We too are deferred over time. Our lives are also displaced.

Lacan says that language is always absent. Hence, the Prefect looking for an object will never find the letter; it is already gone. What is it, after all, Lacan asks? We are never told the letter’s contents, nor are we ever told who wrote it. This prompts Lacan to ask to whom the letter belongs. Is its owner the original composer or its intended recipient? Lacan’s conclusion is that “the responsibility of the author of the letter takes second place to that of its holder.”[14] This is the position of modern critical theory. A literary text cannot be controlled by its author. It will mean whatever its reader believes it to mean. The queen, since the letter was sent to her, has reason to claim ownership, but she cannot because in so doing she would be compromised. It is thus apparent that the letter—its physical nature and its contents—have been reduced to the level of the abstract and symbolic. The letter, once out of the hands the author or its recipient, no longer belongs to either. We can say the same for Poe’s story. Once it is in the hands of Lacan, or anyone else, the text no longer belongs to Poe.

In Poe’s telling of his story, we are led by Dupin as narrator to see the Prefect as a dunce and his attempt to discover the letter simplistic. He is the foil to Minister D—, concocted as a worthy adversary to Dupin of the superior intellect. This, however, is only one form of the story, and textuality has its own way of writing a text. As we have seen, meaning is constantly being deferred. It cannot be arrested, but that is exactly what the Minister attempts to do. He wishes to control the queen by controlling the text. However, like Icarus who could not control Apollo’s chariot, D— has no more power over the letter than does her royal highness. In fact, he uses the same format of nakedly concealing the text as she had, leaving himself just as vulnerable. Just as she tried to hide it in the open but was exposed to the Minister’s eyes, so the Minister attempts to hide the letter in plain site but is exposed to Dupin’s eyes.

But if the Minister cannot arrest the text, he can alter it. He does this by literally and symbolically turning the letter inside out. He smudges and tears it, and he adds an address to himself and his own large black D— seal. This is analogous to the act of reading. All readers alter texts when they come into their possession. Even when the letter is no longer in D—’s possession, it will in his mind remain the same exact text until he realizes there has been a switch. Again this demonstrates that a text has value (or meaning) beyond its contents. With the letter no longer in the Minister’s possession, Lacan asks, “what remains of a signifier when, it has no more signification?”[15] The answer in “The Purloined Letter” is that it will continue to have signification (meaning) as long as anyone still considers it important. The signified just changes as it always does. At the story’s end, instead of existing as the form of blackmail against the queen, the letter will cause the downfall of Minister D—.

Much of the significance Lacan derives from “The Purloined Letter” has to do with two scenes that contain a triadic structure. The first takes place in the queen’s boudoir. In this scene, the “blind” king thinks he knows but does not. Lacan views the king as symbolic of the pure objective. The queen sees that the king does not see, but does not see that the Minister does see. She is for Lacan pure subjectivity. The Minister sees both what the king does not and what the queen does. He, therefore, represents the balance of subjectivity and objectivity. The same triad exists between the Prefect who is blind, the Minister who does not see what Dupin sees, and Dupin who sees what both the Prefect and the Minister do not. Elizabeth Wright has suggested that this relationship to the text between these two groups can stand for the superego (objectivity), the ego (subjectivity), and the linguistic Id (repressed unconsciousness)—the three aspects of human consciousness according to Freud.[16] What Lacan demonstrates is that “reading,” which involves the making sense of all human experience (textuality), is intimately a form of self-fashioning.

Jacques Derrida’s “The Purveyor of Truth,” his response to Lacan, is an example of how inter-textuality works. Lacan parasitically creates a text by grafting his essay to Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.” Derrida does the same when he attaches his text to Lacan’s as does Barbara Johnson when she grafts hers to Poe, Lacan, and Derrida, and now this text to Poe, Lacan, Derrida, and Johnson. We have seen that a text according to modern theory, rather than having a material existence, is an opportunity for pluralistic meanings. There are no original meanings; there is just a reconstitution of meanings. Everything draws upon everything else, and the writer is reduced to a kind of reorganizer. This is what the post-modern Roland Barthes meant when he declared the death of the author.

Derrida takes exception to Lacan’s reading of “The Purloined Letter” as he takes exception to psychoanalytic readings in general. As in the most famous literary, psychoanalytic readings, Freud’s analysis of Oedipus Rex, Lacan sees literary texts as having a symbolic order analogous to the human unconscious. Uncovering a work’s symbolic significance is tantamount to locating its truth. For most post-structuralists, texts by their very nature are constructed out of difference. They are, therefore, immune to absolute truths. Because meaning is always being deferred, truth can never be contained. Meaning is always in the midst of change, so there is no place to locate truth. At best there is the trace, the sense of being able to locate a meaning that has already passed. Acknowledging that truth can be obtained from the reading of a work of literature is acknowledging the existence of authorial supremacy. For Derrida this constitutes logocentricism, the recognition of a single, dominant authority for both the text of literature and the text of life. In other words, hegemony.

Textuality works against logocentricism, and Derrida argues that for all of his discussion of signifier and signified, Lacan ignores the actual self-production of the text and reverts instead to a slightly disguised classical interpretation of “The Purloined Letter.” Moreover, he implicitly accuses Lacan of making himself the author of the text by rewriting it, that is by ignoring the story as a whole and building his case for its “truth” derived from two scenes he has isolated from the rest. Finally, Lacan, according to Derrida, has closed the text in his final statement, “a letter always arrives at its destination.”[17] This is a form of “circularity” or unity that the psychoanalyst, a kind of detective like Dupin himself, achieves through an analysis of the text. Derrida, furthermore, accuses Lacan’s reading of not only being reductive but also being inaccurate. By ignoring the narrator, Lacan is fixated on the plot, more to the point, a small part of the plot. But because the story is narrated by Dupin’s confidante, the story is reflection of the narrator’s consciousness. By ignoring the narrator’s shaping of the story is to misread the entire story. This is what Derrida accuses psychoanalysis of always doing. It does not read the text as it exists; it reads a text as psychoanalysis, as itself.

Derrida’s criticism of Lacan is not what it first appears. Derrida seems to be deriding Lacan for his faulty reading of literature. To some extent this is true. More true is that Derrida is using Lacan as an occasion to put forth his own ideas. Consciously or unconsciously, this the nature of all textual interactions. We reinvent a text to satisfy our own view of the world. Barbara Johnson says that no analysis “can intervene without transforming and repeating other elements in a sequence” (p. 410). When we read, she explains, we both fill in the gaps that we feel are missing and misread when we feel it is convenient to do so, something she demonstrate in both Lacan’s reading of “The Purloined Letter” and Derrida’s reading of both Poe and Lacan: “since Lacan’s text is read as if it said what Derrida says it says” (p. 415).

By now it should be apparent that neither Lacan, Derrida, nor Johnson are interested in examining a work of literature in the classical sense, that is, simply to make sense of it and pointing out some of its artistic features. It should also be clear that they do not regard a work of literature purely as a creative endeavor. They see literary works as texts in a way that all forms of communication are texts. And because everything in existence communicates, everything arguably is a text. They have thus used literary criticism as a means to enter into a dialogue about the meaning of life. Lacan, who sees a literary text as a form of consciousness believes it can be psychoanalyzed in a similar way to human beings with similar results. Derrida sees a text as a single moment already passed in an infinite chain of texts always in flux. And Barbara Johnson sees the reading of texts as a form of transformation that is continuously altering what a text is.

All of these approaches to analyzing literature have discovered something fundamental about the nature of texts and the nature of reading, although Derrida would object to the word fundamental. However, because of the fragmented way in which they perceive, none of these critics ever approach a text’s fullest possibilities. A text may be read in an almost infinite variety of ways, but to know its essence it must be understood from a position of unshakeable truth. This is possible through Maharishi’s techniques that raise the consciousness of both the writer and the reader of texts. And these are supplemented by his development of Maharishi Vedic Science, a system of knowledge whose range of consideration is all inclusive, from “the smallest of the smallest to the largest of the largest.”

A “Maharishi Vedic Scientist,” one who adheres to Maharishi’s exposition on evolution and the Vedas, reads literature with certain firm precepts. Like the physical scientist who begins an investigation with a comprehension that sub-atomic particles exist, the Vedic Scientist enters into any inquiry with an understanding of the existence of Total Knowledge. But what separates Vedic Scientists from other literary theorists is that the knowledge that makes up their critical practice is not simply speculative. It is based upon the empirical evidence from having regularly experienced the state of pure consciousness, the field of Total Knowledge, along with confirmations from the various fields of modern science. Hence we begin with the affirmation that not only does Total Knowledge—the eternal Veda—exist, it has always existed, and it is knowledge supremely worth knowing. It is the source, course, and goal of all knowledge. At certain times in history, the reality of Total Knowledge is more apparent than at others. But it never ceases to be because it is the most fundamental field of life that gives birth to everything in creation. It is the nature of Total Knowledge to make itself known, but because the structure of phenomenal existence is cyclical, there will be times when Total Knowledge is well known and times when it is little known. And yet there will always be those who know of its existence and how to access it. Such individuals we call seers.

There are an almost infinite number of ways a text can be approached from the perspective of Maharishi Vedic Science because as the field of Consciousness its possibilities are infinite. But I am going to progress with this idea that Total Knowledge exists and its existence can be is known. Moreover, understanding that Total Knowledge exists changes fundamentally how any text is understood. This introduction of Total Knowledge into any intellectual consideration is similar to suddenly discovering your house has a whole other wing, one that is more magnificent than the house you have been occupying all your life. Once known, the house can never be looked upon in the same limited way.

Derrida, Lacan, and Johnson are correct that the epistle is the key to “The Purloined Letter.” However, the letter is more than simply an opportunity to exert power, the way Lacan symbolically sees it. If we look carefully how the letter functions, in an all inclusive way, changing with each circumstance and each character, we can say it exists as the representative of Total Knowledge—the field of all possibilities. The reason the letter functions as Total Knowledge is due in part to its non-material character. As we have seen, its contents are never known. Secondly, its physical existence undergoes continuous transformation, not unlike Derrida’s signified, so that its existence can never be fully arrested. The Prefect can not see it because physically it has a specific shape to him that is already absent. The Minister changes its shape with the idea of capturing it and making it his own. And Dupin changes it again to the point of completely replacing it, while to the Minister it remains the same letter. In this respect, the protean letter imitates the non-physical, attributeless, field of Total Knowledge. But more important than its lack of permanent physical characteristics, is its self-referral nature. Maharishi most prominently identifies Total Knowledge with the quality of self-referral [see Appendix]. Completely self-contained, it manifests without manifesting, creates without effort, and causes the inconceivable universe without diminishment. As a person comes to know the field of Total Knowledge through the Transcendental Meditation technique, the experience is also one of self-referral. One experiences what one always has been. Self-referral is also the experience of the seeker of knowledge who evolves from one state of Higher Consciousness. The letter functions like this in Poe’s story. As each character comes in contact with the letter, what each sees his or her self. Theoretically, this is the way all texts work. Ironically, Derrida accuses Lacan of looking at the letter and seeing himself, but this is what we all do. In Poe’s story, the text of the letter just allows that self-referral experience to happen more easily. It can do that because the letter operates more as a self-referral opportunity than an ordinary epistle. Finally, because of its abstract nature, the letter behaves as a primary characteristic of Total Knowledge—total potential. The letter exists for each character either as the fulfillment of desire or moral retribution.

Let’s examine the relationship of the letter to each of the story’s major characters. The Prefect’s connection to the letter is the simplest. He is a materialist steeped in ignorance who only knows how to operate from the most sensual and obvious approaches to knowledge. He cannot see what is directly in front of him because he possesses a restricted consciousness. Total Knowledge is beyond his grasp because he possesses neither the imagination nor the techniques to acquire it. He can only act in a sensual and rational manner. The letter on the Minister’s bulletin board symbolizes the multiple possibilities of Total Knowledge which is both stable and dynamic. It changes with time and circumstance while remaining ever the same. It is always the letter, but it is simultaneously a different letter for everyone it touches. This is the nature of Total Knowledge. It is the field that expresses itself as infinite creation while remaining eternally unchanged. The Prefect, deceived by his senses, can only perceive things that are static. The letter to him is the letter the queen described. That letter no longer exists. It is the nature of the field of change to hide. What cannot be hidden, to those who see, is that value of life that never changes. To a person fully enlightened, nothing is hidden. Such a person sees Total Knowledge in everything in creation. But for all his ignorance, the Prefect does the best thing he can. He seeks the assistance of someone with greater awareness than himself, that is Dupin. In all traditions, this is the pattern of the seeker of knowledge surrendering to the knower of knowledge. Until the seeker actually asks, help cannot be given.

Dupin is the seer in the story. Maharishi has pointed out that a person with expanded awareness not only sees what others do not, that person sees what is lacking in someone else’s sight. Dupin immediately sees the fallacy in the Prefect’s thinking. This is an essential point. It demonstrates that there are no boundaries to Dupin’s vision. He may on one level of the story be a cunning logician; he also functions as one from whom truth cannot be hidden. Once the Prefect confesses that the case of the purloined letter is both simple and baffling, Dupin observes that “Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault…perhaps the mystery is a little too plain” (p. 209). Again, this statement indicates Dupin’s status. Not only are there no boundaries to his vision, there are no boundaries to his success. Total Knowledge is the simplest state of awareness. For those who function on the level of Total Knowledge, achievement is both simple and easy. For the ignorant, life is complex and difficult. The Prefect with all of his resources cannot discover the letter. On the other hand, he no sooner gives the details of the case, and already Dupin sees the answer. If all possible complexities are eliminated then simplicity is the only possibility.

Poe sets Dupin up to be a kind of detective genius, the precursor of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, but he possesses much more than genius. History is crammed full of superior intellects with myopic vision. Dupin’s intellect is supplemented by a developed consciousness. He judges less on a case’s facts and more on his insights into an opponent’s character. He deduces that the Parisian police, including the Prefect, see only what is like themselves; “they consider only their own ideas of ingenuity” (p. 216). The Prefect regards Minister D— a fool because he writes poetry. Anything that lies outside the Prefect’s range of consciousness is beyond him. Maharishi explains this concept in the keystone verse of the Rk Veda, the essence of Total Knowledge. One part of the verse asks the question, yStNn vedÖ ikm»ûc; ki¡r„yitÖ (yastanna veda kim richa karisyati) “he whose awareness is not open to this field [Total Knowledge] what can the verses accomplish for him?” (Maharishi (1996) p. 138)[18] The RK Veda is the eternal scripture of absolute truth. It describes the means to rise from ignorance into enlightenment. But the verses can do nothing for the person who is not awake to them. The Prefect can only imagine the world as he perceives it. The possibility that the letter could be hidden in plain site just does not exist for the Prefect; just as the field of Transcendental Consciousness—Total Knowledge—will not exist for the complete materialist. To convince one otherwise, one might as well be speaking in a different language. The Prefect’s lack of awareness accounts for his utter amazement (that leaves him speechless) when Dupin produces the letter. He walks away in a befuddled fog because he cannot fathom that Dupin has accomplished what to him was impossible.

Dupin also possesses an awareness expanded enough to comprehend a consciousness completely different than the Prefect’s—the mind of Minister D—. Where the Prefect longs for knowledge, D— desires power. A complete egoist, the Minister is an opportunist alert to possibilities for self-gratification and control. One such opportunity presents itself as the Queen’s compromising letter. Because he is an egoist, D— is unmoved by the pain he causes others. In fact, suffering is the means for him to wield power which he perceives as the ultimate good. Insensitivity to another’s pain is an indication of his severe limitations. Consciousness is all compassionate. It is that element of existence that promotes unity rather than diversity. It unites life rather than seeks out differences. In Brahma Chetna, when and individual rises to unity consciousness, differences remain on the superficial level of life, but simultaneously one realizes that all of creation, every single person, is none other than one’s own unbounded Self. It is why the enlightened engage in the activity of ahimsa, causing no harm to anyone. The reality of life—on the level of Total Knowledge—is that everything is the same undifferentiated, eternal Consciousness. Acting from this level, the thought does not even arise to cause pain to another. Conversely, that the Minister can distribute pain indiscriminately is an indication of just how unbalanced he is in life.

Augmenting D—‘s need for power is his exceptional intellect. For Poe it is the intellect that constitutes the battlefield between D— and Dupin. To demonstrate that Dupin is a formidable opponent, Poe contrasts is intellectual powers with the ordinary minds of the narrator (a predecessor of Watson) and the Prefect. Moreover, Poe digresses from the plot for several pages to let us witness Dupin’s extraordinary intelligence at work. But intellect is only one factor in the equation that allows Dupin to out maneuver the Minister. If victory were dependent solely upon intelligence, D— would never have been bested.

The Minister of “The Purloined Letter” possesses an almost unequalled mind. He, first of all, in the presence of the king understands that the Queen is attempting to hide a letter from her husband. She proves successful with her spouse but not the Minister. Secondly, D— immediately calculates the letter’s value for him, how he can turn it to devious advantage. Once he comprehends its worth, he on the spot devises a plan to purloin the it right before the queen’s eyes. His superior intellect, moreover, gives him the boldness and audacity to engage in personal conflict with a royal personage. He also reasons with what desperation the queen will attempt to retrieve the letter. Moreover, he conceptualizes the police’s limitations and capabilities and the action they will take. Finally, it is his intellect that leads him to an impudent display of the purloined letter in plain view, only slightly disguised. What Minister D— does not see is the backlash his actions will produce. Acting only out of indulgence for his own small self, he violates not only the queen, but as the people’s royal representative, the whole national populace. Acting solely within the confines of his unbridled intellect, his actions are cruel and harmful, gross violations of Natural Law.

The queen also violates Natural Law, and it is the cause of the difficult spot she finds herself. We may not know exactly what the letter contains, and Poe was perceptive enough to leave it intentionally vague, but we realize she has committed a serious indiscretion that has left her vulnerable. She has, furthermore, allowed herself to be placed under the power of the unmerciful D—. Again we see the function of the letter as Total Knowledge. For the Prefect, it could do nothing for him because he could not see it. For the queen and the Minister who, are on one level opposites since he is blackmailing her, are on another parallel characters. Each has transgressed, and each has paid or will pay for that transgression. Each has violated Natural Law. Maharishi explains that the Laws of Nature are responsible for the creation and maintenance of all life. Those in tune with the Laws of Nature are supported by them, so that their desires are easily fulfilled. This is action in the direction of enlightenment that upholds the needs of both the individual and society. However, those who act out of a blind egoism, who put their own selfish desires, their own evolution at risk, run counter to the Laws of Nature, the way one might swim against an immense wave. The result is that Nature produces a pinch as a signal to correct one’s actions. The impropriety of the queen, the wife of the head of state, exceeds that of an ordinary person because her territory of influence is greater, and thus the potential for disaster is greater. If she falls, the ramifications will vibrate throughout France and beyond. But the queen who possesses a conscience is susceptible to the moral influence of Nature. The Minister is not.

Dupin it is obviously superior to Minister D—. Not only does he possess an equal intellect, and not only does he act for what we might call the moral good, but he acts in a way that is guided by Consciousness. He is not constrained by the demands of his own small ego as is D—. If, for example, he were to use the letter the way D— has, for personal power, he would actually be placing himself at the mercy of the letter. He would create enmity in those he attempted to negatively influence, and he would open himself up to revenge. But Dupin, as we have witnessed, sees. That is, he sees the wholeness of the situation. He sees what is hidden, even if what is hidden is in plain site. And just as he had seen through the Prefect’s limitations, he also sees through those of the Minister, who believes himself safe because he has outwitted the Parisian police. But D—’s lack of awareness does not allow him to account for Dupin, a person with the awareness, sense of justice, compassion, courage, duty, and yes intellect needed to overcome the Minister’s efforts.

Dupin’s earlier comments on the Prefect’s opacity, that the affair for him was “a little too plain,” applies to his dealings with D— as well. Consciousness works like this. It contains no barriers to either sight or achievement because it is transcendental, beyond all barriers. As a result, someone with an elevated consciousness like Dupin perceives the truth as simply as “a black spot of ink in a pan of white milk.”[19] In his expanded consciousness, Dupin sees not only exactly where the Minister has hidden the letter, he envisions precisely what is necessary to retrieve it. Visiting D—, Dupin wears a pair of green glasses, symbolic of the vision he uses to discover the letter’s hiding place.

Dupin’s thinking and actions are holistic. By recovering the letter, he reestablishes social and political equilibrium. Because it is the nature of consciousness always to be restoring balance to life, Dupin harmoniously acts within the design of Nature, a possibility that exists only for someone whose consciousness is situated at the very depths of Natural Law. In returning the letter, Dupin compassionately relieves the queen of personal suffering while simultaneously removing the potential for national disaster as long as the Minister’s controls the letter. Dupin’s awareness even extends further. Not satisfied to just make off with the letter, he also weakens D—‘s power. He does this by allowing him to continue operating as if he is still possessed the letter. When he next attempts to force policy based on the power of blackmail, D— will cause his own destruction. Finally, Dupin must act with impunity (one of Poe’s favorite words). Hence, he leaves a duplicate of the Minister’s letter in place of the original; in essence using the Minister’s exact ruse against him. Maharishi explains that superior action is that which brings support of Nature to the doer but also no harm. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna leads Arjuna to an understanding that only established in Pure Consciousness, Total Knowledge, will his action be totally right, bringing no harm to himself, his loved ones, and even his enemies for whom he saves from committing further wrong action. In “The Purloined Letter,” Dupin’s Consciousness and his actions approaches this quality of wholeness.

Elizabeth Wright saw the relationship of the Minister, the Prefect, and Dupin as symbolic of the Id (unbridled desire), the Superego (social convention), and the Ego (the individual self). It is just as easy to see this trio representing the stages of developing consciousness. The Prefect symbolizes what we might call the juvenile. In this stage the knower looks outward, sees only objective, cause-and-effect relationships. In this state the inner Self, the foundation of Total Knowledge, the potential for full development, the unity between the individual and all creation simply does not exist. This person’s thoughts and actions are based upon a severely limited assessment of life, and as a result failure and suffering cannot be avoided. The Minister represents a growing awareness. He is aware of greater possibilities in life and subtler laws of Nature. His mind isn’t limited to what the undependable senses provide. His actions are more powerful and his influence is greater. However, he is still driven by a selfish gratification of the small ego. As long as his consciousness cannot transcend what will bring him pleasure, it cannot expand beyond his own small needs. He too is restricted, and he too, unable to place himself in the stream of all mighty Nature, the force of evolution, cannot escape suffering as well. Dupin represents action in accord with Natural Law. He succeeds with the least amount of effort, and he is amply rewarded for his efforts. His actions uphold the needs of society, promote harmony, and restore order. It is for the most part the action of the Self-actualized man.

Dupin is not an enlightened human being, a person permanently established in the field of Total Knowledge beyond the restrictions and limitations of the ever changing world, a person living an eternal state of contentment. There is no indication that such a full transformation has taken place in his life, the kind of transformation that can be augmented by Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program. But in a relative setting, confined by ever destabilizing circumstances, Dupin suggests the possibilities of living a life of fulfillment, free of mistakes, in accord with the Divine Plan. Maharishi Vedic Science, as Literary Theory, allows us to see both the potential in the content and structure of texts, as well as a text’s deepest nature. It can do this, because Maharishi Vedic Science is based upon a set of knowledge that is not man-made. It is taken from Maharishi’s commentaries on the eternal, imperishable truths of life found in the Vedic Literature and cognized (not imagined or analyzed) by enlightened sages who saw the totality of life found in individual expressions. Because all of ever-changing existence, including literary texts, are the manifestations of the deeper truths of life, Maharishi Vedic Science, the science of life is the most suitable form critical analysis for the understanding of all texts.

Maharishi begins his elucidation of Total Knowledge with the understanding that all intellectual disciplines in pursuit of complete knowledge can ultimately acquire only partial knowledge. This is an intellectual certainty. The reason is that Total Knowledge consists of both the field of change and the unified field[20] of non-change which produces the field of change. Moreover, Maharishi explains that complete knowledge is not limited to intellectual knowledge; it is knowledge directly experienced and verified by intellectual understanding derived not by human thought but through the direct cognition of sages whose intellects are already established in the field of Total Knowledge. The cognitions of these rishis include the nature of the source of life, the mechanics of the Laws of Nature, and the corresponding application of those laws in the phenomenal world. Because of the enormity of such knowledge, only a person in the highest level of consciousness—Brahmin Consciousness—is capable of fully grasping Total Knowledge. Nevertheless, it can be subjectively verified through regular experiences of the field of Total Knowledge, the transcendental field of pure consciousness. And it can be verified scientifically through changes in human physiology, such as increases in the orderly functioning of brain waves. This is demonstrated during EEG studies as individuals subjectively confirm their experiences of the field of Total Knowledge. Other scientific studies corroborate the effect of regularly experiencing the filed of Total Knowledge in the growth, happiness, and evolution of regular practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program.

[t]he discovery of the Unified Field of all the Laws of Nature as the self-referral reality, having a three-in-one structure, completely corresponds with the Unified Field of Vedic Science (Saµhitå of Rishi, Devatå, Chhandas). It is interesting to observe that the objective approach of modern science has revealed the self-referral field of intelligence, or consciousness, at the basis of all objective material creation, the complete knowledge of which is available in the Veda and Vedic literature. (Maharishi (1977), p. 6)

In the field of Total Knowledge, knowledge is self-referral; it knows only itself. Knowledge in this field is always unified—always Saµhitå. Nevertheless, without ever losing its unified structure, its qualities of Rishi, Devatå, Chhandas (knower, process of knowing, and known) that make up the characteristics of knowledge are eternally interacting, and out of their various combinations creation in its almost infinite variety emerges.

Knowledge without the knowledge of the source of knowledge, the field of Total Knowledge, is ignorance. Anything less than Total Knowledge is partial knowledge. Attempting to acquire knowledge (i.e. full knowledge) of anything in the phenomenal field is both enormous and ultimately impossible. The reality of this statement is true because of the changeability of knowledge, and more importantly, because the essential nature of knowledge is transcendental and lies outside the domain of the phenomenal world. Fortunately, attaining the knowledge of the field of Total Knowledge is both possible, and as human beings, our birthright. We need only a reliable technique that will allow us to experience this field regularly. This Maharishi has provided as the Transcendental Meditation technique. Having gained the field of Total Knowledge, through this practice, one gains the essence of all knowledge. This is possible because this fundamental field is not only the source of all knowledge, it is the deepest most profound level of every aspect of knowledge, of every point in creation.

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[1] Maharishi, (1969), pp. 19-20.

[2] Eagleton, pp. 30-32.

[3] Selden, pp. 72-73.

[4] Saussure is the founder of semiotics, the study of sign systems that underlie human life, including language.

[5] Belsey, pp. 38-42.

[6] This belief is fostered by and ignorance of the Transcendental Meditation Program that allows the mind to transcend the finest level of language and reach the source of thought, the field of Total Knowledge.

[7] Kennedy, p. 301.

[9] Maharishi 1997, Total Knowledge, the Unified Field of all the Laws of Nature, the Samhita of Rishi, Devata, and Chhandas.

[10] Barthes, pp. 142-148.

[11] Johnson, p. 457.

[12] Staton, p. 320.

[13] See Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics.

[14] Lacan, p. 58.

[15] Lacan, p. 70.

[16] Stanton, p. 322.

[17] Lacan, p. 72.

[18] Rk Veda 1.164.39. The Verses of the Veda exist in the collapse of fullness (the kshara of A (A) in the transcendental field, in which reside the Devas, the impulses of Creative Intelligence, the Laws of Nature responsible for the whole manifest universe. He whose awareness is not open to this field what can the verses accomplish for him? Those who know this level of reality are established in evenness, wholeness of life.

[19] Maharishi used this analogy to indicate how obvious it is for a person with a high consciousness to perceive the mistakes of those acting in ignorance.

[20] Maharishi (1997), p. 2.