By the summer of 1983, the Lebanese Civil War had been raging for eight years, following decades of turbulence. No one had been able to stop it―not a multinational peacekeeping force, not a United Nations interim force that was sent into the country.
That summer, a group of people came together in Jerusalem with the aim to reduce that fighting. This would not be a political or military intervention. It would not involve shuttle diplomacy or signing treaties. In fact, this group would not interact with anyone.
Instead, they checked into a hotel and spent much of each day with their eyes closed. They were workers, students and retirees―ordinary people. But they also were meditation experts. Twice each day for extended periods, they practised the Transcendental Meditation technique and its advanced techniques, “diving within” to experience a state of inner stillness.
They were not “praying for peace”. They were simply settling into a natural inner quietude.
The concept was simple yet radical. The inner peace they experienced would spread invisibly through society and bring a measure of peace to both Israel and Lebanon―significant enough that it would show up in objective measures.
Confirmed by prior research
To many people, this idea would seem laughable. Yet the peace-creating effect this group intended to generate had already been confirmed in earlier research studies.
The earliest studies showed that when just a tiny fraction of any population―just 1 per cent―learns the TM technique, quality of life improves for the population as a whole. For example, in cities that reached this 1 per cent threshold, crime rate dropped significantly in comparison with matched control cities. No other factors known to affect the crime rate could account for this change. Other measures of social stress, such as automobile accidents and suicides, also decreased significantly in the “1 per cent cities” compared with the matched controls.
The first researchers named this phenomenon the Maharishi Effect, after Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who predicted it, developed the technique to create it and urged scientific research on its effects.
Later studies found that when people learned the advanced meditation techniques known as the TM-Sidhi programme (based on sage Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras) and practised them together as a group, just the square root of 1 per cent of any population was enough to create harmony and improve quality of life for the whole population.
Numbers this small made it possible to conduct prospective research―to intentionally form “peace-creating” or “coherence-creating” groups and measure the results.
Dramatic improvements in Lebanon and Israel
This is what the experiment in Jerusalem in 1983 was about. During August and September, about 200 meditators came together in a Jerusalem hotel―a number large enough, theoretically, to affect all of Israel and beyond.
Positive changes swept across the region. In Jerusalem, crime, car accidents and fires dropped significantly. Throughout Israel, the crime rate fell, the number of fires dropped, the stock market increased and the national mood improved.
Most striking, the Lebanese Civil War eased significantly―the intensity of fighting and the number of war deaths fell dramatically.
Because many of the participants in the study had other responsibilities during those two months, the size of the peace creating group rose and fell several times during the experimental period. The data showed that each time the size of the group rose, the variables became more positive. For example, crime, car accidents and fires fell in Israel and the Israeli stock market rose, while across the border in Lebanon fighting subsided and war deaths dropped. When the size of the group dropped, the variables became negative. It was like turning a light switch on and off.
At the end of September, the experiment ended, and the participants returned home―and the war in Lebanon intensified and the other statistics reverted to “normal”.
Nothing else could explain these changes. Not weekends, holidays or weather. Not pure chance. The changes were highly correlated with the size of the group in that Jerusalem hotel, the epicentre of the changes.
On six further occasions over the next two years, large groups of meditation experts came together that were also large enough, theoretically, to influence the Lebanese war.
Combining the results of all seven experiments, scientists found that while the groups were together, fighting in Lebanon plummeted. War-related deaths decreased 71% on average, war-related injuries fell 68%, the level of conflict dropped 48%, and cooperation among antagonists increased by 66%. The odds of these changes happening by chance were less than one part in 1019―virtually zero.
Bringing calm to Washington, DC
In June and July 1993, a similarly rigorous experiment was conducted in Washington, DC.
This time thousands of people―professionals, students, teachers, doctors and homemakers, travelled at their own expense from 73 countries to America’s capital, with large groups of them taking up residence in hotels around the city.
As in Jerusalem, they were all expert meditators, practitioners of the TM and TM-Sidhi programmes. Washington was known at the time as the “murder capital of the world” because of its high homicide rate.
The scientists predicted that violent crime (murders, aggravated assaults and rapes) would drop 20%―an audacious prediction, as violent crime rate had risen an average of 11% each summer for the previous six years.
City officials were sceptical. A Washington police department spokesman joked, “We’ll probably have to have 20 inches of snow to keep people off the streets.”
But soon after the demonstration began, the violent crime rate unexpectedly began to decline, and it continued declining through the two-month period, according to statistics from Washington’s metropolitan police department and the FBI.
During the last two weeks in July, when the number of participants peaked at nearly 4,000, violent crime dropped 23%, surpassing the prediction. No other factors known to influence crime rate could explain this change.
That was not all. Across the city, stress and overall quality of life, which had been worsening, unexpectedly and dramatically began improving. This showed up as significant drops in emergency psychiatric calls, complaints against the police, accidental deaths (including suicide) and hospital trauma cases. It was as if the whole city had relaxed.
Amazingly, even the US Congress worked together more cooperatively during the experimental period.
Statistically, only one thing could account for these surprising changes: the large group of TM and TM-Sidhi programme meditators.
Transforming quality of life in the United States
The longest experiment ran for four years.
Between 2007 and 2010, there was a group of about 1,700 TM and TM-Sidhi experts at Maharishi International University, in the state of Iowa, near the centre of the country. This number, about the square root of 1 per cent of the US population, was large enough theoretically to influence the whole country.
A 17-year study revealed that when the group size reached the necessary threshold, the whole country seemed transformed. During those four years, murders dropped by 16%, rapes by 6%, aggravated assaults by 11%, robberies by 12%, infant mortality by 11%, drug-induced deaths (including opioid deaths) by 15%, vehicle fatalities by 21%, and child and adolescent deaths by injuries by 18%.
This translated into many tens of thousands of lives saved. The savings in costs and human suffering are incalculable.
How strong is the evidence?
This novel approach to creating peace has been documented in 56 studies, 29 of them published in leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Moreover, the evidence in these studies consists of open statistics, gathered by government agencies and other independent sources, available for anyone to check.
The researchers use all the available daily, weekly, and monthly statistics related to the hypothesis―they do not cherry pick.
They analyse the data using the most rigorous statistical methods to determine whether other factors could account for the observed changes.
The statistical results have always been highly significant. The odds that these effects could have happened by chance are minuscule.
The experiments have been replicated repeatedly, and no experiment has failed to produce the predicted results.
All the experiments were created in advance―the groups were formed specifically to produce well-defined effects in the surrounding population. The results were also predicted in advance.
The Maharishi Effect has been demonstrated all over the world, the east and the west, and at every scale of society―in cities, states, nations. On several occasions, groups were large enough to influence the world as a whole.
This research is increasingly accepted in the scientific community, through publication in leading journals and presentations at conferences.
How is this possible? Parallels with physics
To understand this effect, let’s start with the individual. Naturally and effortlessly, TM practice leads to a state of restful alertness, characterised by deep physiological rest, heightened wakefulness, and remarkably increased coherence and orderliness in brain functioning.
In this state, the body dissolves stress with exceptional efficiency. Even those suffering from severe post-traumatic stress experience rapid recovery. TM meditators, with lower levels of stress, have been found to be healthier than the general population.
But the inner peace, harmony and brainwave coherence they experience is not confined to their own minds and bodies. As the Maharishi Effect research demonstrates, it radiates outward.
When we see a group of TM meditators in a Jerusalem hotel bringing calm to an out-of-control war hundreds of miles away, we are seeing an example of a field effect, or action at a distance.
We take advantage of field effects all the time. When we make cell phone calls and send text messages, it is the underlying all-pervading electromagnetic field that carries the signals from one place to another.
What field carries the Maharishi Effect?
Scientists postulate that it must be the unified field, understood in mathematical physics as the most basic field in the universe, the underlying source of everything. When meditation experts settle into their silent inner consciousness, coherence spontaneously emanates through the unified field, fostering peace and harmony everywhere.
But how can so few people create harmony for so many?
We find this same principle in nature. In the heart, a small number of cells, called pacemaker cells, induce the whole heart to function in an orderly way. In an iron bar, when the spins of a small percentage of the electrons become aligned, all other electrons come into alignment, creating a magnet. With lasers, a small number of photons moving coherently can cause a much larger number to move coherently and produce laser light.
In other words, when just a small percentage of the elements in a system begins functioning coherently, the whole system may undergo a phase transition towards coherent functioning.
With the Maharishi Effect, we see this same principle at work in human society. A small number of individuals, functioning coherently, cause the entire society to become more coherent.
This reveals the close parallel between the individual and society. When stress builds up in the individual, it can break out as anger, aggression, and physical and mental illness. Stressed individuals, in turn, create a stressed collective consciousness, and as social stress builds up, it breaks out as crime, violence, social unrest and warfare.
Just as individual stress exacerbates or causes 90% of all disease, now we can see that social stress lies at the root of much of what ails us as a society.
And just as individual TM practice dissolves individual stress, we now see that group practice effectively dissolves social stress.
Revolutionary implications
The Maharishi Effect studies suggest that the unified field, far from being some abstract mathematical construct, is a field of pure consciousness, lively and dynamic, interpenetrating and interconnecting everything, giving rise to the whole of creation and everything in it.
These findings challenge the prevailing scientific paradigm―they suggest that consciousness, not matter, is primary. They show that every human being has access to this field within their own quiet awareness, for their own and others’ benefit.
Most important, these studies suggest we may be looking at one of the most significant discoveries of all time―the discovery of a practical and systematic technology of peace.
Existing approaches to peace―ceasefires, peacekeeping, mediation, negotiation―have had mixed results, and none has proven successful in the long run. We have thousands of years of evidence. In our 21st century civilisation, we remain enmeshed in “forever wars”. Moreover, we face existential threats to our well-being and survival―the climate crisis, collapsing ecosystems, chronic diseases, poverty, food insecurity, and acute social inequalities.
What can we do?
The Maharishi Effect research suggests that we can start by working at the most basic level―consciousness.
Crime, motor vehicle deaths, air traffic fatalities, suicides, infectious diseases, accidents, alcohol and cigarette and drug consumption, opioid addiction, infant mortality, inflation and unemployment, government gridlock―we don’t normally imagine these things having much to do with each other. But when we see these disparate negative trends declining all at once when large groups of TM and TM-Sidhi programme participants come together, we are compelled to conclude that something powerful is happening at a very deep level of society.
The Maharishi Effect, because it operates at this level, has proven successful where traditional approaches have not. It is extremely powerful. It is safe and noninvasive. It is nonpolitical. It is easy to create. Its cost is absurdly low, a minute fraction of what the world’s superpowers already spend on defence. It has been field tested worldwide. It is scientifically validated―indeed, it is the only approach to national security and world peace backed by rigorous scientific research. It has a firm scientific foundation, based on the most advanced understandings of modern science. It eliminates the root of conflict and terrorism. It produces immediate results. And its results are holistic, nourishing and harmonising, dissolving negativity and promoting positivity.
10,000 for World Peace assembly
From December 29 to January 13 this year, more than 10,000 TM and TM-Sidhi meditation experts―just over the square root of 1 per cent of the world’s population―came together in Hyderabad from across India and throughout the globe.
Representing 139 countries, they gathered for a “10,000 for World Peace” assembly, held at the Kanha Shanti Vanam complex, the world’s largest meditation facility, on the outskirts of the city.
The assembly’s chief purpose was to highlight the urgent need for a permanent group of this size, large enough to create continuous and perpetual coherence for the whole world, and to inspire support for it for such a group.
Government and business leaders and spiritual luminaries visited the assembly and were inspired by what they saw. A number of them expressed interest in assisting, and discussions about such support are under way.
What would such support look like? How can large, permanent peace-creating groups most easily be formed?
Any head of state, any leader in society can quickly create groups of coherence-creating experts in their country―in the military, the police force, schools and universities, businesses. Most ideal would be groups whose sole focus is diving within and creating the Maharishi Effect―“peace-creating professionals.” In India, the ideal would be large groups of Vedic scholars. A single wealthy philanthropist or family could create permanent peace for the world family, peace for generations into the future.
Could any legacy be more significant than this? Would history honour and celebrate anything more than this?
India’s most precious gift
These technologies and the knowledge underlying them have been understood in India since ancient times. India’s Vedic tradition holds the innermost essence of nature to be Atma, an unmanifest, unbounded sea of pure consciousness. Other traditions have a similar understanding, with other names for this underlying field of consciousness. And in every tradition, it is regarded as accessible to human experience.
The great sage Patanjali captures the essence of the Maharishi Effect in the Yoga Sutras when he says Tat sannidhau vairatyaga―“In the vicinity of the settled mind (yoga) hostile tendencies fall away.”
As groups of meditation experts settle into the inner experience of yoga, inner silence, they enliven the all-pervading, all-nourishing field of Atma, pure consciousness, the unified field. They neutralise social stress―and negativity in society simply falls away.
India has given marvellous gifts to the world, in science and technology, entrepreneurship, cuisine, music, art, cinema, and more. But history will surely recognise that India’s most far-reaching and enduring legacy is the gift of knowledge: the knowledge of how to unfold the full potential of the individual and create what humanity has yearned after for millennia ―peace.
As if to emphasise this theme: Just two months after the 10,000 for World Peace gathering in Hyderabad, India’s ministry of culture organised a major conference from March 14 to17 at the same facility in Hyderabad. Its theme: “Global Spirituality Mahotsav: Inner Peace to World Peace.”
The technology is in our hands. We only need to use it.
Craig Pearson is assistant to the president at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, and author of The Supreme Awakening: Experiences of Enlightenment Throughout Time―and How You Can Cultivate Them.