World Peace through Transcendental Meditation

The individual is the unit, the building block of society. As well as reducing stress and negativity in individuals, Transcendental Meditation reduces the overall level of stress in society. Many research studies have found that just 1% of a population practising Transcendental Meditation is sufficient to bring about a significant reduction in crime, sickness and accidents. This effect has been called the "Maharishi Effect" by scientists.

FACTS AND FIGURES

In 1993 a successful experiment was performed in Washington, DC, in America to demonstrate the effect of a large group of TM meditators on crime levels. [Summary of research]
Similar experiments were carried out in the Middle East during the Lebanon war and demonstrated that groups of TM meditators were able to produce a 34% reduction in war intensity and a 76% reduction in war deaths. [More details]
In 2003, the highly respected Journal of Offender Rehabilitation devoted all four quarterly issues entirely to studies demonstrating that the TM programme is effective in treating and preventing criminal behaviour, as well as reducing international conflicts and terrorism. [More details]
TM has been taught in prisons in many countries reducing the levels of stress, violence and rule infractions, as well as the re-offending rate, notably in Senegal. [More details]. In Scotland, in 1990, ten prison officers, including the Governor, were taught TM in Glasgow's notorious Barlinnie Gaol, as part of a stress reduction programme.

The Maharishi Effect

Research has shown that groups of individuals practising Transcendental Meditation and the advanced TM-Sidhi technique, enjoy very high brainwave coherence. This individual effect also has the effect of creating coherence in collective consciousness, and generates a unifying and integrating effect in the life of society. This results in a decrease of negative trends throughout society — such as crime, accidents, and sickness — and an increase in positive social, economic, and political trends.

Over 50 scientific studies over the past twenty five years have measured the Maharishi Effect. They have found decreased crime and violence, improved international relations, reduced regional conflict, decreased war intensity and war fatalities, and, significantly, decreased terrorism, correlated with assemblies practising the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programme. [Article]

"I have been following the research on the Maharishi Effect as it has developed over the last twenty years. There is now a strong and coherent body of evidence showing that the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programme provides a simple cost-effective solution to many of the social problems we face today. This research and its conclusions are so strong that it demands attention from those responsible for government policy."
Professor Huw Dixon, PhD, Department of Economics, York University

Field Effect

The explanation given by scientists as to why individuals practising Transcendental Meditation can profoundly influence the whole of society is that consciousness is a field similar to the other fields known in physics, such as electromagnetism and gravity.

The coherence (orderliness) in brain functioning generated by TM spreads through the field, in the same way that light radiates from a light bulb, increasing positivity in collective consciousness and reducing stress and crime. Scientists have named this field effect the Maharishi Effect, after Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who predicted it over 30 years ago.

Researchers have found that the intensity of the effect is increased when a group of people practise Yogic Flying, an advanced technique of Transcendental Meditation.

Creating World Peace

Following the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation, announced the establishment of a $1 billion Endowment Fund for Perpetual World Peace which would be used to support, on a permanent basis, a peace-creating group of 40,000 meditators at a specially designed location in India. Maharishi has appealed to governments, businesses and the wealthy of the world to contribute to it to "eliminate the basis of all negativity in our world".