The Maharishi Effect

The source of this article is a book called "This Book is Not Real" by Chris Campbell. (An excellent read, by the way)

'This Book is not Real' is a book which aims to unify all fields of science - all the way from spirituality to physics and from medicine to mass media and to glean  out and separate Reality from myth,illusion or maya.

Excerpt:

       "Regardless of how different they may appear from one another, every mind contains the pattern of the whole consciousness. And through that link we each have direct access to the entire pattern, in other words, we all have the power to change the hologram of our world. Scientific studies support these principles and have found that when people within a group share acommon experience of consciousness, the effects can be detected beyond the group itself. One example of this phenomenon is Transcendental Meditation (TM) and its effects on large populations. (Braden, 2007)

             Studies date back to the 60’s that show that when groups of people meditate on peace,and feel it throughout their bodies, it affects the environment, and people around them.This ‘theory’ has been proven over and over by top scientists and universities. It is what is called Transcendental Meditation, a technique where you keep your focus on one feeling that creates these results. 

                        Over 500 studies have been completed on the physiological, psychological, and sociological effects of the Maharishi Transcendental Meditation (‘TM’) and TM-Sidhi programs, making it perhaps the most intensively studied technology in the field of human development. These studies have been conducted at 210 different universities and research institutions in 27 countries, and articles have now appeared in more than 100 scientific journals. These studies have been gathered in Scientific Research on the Maharishi Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs, Volumes 1-6,containing over 4,000 pages of scientific papers (TM.org, 2002)

                             The ‘Maharishi Effect’, which was named after Maharishi Mahesh Yogi about 50 years ago and states that the meditation of one person using correctly these TM techniques can affect about 99 people, according to their studies. Meaning, someone feeling extreme peace can calm about 99 people around them. Brain scans of unexpecting people in surrounding areas of meditations have shown this to be true. 

                        It was 1983 when Dr. Singh, the founder of TM.org and the creator of the TM-Sidhi programs assembled 7,000 trained meditators in Fairfield, Iowa for three weeks. During the three week long retreat there was a huge drop in violence and crime. These trained meditators were instructed to meditate solely on peace and to immerse themselves in nothing but peaceful thoughts. Everywhere the crime statistics dropped, as if a peaceful virus spread throughout the entire Earth.A global Maharishi effect was seen whereby conflict reduced worldwide by 30 percent and the effect was seen all over the world….

….We are convinced that we can create world peace by having a few groups, two to three, of 8,000.

Dr. Singh

                Another experiment done in the 1980’s was aimed for the war in Lebanon. This time only about 200 experienced meditators gathered in a facility near Lebanon. During the experiment, war deaths in Lebanon went down seventy-one percent, war injuries dropped sixty-eight percent, and the level of conflict stepped down to forty-eight percent.

                         Immediately after the experiment the violence rose again. When they stopped meditating, people fell back into their destructive habits.Studies show that EEG readings of people in the surrounding area have been affected by the groups from even 1,000 miles away! They also noticed that the brains of the people meditating and the people in the surrounding area produced more serotonin, the ‘happylove- peace chemical’. The serotonin levels rose and dropped in line with the times the meditators started and stopped. Low levels of serotonin is said to lead to aggression, depression, substance abuse, and crime. When the experiment was going on people were more peaceful and apt to be more optimistic. But, when the peace wasn’t in the area anymore they began to run old patterns and became more pessimistic. Somehow the meditators were able to raise the level of this chemical, and create peace all around them.

                   Studies all around the world prove this phenomenon over and over again. Even Washington DC got a taste of TM when Social Indicators Research predicted that an eight week long experiment with meditators would decrease violent crime in our country’s capital by 20 percent. They were close. During the eight-weeks, rape, murder, and violence all dropped by 23 percent. The odds of this happening coincidentally were calculated to being less than 2 in 1 billion. 

                David Edwards, a professor of government at the University of Texas in Austin says:“I think the claim can be plausibly made that the potential impact of this research exceeds that of any other ongoing social or psychological research program. It has survived a broader array ofstatistical tests than most research in the field of conflict resolution. This work and the theory thatinforms it deserve the most serious consideration by academics and policy makers alike.

                                        They concluded that if you took the square root of 1% of people in an area, that’s how many meditators it would take to affect that specific area. Claims have been made by many professionals in many different fields that since the square root of one percent of the entire Earth population is 8,000, that’s how many people it would take to create world peace."

Imagine! Meditation techniques like Sudarshan Kriya or Transcendental Meditation done correctly inducing peace in the society!

And proved by science!

Also see: Permanent Peace: How to Stop Terrorism and War — Now and Forever by Robert Oates. 

That book reveals 19 scientific studies that proved when groups of people meditate, the crime and violence in their areagoes down. 

Oates writes:

“ The basic idea is simple to state: Like ripples on a pond radiating outward from a pebble’s splash, ripples of orderliness and harmony

radiate outward from concentrated groups of meditation experts. And the evidence for this idea has been repeated and is statistically signifi

cant. Not only do signs of social disorder go down — such as violent crime, fires, traffic accidents, warfare, and terrorism — but signs of 

coherence and progress go up. Patent applications, for example, stock market levels, and economic indicators have all been shown to rise. ”